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.
Everyone: urge the Chicago City Council to eliminate from the contract with the thug union the provisions that protect them from prosecution when they kill or brutalize people.
US citizens: phone your Democratic senators at 1-866-665-4470 and urge them to fight hard against the revised Dontcare bill that SCROTUS will propose in July.
Sekulow, the troll's lawyer, raised millions of dollars for his own relatives under the guise of "donations" to a Christian organization.
Dubya sent US special forces to 60 countries. Obama to 120 countries. Now the troll has extended that to 137 countries — about 2/3 of the countries in the world. They win battles, but they never win a war.
It seems the troll is looking for an excuse for war against Assad in Syria, and then against Iran.
I wouldn't put it past Assad to launch a chemical attack. But I have no reason to believe he will do so. The troll's assertion means nothing.
Calling on China to allow Liu Xiaobo to go home for treatment or to go get treatment outside China.
The US has never figured out how to get Pakistan to stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The troll plans to try an unsubtle approach.
Plastic debris in the ocean doesn't all stay in the ocean. It also washes up on the shore and endangers wildlife there.
A large fraction of the world's food shipping passes through a few "chokepoints" which are vulnerable to global heating.
A Catholic bishop in China has been disappeared.
Engineers present further arguments that World Trade Center 7 could not have collapsed as it did without inside help, and that the official investigation skipped over that part of the issue.
I don't have the expertise needed to reach any conclusion about this. I can't judge the arguments of the various sides. The only conclusion that I can reach is that we should have a full, complete and honest investigation of what caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse.
One thing we can be sure of is that the actual investigation was corrupt. One of the members quit and said so.
US citizens: phone Republican senators that might oppose the Dontcare bill.
US citizens: call on Congress to defend press freedom.
US citizens: Senate, reject torture designer Steve Bradbury.
Brazil's corrupt president has been formally charged with taking bribes.
The UK's National Health Service outsourced its mail handling, and guess what? Over 700,000 letters with medical information for patients went undelivered.
The Senate's version of the Dontcare bill would cut off medical coverage for a mere 22 million Americans instead of 23 million.
Some "smart" meters send information as often as once every minute. That's plenty for monitoring people in the home and what they do.
The troll as rendered the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board inactive by not appointing a quorum of members.
Theresa May's contempt for human rights laws gives aid and support to tyrants.
The Supreme Court permitted a part of the troll's partial ban on Muslims to take effect temporarily, but it will not make any final decision until October.
In the mean time, many court cases will be required to work out the precise boundaries of the temporary rule.
Around 400 buildings per year collapse in Egypt because they were built in a shoddy way, due to widespread corruption.
The FERC, as usual, made a biased decision to approve a pipeline.
Women in Afghanistan are treated so badly after a divorce (if they can get one) that they turn to suicide to escape from violent husbands. Some try to burn themselves to death.
Aisha is quoted as praying for death. Did she want treatment, or did doctors pressure her to accept it? If she really still wanted to die, compassion requires us to cooperate with that.
Smoke inhalation probably hurts a lot less than burns. A woman might be wiser to set the violent husband on fire, then inhale the smoke.
A UK court overturned a government order banning local governments from participating in divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The Koch brothers have cut off the pay of the Republican Party until they pass some sort of medical care sabotage.
Republicans would sell their own children to get their pay — and Americans' children too. They know voters will hate them for this, but they will think they've already given up public approval. They are now owned by their corrupt masters, and will have to bet that their masters' money (plus voter suppression) overcomes public memory.
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been nominally released from prison. This occurred a few years early because he is dying of cancer.
Prisons are known for denying prisoners needed medical care. Often by refusing to believe the problem is serious. US prisons do this, Australian prisons do this, and Chinese political prisons are probably even worse.
Activists say that China systematically (though deniably) limits political prisoners' medical care, hoping that prisoners will get sick and die.
They may not have knowingly refused to recognize Liu's cancer until it was too advanced to cure, but they shut their eyes just in case. Shall we call this Chinese Prison Roulette? It is a form of murder (though without actually breaking a law).
His supposed release from prison may be a sham. His hospital room may be a form of prison. Things the Chinese government says often have as little relationship to reality as things the troll says.
The US government ought to be a shining beacon of contrast to China's repression, but that is ever less the case.
Correlating the different systems that have been used to measure temperature in various parts of the oceans, and overcoming various biases, a study confirms that oceans have been getting hotter.
The residents of London housing project that burned down were concerned about the danger of fire, but the Tories had limited legal aid funds so that there was no way they could demand action.
A report assigning the Great Barrier Reef an economic value of 56 billion dollars might perhaps convince some Australians to take measures to curb global heating.
If the Dontcare bill kills people, will that be murder?
When discussing whether something is or isn't murder, outside the context of a legal accusation, to cite laws is to miss the point.
The word "murder" has multiple related meanings. In law, it is the name of a crime, with a definition that varies between jurisdictions. Courts, trying someone for murder, should follow these definitions.
The word also has an everyday meaning that is more basic than laws, and is independent of the details of the laws of one place or another. It means knowingly killing people in the absence of certain morally valid justifications.
Unless "crushing the poor to give to the rich" is a morally valid justification, the Dontcare bill's killings will be murder by the ordinary meaning.
The UK is demonizing anyone that imports a sex doll with a childlike body shape.
It would be ludicrous to claim that some child was harmed by making the doll, so they don't bother offering any justification for the prohibition. The mere idea that these dolls are "sickening" is supposed to justify making it a crime.
Here's an Idea: Guarantee Every Child an Excellent Education.
Half the coffee-producing land in Ethiopia will become unsuitable as a result of global heating.
Worst of all, the wild strains will die out. Their genetic resources will be forever lost.
Progressives say that candidate Ossoff lost to a Republican, despite millions in support from the Democratic Party, for the same reason Clinton did: failure to stand for progressive change.
The progressive candidates for Congress lost too, but they got little support from the Democratic Party — because they were progressive.
Philando Castille made every effort to comply with the thug's orders and assure safety. The thug's response — first incompetent, then violent, then dishonest — turned it into murder.
Video that was kept secret until after the trial shows this clearly.
The thug's acquittal shows the bias of our legal system on behalf of thugs. It bows down to them with more respect than we give ordinary citizens. That respect enables them to get away with murder.
How can we change that? One way is by setting a visible example of denying them the excessive respect they claim. That's why I call them "thugs". It is not just a way to vent emotions. It is a way to teach not to give them so much respect.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to preserve the Johnson Amendment: don't allow
churches to spend money on election campaigning.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
A proposed US mandate for all cars to transmit information about their movements would make it easy to track all cars' movements, all the time.
The article explains why we must fight each new proposed surveillance system no matter how many others already exist.
A universal basic income, in today's economic conditions, would not replace state-funded medical care or support for the disabled.
In a hundred years, if we avoid global disaster and we end human population growth, and if medicine advances so far that no treatment is very expensive, that may change.
Meet some of the Americans SCROTUS are trying to kill.
A mosque in Berlin that aims to reform Islam will not close even though its founder receives thousands of death threats.
Her relatives in Turkey fear they will be used as hostages, but she courageously refuses to let that defeat her.
Corbyn inspires activists in Mexico.
Should You Be More Afraid of Carjackers — or the Zippers on Your Pants?
English "fishing villages" are turning into theme parks; there are few real fishermen, and the tourist-oriented restaurants don't buy fish from them, so fishermen cannot afford to live there anymore.
This is a world-wide pattern that every place that is interesting or special becomes more and more like a theme park.
Mélenchon's party's small bloc in the French Assembly is going all out to oppose Macron's labor "reforms".
These "reforms" are intended, in France as elsewhere, to enable business to pay workers less and send plutocrats more.
High rents and insufficient welfare benefits are projected to push a million British families out of their homes by 2020.
North Korea is not the only place where prisoners wind up in a permanent coma. It happened this year in New Jersey.
North Korea says little about how Warmbier got into a coma. New Jersey likewise says little.
North Korea should come clean, and New Jersey too.
The California single-payer medical system bill passed the California Senate, but was quashed in the lower house by the speaker.
Previously I thought it had been passed by both houses and that it was on the verge of becoming law. Sorry for the mistake.
In Yemen and Eritrea, forces of the United Arab Emirates torture prisoners to get them ready for US agents to interrogate.
Then the US agents say, "We didn't see any torture."
People are becoming concerned about "smart" meters as a surveillance system.
I understood the idea of a "smart" meter to include allowing the utility to query total energy usage at any time. That would allow moment-to-moment monitoring.
If French "smart" meters report electric usage only once per day, they are not much of a privacy threat with that limitation. The utility could determine whether someone was home, perhaps estimate how many people were home, but nothing more.
Are "smart" meters in other countries designed with that limitation?
The Republican Party is the party of ungovernment.
The troll reportedly wants to get rid of special investigator Robert Mueller, but that would require a complicated procedure.
Remember when the troll "saved" jobs at Carrier by giving it a tax cut? The were not saved for long: they are being offshored now.
A black thug, off duty, came to assist a white thug. The white thug shot him.
Apparently no black is safe around white thugs.
Protection of the Siberian tiger since the 1930s has enabled its numbers to increase by 20 times. But the total is still only 500.
A thug killed a teenager by shooting at a violent dog.
A biting dog is dangerous, but wouldn't a taser have done the job? Why did they pull out guns first?
Google's blacklists give it tremendous power. It
can
cut off any website from being visited by nearly all internet
users.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
A list of all the troll's lies since his inauguration.
US citizens: tell Senator Schumer to stop supporting pro-coal Senator Manchin with pro-coal ads.
US citizens: call on Congress to handle infrastructure development the progressive and useful way, rather than through privatization giveaways.
UNESCO says that local efforts can't save coral reefs; curbing global heating is the only way.
Senator Paul proposed a Senate rules change to require a pause before voting on a bill, of one day for each 20 pages of the bill's length.
I think it is a good idea.
A thug was given "qualified immunity" by a US court even though it was proved he lied about facts to try to convict an innocent man.
That decision was perverse. Tentatively disregarding some discrepant facts is sometimes justified, but lying about them can never be excused.
After a thug killed Philando Castile, prosecutors got his girlfriend's phone records to try to throw dirt on her for criticizing the thug.
Despite President Temer's surprise veto, the Brazilian Amazon is not safe yet from loggers and miners.
Parents of badly disabled children have brought them to Congress to show the staff what medical care those children need. The Dontcare bill would cut it off.
Medical care, Republican style: give them less and make them think it's more.
Ireland is effectively sneaking in a national ID card.
The troll and his staff are illegally deleting their communications, which by law must be preserved.
If CREW wins its lawsuit, is there anything it can do to make the troll and his staff follow the law?
Reportedly the CIA told Obama about a range of Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 election, and Obama waited for Republican cooperation in responding.
These reports come from intelligence organizations that have their own antidemocratic agendas. The facts may not be 100% accurate. Recall that Assange said that some DNC email leaks came from insiders, not from Russian crackers. But let's assume they are broadly correct. What then?
Obama, as usual, asked Republicans to cooperate. When they showed their usual attitude, aiming to take control of the US by hook or by crook, he didn't understand the idea of fighting back. He waited for their cooperation until it was too late. What a sap!
Russian interference with the election was hostile to the US, but the damage it did is far less than what the Republicans did on their own: the big gerrymander and voter suppression. That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
"Clean coal" is now even more mythical, as an experimental CO2-extracting power plant turns out to have to burn only natural gas.
A substantial part of the greenhouse gas emissions of using natural gas come from methane leaks before the gas gets to a power plant.
Mexican journalists were spied on through their portable phones, which were turned into listening devices (as commonly occurs).
There is no proof of who did this, but the obvious suspect is the Mexican state.
2C of global heating will spread deserts around the Mediterranean. The beginning of this is already visible. Other parts of the world face other broad disasters that are already starting.
Tall buildings for public housing don't have to be dangerous. It is plutocracy and its child, dooH niboR, that make them dangerous.
Everyone: call on UNESCO to protect world heritage sites by pressure against locating coal mines near them.
A private blacklist database, accumulated from complaints that are hardly verified at all, causes activists to be denied jobs and bank services.
The troll wants to increase US military spending by 10%, by gutting activities that Americans depend on.
Since the US spends as much on the military as the eight other most powerful armies together, it could do with transferring a lot of this spending to activities that are really useful.
Sessions wants America to forget about the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which blacks were left to suffer untreated syphilis even after we had a cure.
Protester Ken Ward was sentenced to two days in jail for turning a value to shut down a tar oil pipeline.
Missouri is moving a bill to allow employers to fire women for using birth control.
Women could also be evicted for using birth control or for not using birth control (i.e., getting pregnant).
The bill also hampers abortion with pointless harassment requirements.
Women will have to lie to employers and landlords about their birth control and abortion practices.
Elsevier reaffirmed the injustice of today's copyright law by winning a lawsuit against the article-sharing site Sci-Hub. But it can't collect the 15 million dollars, since the site's operator isn't operating for a profit, and it can't shut the site down.
Please be careful not to use the term "pirate" to describe sharing. It requires special attention to avoid following someone else's example, such as after reading an article like that one.
Banning VPNs is dangerous, in Russia or anywhere else.
The Senate's Dontcare bill opens a sneaky method for insurance companies to gouge Americans with preexisting medical conditions.
The troll is pushing to increase surveillance of the US and everyone in it, for the sake of deportation.
Chinese censorship descends openly on Hong Kong: signs criticizing China's repression or its repressive ruler have been banned from his parade route.
Dark Money Turns Elections Into Trench Warfare.
When the Theater of Security Agency makes travelers remove papers from their bags, that will lead naturally to unofficial censorship of reading material.
Italy has a fairly efficient system of monitoring and discouraging potential ideological terrorists.
Killing People For Tax Cuts (for the rich only).
The West must respect the nuclear deal with Iran, or that deal may fall apart. In particular, this means no more military provocations.
Turkey has surrendered to ignorance as well as tyranny: schools will no longer teach evolution.
China is turning Xinjiang into a totalitarian system of repression. This is presented as a scheme to crush Islamist terrorism (and Uyghur separatism, which is not the same thing). But this sort of repression is much worse than terrorism.
Americans, take this as a lesson of what the US will be like if we don't stop it.
The heat wave is causing physical injury to homeless people in Arizona.
A century from now, with higher temperatures everywhere, such injury could cover large parts of the US. In some places, heat waves could be fatal to all humans not protected by air conditioning or underground shelters.
Ralph Nader: [plutocrats are] Closing Democracy's Doors Until the People Open Them.
House Logging Bill (HR 2936) Guts Federal Environmental Laws, Literally Privatizes Public Lands, Creates Logging Free-for-All.
Senators Drafting Secret Health Care Bill Backed by Insurance and Pharma Campaign Money.
The US should do an "autopsy" on a specific retired nuclear power plant, to see what flaws the other similar plants may have.
US citizens: call for justice for Charleena Lyles, killed by thugs after she called for help.
Almost half the accounts tweeting in Russian about politics are pro-Putin bots.
The US is drifting towards war with Iran, encouraged by the troll.
Some survivors from the apartment building fire in London are afraid to go to the hospital because they fear they will be deported.
Saboteur Pruitt of the EPA has fired most of the real scientists from its scientific advisory committees, and made them inactive.
The Department of Homeland Subjugation has illegally started submitting US citizens to face recognition as they board some international flights.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Dontcare bill.
It is useful to urge them to delay the vote until after the July 4 recess. More time, more public scrutiny of the bill, will improve our chances of blocking it.
The Senate's Dontcare bill is basically just like the one passed by the House of Representatives.
Its cuts to Medicaid start slower but eventually go deeper.
Hong Kong's non-democratically elected chief says that China can arrest or kidnap publishers whenever it likes. It's fine with her.
Some of Clinton's fund raising leaders are now lobbying for oppressive Republican policy proposals, such as abolishing network neutrality.
Given Clinton's pro-business (plutocratist) leanings, this doesn't surprise me. When I was young, we had a name for politicians like Clinton: "Republicans".
Natural gas is not a safe replacement for coal — to avoid global disaster, we will have to cut its use fast.
Instead of investing in use of natural gas, we should invest in renewable energy.
Just as the apartment house fire occurred, the UK was studying a plan to "get rid of red tape" by eliminating the fire-safety regulations about materials to use in construction.
In the UK, fire is potentially a far bigger danger than terrorists. It is not a bigger danger in practice today, simply because regulations have done a pretty good job of preventing fires.
Guardian: Germany to Quash Convictions of 50,000 Gay Men under Nazi-Era Law.
A nuclear power plant operator is squeezing various states for billions of dollars to keep some nuclear plants operating.
If we spent the money on batteries to store solar power, we would be investing it in a better future.
The main business of Amway is not getting people to resell real products to their friends. It is getting people to pay high prices for seminars, that will supposedly teach them to be a success in reselling products to their friends, but really just say how to push their friends to pay for seminars.
It sounds like EST and its descendants.
A high school valedictorian's speech was terminated by cutting off the microphone when he criticized in a general way some of the school's personnel.
He said the opposite of what he meant to say, by using the wrong word "authoritative" when he should have said "authoritarian". However, everyone understood the intended meaning.
What shocks me most is the comments that rebuke him for his mild criticism of the school authorities. Is this a sample of the authoritarian follower personality?
The troll's plan to deal with the unpayable high prices drug companies charge for medicines is to let them do whatever they like.
Norway will eliminate its foreign aid to Brazil if Brazil does not stop deforestation.
That was on Friday. Perhaps that's why President Temer decided to let a model convince him not to sign the bill that would allow a lot more deforestation.
The copyright industry want to use the renegotiation of NAFTA to increase copyright oppression in Canada, Mexico and the US.
You can tell they are up to no good by their use of the confusion-spreading term "intellectual property".
The Pentagon keeps its eyes firmly shut in regard to civilian casualties from its bombings, then reports that it has seen no evidence of any.
Lessons of 2016 for U.S. Election Security.
Given the resistance that Jill Stein encountered when trying to get recounts in the 2016 election, we can't trust computerized optical ballot counters in the US.
The troll admits that his talk of taping conversations with Comey was a lie for intimidation's sake.
Too bad. Those tapes could have inculpated him.
The beginning of the end for PISSI's territory in Syria and Iraq has unleashed a conflict between the US, Russia, Iran, and their various local clients over the spoils.
I would guess that the US participation in Salafi Arabia's bombardment of Yemen, and the provocations between Salafi Arabia + supports and Iran + supporters, are part of this.
I feel no sympathy for any of the groups of plutocrats that want to fight about this. It is not worth a war.
Seattle's law that raises the minimum wage has not led to reduced employment.
The carbon tax measure supported by polluters disguises a plan to eliminate their liability for all the damage they have done.
The US and Russia continue military provocations.
The thug that killed helpless Sylville Smith was acquitted.
There was no need to shoot Smith again, since he had thrown away his gun. But since he had been a real threat less than 2 seconds before, perhaps the verdict was justified.
The world's human population is predicted to reach 8 billion, just 6 years from now.
It is a good thing that one billion of those people will be over 60 years old, thus too old to reproduce further, but that by itself won't end the population increase. With population increase squeezing from one side, and global heating effects from the other, humanity and the natural world are both likely to be crushed.
How foolish of the article to refer to decline of population as if it were a problem.
When Palestinians attack Israeli occupation forces, that is not "terrorism". Terrorism means making war on civilians.
We must change the US law that protects killer thugs as long as they say they thought the victim was a threat to them.
Even absurd reasons for feeling threatened are accepted when they come from a thug.
As long as the law remains this way, uniformed thugs will be able to murder blacks with impunity. And injure protesters with impunity, too.
Republicans make it standard practice to undermine civil government and honesty in order to get their way. They have been doing this for decades, and it gets worse over time.
A few notes are required:
• I won't take US intelligence's word that the email leaks of the Democratic National Committee were arranged by Russia — though that may have happened.
Whoever was behind those leaks, what matters most is that they served the public by demonstrating how the DNC had sabotaged Sanders' campaign in favor of Clinton.
• It should be noticed that most Montana voters had already voted when Gianforte attacked reporter Ben Jacobs. Also, Gianforte apologized and pled guilty.
However, other Republicans alluded to the attack by inciting more violence.
• ALEC does not "bypass" state legislatures. Rather, it helps corporations organize legislators and sometimes to buy their votes.
• Republicans recently banned using the term "climate change", but 15 years ago they told government employees to say "climate change" instead of the clearer and more concrete "global warming".
Guardian: Over 170 Years After Engels, Britain is Still a Country That Murders Its Poor.
The troll has said nothing about the terrorist attack on Muslim in London, tacitly expressing his acceptance of random violence against them.
Don't think of war as a remedy for the death of Otto Warmbier. War would be much worse.
It is clear that the North Koreans did not kill him intentionally. If they had done that, it would not have looked like this.
We don't know why he died, and — most strangely — his family has forbidden an autopsy.
Exxon and several other large companies endorsed a carbon emissions tax, but in exchange they demand abolition of other policies designed to reduce CO2 emissions.
Whether the tax would do a better job depends on whether the tax is big enough. I have no way of judging that question.
Brazil's corrupt president Temer decided to veto a bill to unprotect a 2300 square miles of the Amazon rain forest, after an appeal from a supermodel.
New corruption evidence against Brazil's President Temer offers once again a possibility he could be removed from his ill-gotten office.
The survivors of the London fire feared having their welfare benefits cut for missing their jobcenter appointments.
That's not an unreasonable fear after the absurd excuses Tories have used to punish people. Indeed, it occurs to me that perhaps the Tories would have punished them for missing their appointments, if not for the publicity that the fire has drawn.
The US is shooting down drones that are flying over Syria, presumably by Assad's forces or their allies.
The drone's approach did not mean it was about to attack, so the US attack was preemptive — begging for a war which could still be avoided.
Where the Amazon rain forest still exists, loggers are degrading it by cutting down trees that are hidden by the upper canopy.
Rating the world's big banks about how much they finance fossil fuel projects.
Scientists have taken a core sample from a glacier in Bolivia that is expected to disappear entirely due to global heating.
Technology combined with neoliberalism adds up to replacing all public services with massive surveillance systems that work for dooH niboR.
We must defend the public services, to reduce inequality and in some cases to defend our privacy.
Some refrigerators and some TVs use a lot more energy in real life than their energy ratings claim they use.
Be suspicious of Samsung and LG.
The Kellers, convicted in 1992 of supposed satanic murders and child abuse, have been declared innocent — these crimes never happened at all.
The US State Department, run by Tillerson, condemned Salafi Arabia for its blockade of Qatar.
This comes after the Pentagon, run by the troll's appointee Mattis, agreed to sell fighter planes to Qatar.
Either some executive branch agencies are simply disregarding what the troll wants, or the troll's statements in favor of Salafi Arabia were lies.
That the troll would lie to us is in no way surprising. Lying to the Salafi Arabian monarchy is another matter. They are disgusting by our standards, but they are not fools that beg to be lied to.
A series of Chinese billionaires have been secretly arrested. One of them either jumped or was pushed out a 12th floor window.
I don't have a basis to judge whether these arrests were justice or injustice. Anyone that rich is likely to have done something very nasty, whether or not it is illegal, and in China I would guess that corruption played a part. There may be good reasons to investigate or prosecute those billionaires.
By the same token, I would expect China to be so corrupt that the state would never bother billionaires unless they start becoming dissidents.
The latest White House "press briefing" banned reporters from recording anything.
Since what they say is pure bullshit, let's not be distracted by them.
Many US states exclude ex-prisoners from many kinds of jobs. This has the measurable result of forcing them to go back to crime.
The air inside airplanes is contaminated with toxins, and a substantial fraction of flight crew have illnesses that might relate to this pollution.
In the US: participate in a Resistance Summer Community Cookout.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-334-5514 and say they should
not have
imperiled
the nuclear deal with Iran by voting for more sanctions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
This applies to all senators except the two, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, that voted against the sanctions.
For more info:
http://act.moveon.org/go/10694
Otto Warmbier has died from the injuries he sustained in prison in North Korea.
The troll is against torture when it's done by North Koreans, but in favor of torture by US government agents.
A special coat for homeless people converts into a sleeping bag.
Republican fanatics, given leave by the troll and other officials, have directed death threats at many US theaters.
The Republican Party is the Party of the Lie. Republican activists are proud of "creatively" spreading deception.
The Imam of Finsbury Park mosque helped to catch and then protect the terrorist murder suspect. As a result, the murderer will stand trial.
The imam also calmed down the crowd.
The Dupes of PISSI: they attack Muslims and thus help PISSI radicalize a few of them.
A study of nine countries found that propagandists were successfully manipulating Twitter and Facebook to spread propaganda.
Iran and Salafi Arabia are at the brink of war.
I distrust both of them, and I won't presume that either one has honestly reported its claims against the other.
US citizens: call on Senate democrats to do all they can to block the progress of the Dontcare bill.
To do this all the time would be sabotage, and wrong. As a response to the sabotage manner that Republicans are using to push the Dontcare bill through fast without scrutiny, using this approach for a few weeks is justified. Once people have a chance to confront them on what the bill says, and what it would do, the Democrats could go back to usual practices.
1/3 of the human population faces deadly heatwaves. By 2100 it will be half, or more.
The UK describes bigotry against Muslims as "extremism" and called an attack on British Muslims with a van "terrorism".
By joining together to condemn all the flavors of violent hatred, we can stop them.
But do remember that hatred for the poor — manifested in Tory and Republican policies — is far more deadly in the west than all the terrorists put together.
The corporate mainstream media are working hard to disparage Bernie Sanders.
This attack by big business (through its media) shows they think Sanders will really try to protect us from them. Sanders for President!
It was wrong to convict a person for killing someone by means of repeatedly urging the person to commit suicide.
For decades, rural Americans have been getting screwed much like poor Americans in cities. Towns are dying, and everyone has to drive a long way to find groceries, gasoline, clothing, or any sort of job.
They already blame corporations, and business-subservient government. Many voted for the troll but don't expect him to do them any real good. I see a great opportunity here for progressives that can propose realistic solutions.
The loss of most of these towns may be inevitable; the economic reason for them has disappeared. However, the secondary suffering might be reduced greatly by feasible policies. I can think of two right now: (1) funding schools from the state budget rather than local property taxes, and (2) helping people move closer to the remaining towns.
South Korea's new president plans to get rid of nuclear power and coal power, though not in a hurry.
When workers aren't replaced by robots, they are often run like robots.
Cockroaches have been turned effectively into robots with brain implants that make them go one way or another. The difference between that and what is done to workers today is substantial but it may not alter the injustice much.
The article is mistaken in saying that the state can't legislate against this. Use your imagination!
Will the troll allow neocons to launch the war with Iran that they have wanted for many years?
North Korea accused US agents of stealing a diplomatic package from North Korean representatives to the UN.
You don't have to admire North Korea to see that such behavior attacks the UN and international peace.
DeVos wants to make civil rights protections for students inoperative by cutting the funds for enforcing them.
One part of this change, that concerning "sexual assault" accusations, might be an advance — it seems that school procedures deny the accused the legal rights that anyone accused of a crime is entitled to.
The rest is entirely bad.
In the US: tell Kroger to stop food grown with neonicotinoids.
The troll's saboteurs are working with Big Pharma on a plan to deal with high drug prices — but the measures they are discussing would not help.
A Republican has called for Democrats to be arrested and the Democratic Party to be banned.
Sessions is unfit for the office of Attorney General because of his failing memory.
David Brin argues that impeaching the troll would be a tactical mistake, because it would enrage his base, and Pence would be just as bad.
He has valid points, but I see one on the other side. The troll's bullshit seems to be necessary to keep some of his base from waking up to the truth. I don't think Pence could do that the way the troll does.
Also, Pence may avoid doing some bad things out of stupidity or wild idiocy.
Some UK stores now "randomly" search people leaving. Of course, it isn't really random — it is based on their ethnicity and how they look.
Right-wing US quilters organized secretly to try to harm the careers of progressive quilting artists.
Some "nonprofit" charter schools are effectively business owned by their founders, and their founders get paid lots of money in direct and indirect ways.
The Kensington and Chelsea council squashed its poor residents so hard last year that it had a surplus — which it divided among the wealthy residents. This is not unrelated to the fatal fire.
The author of the article donated per rebate to charity, feeling it was blood money.
Greece blocked the EU from condemning China's human rights violations.
I agree this is a dishonorable vote, but Greece had to bow to China because of the EU terrible wrong the EU did to Greece.
In the US: join a rally in favor of Planned Parenthood on June 21.
More events: https://resistancenearme.org
Also, keep phoning your senators to oppose the Dontcare bill, even if you phoned before.
Women plan to hold sit-in protests in Republican senators' offices.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the CARERs Act, which would stop federal prosecution for marijuana-related activities that are legal at state level.
US citizens: Free Fate Vincent Winslow — sentenced to life in prison for agreeing to carry $20 of marijuana from a seller to a buyer.
US citizens: call on more representatives and senators to join those suing the troll about his unconstitutional foreign income.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban former members of Congress from becoming lobbyists.
One concrete example is concrete proof that the Dontcare bill would destroy Americans.
As the ACLU encourages cities to limit thugs' snooping equipment, only thugs are opposed.
New "dockless" bike rental schemes admit that they track the user's movements all the time with GPS.
These schemes would work even better, and without spying on people, if the bikes allowed anonymous use limited to a certain area.
The Supreme Court and other courts have given US thugs unchecked power to mistreat anyone, effectively at will.
A new US law redirects NOAA's funding towards weather forecasting.
Since it doesn't give NOAA more money, this money has been taken away from something. What, I wonder? Could it be climate science, perhaps? Is the idea to make good 2-month and 2-year forecasts, at the expense of the 20-year and 40-year forecasts our civilization will live or die by?
Privatization of UK woodlands is happening by the backdoor. Might this be Tories at work?
Surveillance by internet businesses is dangerous and the chilling effect applies to most of what people do.
It is misleading, however, to treat commercial surveillance and state surveillance as seriously distinct. Under the PAT RIOT Act, the databases companies accumulate are immediately and totally accessible to the US government. I consider the companies to be data collectors for the corporatist state.
Resistance against the troll is mounting and has thwarted most of what he wants do.
This is not complete success, however. Resistance has not thwarted putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, nor the deregulatory sabotage of many agencies.
Pulling out from the Paris climate agreement is purely symbolic, but the troll has already canceled the measures that the US was using to carry out its inadequate pledges.
I am not confident we can stop the Republican election-rigging that enabled the troll to "win" the election.
Sheriff Clarke has decided not to accept a post in the Department of Homeland Suppression.
Here's why he aroused so much opposition.
I speculate that public pressure and investigation had something to do with his decision.
The big fire was the crowning event of a long history of contempt for poor people by the Tory-run local council of Kensington.
And, behind them, Tory deregulationism and unwillingness to redistribute wealth to the poor.
PISSI has captured territory in Afghanistan near Tora Bora.
Maybe the US should make an informal alliance ally with the Taliban to keep PISSI out.
Techdirt: Australia's Attorney General Says The Public Will Be Cool with Encryption Backdoors Because They Use Facebook.
The argument is fallacious, but it might appear rational to someone who squints at it hard enough. You can pull the rug out from under this fallacy by getting off Facebook. You ought to do it anyway!
US customs seized lockable travel bags, calling them "drug paraphernalia".
Some US stores demand customers show a photo ID to return merchandise. This is not just to know who the customers are. The stores scan the ID, and all the data goes into the database of Retail Equation.
This is an unjust surveillance system. While it is less than the surveillance of an online retailer, it is still too much. Before you buy anything you might want to return, verify that the store does not use Retail Equation, at least if you have the receipt. (You can keep the receipt.)
Republican senators are totally at a loss when asked what benefits the Dontcare bill is supposed to give the US.
Women dressed as fictional handmaids are protesting against abortion rights and medical care for women.
Sweden's largest pension fund has decided to divest completely from six important fossil fuel companies, including Exxon and the pipeline company TransCanada.
The Dontcare bill could cause 27 million Americans who get medical coverage from their employers to lose it, or find that it covers less.
The Espionage Act needs to be reformed so it can't be used against reporters. Sessions is itching to try.
A proper reform ought to protect whistleblowers, too.
Another dangerous merger: Amazon and Whole Paycheck.
Simply making companies so large gives them more lobbying power and more power to defy enforcement of regulations and laws.
ACLU: The US Intelligence Community Can Share Your Personal Information With Other Governments, and We're Demanding Answers.
Several US states plan to make it impossible for the public to get thugs' body camera videos.
Access to the images should be limited somewhat, so that neither the public nor the state can see it unless there is a specific justification. But when the justification is good enough for the state to look, it is good enough for the public to look.
A new Japanese "anti-terror" law would treat sit-in strikes as "terrorism" and make it easy to snoop on dissidents.
Such laws are far more dangerous than terrorism itself.
The thug that killed Philando Castile was acquitted.
Unconscious racism leads many thugs to immediately suppose their lives are in danger, when confronting a black man is armed, even if he acts in the most calm and reasonable way. As long as juries accept that irrational and unjustified fear as a get-out-of-jail-free card, thugs will get away with unjustified killings. To put an end to this reign of terror, we have to change the system. Where can we change it?
Polls show that Americans mostly support positions that are typically called progressive.
Democrats that call themselves "centrist" are actually moderately right-wing. Only progressive candidates represent Americans.
The European Parliament is on the verge of either protecting digital privacy to some extent or destroying it completely.
The US had a program to try to discourage recruiting by violent white-supremacists and Islamists. The troll has canceled it and plans to redirect it only against Islamists.
The troll and his supporters openly support right-wing violence; naturally they don't want this program to get in the way.
A Republican senator ordered journalists to get permission from one specific Republican staffer for interviewing any senator in the halls of the senate.
I suspect that the staffer will give permission to interview Republican senators, not Democrat senators.
Republicans condemned a production of Julius Caesar in which Caesar looked like the troll, misconstruing it as advocacy of assassination (which is not what the play says).
For Republicans, the truth is unimportant since they they lie with impunity and no shame.
U.S. has only acknowledged a fifth of lethal drone strikes, a new study finds.
US border thugs followed border-crossers to a well-known camp that provides medical care and water, in order to arrest them there.
The camp has been rendered unsafe; border-crossers will die as a result.
The fire that engulfed a tall building full of poor people shows clearly how the various cruelties of neoliberalism came together fatally.
Dare to rebuke the Tories with words that do justice to their nature. Dare to believe that you can change the rules that keep the plutocrats on top. I suggest that protesters dare to chant, "Lower than vermin!"
A US appeals court blocked the FCC's efforts to stop prison phone companies from gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
The EU will move to regulate Bisphenol A to reduce people's exposure to it.
The Tories drastically cut the funds for fire safety inspection of buildings.
Houston is hit often by big floods, and global heating will make it worse.
A bipartisan bill could stop US cities from using tax-free bonds to finance stadiums.
This would tend to interfere with the harmful practice of subsidizing stadiums, which overall hurts the public around the world.
Gas drilling near the Frisian coast may cause sand banks needed by migratory birds to sink out of existence.
US prosecutors are trying to recover 1.7 billion dollars stolen from the Malaysian state's funds by its prime minister.
The apartment building fire has made many people homeless in London, adding to thousands already homeless. To house them, seize the empty apartments that were bought as investments.
In Rhode Island, some schools think they have the right to spy on students with school laptops.
Let's not forget to mention that other companies, including Google, also think they have the right to spy on students.
The troll is making US "aid" to countries in Latin America increasingly military and increasingly secret.
People convicted of drunk driving are being ordered to install additional proprietary software in their computers (mobile phones): specifically, the nonfree apps for Uber and Lyft.
The one for Uber spies on the user.
I wonder what the judge would do when the defendant has no mobile phone. I fear this judge might order the person to carry a mobile phone. Mobile phones' movements and usage can be tracked and monitored by absolutely anyone, so being required to carry one is a big injustice.
There are occasions when it is legitimate for a court to require someone to wear a tracker, but such an order should always be explicit, not camouflaged behind "always have a mobile phone."
A British arms and surveillance company secretly sold massive surveillance gear to Salafi Arabia and some other repressive countries.
The IMF backed down and let the Euro-banksters impose terms on Greece with little or no debt relief.
For Greece's creditors there will be an additional bailout. For Greece, there will be increased cruelty, lasting at least 5 years, together with even more debt that will be as impossible to pay as the existing debt.
Maybe Greece should start printing its own 100-euro bills. That would be a more effective defense.
Gene Simmons filed an application for a trademark on the "rock hand" gesture.
Israel's legal trap for the Palestinians of Al-Amniyr: to keep their land they need water, but Israel destroys their cisterns and water pipes.
12 of Erdoğan's bodyguards face arrest for their violence in Washington, DC.
The use of flammable insulation materials has created a danger of big fires in apartment buildings.
We had better make sure insulation is not flammable.
In Chicago, arbitrary confiscation by thugs tends to hit low-income neighborhoods most.
A court has blocked operation of the Dakota Access pipeline, saying that the study of the effects of a potential oil spill was inadequate.
Of course it was inadequate. That's how the machine works: when wealthy interests want a project done, public agencies tend to try to cover up the harm it will so, by making shoddy reports that close their eyes to the unpleasant truth.
Tropical waters are losing their fish populations, as they become too hot for most of the fish species that live there.
Republican officials work with petroleum interests to fill schoolchildren's minds with petroleum. They have been doing this for decades, with the help of ignorant teachers that love to get any "educational" videos.
The children being mistaught today are very likely to die prematurely from the consequences of global heating, which seem headed to include disease, famine, and war. If that happens, the disinformation campaign described here will be partly responsible for killing them.
After the troll was criticized for a couple of ineffective military actions that he ordered, now he has told the generals to do whatever they wish.
The troll is sending 4000 more troops to Afghanistan, supposedly to train the Afghan army better. I expect that they will participate in the fighting, too.
This added support might push the Taliban back, but that effect will be only temporary.
To defeat the Taliban, better training for the Afghan army is not enough. Better artillery or air support is not enough. What's needed is better morale in the Afghan army, and really caring about victory.
The corrupt Afghan government is not likely ever to inspire such loyalty.
The Republican definition of "freedom" is "Free to buy any product — if you have money. And if you're destitute, you're free to live on the street, starve, and die if you get sick."
The Republican party serves the rich, and that's what the rich want everyone else's life to be like.
Wall-Street Democrat Cuomo, the governor of New York, wants to privatize Penn Station.
Privatizing anything tends to result in bad service for the users and bad wages for the workers, but some rich cronies will profit.
Democratic politicians are more hawkish than the voters that support them. Democrats should start pushing for diplomacy instead of war.
Macron pledges to cut 120,000 public jobs, reduce spending by 60 billion Euros, jettison the 35-hour workweek, raise the retirement age, weaken unions’ negotiating strength, and cut corporate taxes. All the standard neoliberal "trickle-down" policies that really represent dooH niboR.
This will lead to more unemployment and more inequality in France. The rich will get richer, but nothing will trickle down to the poor.
Youth unemployment, the lack of a future to hope for, tends to be concentrated in minority groups. In France that means Muslims. That's the exact opposite of what is needed to discourage Islamist radicalization.
Let's hope it is Mélanchon rather than Le Pen that gets the support of the victims in the next French election.
Telegram is cooperating with Iran on censorship of certain topics including "anti-religious" material. Maybe stallman.org.
Isn't Telegram supposed to offer end-to-end encryption? If that works, how can it tell whether messages are anti-religious? How can it tell whether they are pornography?
The answer: Telegram does not offer end-to-end encryption unless you use secret chats. A lot of people do not use secret chats and so the company can read their messages.
Business wants to expand fracking in the US, and export the gas in ships to Europe, to make plastic.
This is so wasteful it is crazy.
The oil that is made into plastic is not burnt; it doesn't turn into greenhouse gases. But fracking leaks methane, so it adds to the greenhouse effect.
Since plastic gets into the ocean and kills sea life, we need to make less of it. A higher price would have that effect.
The UK made a political decision not to prosecute a thug that shot an unarmed man dead.
The government admitted its decision was made to avoid disapproval by other armed thugs. If that is accepted as a reason not to prosecute, it will give thugs carte blanche to kill.
Everyone: call on the new president of South Korea to start negotiations with North Korea about nuclear disarmament and peace.
Naomi Klein warns that Republicans will now try to equate all opposition activities, such as protest and resistance, with murder.
US citizens: call on Senator Richard Burr to stop interrupting Senator Kamala Harris.
Saboteur of Education DeVos sabotaged the new rules to protect students from for-profit colleges.
Not surprising that the troll wanted this, since he owned such a school. He settled with the students who were suing him for cheating them.
The "education" offered by such colleges is often lousy and useless for any career.
The saboteurs of land management arbitrarily delayed the new limits on methane emissions from oil and gas wells.
The troll's saboteurs are doing permanent damage to the US and the ecosphere by selling more fracking leases.
This sort of sabotage is very hard to undo.
WIPO is still trying to set up a super-copyright covering any group's cultural traditions.
Culture is for appropriating. The injustice is that companies such as Disney can for such a long time stop people from appropriating commercially generated important parts of world culture.
The Democratic Party can only win if it becomes Liberal again instead of following the phony "center". This requires defending the word "Liberal" instead of attacking it.
That is why I refuse to call plutocratist politicians such as Clinton "Liberal", and why I disagree when people attack "Liberals" (which includes me) based on what right-wing Democrats do.
Those who argue that firing Comey wasn't obstruction of justice are focusing on minor details and then stretching their significance.
Republicans want to allow banks to gamble with our money, dump the losses on us, provoke new global financial crises, lay traps with mortgages, commit fraudulent foreclosures again, and disguise their racial bias.
In Denmark, riding a bike to school alone is not merely permitted, it's an explicit goal of urban planning.
The troll regime is now deporting authorized immigrants, Christians from Iraq, back to Iraq where they face almost certain death.
Governor Snyder evaded possible prosecution for Flint's poisoned water by refusing to talk to investigators.
Forensic psychological profiling is unscientific, and useless for finding criminals, according to psychologists who have studied the practice.
American student Otto Warmbier visited North Korea and was imprisoned for some meaningless "crimes". Recently he was allowed to return to the US, and it was discovered that he has been in a coma for a year.
I am no neurologist, but I get the impression it is unlikely he will ever be conscious again.
Were you thinking of visiting North Korea? I am curious about it, but I won't take the foolish risk of going there. I can learn about the place from what others write, and I recommend you do the same.
This sort of treatment is not limited to North Korea. US prisons have practices that systematically deny prisoners needed medical care, such as saying it is too dangerous/inconvenient/whatever to let them see a doctor, refusing to believe they are sick, or insisting they have only minor ailments rather than cancer until it is too late.
But they don't go as far as covering up for a year that a prisoner is permanently unconscious.
The US mainstream media are trying to convince Americans to regard Corbyn as unclean and suspect.
They don't want is influence to help Sanders.
A decades-long right-wing campaign has produced a perverse variant of Christianity that cites the bible to argue for contempt for the poor.
The European Court of Justice gave a victory to the copyright industry by equating torrent trackers with actual redistribution of copies.
The result might be to enforce blocking of torrent sites. That would be very unfortunate for people in Europe.
Aside from sharing copies between people, the only form of distribution of movies today that is not oppressive is by sale or rental of DVDs. That is just barely not oppressive, because there is free software that can play a DVD.
Some parts of the US just got a taste of very hot weather that will be common a few decades from now.
The troll's planned EPA cuts will hit America's most vulnerable.
Millennials were taught to take initiative and not trust their employers. Naturally, they keep leaking.
The US will sell fighter jets to Qatar, after the troll just endorsed the Salafi Arabian blockade of Qatar.
The Republicans, led by the troll, have encouraged political violence against Democrats since almost a year ago.
One suggested using guns to do it.
They are also repeatedly violent against reporters, too.
Today someone who opposes the Republicans shot at some SCROTUS, and some Republicans have the gall to claim Democrats fomented this. It's clear what must have happened, though. The shooter loathed Republican policies, and had violent tendencies; after seeing plenty of right-wing violence and Republican incitement, he turned it around at them.
If Republican leaders have human decency, they will learn the lesson to stop inciting political violence. Gianforte's humble apology set an example that others can follow.
I don't expect many will do this, because it would require a complete reversal of attitude.
Republicans have rejected the Golden Rule, dehumanized everyone else, and set out to take and hold power no matter what damage it does to America and Americans. Probing how far they can go in violence is just one part of that.
Everyone: call on the Golden State Warriors sports team to refuse to visit the troll at the White House.
But they shouldn't simply stay away. They should hold a protest across the street!
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Senate Republicans to show us their revised Dontcare bill.
Everyone: call for full pursuit of justice against the thugs involved in killing Jordan Edwards.
In the UK, officials often tell homeless immigrants their children can have housing if the parents give them up.
When the same officials are confronted about this, they deny it, but it's clear they are lying.
Many of these immigrants can get permission to live in the UK, after a lengthy process during which they have to starve on the street.
This is the standard Tory pattern of kicking weak people while they are down: rather than make a careful decision, seize any excuse to be harsh, and inflict cruel punishment.
US citizens: phone your senators to object to the Republicans' secret Dontcare bill.
Guns are dangerous, to the people that carry them and to others who are near them.
Considerable fractions of the troll's supporters are having doubts about him.
If this continues, it will encourage SCROTUS to protect him less.
Every Democrat should support Medicare for all.
US citizens: Call on all US elected officials to defend press freedom.
New York rushes to enact terrible right of publicity law.
Australia will pay any amount of money to cover up its cruel treatment of boat people.
Deporting foreigners before they have a chance to appeal has been ruled illegal in the UK.
Michigan officials have been charged with involuntary manslaughter for poisoning the water in Flint.
I suspect Governor Snyder was equally involved, and that the lower officials are protecting him.
Tory austerity was part of the cause of the fire that raged through a large apartment building in the UK.
Tory "ripping up red tape" was another part.
Turkish opposition politician jailed for 25 years on spying charges. He helped publish the news that Turkey was sending arms to jihadis in Syria.
We see that the US disapproval of countries that "support terrorists" is essentially arbitrary.
Some stores want to use vision systems to personalize ads according to demographics.
In terms of the threat of massive surveillance, this peculiar system might be acceptable, if we could be sure that no one (not the state, not crackers) could have access to collect its images.
Senate Republicans are secretly developing their plan to drastically cut medical care for millions of Americans.
The Soviet Union developed disinformation as a form of attack in the 1920s and practiced it intensively since then.
Ignoring sanctions against Russia, European countries are building a pipeline to buy gas from there.
Democrats have proposed a bill to tax businesses to cover the costs of any public assistance their employees are eligible for.
I hope it covers indirect employees and supposed "independent contractors". If not, it will encourage uberization.
The right-wing double standard: supporters of the troll demand that nobody insult him, and exaggerate the slightest reference to call it "incitement." Meanwhile, they flaunt their own threats, and actual violence.
The troll is making Republican officials give him personal public obeisance.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand an independent commission to investigate the connections between the cheater and Russia.
With reports that the cheater is thinking about firing special investigator Mueller, this is absolutely necessary.
Analysis of leaks from banks shows that rich people are hiding around 30% of their wealth. This implies that inequality is bigger than was formerly believed.
Families in England go without beds, cookers, clothes, even meals, because of debt. Many of them consider suicide.
US citizens: Tell Saboteur Pruitt not to cancel proposed regulation of toxic pollution from exhaust and waste from power plants.
"If we stopped poaching tomorrow, elephants would still be in big trouble."
It looks like the US artillery is using white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon in Iraq.
Sessions avoided inculpating the troll by not really answering most of the questions.
Tillerson said that Cuba has to improve its respect for human rights.
I agree that Cuba should respect human rights more. However, for Cuba to be as good as the US on that issue, it only needs to wait a few years for Republicans to bring the US down to Cuba's level.
The Secretary of Defense admitted that the US is not winning in Afghanistan.
To recognize the facts is a step forward, but he can't possibly come up with a strategy to defeat the Taliban, because the corrupt Afghan government lacks the capacity to win no matter what the strategy. The US can prop it up by continuing to fight there, but that will not lead to a victory.
The Taliban are perverted enemies of human rights, and I wish it were possible to defeat them conclusively, but we have to recognize that we can't.
Worldwide use of coal declined 1.7% last year.
If it continues at this rate, in 20 years coal use will decline 30%. I don't think that's enough to rejoice about.
The Tories' "assessments", to determine whether disabled people are really disabled, are idiotic and ignorant.
The idiocy makes sense when you understand it as one of many means intended to advance the Tories' unstated goal: every penny less for the disabled, the poor, the homeless, and the hungry is one penny more for the elite.
Factories that make rayon in countries without effective laws poison the air and water because they don't bother to prevent this.
One possible partial solution is through import regulation. If all importers of rayon are required to tell customs when they make an order, and then every shipment is held until a certain period of time has elapsed from the order, there would be no more pressure to speed delivery. If a tax is imposed on every order of rayon, and it goes to antipollution measures in factories that make rayon, the pressure to cut costs would no longer boost pollution.
In order to be able to do this, and a thousand other things, we need to replace plutocratic government with democratic government. We need officials who are prepared to tell businesses, when they say they "need" to be cruel in order to compete with other cruel businesses, "For all we care, you can go broke. You're the 'risk-takers', right? When you take a risk of making people sick, you henceforth take a risk of going broke."
Oslo is eliminating street parking in the center city with the idea of getting rid of most car traffic, to reduce CO2 emissions.
If this is accompanied by good enough public transportation, all usable anonymously with cash, I'd be in favor.
US citizens:
Protect
Bristol Bay salmon
from new giant mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Children growing up in poverty in the US find it hard to afford to see a dentist. Occasionally one dies from this. Lesser disease problems are widespread.
What the working conditions are like making clothing for Ivanka Trump to sell.
France and the UK both want to force tech companies to impose censorship according to their specifications. This time the specific target is Islamist ideology, but the use of words such as "inflammatory" shows they aim to suppress more.
They also want to work together to abolish privacy of communications world-wide.
Once privacy and freedom of speech are rejected as principles, what target will be next? Corbyn? Quoting Aneuran Bevan? Will saying that global heating is likely to kill billions of people, and that the victims have the right to fight to prevent killing them, be forbidden too?
There could be one good effect. Since global heating denial promotes mass murder, that too could be censored. Austerity policies kill far more people, in the US and UK, than terrorism. (It may not be true in France because it is not so right-wing — but Macron may establish that.) If publications arguing for austerity and neoliberalism were banned, it might become more difficult to radicalize people to become Tories or Republicans.
Even so, I am still opposed to censorship. Respecting freedom of speech includes letting people say things that we despise.
Maryland and Washington DC have sued the troll for violations of the Constitution. They demand release of the troll's tax returns so that the violations can be measured.
Democrats in Congress are suing too.
Jeremy Corbyn has won the first battle in a long war against the ruling elite.
US citizens: Phone certain key Republican senators to oppose the Dontcare bill.
The US military is trying a secret briefing to convince senators to support arms for Salafi Arabia to bombard Yemen. Doing it in secret means they can present a one-sided picture and no one else will be able to call them on it.
By its secrecy, the FBI blocks us from judging whether through incompetence it allowed the massacre in Orlando to occur.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Russia, after Navalny.
Ben Jacobs responds to Greg Gianforte's sentence and apology for attacking him.
The Tories plan to continue crushing the NHS to their last gasp or power.
Britons are dying from this. I suggest to their families and friends: don't mourn, organize!
Argentine women whose fathers murdered dissidents in the 1970s have condemned them publicly, to counter a wave of support for the military government.
Gianforte pled guilty to a fairly minor crime. Should immigrants be deported for such crimes?
The UN special rapporteur has criticized Japan for political pressure on journalists.
The UN recognized once again that Ireland's abortion laws violate human rights, specifically in the case where they apply to a fetus that will be born dead.
In many countries, including the UK, women riding bicycles frequently face condemnation and violent attacks.
Several European countries want to force companies to censor the public.
Fearing huge fines, they will censor in the strictest way they can imagine.
EU citizens: The European Parliament is considering a directive that could attack computer users' freedom in several ways. Please call your MEPs!
Records show girl begged for her life as officers dehydrated her to death.
It's standard practice for US prisons to find excuses to deny prisoners medical care, then lie about it when that results (as it sometimes does) in death or permanent injury.
Facebook's app listens all the time, to snoop on what people are listening to or watching. In addition, it may be recognizing their conversations.
The troll admitted in court that he made a practice of telling journalists — falsely — that he was taping their interviews, and said it was to "intimidate" them.
I don't think it is wrong for the interviewee to tape an interview. After all, journalists generally do so. If you worry about being misrepresented, taping the interview is an effective precaution. I don't see why this should intimidate, but that's how the troll saw it.
Amazon delays order processing for customers that have not paid a subscription fee for "prime" delivery.
Cars concentrate toxic pollution, often to a level ten times that in the outside air. Thus, being driven to and from school harms children's health, and their ability to concentrate.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal PAT RIOT Act Section 702 which allows for mass surveillance, in practice even of Americans.
A Republican senator tried to pretend that if you say "I hope" when trying to stop an investigation, it isn't obstruction of justice.
Paul Ryan said we should forgive the troll because he's "new to this".
However, bullying and threatening is nothing new for him.
The troll threatens to wipe out iconic species by allowing development in their migration corridors.
People connected with the oil industry just don't get the point. Analysts think they are predicting a good future when they forecast .5% annual growth in use of oil.
Spreading paranoia to American parents keeps getting more and more exaggerated — including fear of totally nonexistent dangers.
Excessive weight, even when it doesn't reach the point of obesity, kills millions of people each year.
If only it were not so hard to avoid.
The Tories say that only they are "strong and stable" enough to fix the messes they keep making.
A year ago, the richest 8 men owned as much as the poorer half of humanity. As inequality grows, the richest 5 men now own almost as much as the poorer half of humanity.
Those men claim to deserve this great wealth because of the benefit that their work has provided to humanity, but the benefit is not so much and they depended on others (some of whom they ripped off).
The article embodies confusion and ignorance where it uses the term "intellectual property". I think the events in question involved copyright, and only copyright.
Finland works, quietly, to bury its nuclear reactor waste.
Texas prison thugs killed a prisoner by boiling his brain, as the heat in his cell gave him a fatal fever.
The water in the prison is unsafe to drink, so drinking more to stay cool is dangerous too.
Statistics from a few years ago showed that around 50 people a day died from effects of heat.
Fishing and and toxic wastes (including CO2) endanger species that live in the deep ocean. Soon mining may do that too.
One mine, at a volcanic vent, could wipe out a species that lives only there.
Deep sea mining can be very useful — it could end some of the wars over "conflict minerals" and reduce the pollution of the land. But only if it is done safely.
Perhaps we should limit deep sea mining to collection of nodules by robots that can pick them up one at a time. Not by dragging nets along the sea bottom!
US citizens: Support the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The UN special rapporteur condemned Australia for "inhuman" treatment of boat people.
Don't let Islamists, even nonviolent ones, go unchallenged in speaking to or for Muslims in general.
Tillerson called for an end to the blockade of Qatar; immediately after, the troll spoke in favor of it.
I don't suppose Tillerson liked this. If this continues, he might resign, or turn state's evidence.
The troll meets the standards for impeachment charges that were asserted against Nixon and Bill Clinton.
How the troll's active supporters post blatant lies and then spread them around the internet.
This is what protects the body of his supporters from all the scandals the troll regularly produces: they don't believe the truth.
Those supporters include crackers, who steal the Twitter accounts of real people and use them to spread their lies, attributing them to other real people.
Please don't use the word "hackers" to refer to people that break computer security.
Facebook's new patent suggests that Facebook may be planning to use the computer's camera to detect its useds' emotions. It might already be doing so.
US citizens: tell the Senate to reject the Poison Our Waters Act.
Massive surveillance enables the few real potential terrorists to hide in a haystack of data.
This injustice is sold to us as a way to catch terrorists, but even if it really worked it wouldn't justify the offense against our freedom. Since in fact it doesn't work, let's end it with no further ado.
The sensible way to find the few terrorists is to listen when their friends and relatives warn that they are dangerous.
Puerto Ricans voted almost entirely to request statehood in the US, but since only 23% of them voted at all, it doesn't really signify much.
Right-wingers think freedom of speech includes freedom to intimidate others into silence.
On Saturday there were rallies in the US to condemn Shari'a law. Some civil rights groups denounced the marches.
Here's an idea for another response: suggest that other people join the rallies to condemn, more generally, religion-based denial of human rights. Then it would cover the intolerant Christians, Hindus and Jews as well as intolerant Muslims.
There could be more of these broadeners than the number of right-wing division-spreaders.
For Labour to win the next UK election, the "right-wingers" that tried to remove him as leader must accept him as the leader, and his policies too, and stop trying to find fault with him.
If they had given him support before, Labour might have won this time.
They have now more or less recognized he can lead the party, but some of them are still attacking his traditional Labour policies and demanding more right-wing policies. Corbyn can surely judge better than I, but it seems to me that they will never really support the revived Labour party.
We have a similar problem in the US, with the right-wing "centrist" establishment Democrats. Sanders says they have learned nothing from their defeat, and are still fighting to keep Wall Street in power.
NAFTA has a special provision that says Canada cannot reduce its oil exports to the US.
Saudi Arabia is destabilizing the world. And especially Indonesia.
I call it "Salafi Arabia", for spreading the harsh and rigid Salafi form of Islam.
Why the UK should not allow the bully to visit.
It is misguided, though, to worry about danger to the "special relationship" between the UK and the US. The name of that kind of relationship is "submission", and it facilitated Dubya's conquest and occupation of Iraq.
British condemnation was too much for Trump, who has put the visit to the UK on hold.
The sex offender registry treats any sexual crime as far worse than murder.
US citizens: call on the Senate not to cut off US medical care funding.
US citizens: Oppose anti-abortion nominees for federal judgeships.
Naomi Klein's latest book aims to show people how to fight the troll. She previously explained the way plutocrats exploit economic and social shocks. The troll makes his own shocks every day, to give them something to exploit.
A study of many body camera recordings show that Oakland thugs are generally polite to whites, and generally much less so to blacks. Although circumstances affect their behavior, that starts from the racist base.
A team of thugs in Georgia entered a high school with no warrant, locked 900 students into rooms, then sexually assaulted many of them.
US citizens: call on Congress to demand answers from Sessions about his relations with Russia and his involvement in the Flynn scandal.
US citizens: call on Congress to start now to impeach the saboteur-in-chief.
Thousands of families in Flint are threatened with eviction because they can't afford the high prices charged for water that made them sick.
This is what Republicans do when they get a chance. It was Governor Synder and Michigan Republicans that imposed a non-accountable government of occupation on Flint, and the occupation officials poisoned the water to save money. Now they plan to make families homeless to save money.
Delaware has repealed all state-level restrictions on abortion, including allowing teenage women to get abortions without anyone else's approval.
Chicken processing companies claim that their own inspections will maintain safety better than government-run inspections. But they evidently are not confident of this statement, since they want the fact that they run their own inspections to be secret.
I think that the US government is putting the fox in charge of our hen house. Note that this started under Obama. While he wasn't a bully and a bigot like the troll, he was no great shakes for defending people against abuses by businesses. I am proud not to have voted for him.
The troll could commit a crime if he keeps trying to punish or intimidate Comey.
A Pakistani man has been sentenced to death for a statement that supposedly insulted Muhammad. I wonder what he actually said. Can anyone send me an English translation? If you encrypt it to my GPG key (stallman.org/gpg.html), and mine alone, and put something irrelevant in the Subject field, no one in Pakistan will be able to tell what you sent me.
People should stay away from Pakistan except for vital humanitarian missions.
Cambodia has charged Australian documentarist James Ricketson with spying.
Oil and gas companies must stop burning the fossil fuel that isn't worth collecting.
We should require them to collect all the hydrocarbons that come out of the well, and if that makes the well too expensive to run, they should shut it.
Of course, we should charge them a lot more than that. We need a carbon tax.
People in the US that don't have government ID are locked out of many aspects of life. Even visiting government offices to try to get replacement ID.
To require people to prove a permanent address to get ID is a direct and intolerable injustice to homeless people. But the injustice here is deeper and broader than that. The US is being converted, step by step, into a state where everyone must be identified. To fix this problem we must eliminate the ID requirements for many of these activities — starting with visiting government offices.
The US government is leaving it up to big IT companies to decide the future of computing — to their advantage over us.
The article doesn't go far enough. We need to do more than just participate in the development of AI, through our democratic state (as it ought to be); we need to legislate to stop it from being used to subjugate people.
As British Muslims pour out anger and rejection at the few terrorists in their midst, the Britons in general must seize the opportunity to solidify an alliance with them against extremism.
Turkey now blocks Wikipedia — a sign that tyranny is consolidating its grip.
Venezuela's suppression forces are now gratuitously violent, shooting tear gas containers and metal marbles at protesters' heads and killing them.
They are acting much like the US suppression forces that were used against pipeline protesters, and like Israeli soldiers against Palestinian protesters.
I think they all reflect the attitude of authoritarian followers towards anyone who doesn't bow down to the master.
Sad to say, Maduro is right in saying that the US wants to enable multinationals to exploit Venezuela's resources. However, Maduro is also exploiting them.
Venezuela needs another opposition, a Chavista opposition.
Election campaigns in the UK (as in the US) are based on lies told privately to one potential supporter at a time.
It isn't always successful, but it is always dishonest. Political campaigning organizations should be required to publish anything they send or show to supporters who are not paid staff.
If the Tories depend on the extremist, theocratic Protestant party of Ulster, it could re-stimulate Ulster terrorism.
A high school in New Jersey censored student artwork that mocked the troll.
The student who appreciates the publicity this got him is not mistaken about its useful consequences, but if he wants to build resistance to the troll, he's making a mistake about how to go about it.
What these students should do is publicly denounce the school and its principal, and demand to confront those who operated behind the scenes to pressure for their work to be censored.
It might also be effective to replace their art works with big "This piece was censored" signs.
Corbyn's huge advance shows that progressives can win on a progressive platform. Democrats must stop aiming for "centrist" right-wing positions.
Those that do so are not simply choosing the position they think people will vote for. It's also a question of getting funds from various businesses and rich people: corruption, in other words. Even when they see that progressives can win, they may continue to oppose the progressives for the sake of their paymasters. We will have to push them out.
If Trump is too ignorant to be guilty, he's too ignorant to be President.
More suspicion about Sessions' actions in relation to Flynn and Russia.
Brazil's corrupt President Temer escaped from corruption charges.
This is a bad blow to all hopes for Brazil. Temer and his corrupt allies seek to cut down the Amazon rain forest and crush the poor.
The troll wants to deport 1300 people whom courts had already decided not to deport.
US citizens: file a comment with the FCC for Net Neutrality if you haven't done so already.
White House Releases Transcript of Trump and Comey Dinner Meeting (not).
The troll acts like a mafioso, but not like a competent and successful one.
Sanders: Corbyn surge in UK shows world rising up against austerity, inequality.
US citizens: tell the Senate not to let the troll pick a new FBI director.
Sessions wants to prohibit secure encryption in the name of ending enslavement of prostitutes, but this is a red herring. When the government looks for enslaved prostitutes, it finds few of them. What Sessions wants is to crush what remains of privacy in the US.
Students at Evergreen State College are competing to take anti-racist campaigns to the most extreme possible degree.
Comey's testimony says he believes Pence lied when he said he didn't know about Flynn's meetings with Russia.
In several states, prisoners are forced to work unpaid for the personal convenience of elected officials.
It is pointless to condemn Clinton personally for accepting in the 1980s a practice which was not controversial at the time. Instead of that distraction, it's better to focus on the practice itself. We should stop coercing prisoners to work on anything other than running the prison, and if they do do such work they should get the same wage as free labor. They should also be allowed to join the union for such work.
Russian Parliament moves ahead with banning anonymity on messenger apps.
The troll's plan to privatize highways and everything else would give companies a free hand to run them into the ground.
The deals would probably be set up so that there is no way to undo them without paying the companies 10 times what they put in. We might need a constitutional amendment to make it easy to undo them. Or perhaps a new form of eminent domain can be established for taking back anything that was privatized, in which the temporary private owner would get back the amount that it paid, minus however much it has extracted from the property since then.
Funny how right-wingers say you can't trust the state to do anything right, except what it comes to imprisoning people based on their ethnicity.
Naomi Klein: we must take the offensive against the plutocrats' agenda, which would drive most Americans into poverty and sickness as corporations tread people underfoot, using every possible shock as an excuse.
Reporting on the pros and cons of privatizing air traffic control.
I am sure the main airlines will abuse their increased power.
Miami's thugs tried to pull a fast one by getting approval for some new surveillance in a very vague way. Then it was discovered that they wanted to fly planes over the city to track everyone all the time.
Efforts to reverse the vote have a chance of success.
Give those weasels an inch, and they take a mile.
Large fishing companies have agreed to protect fish stocks and put an end to slave labor on fishing boats.
Turning this into real change will not be trivial.
Salmon farmers are trying to use wrasse as cleaners to eliminate the sea lice that plague farmed salmon. They are catching so many wrasse that they are putting that species in danger.
Uncrewed cargo ships may reduce accidents.
On the other hand, they will pass by sailors in distress without any way to notice and aid them.
The EU wants to set up its own version of PRISM, which is how the FBI gets personal data directly from companies' servers.
"The cloud" is just a way of saying "Don't ask who, where, or which agencies have has access." Don't be a fool — don't trust anything so cloudy.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say, don't let Sessions off the hook for plans to fill up private prisons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
On every anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, The Chinese state arrests survivors and their families. It is hard for people in China to learn, or even remember, what happened there.
The Tories will try to rule with the support of a Northern Ireland party of religious fanatics that consort with terrorists.
One of the fanatical party's ministers is trying to bully a museum into promoting denial of evolution.
The troll's "infrastructure plan" means more toll roads, more privatized water systems, and more Enrons. To the extent it is actually possible.
The head of the NSA refused to tell Congress how many Americans the NSA spies on.
Danish ISPs will no longer disclose subscriber identities to copyright trolls.
It is a step forward, but we need to legalize sharing.
Missouri's voter ID law says that the state will fund giving all eligible voters ID so they can vote. But the state didn't do so.
Corbyn's "centrist" detractors called him a radical and predicted he would cause big losses for Labour. He has proved them totally wrong.
They may have convinced themselves of their claims, but it was obvious to me that they were straining the truth, and making foolish assumptions, to discredit Corbyn.
The right-wing media also couldn't stop him.
Corbyn's success shows that it is possible for Sanders to win.
Russia is considering a bill to ban VPNs and Tor, and make ISPs block access to them.
This means Russia is trying to make censorship of foreign sites essentially impossible to violate.
Labour made big gains in the UK election and has stopped the Tories from having a majority of Parliament.
This advance is due to Corbyn and the anti-austerity Labour manifesto, as well as to the lousy Tory campaign which revealed its shortcomings.
Although Corbyn's Labour didn't win a majority, it achieved an almost record fraction of votes.
Previous Labour leaders were "convinced that if the public saw their true political nature they’d lose that election that they ended up losing anyway."
Either Trump or Comey is lying. The idea that it is Comey is not credible.
Why Trump's So-Called Infrastructure Plan Is Good for Wall Street But Bad for America
President Maduro is splitting Chavistas between those that are loyal to Chavez' legacy and those that are more concerned with keeping power.
SCROTUS in the House of Representatives passed the CHOICE Act, which gives banksters the choice to cheat Americans and cause another financial disaster.
Republican senators' highest priority, as Comey testified, was to defend their megalomaniac point man.
US minimum wage workers can't afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
The minimum-wage increases some cities and states have approved won't fix the problem.
Right-wing liars game Google Search so that their false news articles fill the search results, pushing everything else down out of sight.
Kansas Republicans voted to undo their right-wing "experiment" in tax cuts that proved disastrous for the state and its people.
A former EPA official is under investigation for colluding with Monsanto to pervert the decisions about glyphosate. The official was the head of the committee in charge of judging whether glyphosate should be banned as carcinogenic.
Dallas has paid compensation to Robert Groden, for trying to harass him to stop handing out leaflets in Dealey Plaza stating claims about the assassination of President Kennedy.
The troll's nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has shown an inclination to try to block regulations to protect Americans' health.
Hundreds of American women are shot each year by their husbands/lovers.
It's a much bigger danger than terrorism.
Virus-writers are passing commands to a virus in comments on photos on Instagram.
I'm afraid this will lead to shutting off commenting across the net.
Over 7% of the babies whose mothers catch Zika early in pregnancy have birth defects.
At present, the only known way to prevent those birth defects is not to have a baby under such circumstances.
Saudi Arabia's real priority in the blockade of Qatar is to close al Jazeera.
UK thugs have been unable to stop terrorist plots, even though they knew of the participants as vaguely leaning towards extremism. There was no visible difference between those few who became real terrorists and thousands of other who have not done so.
Moreover, the methods that Theresa May proposes to "get tough" would not help.
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 to oppose the sneaky Republican attempt to destroy Medicaid and Obama's medical coverage plan (and give the rich a big tax cut).
The UK and US have supported jihadi groups in Syria and Libya, as well as states such as Salafi Arabia and Qatar that have supported jihadis elsewhere. The result is terrorism.
The head of Australia's human rights commission warns of government threats to freedoms of speech and advocacy.
Israel lied to the US about the start of the six-day war, claiming that Egypt had started bombarding Israel, according to someone that was a CIA analyst at the time.
Egypt had in fact attacked Israel, by blockading the port of Elath.
Theresa May wants to impose broad censorship of undesirable political opinion, as well as impose something approximating incommunicado house arrest without trial.
The Theater of Security Agency hopes to reduce its failure rate for identifying weapons and bombs turning airport security into a slow and difficult procedure for everyone.
Will we be required to remove all paper money from our bags? That would cause lots of theft.
Trump is very much like Mussolini, and could impose fascist power in the US.
Verizon tries to make customers move to fiber communications by refusing to fix copper wire facilities. In Pennsylvania the state forced Verizon to agree to fix them.
Fiber allows faster internet connection, but it also means that your phone will stop working some hours after a power failure.
Lawyers disagree about whether the troll's conduct, as reported by Comey, goes far enough to amount to obstruction of justice.
Comey has testified about how the bully tried to pressure him to let Flynn off the hook.
A summary of the important points.
The full text of his testimony.
Several current high officials refused to testify to the senate.
However, one had told other people that the troll had asked him to try to make Comey pull back on his investigation.
The troll has nominated a new FBI director with ties to the troll's election campaign.
350.org's plan to defeat the global heating denialists.
The Tories have used dishonest and deceptive ads to falsely criticize Corbyn.
With constantly growing warehouse space, the Inland Empire of California is getting more and more polluted with increasing truck traffic.
How about building a railroad to carry cargo to the Los Angeles area?
The big bully is inspiring students all around the US to bully students from all sorts of minority groups.
Schools should tell students that Trump is a bully, that it's wrong to do what he does, and if he were a student he would be told to stop or else be sent home.
An armed rebellion in England 200 years ago was provoked by an undercover government agent sent by contemptuous Tories.
It's amazing how many things are still the same today.
Gianforte apologized at length for attacking reporter Ben Jacobs.
It is chilling to realize that many Republicans today wouldn't apologize for attacking a reporter or a dissident.
Just after Iran suffered an act of Islamist terrorism, the US plans to put more sanctions on it.
Iran supports terrorism through the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, but compared to what Salafi Arabia does, and has done, that's minuscule.
In South Sudan, teenage girls are sold by their families as brides in exchange for cows. Once married they are subject to violence.
Nothing will enable all the children to survive in a violent place where families have seven children. It's up to rich countries to provide women in South Sudan with the birth control they need to avoid that.
The tracking dots code that identifies printers gives the US government tremendous power to identify people for any reason. Since this power was established secretly, we have to worry that other kinds of devices have secretly been redesigned to spy on everyone.
Snowden explains how the Espionage Act unfairly stacks the deck against Reality Winner.
Brazilian tribal leader tours Europe to plead for help to stop killings and land grabs.
The troll's lawyer demands an investigation of Comey for "leaking" with his testimony.
The troll's overall response is a general campaign of blackwhiting. (See 1984 for the definition of "blackwhiting".)
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
US citizens: call on plutocratist Democrats to give away the campaign contributions they received from Kushner and anyone else connected with the troll.
Venezuela's opposition says that thugs are robbing protesters.
I believe the accusations, but they probably have nothing directly to do with President Maduro. Thugs in Venezuela have been crooked since long before Chavez. He was unable to make them stop, but neither could anyone else.
While Chavez was president, the head of a state agency I worked with told me he had been (in effect) held for ransom by thugs, who stopped him as he was driving and made up charges against him on the spot. The fact that he was the head of a state agency didn't help him to escape.
The infant caused a lot of trouble by insulting the ruler of Qatar while a major US base is located there.
Civilian casualties from US bombing in Syria and Iraq have gone way up due to the troll's changes in policies.
Indeed, we don't really know how many they are, only a lower bound for them.
A charity that feeds people with rejected food faces prosecution for using food that has past its sell-by date.
That's an absurd excuse: food does not become unsafe after that date, nor even unpalatable.
The NSA made the world vulnerable to WannaCry by saving up bugs to use for attack rather than getting them fixed.
Humans need nature both biologically and psychologically. But we are wiping it out.
Stop Legitimizing 'Conservatism': It's Not an Ideology — It's a Goddamn Death Machine.
I have to point out that many of the Western ideas of human rights are not thousands of years old: they were formulated in the 1700s, or even later. However, that doesn't invalidate the point.
A scheme to compensate victims of bank fraud in the UK is so sloppy that one of the victims says it is a "sham".
The US under Obama knew early on that cholera was introduced to Haiti by the UN coup-maintaining forces, and covered it up to shield the UN from criticism.
US thug departments photograph everyone they arrest, and often publish the photos directly to sites that use them for a sort of extortion.
An example of the total confusion and nonsense that results if you suppose that the term "intellectual property" has a concrete meaning.
Here's why it doesn't have one.
US agencies say that Russian crackers planted a false news story which led to economic warfare between Salafi Arabia and Qatar.
It seems that the US agencies want to avoid the economic warfare, while the troll desired it.
The Malaysian state has disappeared foreigners that were trying to preach second-class religions in Malaysia.
Malaysia is definitively opposed to religious freedom, in particular for anyone who was at one time a Muslim, or for anyone of Malay descent (since the state presumes they are all Muslims regardless of what they say).
The troll's fast-track deportation court, inside an immigration prison,speeds deportation by making it difficult for the prisoners to get legal representation or advice. Their families can't find them, let alone find them lawyers, and they don't know whether their relatives are alive or dead.
Many women in Central America flee to Mexico to escape husbands that want to kill them. They have no other place to look for safety.
Erdoğan has arrested 23 lawyers, including the local head of Amnesty International, on the vague accusation that they have ties with Gülen.
The claim seems implausible in the case of someone who works for Amnesty International, but that's a side issue. Merely having some sort of relationship with Gülen's system of religious schools would not be valid grounds to arrest someone.
Israel has blocked electricity for Gaza, so its wastewater treatment plants are shut down. The intense pollution of the Mediterranean by untreated sewage has spread to Israel's coast and is making desalination plants shut down, thus leaving Israel short of water.
British Muslim clerics are showing their disgust for Muslim terrorists by refusing to carry out funerals for them.
The US government persecutes even legal whistleblowers, because the laws against retaliation have gaps and are hard to enforce.
A leaked document shows that the NSA investigated apparent Russian attempts to take control of some US voting systems before the 2016 election.
Assuming this document was not intended as a red herring, it means that the NSA is sincere about suspecting Russian sabotage attempts.
The person who leaked the document is Reality Winner, who will probably be imprisoned for 10 years for it.
If it takes the knowledge and careful planning of a Snowden to leak documents to the public and not be imprisoned, we won't have enough whistleblowers, and that turns democracy into an empty shell.
Snowden: prosecution of an alleged source for journalism on a charge of "espionage" is a threat to the free press.
Maybe that's why the troll did it. He is against almost everything that protects Americans from his own power.
I think The Intercept showed bad practices in handling the letter it received. It should have shredded the envelope before reading what was inside.
UK thugs picked someone out of a crowd using automatic face recognition. We are one step closer to an irresistible tyranny.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
Planet-roaster governments are spending less on renewable energy, but new capacity is increasing fast because the construction costs have dropped.
We now produce 24% of electricity using renewable methods, but we need to produce around 100% that way. That means an increase in capacity of 300% of the present total. And since electricity is only a part of our use of fossil fuels, we need to increase capacity even more to replace fossil fuels for transport.
That means we have a long way to go, and we don't have a long time to do it.
We need to smash the dominion of the fossil fools before they kill us.
Thailand has put Burmese migrant workers on trial for complaining about the horrible working conditions imposed on them.
By accusing them of theft of a timecard, which they presented as evidence, the Thai state shows it is a state of repression that has no shame.
I urge people not to visit Thailand except for important humanitarian reasons.
The troll wants to privatize state assets, so that companies can put tolls on their use.
The Republican Party did recruiting at a right-wing extremist rally.
In the UK, 1/3 of workers have insecure working situations and don't know if they will be able to pay their bills the next week. This is what unethical employers want.
The US arms industry effectively buys the votes of senators deciding whether to approve an arms sale to a repressive theocratic regime such as Salafi Arabia.
Should we condemn individual senators for selling their votes, or the system that pressures them to do this?
Both! Of course, both!
We can forgive people who are in positions of weakness for yielding to the pressures of the system, except when they do something egregious. However, someone as powerful as a senator can never plead, "the system made me do it."
Colorado is doing lots of good with the 100 million dollars of tax revenue from marijuana.
Tobin Smith, formerly on the O'Reilly program on Faux News, says that the "debates" were always rigged, and that the shows were calculated for emotional manipulation of the audience.
The troll wants to authorize using explosions in the Atlantic Ocean (the sound from which will deafen whales at great distances) to find oil to extract, thus helping to wipe out most ocean life and replace it with plastic.
That's typical extractivist behavior — use up the world as fast as possible and never mind what does or doesn't remain afterwards.
The troll, and Republicans, are waging war against our children. Even children can see this.
Tariq Ramadan: We Will Not Tackle Extremism by Stigmatizing Muslim Citizens.
California State University was given an endowed chair of Middle East studies in the name of Edward Said, but decided not to appoint anyone due to pressure from supporters of Israel.
We know this from the dean that had the courage to resign in response.
The troll wants to privatize US air traffic control. The company will cut corners, such as using less skilled people as controllers, and the result will be fatal from time to time.
Google's ad-blocker creates an opportunity for Google to block any ads not sold by Google.
Doctors compare Australia's possible new giant coal mine to tobacco.
Hooray!
But Europe still needs to kill the business-supremacy treaty with Canada.
The troll's incompetence fits with his leanings toward autocracy.
The incompetence can ruin the US, and its political system, but won't stop him from getting what he wants most.
Barrett Brown reports how US government agencies habitually twist or disregard the laws they are supposed to follow.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement, it makes climate action desperately urgent to avoid incredible heating.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that invading Iraq was unjustified and would provoke terrorism. Just recently he pointed out that we had better stop doing more of the same.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when they hit. The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans. That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there goes through a disaster.
The Democrat running against Republican Stephen King has withdrawn due to death threats, as well as Republican budget cuts imposed on the state agency she works for.
Once Republicans see that this is effective, they will do it over and over, in effect stealing elections by threats. Surely there is a way to find funds for protecting her.
Apple faces trial in Australia for bricking devices because they had had an "unauthorized" repair.
The leader of UK's Liberal Democrats condemned massive surveillance as a foolish and dangerous response to occasional terrorism.
"Theresa May's 'enough is enough' risks making the extremist threat worse."
Salafi Arabia and some other Arab countries have cut off trade and relations with Qatar. The troll's regime seems to be pushing Salafi Arabia to do this.
Reportedly this is because Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood which Salafi Arabia' monarchy hates. The other countries involved are obeying Salafi Arabia, except perhaps for Egypt's military rulers that hate the Muslim Brotherhood for other reasons.
Maybe it is really about the campaign to demonize Iran.
Any form of Islamist rule shows contempt for human rights. All the regimes involved in this dispute are unjust, though the details vary. But is there any rational reason for Americans to consider the Muslim Brotherhood or Iran worse than Salafism? I don't see one.
Israeli leaders in 1967 had no intention of ever letting go of the West Bank that Israel had just conquered. The first colony there was set up just months after the war.
In regard to launching the war, even though Israel did not know whether Egypt and Syria would attack, that danger was real. If Israel had waited to be attacked, by enemies with much larger armies, it could have lost. By attacking first, Israel took the benefit of surprise away from its enemies. Under the circumstances, that was justified.
A Chinese billionaire donates to at least two rival Australian political parties. One senator seems to take a friendly stance towards China in exchange for donations.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white bigots complain that their freedom of speech is being denied.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to join in investigating Exxon for climate fraud.
US insurance companies offer customers gratis "smart" security and economy devices, but you should not trust them.
When a product is marketed as "smart", read "treacherous spy."
Evanston's library board wants to fire librarian Lesley Williams for criticizing the library's discriminatory practices. The community is rallying to protect her.
Mylan, maker of the price-gouging EpiPen, cheated the US government by claiming it was a generic drug.
If we had a national health service and it negotiated the price with each company, we wouldn't get gouged on drugs. Americans, support the candidates that advocate this change.
Right-wing bigots are threatening lynching, by leaving nooses as tokens of their hatred.
Speculating about corruption that might have motivated Kushner to pursue a secret channel of communication with Russia.
Citizens of France: ask your candidates for elected office to sign the Pacte du Logiciel Libre.
A survey in Indonesia found that nearly everyone believed that per household was near the median income. They gravely underestimate the inequality that really exists.
This causes real harm because people don't demand that the state act to reduce the inequality.
They also overestimate their chances of getting wealthier than they are. However, social mobility means that some get wealthier and some get poorer. Increased social mobility is no excuse for leaving some people in poverty. What we need is not more reshuffling of people on the income scale, but to make the lives of the poorest better.
Floods in Missouri illustrate the damage that global heating is already doing.
Residents of Louisiana, near chemical plants, often get cancer. The troll will surely help companies make more generations sick.
"Do you love your interpretation of the second amendment more than you love your kids?"
The "circular economy" would mean systematically reusing products instead of turning them into waste.
Tackling the reproducibility crisis in science.
It is of course an oversimplification to say that the state of science at any particular time gives us "the truth". What science does is provide a systematic method to correct errors over time. As an area becomes heavily studied, for example global heating and (even more so) evolution, the remaining errors get to be fewer and smaller.
I think we need universities to stop judging people by how often they publish in "high-impact" journals.
EPA staff says that the troll's saboteurs have effectively wrecked its efforts to curb global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep funding campaigns against bigotry.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white bigots complain that their freedom of speech is being denied.
A Chinese billionaire donates to at least two rival Australian political parties. One senator seems to take a friendly stance towards China in exchange for donations.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when they hit. The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans. That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there goes through a disaster.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that invading Iraq was unjustified and would provoke terrorism. Just recently he pointed out that we had better stop doing more of the same.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement, it makes climate action desperately urgent to avoid incredible heating.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to join in investigating Exxon for climate fraud.
EU citizens: some MEPs are trying to make the proposed internet censorship directive even worse.
MEP Julia Reda talks about how to oppose this.
A sculpture of Theresa May was full of surveillance cameras. A passerby attacked it with a hammer, and was fined statue-tory damages.
Spread the word!
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to support the Improving Access to Affordable
Prescription Drugs Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
A little more information about it.
Resist the troll by divesting from fossil fuels.
The Tories plan to sell all state-owned forests in the UK.
"This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands, sites of special scientific interest, heathland, campsites, farms and sporting estates."
"Tories" and "trees" sound similar but are actually opposite.
Leaked documents appear to say what Macedonia's intelligence agency has learned about Russia's efforts to interfere in its politics. The goal has been to keep Macedonia out of NATO and away from the West.
Companies such as Dow and Corning try to have it both ways on global heating.
Mining the ocean bottom could destroy ecosystems if we are not careful.
Trawling the bottom for seafood already destroys ecosystems, and we have not made much progress in stopping that practice.
A new Montana law is a step forward in limiting the state's access to people's digital messages stored in service providers.
However, it doesn't apply to metadata, and it won't protect whistleblowers. This approach is fundamentally inadequate. We need systems to be designed so they don't collect personal data.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to investigate illegal campaign contributions from a private prison company.
US citizens: Support the bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
We need to stop making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
"Lying on the floor for hours awaiting help, unable to afford both incontinence pants and food ... This is the reality of [Tory] disability cuts."
War causes moral injury, the result of being responsible for something that turned out to be a terrible wrong. Often this leads to suicide.
Irish Police Phone Tapping Undermines Citizens' Rights.
Political parties now show different messages to different people, based on profile. These parties are two-faced, or perhaps three-faced or ten-faced or fifty-faced.
Leaks prove that private thugs explicitly treated pipeline protesters like jihadists. That's the word the thugs used.
Idaho started using proprietary software to decide how much support to give to Medicaid patients. It turns out that the program used a bogus algorithm based on a subset of the historical records, with bogus results.
World leaders should treat the troll as a child, not as an adult.
Tory politicians received luxurious gifts from Salafi Arabia. Perhaps that is the mysterious reason why they support the Salafi war of aggression in Yemen.
Berta Cáceres has won a posthumous victory: the sponsors of the dam she tried to stop have withdrawn funding.
Even supermarkets are starting to demand different prices from different customers, based on secret algorithms.
I wonder what they will do to people like me, that don't carry a portable tracking device.
I wonder what will happen when customer A sees price P on the price display on the shelf, because customer B is nearby at that moment, then gets charged a higher price.
Raimundos Oki, a journalist in East Timor, has been found not guilty of defamation.
It is an injustice to make defamation a crime, because that chills journalism. The prosecutors seem to be trying to achieve that very result.
Journalist Mohamed Adan Dirir was imprisoned in Somaliland for asking an inconvenient question in a press conference.
Somaliland is a part of what was once Somalia. It avoids the Islamist terrorism that plagues most of Somalia, but that doesn't mean human rights are respected.
In the US, people convicted for having copies of child pornography tend to get longer prison sentences than those convicted of having sex with children.
Mere possession of child pornography should not be a crime at all. To prosecute people for possessing something published, no matter what it may be, is a big threat to human rights.
The troll tried to eliminate US sanctions against Russia as soon as he got into office. The effort was blocked by some employees at the State Department.
They were joined by SCROTUS, which supports the neocons that want too much hostility with Russia.
The troll told some federal agencies to return to the senate their copies of the secret Senate report on CIA torture. This is part of a plan to destroy it and make sure that its conclusions are forgotten.
This would be impossible if the report had been published, as it should have been.
Exxon and Tillerson Accused of Defrauding Investors Over Climate Risks.
A victim of a drive-into terrorist attack is suing the rental company from which the vehicle was rented.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help such people is through the National Health Service, not through lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to make the NHS do its job again.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship on children, they teach those children that computerized surveillance and censorship are normal.
US citizens: tell the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
Everyone in the US, or those who can receive the MSNBC channel: tell the channel that you object to its hiring right-wing hard-hearts.
The strange bias of US politics: by tradition, many officials are "supposed" to be Republicans, even under Democratic presidents. As a result, Republicans regularly have the power to intimidate Democrats, while thumbing their noses about their own crimes and corruption.
America's Toxic Prisons: The Environmental Injustices of Mass Incarceration.
The idea of recognizing micro-expressions to determine what people are feeling is based on unverified suppositions.
The troll mis-cited MIT climate researchers. They insist that the Paris climate agreement can do a lot of good, by keeping the opportunity open to do make the larger effort that might prevent disaster.
Muslims in Burma were arrested for praying in the street.
How strange for that to be a crime?
Black Lives Matter activists are becoming concerned about being tracked by their phones.
Finally this injustice is being noticed.
Republicans are already smearing Elizabeth Warren to try to stop her from becoming president.
They don't hesitate to stretch the truth, or lie outright.
Over 200 non-citizens served in the US military, expecting to receive US citizenship, and were subsequently deported.
SCROTUS plan a suite of repressive practices that will fill up federal prisons with immigrants, most of whom won't have been any danger to anyone, and spend billions to keep them there.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools, have done away with periods for free play. The result is that children suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
US citizens: Support the bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship on children, they teach those children that computerized surveillance and censorship are normal.
We need to stop making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help such people is through the National Health Service, not through lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to make the NHS do its job again.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools, have done away with periods for free play. The result is that children suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
Denmark has repealed the law against blasphemy.
Many other countries still need to do this.
Disgust for the troll used to be mixed with derision. Now that he is carrying out his evil plans, it is hard to laugh.
The author errs in suggesting that Macron should have acted submissively. The bully interprets that as a sign of that he can go further and demand more. He will do this until he confronts people that won't kowtow to him.
I suggest that other countries now negotiate a binding agreement to supersede the nonbinding Paris climate agreement. It should include the possibility of sanctions on non-signatories that don't comply.
Comedian Kathy Griffin is getting death threats, as well as cancellation of gigs, from fanatical supporters of the troll, because of a video in which she had an imitation of his severed head.
I don't think things have degenerated to the point where civilized people should reply in kind to the violence and threats of the supporters of the troll. Griffin clearly agrees, and didn't intend to make a threat.
Making a statement that is misunderstood is not something that calls for a humble apology: all humans sometimes speak unclearly, and there is no need to be ashamed of that. It would have been better for Griffin to say she regretted the misunderstanding and would take care to avoid it in the future — while restating the intended point in some other way that would not be misunderstood.
If you are faced with a wave of hatred from people who are offended for an invalid reason, don't give in to the urge to apologize. The apology harms your reputation in a way that others' threats cannot.
Salman Rushdie tried apologizing to the fanatical Muslims who condemned The Satanic Verses, misinterpreting it based on second-hand reports. They did not stop trying to kill him.
Chelsea Manning disappointed me greatly when she apologized for her act of heroic whistleblowing. It might have got her a shorter sentence, we can't know, but it let down the cause of other whistleblowers that also deserve our support.
The troll has told various federal agencies to reject congressional Democrats' requests for information.
It's Congress's function to oversee federal agencies. They are not human beings with a right to privacy.
When stores can identify customers, and change the price either systematically or at random, there is no such thing as a price for the item.
One virtue of the market as a system for commerce is that it determines "the right" price. If there is no longer "the price", there is no longer a "right" price.
It is another reason to (1) resist profiling and (2) buy in physical stores, not on the internet.
Stiglitz calls for sanctions on exports from the "rogue state", the USA. That's the very least other countries should do. Others have referred to the US as a rogue state because of its wars and its support for dictators around the world.
The new Left-Green government of British Columbia has announced plans for several good changes, and we can expect more.
Bill McKibben: The Paris climate agreement, inadequate on its face, had a chance of building momentum that would lead to a real curb on global heating. Now, thanks to the troll and his stubborn idiocy, it could unite the world in doing enough.
He also thinks that it will help defeat every denialist politician.
When Will Exxon Be Worthless? Not If.
In the US: call on the Kansas City Royals team to stop promoting an antiabortion group.
Some Democratic senators suspect Sessions of perjury, for giving false testimony to the senate during his confirmation hearing.
US citizens: Tell the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
The US, under Obama's half-hearted support for climate protection, weakened the Paris climate agreement at every level. The world would have been better off kicking the US out at the beginning.
Now the revulsion of the rest of the world may be enough to lead to sanctions on the US fossil fuel companies, or even the US. I hope so. With pressure from the rest of the world, we Americans may be able to redirect our government towards protecting civilization.
On the average, the richest .01 percent evade 1/3 of their taxes.
US visa applications will demand so much information that hardly anyone could get it right. Thus, everyone could be deported for the slightest mistake, unless the Supreme Court rules to limit that.
The social media info is supposedly voluntary, but people will be scared not to provide it.
Welfare is not consumption, and taxation is not a burden.
The troll proposes to cut a large fraction of welfare for families. What's worse, each state could make more cuts.
The reason welfare is now called "temporary assistance" is that President Clinton's "welfare reform" put a maximum limit on how long each family could receive assistance. "If you're still poor after five years, starve on the street."
Establishment Democrats continue undermining Sanders-backed progressive candidates; then plutocratists claim it's their own weakness at fault.
"Trump asked when the world will start laughing at the US. It already is."
For kids safety, they should slide down the playground slide alone. Riding on a parent's lap is dangerous.
A new Green/Left government in British Columbia vows to block a pipeline for exporting tar sands oil.
A TV in the bedroom for a young child tends to lead to obesity.
California's single-payer medical insurance will increase take-home pay for just about everyone in the state, while providing medical care to those who don't have it.
Thugs in Salt Lake City have become less thuggish thanks to de-escalation training. They have not shot anyone since almost two years ago.
Texas Republicans voted to make it a felony to help a woman go to an abortion clinic to get an abortion that was illegal.
When asked to reconsider, they voted for it again.
The shareholders of Exxon voted to require the company to state how necessary future regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will affect the value of its assets.
This will make Exxon encounter stockholder resistance if it is reckless.
The UK's nuclear missile submarines run Windows. Someone could crack the system while the sub is in base, and set it up to do something later, such as launch missiles.
Just imagine ransomware in a nuclear missile submarine.
The troll's latest attack on contraception: any employer would be allowed to pretend to a moral objection to birth control as an excuse not to cover it.
SCROTUS passed a bill to put teenagers in prison for 15 years (mandatory minimum) for sexting.
Sexting should not be a crime at all.
Ketamine seems to be an effective treatment for depression, even for patients that nothing else helps.
China's ivory ban has cut the price in half, but this has failed to reduce the killing of elephants.
The UK Greens advocate a universal basic income.
I like the idea, but the first and crucial battle is to defeat the plutocracy and tax the rich adequately. With that done, it would be possible to adopt policies such as the universal basic income.
The US economy convinced 600,000 people to give up looking for work in April and May.
The saboteur-in-chief declared that the US will not follow the Paris climate agreement, and received world-wide condemnation.
The US has never been a real leader in stopping global heating disaster: the planet-roasters have had too much power.
To pull out formally requires three years, but he has already sabotaged the practical US measures needed to carry out the agreement.
Donald Trump Has Ditched the World in Favor of Big Oil's Titans.
Amazingly, the CEO of Goldman Sachs condemned the troll's decision. What's amazing is that the troll dared to disobey Goldman Sachs.
Vicente Fox (himself unpleasantly right-wing): the troll is "declaring war on the planet itself". Too bad it's an understatement.
The French environment minister said that the troll may face charges of crimes against humanity for this.
I think all the paid denialists, and their paymasters, should face such charges. Furthermore, their ill-gotten gains should be confiscated from them or their heirs. Let them face the result of their crimes just as everyone else will, without the advantage of wealth deriving from committing the crimes.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to investigate possible Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
US citizens: call on large US companies to continue covering birth control in their health plans.
It is now possible to electrically stimulate internal areas of the brain using equipment outside the head.
Am I the only one who sees a danger here?
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia is telling its subscribers that they won't be covered if they go to the emergency room and it isn't a real emergency.
It would be a good thing to move care for non-emergencies out of the ER, but surely there is a way to do that which is less harsh. Can't the ER triage nurse direct those patients elsewhere?
Congress Pushes Nuclear Energy, but Has No Clear Plan for Radioactive Waste.
When teenagers use mobile devices at night, they get less sleep, and this often results in depression.
The history of Brazil's giant corruption investigation, Lava Jato.
New York [State] Forces Women Like Me to Carry Nonviable Pregnancies to Term.
Cory Doctorow: Technology is making the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this.
I put my hopes on political resistance, not technology per se.
San Francisco Mulls Ban on Delivery Robots.
I am in favor of it. America needs jobs more than it needs efficiency. Increases in productivity are no use to American workers, because since 1980 that no longer gets them a raise.
The troll's budget would make America the land of no opportunity.
Government policies to encourage people to take out mortgages to buy houses often do overall harm — such as increasing the prices of housing, without even increasing the fraction of people that own houses.
Erdoğan's family got a 20-million-dollar gift from a billionaire in 2008. The deal was covered up by passing it through Malta.
Under Tory cuts, UK schools cannot even afford paper, let alone textbooks.
Even aside from starving the schools themselves, the expense of housing and the cuts in welfare for the poor are destroying children's education.
The Republican Party's Sickness of the Soul.
55,000 people are now homeless in Los Angeles County.
Women journalists in Afghanistan work to change patriarchal society despite threats to their life.
Labor rights activists in China, investigating the factory that makes shoes for Ivanka Trump's brand, have been arrested.
I wonder what the troll did to get this sort of support from China.
The Tories agreed to investigate the source of funding for Islamist terrorism, but now doesn't want to publish the results. Suspicion is that the report traced the funds to Salafi Arabia.
Disappointingly, Labour would continue with almost 80% of the further welfare cuts that the Tories have planned.
EFF: Chromebooks are still spying on students.
I don't think Google — or any other company — should be allowed to collect data on students on the grounds that it is "necessary" for something or other. When schools invite a student to use a certain computer, that computer should not send any data about the student to anyone.
Erdoğan has decided to arrest another 3,000 dissidents, supporters of Fethullah Gülen.
It is absurd to accuse 47,000 people of participating in a coup plot. So many people can't keep a secret, the coup plotters knew that.
China
will develop a state-approved encyclopedia, a propaganda
counterpart of Wikipedia.
In effect, Gandapedia.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Russians protested by reading the Russian constitution aloud in Red Square. They were arrested.
Could there be a clearer admission of tyranny than this?
Kansas Republicans require women to sign a form printed in fairly small print in order to get an abortion, apparently just to harass them.
Sanders: Americans, unite to free our country from oligarchic rule.
The troll feels threatened by the investigation of Russian ties, so he and his staff now refuse to answer any questions about the issue.
No country should be saddled with a president that clams up because of an investigation of possible crimes. He should resign, and then we will have no objection when he exercises his right not to incriminate himself.
Australia must put an end to clearing of land in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Since rising temperatures are increasing many natural CO2 emissions, we need to cut human emissions enough to get ahead of the game.
A woman died walking into Canada before she could reach Canadian officials to ask for asylum.
The article is misleading when it says that Canadian thugs "intercept" these people. They do not want to live in Canada secretly. Once across the border, they seek out officials to apply for asylum.
A New York City thug faces murder charges for shooting a schizophrenic woman in her own home.
Thugs are supposed to know how to subdue people without killing them.
Even US government officials can't escape persistent debt collectors who harass them about debts owed by someone else.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a big boost.
They use some of the same methods that Islamist terrorists use, so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise led immigration thugs to seek the outer limits in cruelty, while also trying to cut off legal aid to those they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too. The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
With Trump, A Full-Scale Assault on Protections for U.S. Public Lands.
The US Supreme Court ruled against trying to use patents on ink cartridges to stop independent commercial refilling operations.
The article falls into a common confusion when it describes copyright law, patent law and trademark law as "intellectual property". Those laws are totally different, and trying to generalize about even two of them will surely lead you to false conclusions.
The Theater of Security Agency plans a lot more harassment regarding carry-on baggage.
With global heating threatening to destroy coral entirely, conservation is forced to consider a big strategic retreat. To preserve any coral reefs at all will be hard enough.
US prosecutors claim that they never prosecuted any low-level drug criminals, and no such people have been in federal prison.
However, Obama found almost 2000 of them and pardoned them.
When parents use mobile devices often, they can't pay their children the attention children need. It's called "absent presence". The result is that the children show bad behavior which reflects psychological harm.
How Liberals lost touch with middle America and thus lost political power.
The groups have grown apart so much that they don't know how to relate to each other, and feel contempt for each other.
I certainly don't know how to relate to people with the usual tastes and attitudes. I can talk myself out of thinking that mine make me better than them, but I still can't see how to find common social ground with them.
Most of the UK political parties now say they agree on replacing neoliberalism with "an economy that works".
I don't think the Tories are serious about it, though.
Black Americans are less interested in voting for Democrats because they have become Republican Lite.
Although tens of thousands of blacks would probably have voted for Democrats last year if they hadn't been blocked by Republican voter suppression.
Even though asbestos is known to be very dangerous, the US has not banned it, and the death rate from asbestos-caused disease continues to rise.
The troll is trying to make it worse, by denying the danger and encouraging more use of the poison.
He is trying to make more Americans sick, while leaving them without medical care. That is the cruel way to reduce our population. Wouldn't it be better to pay for birth control for everyone?
Comparing the housing policies of the three main UK parties. The Tories say vaguely they will break from their cruel past, the Labour policy is much better but not bold, and the Lib Dems offer interesting ideas.
The Supreme Court overruled one of the few ways citizens had to put a check on thugs that do illegal searches followed by gross violence.
A Tory politician understated the need for food banks, saying it was for "cashflow problems". In other words, transient problems. The manager of a foodbank explains how they are due to long-term problems created by Tories.
Democrats, stop listening to Rahm Emanuel's right-wing advice.
"Centrist" Democrats (including Obama as well as Emanuel) are in fact considerably right wing compared with the views of most Americans when asked about specific issues.
Dubai envisions a "smart city" system that would track everything about everyone.
This complete data base is suppose to make it possible to ensure everyone is "happy". Except those for whom happiness involves having human rights.
US citizens: Demand that NAFTA re-negotiations benefit working people, not corporate power.
Everyone: call on the press to start scrutinizing Pence for inconsistencies and denying facts.
US citizens: call on the troll and other officials to respect the Paris climate agreement.
It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid of it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
Also phone te White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and ask for the comment line.
The troll wants to cut taxes on corporations. Here's how they are dodging taxes and sabotaging the US.
UK charities know that planned Tory cuts will kill some of the people the charities help, but Tory laws ban them from talking about this.
They should do it anyway, defying that law, then openly dare the Tories to fine them since that money too will be taken from the poor.
The EU is struggling to put an end to emissions cheating software in cars.
The Democratic Party establishment wants to continue with Clinton's useless identity-based politics, instead of taking up the causes that Americans want.
The commander of the Indian army defended use of human shields in Kashmir.
How disgusting.
When India took over the princely state of Kashmir, it promised the people of Kashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India. India should give them that referendum.
Goldman Sachs bought Venezuelan bonds for under 1/3 of face value. (The bonds were issued by PDVSA, which is the state-owned oil company.)
Whichever government is in power in the future, it will suffer from the consequences of this.
Egypt has adopted a law that will make human rights organizations shut down unless they follow the state's priorities (become useless).
India's theocratic ruling party is making it very hard to sell cows for slaughter. Especially cattle that were used as farm work animals.
There were protests against this in various parts of India, and in one of them a protester was attacked by religious fanatics and seriously injured.
With global heating plus increased urbanization, many cities could be 8C hotter by the end of this century.
The US military continues to cover up civilian casualties from bombing raids.
It's impossible to fight a war and perfectly avoid civilian casualties. It is possible to make a real effort to avoid them — and it is possible to admit them when they happen.
Republicans are in favor of policies that redistribute wealth, as long as it's redistributed to the rich. But they disguise this redistributive effect behind some other motive, so that they can pretend to "oppose redistribution".
The article sets a bad example in one point: it uses the propaganda word "protection" in reference to copyright, and to patents. A deeper error in that same point is that it groups copyright and patents together as if they were similar issues.
Some US Christians cheer Gianforte's violence and call for a "more violent Christianity".
Other religious fanatics call for a more violent Islam, and look at how much harm they have done. These could do even more.
200 students on a school trip were invited to give Paul Ryan a photo op. Half of them refused to participate.
Bravo! They are learning what America means.
Interview: Crackdown on Media Ahead of Kenya's 2017 Vote.
Global heating is destroying Hawaii's coral reefs despite efforts to protect them.
Russia is far more powerful than PISSI, but Putin is less hostile: his aim is to secure his authoritarian rule of Russia.
In today's capitalism, the customer is beneath contempt. What's more, treating other institutions like businesses (for instance, schools and hospitals) means they treat the customer with contempt much as businesses do.
US gun nuts oppose a bill to make hearing aids cheaper simply because Senator Warren supports it.
The troll conspicuously refuses to denounce right-wing terrorist murderers, while other Republicans call for using armed militias for "security".
Moderate Muslims have a duty to campaign against Islamist terrorism. Likewise, moderate right-wingers have a duty to campaign against right-wing terrorism. It's the same situation, and the same duty.
Corbyn defended Labour policies well in a pseudo-debate, and clearly rejected Tory austerity.
It is disappointing that Labour does not intend to undo all the Tory cuts in aid for the poor and disabled, but stating opposition to austerity is the first step.
A Texas Republican legislator threatened to shoot a Democratic legislator.
I am not surprised.
The troll can unite Europe — against his contempt.
To carry out the Paris climate agreement, we need a carbon tax, and it has to be preplanned to become quite high.
However, the Paris climate agreement is insufficient.
Therefore, to avoid global heating disaster, the tax must be even higher.
Renegotiation of NAFTA would be an opportunity to make it somewhat less bad, by eliminating the option for companies to sue national governments.
However, it would still be bad for the US (industry moves to Mexico) and for Mexico (peasants can't make a living).
Facebook developed algorithms to detect teenagers that are in a vulnerable or susceptible state, to target them with ads.
Restaurants are using bigger wine glasses, which leads many people to drink more wine and get drunk.
How SCROTUS defends the Dontcare bill: falsehoods, euphemisms, and deleting criticism.
US citizens:
call
on the troll and other officials to respect the Paris climate agreement.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid of it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Even US government officials can't escape persistent debt collectors who harass them about debts owed by someone else.
The UK is trying to make refugees leave by starving them.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a big boost. They use some of the same methods that Islamist terrorists use, so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise lead immigration thugs to seek the outer limits in cruelty, while also trying to cut off legal aid to those they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too. The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
US citizens: call on candidates to pledge to take no fossil fuel money.
US citizens: call on Paul Ryan to keep Gianforte out of the House of Representatives.
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to preserve all US national monuments.
US citizens: call on Congress to block arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: call on Democrats to refuse to lend legitimacy to the troll's proposed voter suppression commission.
Thug unions in Alaska are lobbying against a law that would prohibit thugs from pressuring suspects, crime victims and witnesses to have sex with them.
This law applies to more than just situations where prostitutes face arrest for prostitution. Anyone who is attractive and facing arrest by a thug is vulnerable to being forced into prostitution by the thug.
The troll might be planning to privatize US infrastructure and sell it to Salafi Arabia.
Veterans for Peace will rallied on Memorial Day to move beyond remembering war dead. Their idea is to reduce the number of future war dead.
Uruguay has legalized marijuana, but for those who register for a license to buy or grow it.
That adds up to a government registry that could prove dangerous, and in any case is unjustified surveillance.
Making people work until age 70 could be acceptable, but what about when their pay isn't enough to live on, or they are disabled?
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid. The one permanent doctor in Sudan's Nuba mountains explains the situation there.
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid. With so many rich people and companies demanding tax cuts, little is left for starving people far away.
Food Stamps: A Lifeline for America's Poor That Trump Wants to Cut.
A few right-wing hate spreaders have been kicked off mainstream media by the hand of the increased corporate power they have fought to make possible.
Meanwhile, progressives remain excluded from the mainstream media. Tens of millions of Americans want single-payer medical care, and each one thinks, "I must be the only one. Am I a an extremist?"
The troll's bizarre antics are very effective distraction. Keep an eye on the Republicans' other hands!
Joy Buolamwini thinks it is an injustice that face recognition works better on white faces than on black faces.
I agree; but I am puzzled that she wants to make it recognize black faces better. I think that's backwards. It should recognize white faces just as badly as black faces.
The Tories are refusing to talk about their use of sensitive personal data, which appears possibly to be illegal.
Islamist terrorists attacked civilians for being Christians. Christians say the Egyptian government was not very interested in investigating.
It did use the opportunity to bomb terrorist camps in Libya. But they belong to a different group.
The UK is lobbying to undermine EU-wide energy efficiency measures which would take effect after the UK has left the EU.
This shows that the motive must be sabotage — of civilization's hope of surviving global heating disaster.
The way to deal with possible price increases from electricity suppliers is to preempt them with a carbon tax. If they get windfall profits anyway, apply a windfall profits tax. This money can be used to solve other social problems.
The troll's repeatedly announced War on Journalism targets journalists, but especially leakers.
Blacks moving to America's small cities face systematic harassment by thugs. The previous inhabitants, nearly all whites, suppose (falsely) that crime is going up and they blame it on the blacks who are moving in.
A Colombian grad student was finally cleared of criminal charges for posting an academic article online.
All scholarly articles should be free.
The latest fashion in education is total monitoring of children to teach them to accept total surveillance when they grow up.
The troll's saboteurs love science, but they want to gut the EPA Science Office.
Gianforte's attack on a journalist has unleashed the inner Republican spirit: violent hatred of whoever gets in their way. Republican politicians are encouraging it.
I can see this leading to a wave of terrorism.
Palestinian prisoners have ended their hunger strike in exchange for an Israeli concession about family visits.
The article fails to mention that many of these prisoners are not serving sentences imposed after conviction for a crime. They were imprisoned arbitrarily without trial.
A German draft law would require social network companies to do censorship, deleting many sorts of works that are considered deplorable.
Multinational companies have found a screw in EU treaties that would enable them to claim back around $80 billion in taxes that they paid in the UK many years ago.
Maybe exiting the EU will enable the UK to refuse to ever pay them.
There are hopes that Ecuador's new president will reduce Correa's practice of prosecuting journalists and leakers.
What if getting help for mental illness were as easy as going to the dentist?
The "war on drugs" is a failure world wide, but even worse, it accustoms the world to massive murder.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to reject
the troll's budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: Support the financial transaction tax.
US businesses often cheat low-wage workers, and retaliate with blacklisting, threat of prosecution or deportation, even violence against workers that complain.
Right-wing bigots have adopted a camouflage of irony and humor. It enables them to make bigotry seem normal while recruiting support in a deniable way.
The author recommends treating anyone that jokes about support for bigotry as a serious supporter regardless of denials.
Another method that some clever people might be able to apply is to inject other ideas, not bigoted, into the group. If they won't admit they are really bigots, they might have trouble explaining disapproval of this. To succeed at that would take skill, and I doubt I could pull it off, but a group of clever progressives might get somewhere.
White racism in the US is ready for murder once again, with encouragement from the troll and his saboteurs.
The troll wants to cut food stamps by 25%, and dump another 20% of the cost on states.
When states can't pay that, the result might be no food stamps for some people in that state. This could serve a an indirect excuse for even bigger cuts.
If that's not bad enough, new fees would be imposed to discourage small stores from accepting food stamp payments.
Don't respond to loss by avoiding things you love that remind you of the loss.
The troll stated admiration for Do-dirty's death squad campaign.
Republicans opposing net neutrality are using a script written by cable company lobbyists.
A court victory for the EFF: the NSA is required to give surveillance plaintiffs all the necessary evidence to determine whether they personally have been snooped on.
The troll wants to put a polluters' advocate in charge of administering the Superfund for cleaning up polluted industrial sites.
The Superfund problem, like so many others, can be traced to letting businesses get out of paying taxes.
Hoosick Falls should have a local newspaper called "Hoosick Today?"
A group of nazis in Florida were planning to explode a bomb to spread radioactive material. Then one of them converted to Islam and murdered two others.
It is interesting to see how close right-wing bigotry is to Islamist bigotry.
Automation threatens to divide humanity into the enhanced elite and the impoverished masses.
The progressive movement fights against the continued advance in that direction. Please join in.
Taiwan's highest court has ordered the legalization of same-sex marriage.
China has brought its birth rate down, and some say India now holds the shame of being the world's most populous country.
Unfortunately, those fools claim that population increase is a good thing and China should produce more babies.
Global heating could cause changes in ocean circulation which would eventually wipe out large whales.
Software is being developed to let thugs use body cameras to identify the faces of everyone their bodies point at.
They should not be allowed to have this capability without limits.
A film made by Armenians depicting the genocide of the Armenians faces organized harassment and business sabotage.
One Pennsylvania legislator defends to the bitter end his right to receive gifts in exchange for votes.
In the UK even schoolteachers are in danger of living on the streets.
This is due to Tory policies that have eliminated public housing and driven rents up. Meanwhile, Tory dooH niboR policies squeeze them from the other side.
The troll's budget plan, for ten years, "sacrifices public health, environmental protection, reproductive rights, international aid, social safety nets, farm subsidies, the arts, student aid, and public education" for military and the rich.
It cuts scientific research drastically.
Tories Say They'll Exploit Manchester's Dead to Ban Working Crypto in the UK.
The plan appears not to be a ban on using encryption, but rather to require companies to put back doors in their products.
Theresa "Snooper" May has campaigned for years to eliminate all possibility in the UK for people to have a private conversation. She must have been waiting for an opportunity like this one.
Ralph Nader: end the War on Drugs and handle other dangerous addictive drugs the way we handle alcohol and tobacco. The bill S.1127 would do this.
A "Russian intelligence document", erroneous and possibly fake, complicated the investigation of Clinton's private email server.
The US and its allies in Syria have agreed to cover up the civilian casualties they cause. These casualties are increasing.
Keep in mind that PISSI conscripts local men, often as soldiers. As soldiers, they are legitimate targets in war, but their relatives should not be. In any case, making war on civilians is terrorism, and the US must not engage in terrorism.
The PISSI-controlled area of Syria, including Raqqa, is a battle zone. There is no way assure safety for civilians in a battle zone. But the US has an obligation, morally and by treaty, to make strong efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Covering them up is reprehensible.
If Congress were doing its job, it would require honesty and protection of civilians as a condition for authorizing the war.
US right-wingers now understand the danger of the Deep State. Will they recognize that Snowden's fight to diminish it is heroic, and help do so?
Most teenagers don't have basic financial literacy, and it's worse for those who have a bank payment card.
This confirms that paying cash makes people more aware of how much money they are spending. So there are two reasons to pay cash: to resist tracking and to understand your budget and spending better.
With the troll mostly hated, and Sanders the best-liked politician in the US, Democrats have a clear path to victory: follow Sanders. Strange that few Democratic politicians actually do that.
The partial ban on Muslims is a test for the US Supreme Court.
The US subsidizes fossil fuel companies an effective 7 billion dollars a year for their use of public lands.
Comcast has decided not to sue the site comcastroturf, at least not for the moment.
That's because the suit would be frivolous and Comcast knows it.
Comcast's excuse, supposing it is the truth, is really no excuse.
Many companies hire trademark lawyers that regularly try to intimidate anyone that uses the company's trademarks in discourse, without asking themselves crucial questions such as "Is their use fair use" and "would demanding they stop constitute bullying?" Such trademark lawyers are, in effect, acting like robots even though they are human beings.
The company that chooses to employ such robot-imitators to bully people indiscriminately is morally responsible for the mistreatment involved.
The battle to stop a proposed giant coal mine has given the environmental movement in Australia a clear way to focus attention on global heating and the threat to the Great Barrier Reef.
A journalist in East Timor faces imprisonment for mentioning the wrong company in an article. The newspaper has already published a correction.
The injustice starts with the existence of a law making "defamation" a crime. Prosecution for "defamation" is a tool for repression.
Leaks about surveillance of the Russian ambassador say Kushner the troll-in-law discussed with him how to set up unmonitored communications with Russia.
The troll says it would be too hard to keep track of whether he's getting money from foreign interests through his business. This means he must truly divest from his business.
US reactors of the same type as those at Fukushima have been left vulnerable to running out of water in the spent fuel pools. It's not worth fixing, say regulators. In the event of a Fukushima-style accident, that could lead to a much bigger disaster.
Republican politicians think the idea of attacking reporters will appeal to their core supporters.
It's the same thing the troll discovered in his campaign rallies: every time he bullied someone, his supporters loved it. They get a vicarious feeling of strength by identifying with him.
Before Gianforte attacked a reporter, he attacked the citizens of Montana, trying to stop them from fishing on public land near his house.
That attitude typifies the Republicans' attitude towards the public.
In Libya, the failed state that resulted from the ouster of Qadhafi opened up room for PISSI to recruit people angry at the state of their country.
It wasn't exactly the fault of the US/European intervention, but anger at other US/European interventions gave Islamist extremism the force to succeed in recruiting some of the disaffected.
A man who harassed Muslim women on a train in Portland, Oregon, murdered two other passengers who tried to protect the women.
Do-dirty "jokingly" encouraged soldiers to rape women in Mindanao.
Corbyn: the UK must recognize that its warlike posture has helped provoke terrorism, and must change that posture.
The EU's plan to spread WiFi access throughout Europe must not promote big business that spies on users.
If it requires people to log in and identify themselves, it might eliminate the convenient systems in cafes that don't require this.
In 1967, when Israel was at war with several Arab countries, its planes attacked the USS Liberty, a radio listening ship. The survivors and other witnesses say that the attack was intentional — and some testify to hearing radio surveillance recordings in which Israeli pilots asking, "Are we really supposed to attack an ally's ship?"
Paraguay has done a great job of giving rural population access to clean water.
Tricks that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat use to make people feel anxious and spend time there.
Car owners are suing General Motors accusing it of using "defeat devices" to cheat on emissions tests.
Meanwhile, Diesel cars that were found to spew lots of pollution are still being sold.
Humans are wiping out seabirds through many practices that are deadly for them.
The job-killing mogul Greg Gianforte won the election in Montana despite attacking a reporter.
Or was it because of attacking a reporter? Republicans assume the reporter must have done something horrible to deserve being attacked.
I hope Gianforte starts his congressional term in jail.
Libyans in Britain warned the state repeatedly about jihadi recruiters operating among them.
So don't complain that moderate Muslims don't try to stop terrorism. They do try.
The inspector generals report that US agents were directly involved in the raid in Honduras that killed four Miskitu people.
The US thugs shot at them, then stopped them from getting medical aid which might have saved some of their lives. Then the thugs lied about it, naturally.
The coup-installed Honduran government is giving them a runaround instead of justice.
36 US states do face recognition on drivers licenses. In some states, they violate state law by doing so.
Let's make it illegal everywhere!
Is California's single-payer medical system too expensive? It's cheaper than the present system, provides better care, and doesn't leave millions out.
Right-wing Democrats led by Bill Clinton paved the way for DeVos's extreme privatization campaign.
It's not enough for Democrats to win. We need progressives in Congress, progressives who won't support privatization.
The ease of switching from neo-Nazi to Islamist shows that for some people the direction of extremism is just a detail.
The psychology of jihadi radicalization: to counter it, neighbors and media must help young Muslims feel they are welcome as part of the society around them.
Weak encryption is worse than no encryption, so business operating in countries that don't allow effective encryption should offer no encryption and loudly say why.
The troll is personally responsible for encouraging violence against journalists in the US.
The US finally admitted that bombing one house in Mosul killed more than 100 civilians.
It's impossible to fight a war without mistakes. The US should have admitted the mistake quickly; trying to deny the facts only adds to the wrong.
The US should stop using 500-pound bombs to attack a few people in a roof. And it should stop assuming that a house is empty just because it doesn't know of anyone inside. Those practices invite causing civilian casualties.
Thugs in Brazil shot at protesters that demanded the resignation of the corrupt president.
The troll-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns a rental housing company that aggressively squeezes money out of former tenants — even when they don't owe any, his lawyers pursue them for years.
A Republican congresscritter wants to cut food stamps for some Americans to be "fair" to other Americans that don't get them.
Following that logic they will eventually give zero welfare benefits to all non-rich Americans.
A right-wing extremist murdered a student in a Maryland university that he didn't know. The only idea for a motive is bigotry.
Oil spills are not a rare occurrence where pipelines are concerned. The companies downplay the spills in the press, which spreads a mistaken impression that they will generally be safe and spills will be unlikely.
Egypt has blocked more foreign news sites, saying they publish lies.
"Lies" is Egyptian for "criticizing the state".
The PISSI offshoot in Libya has mostly lost its military power but can still organize terrorism abroad.
We must remember that the harm it can do is small compared with the loss of our freedom.
Just as the Saboteur of the Interior begins considering whether to abolish some national monuments, he has shut down public lands local advisory councils around the US.
Of course, the troll's saboteurs get their orders from a powerful few. Naturally they don't care what everyone else thinks; but it's surprising when they expose that so clearly.
Carson, Saboteur of Housing and Urban Development, said that poverty results from having the wrong mindset.
Mindset does play a role, but getting out of the gutter without help takes exceptional ability and a lot of luck.
The point of government welfare programs is so that the rest of the poor people can have a decent life.
It should also be noted that growing up in poverty teaches most people a bad mindset.
A poll of 8 important greenhouse-emitting countries found most people are willing to change the way they live to avoid global heating disaster.
These countries are the US, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil, South Africa, and Germany.
The Dontcare bill would result in loss of medical coverage for 23 million Americans.
That's one million less than the version they rejected. A small step forward, on top of a big step back.
Millions of other Americans would lose out also, just not quite as much.
Cannabidiol made from marijuana is an effective treatment for epilepsy in some children.
The US needs to change the legal status of marijuana to make it possible to sell drugs made from that plant.
Suicide bombers attacked thugs in Jakarta.
They were surely Islamist, since there is no other plausible candidate.
This is the result of Salafist indoctrination funded by Salafi Arabia, and encouraged by the blasphemy law.
A truly tough response to terrorism would be to deny the terrorists the reaction they seek.
The damage to Africa from global heating effects and from stripping and hiding wealth abroad far exceeds all the aid Africa receives.
A turncoat in the EPA, linked to pesticide companies, seems to have persuaded the European Food Safety Authority to ignore evidence that glyphosate is dangerous.
Britons, don't go off the deep end when there is a bombing. Cars are far more deadly. In the UK, over 100 people are killed each month by car collisions. (112 per month, for 2015.)
Each of those deaths was a loss to the world, and left relatives and friends bereft. But you don't ruin your free society over those deaths. Don't do it over these!
Don't let it make you regard Muslims as enemies.
A former prisoner of PISSI says that his captors were delighted every time westerners responded to a terrorist attack by proclaiming general hostility to Muslims. That supports their recruiting strategy.
The Union of Concerned Scientists: Trump Budget Disregards Science, Puts Public Health, Innovation at Risk.
The plutocratist wing of the Democratic Party seems to want to fight just hard enough to get back in power, not to really win for the non-rich.
Watch out for Ancestry.com and its rules for who owns scans of people's DNA.
Comcast is using a frivolous but dangerous trademark lawsuit to try to shut down a web site that criticizes it.
The troll's proposed budget includes the already announced cuts for the EPA and endangered species.
If this goes through, it will cause an irreparable loss.
The UK will have stricter security at concerts.
That could be useful, and I don't criticize it. It isn't wrong to search people entering concerts for bombs or weapons, as long as the thugs don't take note of anything but bombs and weapons.
The Oakland prostitution scandal has led to many thugs' resigning or pleading guilty. One is actually on trial.
My ethical analysis of all this:
It wasn't wrong for Celeste Guap to do sex work, and it wasn't wrong to be her customer.
If a thug compelled her to have sex by threatening to arrest her if she didn't, that was a form of rape.
If a thug convinced her to have sex by offering her information about operations, that was in effect taking a bribe from her, paid in the form of sex. It was wrong for the thug to take that bribe, and wrong for her to pay it; but those wrongs are overshadowed by the bigger wrong of arresting people for prostitution.
The troll's proposed budget would cut hundreds of billions from support for poor people.
A paid family leave plan would give back a tiny fraction of that. "Ivanka Trump's family leave plan is a fig leaf for her father's worst policies."
As for the tax cuts, we know that hardly anything will "trickle down" to the non-rich.
Before Tony B'liar helped Dubya attack Iraq, UK intelligence warned it would provoke terrorist bombings in the UK.
In the long run, we can best reduce the danger from Islamist terrorists by (1) ceasing to attack other countries (particularly Muslim countries), and (2) making Salafi Arabia reduce its efforts to spread a cruel form of Islam.
Uber has repeatedly underpaid its drivers.
Vietnam is recognizing the harm that rising sea level will do.
Google has found a way to track most credit card purchases in the US, even those not done through a phone, and correlate that with people's online actions.
Google can't do either side to me, since I pay cash and don't carry a mobile phone, and it doesn't know what web sites I look at.
Illinois is considering bills requiring web sites to tell users what information they hold about them and what companies they have distributed it to.
I'm in favor of this, but I don't think it will do much to protect us from surveillance by web sites. And that's not to count the surveillance of bank cards, pharmacies, toll booths, phone companies, license plate cameras and face recognition cameras.
The last old forest in Europe is being destroyed by illegal logging and legal logging.
A public toilet in Beijing requires using a face recognition system to get toilet paper.
Some governments will spend lots of money to surveil people in the name of stinginess.
If there's anyone in Beijing that can't afford toilet paper, the city government should give out toilet paper for them. Why not put a box of rolls next to the toilet?
I have a hunch that that toilet does something else even worse: that it is a pay toilet. The idea of charging people to use a toilet offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet. Please join this campaign, and spread the word.
Britons, don't react to terrorist bombings with fear and vindictiveness!
The biggest danger to the UK comes not from the terrorists, but from tearing up their own freedom in the vain pursuit of absolute security.
George Monbiot: "Don't let psychopathic murderers suppress our common humanity."
A Chinese student praised US freedom of political discussion as she addressed other students in graduation from a US university. She was subjected to orchestrated smears in China.
It is a shame that she undercut her defense of freedom by apologizing for it.
Banning neonicotinoid pesticides will be facilitated by a report showing that other solutions do as good a job.
The Supreme Court rejected racist gerrymandering in North Carolina.
Republicans aimed, in their usual way, to create a handicap against Democrats.
The EFF reports that HTTPS is making it difficult for states to impose selective censorship via filtering, which leads states to turn to demanding that companies such as Facebook carry out the censorship for them.
Unfortunately, it ends with an inadequate recommendation for companies to be "transparent" about their censorship. That's hardly enough to qualify as trying to resist.
The article also uses the term "content" to refer to publications, which ought to be avoided since it deprecates them all.
UK doctors say many of the children they treat suffer from bad health caused by Toryism and the poverty it campaigns for. This harms children's health by way of bad housing, bad food, and stress about financial insecurity.
The excessive demonization of Russia has interfered with removal of an unconstitutional California law barring Communists from state jobs.
Communism sounds nice in the abstract, but when implemented it turned out to be just another system of dictatorship by an elite. China and Vietnam today, and to some extent Cuba as well, show that this outcome was not limited to the Soviet Union.
9 ways Iran is more free than Salafi Arabia.
Regarding item 4, electing from a list of candidates handed down from on high is a parody of democracy, and that's where Iran falls short of democracy.
Item 10 is irrelevant to the question of freedom in Iran. However, I don't think Iran's support for Assad is any worse than US support for a variety of comparably vicious regimes.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the troll budget.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the troll's cruel budget.
When Erdoğan's bodyguards attacked protesters in Washington DC, the world got a glimpse of Turkey's standard repression.
One of the troll's cabinet saboteurs stated his admiration for the absence in Salafi Arabia of any protests against the troll's visit.
A report on business surveillance of employees, and avenues to limit such surveillance.
In general, we should not allow any businesses to excuse surveillance of the public based on nominal "consent". To protect privacy and democracy we need to get rid of most of the existing massive surveillance.
Business surveillance of employees can be oppressive even when they are on the job. For instance, if they are not allowed moments to rest between calls, or if they are impeded from going to the toilet.
Oxfam finds that opening new coal mines will only worsen [global heating] and drive poor nations deeper into poverty.
US retailers may replace 7.5 million sales clerk jobs with automation in the next 10 years.
I refuse to use self-checkout machines in stores, but I do more than just avoid them. When I pass those machines, I shout, "If you use those machines, you are putting Americans out of work!" Then I go to the human sales clerk.
If I have to wait for the sales clerk, that's ok. I always have a book to read. (I don't go out without a book and a computer.)
Please join me in doing these things. It's not too early to push back against socially harmful automation.
Of course, buying on line is even worse, and it records in a data base who you are and what you bought. You can join me in rejecting that too.
Two Turkish teachers went on hunger strike 10 weeks ago after being fired for political reasons. Now they have been arrested for not eating.
Over 100,000 people in Turkey have been fired and blacklisted for political reasons. Some (all?) of them have had their pensions and passports taken away so that they cannot get asylum.
The claim that 100,000 people were involved in the coup attempt is absurd. Coup plotters know better than to tell so many people their plans.
How the peace activists can try to end proxy wars.
The FCC received lots of comments opposed to network neutrality generated by bots, not submitted by human beings. Saboteur Ajit Pai suggests he will treat them as valid.
This sort of two-step falsification is the essence of AstroTurf. One party creates a lot of smoke. Another sees the smoke and claims there's a fire. In effect, they combine to promulgate a lie, but neither of them can be held responsible for lying.
100 students walked out on Pence as he addressed the graduation at Notre Dame.
Iranians just voted for better relations with the US. Too bad the troll wants to support the warlike Sunni murder-states instead.
The UK Green Party calls for strong measures to help the non-rich, including a universal basic income.
The war and famine in South Sudan continue, stirred up by rivalry between several meddling US client states.
Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan are ruled by tyrannical regimes that are willing to kill large numbers of people. Uganda does not have free and fair elections, but I don't think it is as repressive as those other three.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia to get rid of an Islamist but not aggressive government that had unified the country, and it has been wracked by civil war ever since; this intervention had to have US support.
Corbyn has made the Labour Party relevant again by making it stand for something that can inspire people.
Islamist bigotry in Jakarta: 140 men arrested at a sauna party.
I'm afraid it is only a matter of years before the Muslim majority of Indonesia starts a civil war by trying to impose its rules on other ethnic groups. This is all the fault of Salafi Arabia, which has funded the inculcation in Indonesia of repressive forms of Islam in place of the tolerant forms that were widespread in Indonesia before.
Salafi Arabia's many evils, collected.
Chelsea Manning shows the heroism required to be a whistleblower in a country that doesn't respect whistleblowers — and why we need whistleblowers tremendously.
Secret New European Copyright Proposal Spells Disaster for Free Culture.
When the international situation permits it, it will be possible to prosecute those in the Assad regime who are responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of prisoners.
Getting abortion pills and advice in using them online proves to be quite safe.
Iran, Salafi Arabia, democracy, and the troll.
Twitter has implemented new non-privacy settings; the default is substantial surveillance, if users don't turn it off.
Sabotaging the 2020 US census would help Republicans get away with gerrymandering.
Republicans want to build US infrastructure through "public-private partnerships", which means the public pays more and gets less control.
In Salafi Arabia, the troll talks about the need to defeat Islamist extremism.
As if it weren't Salafi Arabia that spends millions per year to spread Islamist extremism.
The troll also strained to equate Iran's repressive state with terrorism. However, Iran's repression happens overtly, in Iran. Stay away from there and you're safe from it. And Iran's repression is only a fraction of that of Salafi Arabia.
Canada has removed most of the requirements for supervised facilities for addicts to take opioids.
El Cenizo, Texas, is suing to overturn the Texas law that forces all local thugs to obey orders from US border thugs.
The Republican governor of Maine has prohibited posting signs to lead people to the Katahdin Woods and Waters national monument, which he wants to eliminate.
He hopes to keep visitors away so he can claim people don't want to go there.
This reminds me of how New Jersey officials (surely directed by the Governor Christy) punished a Democratic mayor by closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge. (The governor says he didn't tell his aides to do this. If you believe that, maybe he will offer to sell you that bridge.)
This shows the scheming and dishonest attitude of today's Republican Party. They will degrade any institutions they get their hands on, and use it to spread lies, merely to deny their rivals a chance to point at any sort of success.
US journalists denounce the practice of imprisoning journalists, which was expanded under Dubya and Obama and is getting worse under the troll.
In January, Flynn convinced Obama's national security advisor to put off a plan to arm the Syrian Kurds to capture Raqqa. Flynn had taken pay from Turkey during 2016.
The troll has since reinstated the plan.
Democratic congresscritters wrote to Pence in November to warn him about Flynn's employment by Turkey.
Pence claimed he didn't know about this.
The thug that shot Terrence Crutcher lied about many aspects of the killing, and then was acquitted of charges.
Thugs assumed Crutcher was dangerous before they approached him. They didn't bother to notice that he was unarmed and had his hands up. Unconscious racism may have played a role, and surely the assumption did too. That is no excuse for what they did.
Here's an idea: put up posters showing that thug, in uniform, with the caption "Armed, Dangerous Liar." Each word can be proved.
The US government organizes the arrest of hundreds of sex workers every year, under the guise of releasing enslaved minors — except that it finds hardly any minors and none are enslaved.
Sheriff Clarke wants to put thousands of Americans — perhaps as much as a million — in prison without trial based on suspicions he appears to exaggerate.
What Facebook gained from buying WhatsApp was to associate nearly every used of Facebook with a phone number. Facebook lied about this when it bought WhatsApp.
Brazilian president Temer says the audio recording which had him discussing hush money for Eduardo Cunha was faked.
The Australian government is disappointed that environmentalists have defeated coal mining plans in court, because they would harm endangered species. Instead of making mines respect wildlife, the government has decided to block environmentalists from taking such issues to court.
Future mining projects will get away with destroying endangered species, because the extractionist state doesn't care, and everyone else in Australia will be powerless.
The troll's saboteurs have blocked a plan to measure greenhouse emissions from cars and trucks.
EFF: since stingrays always snoop on everyone in a neighborhood, the usual criteria for a search warrant are not enough for using a stingray. They should be used only in cases of major crimes.
Pence is a Christian theocrat and plutocratist, but that is no reason to hold back from impeaching the troll.
Some US agency reports listening to a Russian agent boast of plans to interfere with the US election of 2016, to punish Clinton.
If true (those agencies do sometimes lie), it is not proof that the troll's staff colluded with Russia about the matter. But it confirms the importance of a full and trustworthy investigation.
The troll tried to erase concern for global heating from the nearly finalized Arctic declaration.
After the final defeat of North Carolina's voter suppression law, Republicans there vow to try again to stop Democrats from voting.
A British woman is on trial for going to a park and inviting teenage boys to have sex with her there. Her husband acted as a lookout in case someone else passed by. One teenager allegedly visited her at her house repeatedly to have sex with her.
None of these acts would be wrong in any sense, provided they took precautions against spreading infections. The idea that adolescents (of whatever sex) need to be "protected" from sexual experience they wish to have is prudish ignorantism, and making that experience a crime is perverse.
The Tories plan total state-controlled censorship of the internet in the UK.
The FCC's nonuniformed thugs grabbed a reporter in a meeting where the press was invited, and physically threw him out.
Other reporters, who knew him, were shocked.
Most Republicans don't care what nasty, criminal or treasonous things the troll does; they will construct excuses to support him regardless.
This may explain why Republicans tell blatant absurd lies all the time. The falsehood is easy to expose, but they know their supporters have chosen to disconnect from reality and will treat the lies as truth.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the EPA's budget.
New Orleans has finished removing its memorials to the Confederacy.
The troll has appointed a sheriff that notoriously hates Black Lives Matter as liaison with local thug departments.
The troll's choice for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior Department is a saboteur indeed: a walking conflict of interest".
If US intelligence about al-Qa'ida in Yemen is imperfect, the result is to kill lots of the wrong people.
If the members of al-Qa'ida are a tiny fraction of the population, it doesn't take much of an error rate for drone assassinations to kill more bystanders then enemies.
Trying to explain why do the Tories' victims plan to vote for Tories.
I think politicians that will try to do good things and might fail are preferable to politicians that can be relied on to implement policies that will crush lots of people.
The Tory state contracts with charities to implement state responsibilities to help the poor, but doesn't pay for the costs. The charities need to use other money.
This can't go on much longer. In a year or two, the charities will cease to bid for these contracts. Then the Tories will say, "Oops, there's no money to help the poor, we have to stop!" But there will be no election scheduled for several years, so Britons will be stuck with it.
That's if they are suckers enough to vote for Tories now.
These charities should cancel now to give voters a sign of what they'd choose if they vote Tory.
If We Cared about Peace We Would Be Talking to Hamas.
Hamas's new charter demonstrates that there's a real possibility for Israel and Hamas to make peace. If you would like negotiations to succeed, it makes no sense to demand more than that as a precondition for starting negotiations. When the US demands more than that from Hamas, and doesn't make similar demands on Israel, it supports Israel's unstated intentions to continue the occupation and siege; to reject peace.
Without Action on Antibiotics, Medicine Will Return to the Dark Ages.
The seed vault in Svalbard had a close scare from global heating effects.
Svalbard is heating faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. If we don't curb global heating soon, it will be above freezing all the time for several months of the year.
Globalized industry pressures countries to compete to allow the highest levels of pollution.
If we want to change this, "rewarding social responsibility" is a weak intervention. We should prohibit import of goods that polluted where they were made.
The Tories are systematically borrowing Republican techniques to suppress voting by the poor. Next step: voter ID.
The Tories are also imitating the troll's contempt for reporters that are not subservient.
Plutocratist parties operate governments of occupation on behalf of the conquering global rich. They may use democracy while it exists, but they aim to deny the people to any real control over their destiny. In the process of doing so, they become ever less legitimate as governments. They deserve their power no more than any other government of occupation.
Sweden has dropped charges against Julian Assange, rejecting the option of bringing him to Sweden with a commitment not to send him to the US.
However, Assange still can't leave the Ecuadorian embassy, as the UK has found a minor crime to arrest him for, and the troll regime says it plans to prosecute him somehow.
It appears they intend to make him spend the rest of his life in the Ecuadorian embassy.
I conjecture that Sweden dropped the charges because the US no longer had any need for them.
Do-dirty has decreed a ban on smoking tobacco in public in the Philippines.
I wouldn't expect that a president has the legal power to do that alone.
Democratic Senators demand information from the troll's companies, now operated by his sons at thumb's length from him, to see whether they are passing through foreign money to him.
Uber collects data about passengers, then uses the data to profile them in various ways.
A careful survey suggests that 1/4 of the US population may be atheist, but many of them fear to let this be known.
Ships emit so much air pollution that they may cause 60,000 deaths per year.
Progressive candidate Rob Quist has a chance to get elected to Congress from Montana, but the national Democratic Party has given him almost no support.
The DNC works for the Wall Street Democrats, like Clinton, against progressives such as Sanders.
Clinton and the Wall Street Democrats want to bring opposition to plutocratic Republicans under their Plutocratic aegis.
In July 2016, I posted a petition on MoveOn calling on Clinton to stand aside so Sanders could defeat the troll. Too bad she didn't do it.
Wall Street Democrats want to go on and on, along the same path of dooH niboR. If we want to go in the right direction, we must not reject their attempts to lead us astray.
In addition to the special criminal investigator, we need an independent commission to investigate wrongdoing by the troll that isn't a crime.
The troll and DeVos want to gut federal support for public schools and college student loans, and move most of the money to private and religious schools.
DeVos wants to eliminate the program that forgives student loans for some students.
If you were rich enough to matter, in her judgment, you wouldn't have needed any student loans.
The troll wants to cut 70% from support for renewable energy in the Department of Energy.
Some US companies offer maternity leave to full time corporate employees, but most of their workers are part-time or employed by contractors or franchises, and don't get those benefits.
If there is any doubt about how you can afford to raise a child, you shouldn't expose it to the risk of being born in that situation.
It took a series of lucky breaks to expose Nixon's conspiracy and remove him from office. We can't count on that to happen again.
However, with the special investigator we have at least traveled a step further down the path.
There are plans to store and transport renewable energy in the form of liquid hydrogen or ammonia.
Iceland could export energy from the heat of underground molten magma.
These could help avoid global disaster, but only if they are ramped up soon.
Careless treatment of intelligence information is not as important as unjustified war.
So You Want to Share Intelligence with Russia ... There Are Less Risky Ways to Do It.
I wonder: would Russians have been able to deduce that the information came from a spy working for Israel, from the information they got? Or did they get that info from the US media?
Meet Aristotle, the Robot Nanny That Can Raise (And Spy on) Your Child.
I am glad people are starting to recognize that these products are fundamentally bad.
EU citizens: object to plans to require web sites to impose mechanical copyright censorship that would reject parodies and other commentary.
The page raises two issues. I think the copyright censorship issue is the most important; if I were an EU citizen I would respond put that one first.
I would also avoid using the word "content" to refer to works of authorship in the text I wrote.
US citizens: state your opposition to snooping robots for children.
I think they are just as bad when offered to adults. The wrong is an outgrowth of the nonfree software in the device.
The troll's ghost-writer says his behavior pattern now is the same as in 1985: no empathy, no conscience, no shame, and no respect for truth. Every other person is a rival he needs to dominate.
US citizens: call on Sessions to rescind the new prosecution policy of always aiming for the maximum sentence.
US citizens: call on the UAE to back out of planned bombardment of Hodeida or its state-owned airline, Emirates, will face a boycott.
US citizens: call on Republican congresscritters to sign the discharge petition for an independent investigation of the troll's relationship with Russia.
The US air force bombed some of Assad's allies in Syria.
Saboteur of the Treasury Mnuchin advocates bringing back all of the Glass-Steagall Act, except for the Glass-Steagall Act.
Iowa Republicans cut off funding to Planned Parenthood for contraception and tests for cancer and diseases.
Many women on Medicaid will have trouble getting those services from anywhere else.
Refugees Australia dumped on Manus Island are subject to constant intrusive surveillance. Guards take notes about how they look each day and about who talks with whom. When they make phone calls, the guards listen.
They are threatened not to talk with journalists, and their supporters have been arrested and deported without seeing them. All this is at the behest of the Australian state.
Sooner or later, the Australian state will arrange to waterboard them, or stick burning cigarettes into their testicles. Or behead them — videos of that would sure scare any would-be refugees away from Australia.
Thugs arrested an autistic 7-year-old in school and jailed him for a week, and his parents could not find him.
He hadn't committed a crime. He had only made a nuisance.
Wall-Street-supporting Senate "Democrat" Manchin challenged progressives to vote him out. Paula Swearengin is trying to do that.
McCain called for expulsion of the Turkish ambassador, and prosecution of his bodyguard for attacking peaceful protesters in Washington DC.
I agree.
Apple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records Confirm.
Recorded phone calls show the corrupt president of Brazil is involved in paying hush money to convicted official Eduardo Cunha.
An investigation has been launched.
Everyone already knew Tener was corrupt; that was the motive for installing him.
Press freedom in Bangladesh is being crushed by prosecution of unwelcome points of view, and arbitrary intimidation of advertisers.
A whole neighborhood was evicted for the Rio Olympics, and many of the inhabitants are left without a community even though they have more valuable houses.
I don't think the Olympic games will be held very much in free countries any more. The people know what a swindle the games are and will campaign to keep them away. The games will be held in tyrannical countries like China, where the people can't resist.
This raises the question of whether to hold Olympic games any more. Typically each sport has an annual championship. Those are held at different times of year, and they don't put a burden on the cities where they are held. They also don't provide an opportunity for big profits for a few businesses — and that is good.
Children need to play on their own. Not playing is bad for their health.
Delta wants to use face recognition for checking luggage.
I'm afraid that in a couple of years they will force this on everyone.
Since the Tories can't squeeze much more money out of the poor, they have announced plans to hit the middle class, especially old people and ill people that can't live on their own.
I suppose they will continue hurting the poor more anyway.
Germany Is Showing the World What's Possible with a Sufficient Investment in Renewable Energy.
Facebook deleted posts that presented evidence of individuals' use of shell companies, evidence coming from the Panama Papers.
This resembles Amazon, which famously shut down Wikileaks' virtual server because Wikileaks didn't have US government authorization to publish leaks.
Proposing a commission made up of physicians and psychiatrists to judge whether the US president is incapacitated or unfit to serve.
Conjecture: US parents demonize non-overprotective parents in a futile attempt to convince themselves that they can guarantee nothing bad will ever happen to their own children if they take enough precautions.
Some US states criminalize driving with even minimal amounts of marijuana drugs that are too little to impair driving.
It's not clear that marijuana is a significant factor for whether people can drive safely.
A report says the troll's pet wall would threaten 93 endangered species.
Birds can fly across a wall, but building the wall would destroy some of their habitat. Habitat destruction is typically an important factor in pushing species towards extinction.
UK thugs who accused four British man of plotting an act of terrorism have been caught in perjury and other crimes.
SCROTUS plans to impose huge budget cuts without saying what spending will be cut. Of course, the cuts will be aimed at non-rich Americans, but they will pretend not to know that.
A judge in Texas has been punished for urging the public to lynch someone.
Lynching was traditionally done mostly to blacks, and racism may have been part of this judge's motivation for advocating it, but the wrong of this judge is fundamental and not a matter of who the target is. It is unacceptable for a judge to support lynching, and this one ought to be dismissed.
Students at a Texas college fended off a plan to invite a Republican senator as their graduation speaker.
I wish MIT students would organize to reject the CEO of Apple as a graduation speaker. And I wish Harvard students would organize to reject the CEO of Facebook as a graduation speaker.
A challenge that right-wing antiabortionists can't beat: provide benefits to make life easier for women that have babies.
Alas, in the actual world we must not do that, because it would encourage population growth, and that threatens to destroy civilization. What we can and should do is systematically provide reliable contraception gratis to every woman that would choose to abort a pregnancy.
The DOJ has appointed a special investigator to head the investigation of troll. This will include his relationship with Russia and whether he committed obstruction of justice.
The head of the investigation is independent within certain limits.
The Australian government is concealing the details of an oil spill in the ocean, to protect the company responsible from criticism and protests.
A riot of looting occurred in a part of Venezuela where there is a major crossing to Colombia.
When I was there, my friends told me that people bought subsidized goods and took them to Colombia to sell at market prices, and this resulted in shortages. The Venezuelan government subsidized those goods without limit, rather than subsidizing limited amounts per person or family.
Don't lionize Comey — remember the injustices he was involved in.
He did show integrity in dealing with the troll, but that was just one good thing among many bad things.
Erdoğan's bodyguards kicked and strangled protesters in Washington DC; then Turkish state radio told lies about the attack.
Erdoğan's actions repeatedly insult Turkey and Turkishness, and they attack all citizens of Turkey, regardless of ethnic background, that want freedom for their country.
The Trump News You Missed: He Asked Comey to Jail Journalists.
Australia schemed to make the Manus Island refugee camp more painful, to pressure refugees to leave.
Apparently that didn't work well enough, so now Australia is closing the camp.
The reason refugees don't leave is that the native population won't tolerate them.
Congress should demand a copy of the private transcript of what the troll told Russian officials.
"Pay Trump bribes here" projected on the troll's hotel in DC.
A SCROTUS got a bank employee fired for actively opposing his campaign.
The troll's release of secrets to Russia shows how unfair was his criticism of Clinton's email server.
Here's how Paul Ryan put it.
Clinton's email server was a red herring, an molehill blown up by Republicans into an apparent mountain. I rejected Clinton because of her loyalty to Wall Street against America.
The troll's release to Russia could conceivably have been worth while, but we can't trust someone like the troll to judge that.
In the US: call on the Saboteur of Homeland Security not to appoint Milwaukee Sheriff Clarke to any sort of position.
Here's more about why.
US citizens: insist on continued protection for grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to protect the Endangered Species Act.
US citizens: call on SCROTUS to join in releasing the troll's tax returns.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the COAST Act to ban offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast.
Chelsea Manning is out of prison.
I was worried that the troll would find some excuse to prevent this.
The US and Russia have both decided to support the Syrian Kurds, and told Erdoğan to get lost.
I consider this good news. It is good when the US and Russia have good relations and cooperate, when what they do together is good. The US government has stirred up lots of hostility towards Russia for no good reason.
Putin remains a tyrant and a Trumpish liar. Other governments ought to condemn this, but that doesn't call for international hostilities.
Various US cities show the same decrease of the middle class.
A few of those who cease to be middle class become wealthy. Most become poor.
Media consolidation means that many Americans will have a choice between right-wing propaganda news and right-wing propaganda news.
Video shows that Connecticut thugs shot a teenager dead while he was handcuffed, then lied about it.
To celebrate Mothers Day, how about thinking about the needs of working mothers?
An esteemed Mexican journalist has been murdered, apparently by narco gangsters.
Australia is tightening the rope around the boat people that it dumped onto Manus Island, by closing the place they live.
Those who have been judged to be refugees will have to live among a community of people that hate them and violently attack them.
The rest are likely to be deported, though they may face punishment there.
The WWF calls on Mexico to ban gillnet fishing in the Gulf of California to protect the nearly extinct vaquita porpoise.
Israel prefers continued occupation of Palestine to peace. There will be no peace until outside pressure changes that preference.
The USDA hardly bothers to punish companies that import non-organic grain and fraudulently label it "organic".
More training can enable one working person to move up the ladder and get more pay and better working conditions. But the supply of those better jobs is limited, so more training for everyone won't change much.
To make everyone better off, workers need to organize to change the system. For instance, with progressive laws and unionization.
Poor people in Britain don't bother to vote because none of the parties shows much concern for them.
Even Labour doesn't show much concern for them, though some aspects of its platform will help them.
What would happen if Donald Trump were impeached?
Omid, in Britain, is condemned to years of suffering for a disease that will kill him eventually. He demands the right to assistance in suicide.
I support his demand. I do wonder whether he could die by refusing food, and get treatment to help him bear the hunger. Would the nursing home force-feed him?
Trump's New Bank Regulator: Lawyer Who Helped Banks Charge More Fees.
Ukraine has blocked access to Russian social media sites and a search engine.
There is no justification for this.
Remote, uninhabited Henderson Island is covered by 18 tons of plastic debris that washed up from the Pacific Ocean.
We need to use less plastic, so that we produce less plastic.
New french pun: Mines de charbon.
Everyone: Call on Taiwan to ban ivory trade.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the Sinclair TV chain merger.
US citizens: call on Congress to condemn the troll's latest attack against Assad's forces as illegal and impeachable.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support a special committee to investigate the troll's ties with Russia.
Texas Latinos have launched 100 days of protests and organizing in response to the Texas law that forbids cities to offer sanctuary to unauthorized immigrants.
The US practice of arresting them and deporting them when they get medical treatment, when they meet with government officials, and even when they appear in court, threatens public health and public safety.
Everyone: move funds out of the big banks that fund polluting pipelines and tell the banks that you're doing so.
The troll is the result of centuries of US racism.
The article presents Mumia Abu-Jamal's story of how he and friends were beaten up by contemptuous thugs after they protested peacefully at a campaign rally for white-supremacist candidate George Wallace.
US high school history teachers: devote the rest of the term to the question of how to remove a president that is incompetent, repeatedly breaks the law, and disregards the constitution.
The Senate has not provided any resources for a real investigation of troll/Russia by the senate committees that are supposedly doing it.
Laundering drug money is responsible for large amounts of deforestation of protected land in Central America.
The troll shared secret information with Russian officials in a way that endangered intelligence sources.
Sharing secrets with Russia (or other countries) is not necessarily a bad thing. In some cases it is useful for diplomacy. However, endangering sources is a harmful practice; states do this at their peril.
One of the few criticisms of Wikileaks that I agree with is that sometimes it endangers intelligence sources (and other people) by failing to redact information.
Dubya was criticized for revealing the identity of Valerie Plame. He did this merely to score political points.
When a fossil appears at the surface of the ground, we have a limited time to collect it before it erodes away or is crushed. We could remain forever ignorant of past species unless we have people collecting fossils as they appear.
Tory changes in voter registration have greatly reduced the number of newly eligible voters that are registered.
The troll has emboldened white supremacists in the US; they are becoming a real danger, just as the KKK was.
The copyright industry repeatedly violates copyrights in its campaigns to make copyright law more repressive.
The Liberal Democrats in the UK have made massive surveillance a campaign issue.
I wish Labour would do that too.
US deportation agents didn't obey Obama's orders to focus on the unauthorized immigrants that had committed serious crimes. In California, nearly half of those deported in the 9 months after that order had no criminal record.
Agents particularly picked on immigrants whose children were US citizens, which suggests that the agents were motivated by sadism or cruelty.
A British antiwar activist describes her two-year relationship with an undercover thug infiltrator who was lying all the way.
If he didn't love her, he was callously lying when he told her he did. If he did love her, he callously tossed her aside.
True support for family values means giving children everything they need to grow up strong and capable. And that should mean all children.
Research from Sweden shows that reducing levels of children's lead exposure reduces subsequent crime, even when the level starts out rather low.
Diesel engine exhaust kills around 38000 people each year world-wide, a study estimates.
Each time right-wing politicians hurt millions of Americans, a fraction of the victims are so deluded about who to blame that they turn to right-wing extremism.
This started with the "farm crisis" caused by President Reagan and the Republicans.
Great inequality makes life unhappy for everyone. Even for the rich — because each rich person thinks, "I don't have as much as I really deserve."
It is true that some people have more talents than others. Few people have as much of a talent for programming as I had in my prime. Does that mean I deserved to get rich? That it would have been unjust not to give me a chance to get rich that way? Would that have justified my using my talent to subjugate people, so that I could get rich?
I don't think so.
The Tories offer to give back to the non rich a little of what they have taken, and say that is support for workers' rights.
Right-wingers want people to think that the widespread prosperity and lesser inequality of the 1970s is a "fantasy", impossible in the real world.
Since we did it once, we can do it again — if we stop the plutocrats from getting in the way.
The mainstream media's intense focus on troll/Russia and the firing of Comey has pushed all the political nastiness of Republican policies into the shadows. Could the troll have intended this?
Making announcements as distraction is his standard modus operandi. I don't think that was his motive for firing Comey; I think he considered the investigation a real danger and wanted to stop it. But it could be that his shocking way of firing Comey was a distraction operation.
US citizens: Protect Bears Ears and other national monuments.
US citizens: support the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would prohibit deportation raids on schools, hospitals, courthouses, and churches.
Everyone: call on UK Prime Minister May to stop helping cause famine in Yemen.
The troll is the epitome of the values of most Americans. We should not be surprised he got almost enough votes to win the election.
The article assumes that people deserve the consequences of their foolish ways of thinking and acting. I disagree. Even when people are so foolish that they bring disaster on their country, they still don't deserve the disaster.
People get the government their behavior deserves.
People deserve better than that.
Comey wanted to prosecute Assange and Wikileaks based on a newly invented criterion about his perceptions of a journalist's motives.
I disagree with the author on one point. I maintain that a US government employee's duty of loyalty to the US and its constitution must take precedence over any specific undertaking that the employee has made. That duty can morally require leaking information about injustices of the state. Drake, Manning and Snowden are the true patriots.
New South Korea Leader Moon Jae-in Willing to Talk to Kim in North.
The new president is a former political prisoner and wants to bring peace to Korea.
Texas will try to negate a court ruling against keeping immigrant children in immigration prison by designating the prisons as "child care facilities".
One of the most repressive states on Earth is pushing to eliminate cash.
I hope this convinces you to defend the use of cash. The way to do that is to insist on using cash.
To justify Comey's claims that protests against killer thugs have inhibited thugs from doing their proper jobs, the FBI has released a "study" which only asked thugs their opinions.
Abu Zubaydah will testify about how he was tortured by the US government.
Tory-imposed mass poverty is causing British children to suffer from ailments that were eradicated.
Since marijuana has great medical potential, we need research on how it affects humans.
Cholera is spreading in Yemen.
This is a consequence of the bombing campaign operated by Salafi Arabia with US help. Those countries did not directly bring cholera, but the bombing is what prevents it from being eradicated.
The bombing campaign has no moral justification. Its motive is nothing more than rivalry for power, which the US supports based on the bizarre claim that Iran threatens to take over the whole Middle East. Even if it didn't spread famine and cholera, it would be a crime.
The mainstream media must defend the right to protest.
Especially we must condemn Haymarket-style prosecutions that hold protest organizers responsible for any crime that occurs at the protest.
Activists on behalf of gay rights tried to deliver a petition to the Russian state. The state not only didn't accept the petition, it arrested them instead.
Barrett Brown was released from prison, then arrested (the thugs claimed he wasn't allowed to give interviews to the press), then freed a few days later (perhaps because legally he is allowed to give interviews to the press). Here is his interview with Democracy Now.
He talks about the way the US government helps plutocrats get private surveillance assistance from companies such as Palantir.
The NSA made the wave of ransomware attacks possible by perpetuating vulnerabilities rather than fixing them.
US border thugs are gratuitously cruel to refugees, for instance throwing all their medicine in the trash, and the troll is pushing them to be more cruel.
Muhammad Rabbani of Cage faces possible imprisonment for refusing to give the UK border thugs the password for his laptop.
Cage campaigns against torture and unjust imprisonment in various countries including the US. The laptop contained privileged legal work product that he had no right to reveal to anyone. Now Rabbani is threatened with unjust imprisonment, unless Cage succeeds in overturning that law.
Because of Tory underfunding, the UK's ambulances are barely operable, and their first aid equipment for people having heart attacks is rickety and slow. The experienced staff are quitting due to pension cuts.
Nurses are going to strike due to pay cuts.
In a few years, the Tories will admit that the NHS no longer functions, and replace it by privatized medical treatment that most people can't afford at all.
The EU's proposed copyright directive would require all social media, all sites that let users post anything, to set up copyright censorship systems. Parodies and other fair use, not recognized in Europe as part of freedom of speech, would be rigorously eliminated.
Professor Jacob Dorman explains his resignation from the University of Kansas because of the state's insistence on allowing concealed guns on campus.
He also reviews the statistics that show why this will kill students far more than it protects them.
Two scientists resigned from an EPA advisory committee in response to Saboteur Pruitt's dismissal of other scientists.
They say the dismissal shows that their recommendations will not be valued. In effect, their recommendations would be ignored and their names used to imply endorsement of the conclusions.
Many Americans that work full time can't afford the dental work they need.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to refuse to confirm a new head of the FBI until an independent investigation under a special prosecutor is under way.
Capitol Switchboard number: (202) 224-3121
Everyone: call on NBC not to give Megyn Kelly a platform for bigotry.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Sessions' war on drugs.
US citizens: call on congresscritters to pledge to move off fossil fuels.
Even total surveillance of everyone would not find all terrorists. The few real terrorists would be buried under a heap of false positives.
The saboteur-controlled EPA has withdrawn its objection to a giant mine in Alaska that would sooner or later poison the salmon of Bristol Bay.
Madagascar's endemic plants are heading for extinction.
PCBs were banned in the 1970s, but millions of tons were produced and used and they get into in the ocean, where they make dolphins and sharks sterile.
To Avoid Conflicts of Interest, Pay Doctors a Salary.
Government-organized private loans keep worthless for-profit colleges going.
The companies that make the loans treat the borrowers terribly.
Senator Sanders has introduced a bill to promote worker-owned cooperatives.
UN urges Pakistan to "incorporate into its legislation a specific definition of torture."
The troll has appointed a Republican voter suppression activist to run a phony "investigation" of nonexistent individual "voting fraud". This is meant to provide an excuse for more voter suppression.
It is clear what the troll's plan is. The Republicans know they can't win an honest election, so they plan to steal the 2018 election even more than they stole the 2016 election. The reports of the "investigation" will be a bunch of lies, and nearly all Republicans will pretend they are true, as an excuse for more voter suppression.
Since 1989 the total mass of insects in Germany has fallen by 80%. And it's not just in Germany — this is an example of a widespread tendency.
I think the writer is obtuse about extinction. Concern about extinction is not a matter of "fetishizing" the last few individuals of the species. The species is different from its members, and the loss of a species is different from the death of any number of members of that species.
If a given species of frog has a million members, the death of a specific hundred of them would not concern me much. If those hundred were the only ones left, their death would still not concern me much; but it would mean the extinction of the species, and I would consider that a real loss.
An 80% decrease in insect biomass is a big ecological change, and I think we had better find out soon what we did to cause it.
Theresa May Is Creating an Epidemic of Poverty. Don't Give Her a Free Hand.
The troll has admitted that he fired Comey because Comey was pursuing an investigation of the troll/Russia links.
Firing Comey for obviously bogus reasons was an example of the troll's attempt to destroy the very idea of truth and loyalty to truth.
His gesture said, "I can do anything I want and no one will dare stop me."
The troll has confessed to obstruction of justice.
Some Americans have the courage to refuse to go along with the Republican lie machine.
Our future depends on whether SCROTUS find the moral fiber to stand for truth rather than lines.
Millions of working people in the UK can barely pay the rent. Many sometimes have to borrow money to pay the rent.
Thatcher started this by allowing tenants in public housing the "right to buy".
Thailand has ordered Facebook to delete posts that the state considers critical of the Thai monarchy.
Facebook has generally given in to demands for censorship of political views.
I think this shows that multinational social networks have a deep problem: each country can impose its own censorship on the whole world.
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but only if his testimony is public.
Comey says that the troll asked him to pledge personal loyalty, basically to put the troll above his country, and he refused.
Campaigning to free the US black mothers (and others) that are jailed, often for months, because they are too poor to pay bail.
Laurence Tribe: Congress must start impeaching the troll now, for his obstruction of justice (as well as plenty of other acts).
Are There 22 Patriotic House Republicans?
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but only if his testimony is public.
Republicans that shield the troll from punishment for blatant obstruction of justice, and investigation for possible treason, are associating themselves morally with those acts. They cannot be legitimate parts of the US government.
The Syrian Kurds would like to negotiate a trade route to the Mediterranean. That would involve an agreement with Assad. They also talk about capturing Idlib from the Islamists some day.
Liberating Idlib from the Islamists would be good, provided that the inhabitants are happy with it. That is easier said than done. Who would rule Idlib instead? The inhabitants probably don't want that to be Assad, and they (being Arabs) may not be comfortable with Kurds today (though they were content enough with Salah ad-Din).
Our global heating, which melts Arctic sea ice, is forcing polar bears to live on land where they may fight with humans.
Beyond apartheid to ethnic cleansing: the rabbi that leads a significant Israeli electoral party calls for expelling all non-Jews from Israel.
Peace Now: Israel's New Settlement Policy an Attempt to "Fool International Community".
Some sunscreens contain a chemical that poisons coral even in very low concentrations.
Airwars has found over 3000 civilian casualties from US bombing in Iraq and Syria, but the Pentagon acknowledges only 352 of them.
Airwars' method of counting tends to lead to a considerable underestimate. The real number must be a lot more.
We should note that the US bombing in Syria and Iraq is far less criminal than PISSI. Meanwhile, the US bombing in Yemen is entirely gratuitous.
Sanders: "A basic principle of American economic life should be that if you work 40 hours or more a week, you do not live in poverty."
Really our goal should be that no one lives in poverty, but Sanders is campaigning for a substantial step forward.
No system of recycling for drink bottles will be effective unless people get a refund on a deposit for turning in the bottles.
US citizens: call on the USDA to reject GMO eucalyptus trees.
The article is mistaken in one point: growing these trees and burning them would not contribute to global heating. But the other reasons, such as the danger that the genes would spread, are significant.
Everyone: phone the banks that might fund the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to block the sale of arms to the UAE if it rejects a cease fire in Yemen.
US citizens: call for protection of the corals off the New England coast.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the troll's commission that is designed to provide an excuse for voter suppression.
US citizens: call for an independent investigation of the troll's campaign's ties with Russia.
Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang
said,
in his show trial, that he wasn't tortured into confessing.
However, he had already informed people that any confession would be
due to torture. Apparently he was tortured into denying that he had
been tortured.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The charges against him amount to "campaigning for human rights". When a state charges someone with that sort of "crime", it is automatically an injustice.
The US also prosecutes people for political organizing. Unlike China, it tries to disguise this behind phony accusations, but that doesn't make it any less of an injustice.
Ireland has dropped the prosecution of Stephen Fry — hardly any Irish viewers complained about what he said on TV.
This is a relief, but the prohibition of "blasphemy" remains unjust, in Ireland as in Pakistan.
Israel has expelled a Dutch journalist, apparently for tweeting references to articles in 972 Magazine.
Israel does not have a free press. Now it is trying to repress foreign writing about Israel.
Thugs in West Virginia arrested a reporter for "yelling questions" at Saboteur of Health Tom Price.
Thugs have repressed dissent in the US for a long time, but it seems that the troll has emboldened them in repression.
Sanders has introduced a bill to provide funds to promote employee ownership of businesses.
How "safety" is used to shut down discussion and control people.
Republicans have redefined "diversity" to avoid representing minorities or women in decision making bodies.
Republican congresscritters are receiving so much condemnation from the public that most of them are hiding from their constituents.
Taking down the confederate president's statue in New Orleans: "We must remember all of our history, but we need not revere it."
The motive for the secession of the South was to perpetuate slavery. No matter what good personal qualities some of the secessionists may have had, they can't outweigh the wrong of what they were fighting for.
The UK Labour Party platform will correct many of the policies that oppress the poor.
It will even ban neonicotinoids to protect bees.
To wish for this platform but without Corbyn, as Polly Toynbee does, is like wishing for a square circle. The reason the Labour Party now dares to propose to fix those wrongs, which it hasn't dared to propose since the 1980s, is Corbyn.
A victory for Labour could be a big help to the poor in the UK.
The troll met with Russian officials and allowed a Russian news photographer but no US journalists.
Henry Kissinger was his guest at about the same time.
People are protesting outside senators' offices, demanding an independent investigation of troll/Russia.
Jeff Sessions' Defense of James Comey Contradicts His Justification for Firing Him.
BAE, which sold jet fighters to Salafi Arabia which it uses for the bombardment of Yemen, may also employ people who load the bombs.
Innovation starts from the state. Without state funding, what you get is lots of juiceros.
Global heating vs Glacier National Park: 124 glaciers gone, 26 remain.
Hong Kong Accused of Smothering Dissent for Expected Xi Jinping Visit.
Don't be embarrassed to ask for tap water. Be proud that you are avoiding some harmful plastic waste!
A Muslim Indian wife demands the same right of instant divorce that Muslim Indian husbands have.
It's Time to Build a Trump Impeachment Campaign.
Congressional aides say Comey asked for more resources for the troll/Russia investigation a few days before he was fired.
New pipelines will pollute Pennsylvania to ship ethane to Europe to make plastic.
It's not as bad as burning the gas, but fracking to get the gas will cause local pollution and leak greenhouse-producing methane.
Around 1/5 of low-wage workers in the US are being paid, illegally, less than the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is worth less now than it was 40 years ago, so you can see how the economy is getting worse and worse for the poor. This is no accident: it is dooH niboR at work.
US citizens: stand for Network Neutrality.
US citizens: urge the Senate intelligence committee to call Comey to testify about troll/Russia.
US citizens: Tell the State Department to stop promoting the troll's businesses.
Everyone: call on Volkswagen to negotiate with the US workers' new union.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban "conversion therapy" that purports to "cure" homosexuality.
A high official of UK thugs was formerly an undercover infiltrator of protest groups, and seduced a real protester to get cover.
Lawrence Tribe: "Trump is putting himself above justice in a fundamental challenge to our system."
Clothing companies are doing little to reduce the release of microfibers from new clothing.
Sprint and T-mobile are considering a merger that would take the US even closer to a monopoly of mobile service.
The US constitution, or any constitution, is impotent to stop a president who disregards the unwritten rules of democracy with no shame.
Oracle and Cisco are eager to see the end of Network Neutrality in the US.
The repression of Shari'a law in part of Indonesia.
It was wrong of Indonesia to allow Aceh to impose Shari'a law on anyone. Individuals should have the right to choose the same law that applies to the rest of Indonesia.
Trump's Voter Fraud Commission Is a Shameless White Power Grab.
Substantial oil pipeline leaks happen fairly often.
The troll hinted that he secretly recorded his conversations with Comey and threatened to use them to refute Comey's statements about their conversations.
Said recordings may not really exist, and we must never assume the troll means what he says. However, I do hope Comey sticks to the truth in his statements.
A proposed definition of fake news, to distinguish that from flawed journalism.
Nader: The US keeps attacking new enemies, and yet hostility to the US keeps spreading to more countries. It is because Congress fails to exercise its responsibility to control US war.
Corbyn said that Labour would try to use diplomacy rather than war to address international conflicts.
Sessions has ordered prosecutors to aim to put drug suspects (in particular) in prison for longer, by charging them with crimes that have mandatory minimum sentences.
Myanmar Army Allegedly Left Rohingya Refugees with Bullet Wounds And Burns.
There are so many videos of thugs' killing blacks that each one hardly sticks in people's minds.
I have to look up the names of specific victims to recall what happened to each one.
Almost a million Britons now work on zero-hour contracts in which they are not assured of any work each week.
The US government keeps too many secrets and that threatens democracy. Journalists must publish leaked secrets, when they consider them to speak to important issues.
They also need to fight against plans to prosecute Wikileaks.
A judge released Baxter Reid, who was jailed by the US when Canada didn't let him leave the US just before his visa required.
I am glad that judge resolved this in a good way, but the problem is in the system. It's not enough to end one example of the injustice. The US needs to change the attitude of grasping for a chance to screw someone.
The Dakota Access pipeline isn't operating yet but has already had an oil spill. The company wasn't going to inform us.
DeVos was invited to speak to the graduation at Bethune-Cookman, formerly one of the black colleges set up because blacks were excluded from other colleges. The students booed her off the stage. Hooray for them.
I don't believe that the school administrators invited her for intellectual reasons. I believe they were doing it for political reasons, effectively sucking up to Republicans.
I hope that students and donors demand they resign.
ACLU: New Hampshire Disenfranchised This 94-Year-Old, Legally Blind Woman Because of Her Signature. Now We're Suing.
The Dakota Access pipeline's owner has been fined in Ohio for destroying wetlands with a leak.
I don't think a half-million-dollar fine is enough to teach that company any lesson.
The Republican senators foiled the troll's effort to eliminate Obama's regulation to limit methane emissions from extraction on federal land.
Oakland, California, has adopted a law requiring all new use of surveillance technology to get approval from the city council.
It would be even better if all current uses of surveillance technology had to get approval from the city council within 2 years, or else be discontinued.
Even Republicans in Congress won't stand for Saboteur Price's rule that staff of the Department of Health must get permission before talking with Congress.
A West Virginia police officer is suing the thug department which fired him for not shooting someone.
More kinds of product packaging may start spying on people. We need to push for a "No radio interaction" label.
Yale graduate student teaching assistants are hunger striking because Yale won't negotiate with their union.
The blasphemy law is being used to establish Islamist domination of Indonesia.
Protests in Jakarta After Christian Governor Convicted of Blasphemy.
Joint events, organized by Israelis and Palestinians to remember the dead of both peoples, were attacked by Israeli fanatics.
Israel makes it extremely hard for a Palestinian in Gaza to move to the West Bank.
In 8 years, permission has been granted only 5 times. Merely having a parent or spouse living in the West Bank is not enough.
Since the Israeli Medical Association condemns force-feeding of prisoners, Israel threatens to bring in foreign doctors to do that.
Force-feeding sometimes kills the prisoners. Fasting also is eventually fatal, but the prisoners (like anyone else) have a right to end their own lives.
Some of the prisoners are too weak to stand up, so Israel is now fining them for not standing when ordered to do so.
Israeli soldiers shot at Gaza fishermen again, and sprayed herbicide on crops in Gaza.
Israeli fanatics threw stones at Palestinian houses and broke their windows. The inhabitants tried to chase them away, so soldiers came and shot rubber-coated steel bullets at the Palestinians. The soldiers didn't interfere with the attacking bigots.
Elsewhere, Palestinians protested land-grabbing Israeli "settlers" who were building a road across Palestinians' farmland. Israeli soldiers defended the "settlers". The soldiers paid no attention to the Israeli court decision that ordered the "settlers" to stop.
Wisconsin's voter ID law stole the election there for the cheater.
Republican senators are planning to draw up a new Dontcare bill in secret meetings with no hearings.
Why give the victims a platform to complain, they must have asked themselves.
Cloudflare rejected calls to impose censorship, but offered a way to make anonymous complaints to sites.
The troll's FCC saboteurs have relaxed media concentration rules, allowing right-wing radio chain Sinclair to buy a lot more radio stations.
The troll fired FBI director Comey, supposedly for treating Clinton unfairly in July by announcing that Clinton would not be prosecuted.
This was said to exceed his authority and thus do wrong to the Attorney General at the time (who did not, however, object).
If the cheater really wanted to fire Comey for this reason, he would not have waited until now. His real reason must be something else. Many suspect it's an attempt to stop the FBI from investigating the cheater's team's relations with Russia.
The UK now forces long-married couples separately into nursing homes. That means they almost never see each other again.
Some German soldiers are on being prosecuted for planning a false flag terrorist act. They would have made it appear that refugees were the culprits.
The US says it will give the Syrian Kurds more arms. I hope so.
The worst terrorist group in Turkey is the Turkish army. (PISSI is a distant second.) We don't hear much about its terror activities because they happen in places where tourists don't go — where mainly Kurds live. Recall that the Kurdish separatist group PKK made a truce with the Turkish government many years ago, and Erdoğan broke it to get more votes.
It is very important for women to talk about their abortions. If they stay in the closet, people can fool themselves that nobody they know would ever have one.
The troll condemned the war in Afghanistan, before the election. Now he wants to escalate it.
The Taliban have infiltrated schools in parts of Afghanistan, intimidating teachers or imposing their own choice of teachers.
Laws punishing banks for anything that resembles money laundering are leading banks to shut the bank accounts of small charities and organizations. And they refuse to explain why.
The internet facilitated today's right-wing lie campaigns: it created "message-board" Darwinian discourse, in which people compete for attention and the most brash and outrageous claims win.
The total insecurity of Signaling System 7 means that crackers can now fake two-factor authentication using SMS.
I have never used two-factor authentication myself, because it requires a mobile phone (portable tracking and listening device) and I refuse to be tracked and listened to.
I think other sorts of two-factor authentication require a smart phone — which means, even more malicious.
I don't do internet banking at all, because it is legally risky as well as risky in regard to computer security.
The Macron campaign fooled the phishers by giving them phony accounts.
There is good and bad about this. If the Democratic National Committee biases the primary race against Sanders in 2020, as it did in 2016, it may be harder to detect that.
Israel is considering a law to eliminate Arabic as a national language and say that non-Jews are essentially second-class citizens.
An American living in Germany describes
her
experience with the German public medical system.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
A survey found that managers don't have more stress than the employees they manage.
Sally Yates warned a lawyer from the White House that Michael Flynn could be blackmailed by Russia.
Now that Macron has defeated right-wing demonizer Le Pen, France faces the challenge of preventing him from "reforming" the French economy to suit business more, in the name of imaginary trickle-down.
Global heating is causing Alaskan tundra to release more CO2.
Legalization of marijuana makes possible regulations to require higher levels of cannabidiol, which reduces harmful side effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The FCC is investigating Stephen Colbert for a joke some prudes complained about, instead of doing its job and protecting our freedom from ISPs.
In a sample of Australians, 20% had had nude photos distributed without their consent. Revenge is only one of the motives of those who do it.
In our culture, the person whose photo is distributed can feel great pain as a result. There are other cultures where people would say, "So what? Is this supposed to hurt me? Everyone in the village sees me nude every day."
200 years ago, in Europe and the US, if you slapped a man's face he'd feel he had no choice but to fight you to the death. We are fortunate to have discarded that idea. Now let's discard the idea there is something shameful about nudity.
The Democratic Party, if it is to win again, must present progressive values and stick to them.
Stephen Fry faces possible criminal charges for talking about a "a mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world so full of injustice and pain" on Irish television.
That law is evidently unjust.
As the troll blatantly embraces dictators, he is trying to destroy the US's national conscience.
Quietly embracing other dictators, which the US did before and still does, does damage in some ways; embracing them openly does that damage and other kinds too.
Can virtual reality games provide a sense of meaning for our lives?
The end of work won't be an unprecedented situation for humanity. Hunter-gatherers typically had lots of leisure time. They needed to do some work, but that was far less than 6 hours a day (the equivalent of 42 hours a week). They had plenty of time for rituals, games, whatever they wanted to do. We know people don't have trouble living that way.
The article helped me understand something about myself: I am completely insensitive to "deep play" that has no intrinsic interest for me. I don't care deeply about baseball or football in the US, any more than about about cockfights in Bali or soccer in Argentina. I don't try to learn to care deeply. I don't pretend to care deeply. The fact that other people do care deeply about these things has no influence on me because it makes no sense to me.
I can be curious about a sport — for instance, I read a book about cricket so I could understand how it works. I'd be interested in watching part of a game one day, to understand it better. But that is simply curiosity. I would never get worked up about whether team A wins or loses.
And the only way I want to play a computer game is without competition.
Texas has adopted a state law requiring local thug departments to arrest people for deportation.
Which is worse: the risk of giving aid to someone who is cheating the system in a small way, or the risk of denying needed aid to someone who isn't cheating?
When the state's aid to those who are honest is not enough to get by, it systematically compels them to cheat in every small way that they can find. If that is bad, the blame falls those who run the state.
Everyone: call on the US National Collegiate Athletic Association to stop holding prestigious football matches in North Carolina and other states that allow discrimination against queer people.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the
Safe
Energy Future Plan, which would make fossil fuel business follow
the usual environmental standards.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the Regulatory Accountability Act.
Please don't try to send a message through that page — it requires nonfree JavaScript code.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on the Senate Intel Committee to have Comey testify.
US citizens: Ask your congresscritter to support the Respect State Marijuana Laws Act.
Saboteur Pruitt is packing the EPA Scientific Board with saboteurs that represent polluters.
Life Expectancy Gap Between Rich And Poor US Regions Is "More Than 20 Years". And it is getting worse.
Puerto Rico's bankruptcy may be a disaster instead of a solution. The board placed in charge of running Puerto Rico can impose austerity that would kills thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
30 state bills to punish protesters would 'attack right to speak out'.
Right-wing billionaires quietly fund efforts to wipe out union power in the US.
The biggest defeat that US workers have suffered is that they have lost the idea that unions need their support.
A general explanation of anti-science disinformation techniques helped people resist those techniques on multiple issues.
The troll has no serious political philosophy. Trying to construct one from his inconsistent, even nonsensical words is like trying to interpret white noise with a speech recognition system.
Guled Hassan Duran has been held prisoner in Guantanamo for 11 years with no trial. The US government is giving his lawyers a runaround.
Mississippi African Americans Besieged by Illegal Searches, ACLU Lawsuit Says.
Republicans: "Death to the Unemployed!" They want to take Medicaid away from unemployed people.
Case Farms sought out unauthorized immigrants to hire, guided them in how to help Case officially deny it was doing this … then used their vulnerability to impose illegal working and living conditions.
When the troll supports dictators, even mass murderers, that's nothing new for the US. The US has done that for decades, maybe more than a century.
Nonetheless, the article misses out on an important change. The US used to have certain general policies that acted weakly to promote freedom globally. Also, it proclaimed principles of freedom which inspired freedom-lovers to defend freedom in their own countries. Stating these principles did some good even though many people knew that the US did not follow them.
The troll is continuing the harmful and unjust US practices while abandoning the principles that did some good.
A Republican in Congress said that people are always to blame for their preexisting medical conditions.
The UK government is planning to ban products with encryption it can't break.
Boko Haram released 50 or 60 kidnapped girls after negotiation with the Nigerian government.
Oklahoma has made sit-in protests a felony, and some other kinds of trespassing or minor mischief if it is part of a protest. Any organization that helps organize the protest can also be prosecuted. Those who provide legal aid to those who are arrested or prosecuted might also be prosecuted.
The Republican Party is the enemy of what America says it stands for. I wonder what they would dare say about the Boston Tea Party.
The common theme in the troll's actions is gratuitous cruelty.
A few developers are changing Michigan tax laws to get a big payoff for developing a small part of Detroit.
UK thugs arrested a press photographer for taking pictures of city hall. This is a small illustration of the danger of giving thugs too much discretionary power: some of them, inevitably, will be overeager.
Thugs around the US used to do this sort of thing in the early 2000s. I have not seen reports of it recently.
The troll will allow churches to collect money secretly and use it for political ads. That behavior is illegal, but the troll has ordered federal agencies to let churches get away with it.
We must defend freedom of speech from attacks from all sides. Your words don't need to have some identifiable social value to give you the right to say them.
Committee to Protect Journalists: With press freedom under attack worldwide, US is setting the wrong example.
President Rouhani says that hard-liners in Iran tried to sabotage the nuclear deal.
Sounds like the US.
The accusation that the CIA tried to kill Kim Jong-un is not beyond the bounds of credibility, given its past history.
However, it's entirely plausible that Kim Jong-un made it up.
Argentina's right-wing government has found an excuse to shorten the sentences of the military torturers and murderers of the 1970s, who were prosecuted only decades later.
These people have still refused to disclose what they did with the people they kidnapped and killed, and with the children they took.
If you let ISPs and data brokers see what web sites you visit, that can add up to a nightmare for you.
The troll, and Saboteur Zinke, are legally required to consult with various indigenous tribes before abolishing national monuments, but refuse even to talk with them.
This will give the tribal governments a basis to sue.
Some predict that driverless cars will take over completely in 13 years, drastically cutting the combustion of oil.
If this happens, it will be great — but we have to make sure they don't turn into a massive surveillance system that tracks where people go, like Uber.
Sad to say, the proponents are encouraging exactly this.
Jeff Sessions now heads the Department of Injustice. He is taking action to put more people in prison, deny voting rights to minorities, and let uniformed thugs bully and harass at will.
Many wilderness areas in the US are affected by noise from human activities which drowns out natural sounds, This can mess up the lives of some animals that need to hear.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan tried to lynch a Hindu man jailed for an accusation of blasphemy.
It is a good thing that the thugs are protecting suspects from lynching, but the law against blasphemy is as unjust as lynching.
Companies are doing away with physical annual meetings so that there is no place or time for the public to protest.
The US did the same thing with auctions for fossil fuel deposits.
US citizens: call on Congress to insist that Sessions resign.
US citizens: call for an independent investigation of the troll's links to Russia.
US citizens: support the People's Budget.
US citizens: support the College for All Act.
US citizens: call on Michigan governor Snyder to restore the water credits for the people of Flint rather than letting his henchmen take away their homes.
Snyder is primarily responsible for the lead contamination in Flint. It was his effort that imposed a nondemocratic government on Flint and that is what changed the water source in a way that caused lead contamination in people's homes.
Kushner told rich foreigners they could get US residency by investing in his company.
He left out important business from his official disclosure form, too.
Wireless power for small snooping devices: is that an advance for the good, or is it dangerous?
The world is not providing enough food aid to feed the starving people in Yemen.
If Salafi Arabia and the US bomb Hodeida, the food aid couldn't reach Yemen anyway.
"The insurance market is extracting millions to protect us from the built-in flaws the surveillance state relies on."
The US and al-Qa'ida are effectively fighting on the same side in Yemen.
The EU supported a ban on DecaBDE, an endocrine disrupter, then turned around and asked for broad exceptions.
Medicaid funds the medical care for half the babies born in the US. That's what SCROTUS just cut.
The divestment movement offers a way for people to put global heating on the political agenda and press to loosen the ties between fossil fuel industry and the rest of the world.
Draft Law Would Require Egyptian Social Media Users to Register With Government.
Anti-vaxxers caused an outbreak of measles in Minnesota.
China has kept the Panchen Lama in prison incommunicado for 22 years.
Did the Marquis de Sade Write This Health Care Bill?
No, he was only interested in directly and personally making people suffer. To get pleasure from harming millions of people you don't personally know, you have to be a Republican.
The article includes a long list of specific harmful provisions in the bill.
The Labour Party says it will raise taxes on high earners.
That's a good first step. It must also make businesses pay tax.
Anyone in France who republishes anything from the Macron leaks is threatened with prosecution.
These leaks appear to be of no intrinsic importance, but the repressive policy of the state towards leaks will help cover up real scandals in the future.
The UK wants to do the same thing.
The troll seeks to eliminate 27 US national monuments.
Varoufakis says that Macron was the only French minister that opposed the Euro-banksters on behalf of Greece.
China will require all online news portals to have staff specifically to carry out state-imposed censorship.
Facebook reports that it was used by organized groups to spread disinformation to influence the US election.
Global heating effects are already harming human health. With the years, the effects will get worse.
Does anyone have an idea how to breed, or engineer, plants to make as much protein as they do now even with higher CO2 concentration?
Puerto Rico has applied for bankruptcy and relief of some of its debt.
The objections of creditors and plutocratist politicians suggest the bankruptcy scheme might actually do some good for Puerto Rico's citizens.
The Republicans in the Senate may modify Dontcare drastically to bypass a filibuster. It will have to be limited to spending cuts and tax cuts.
That will provide no opportunity to disguise the nature of the bill.
Boko Haram lures young girls to carry bombs into crowds for murder. The children are too young to understand death, and it doesn't occur to them to disobey.
As a result, people in Maiduguri are afraid of any unknown children that approach them.
Sometimes an adult man hugs the girl to carry her away from the crowd, much as some soldiers in World War II threw themselves on a grenade to save the other soldiers around them.
We don't need to pretend that everyone who gets food from food banks is totally admirable. It's a shame to make life so hard that people need to go to food banks.
It's also a shame not to make make alcoholism treatment available to everyone that needs it.
The US plans to demand that some visa applicants describe their travel and work history for 15 years — which many people could not possibly answer — as well as demanding to look at their social media accounts.
Doing this at the time of visa application is less cruel than doing it when people enter the US. If you get asked unacceptable prying questions when you apply for the visa, at least you can still cancel your trip without losing the price of intercontinental airplane tickets.
Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir, formerly prisoners in Guantanamo, write about their torture and their legal cases.
The US imprisoned them without trial, and eventually released them after the Supreme Court ruled they were entitled to demand justice. But that was after 7 years of unjust imprisonment.
The dates suggest that Dubya was unwilling to release them and they were freed only after Obama became president.
The Kentucky Derby is complaining that it can't find the workers it needs. It generally hires immigrants for low wages.
The idea of limiting immigration of workers is that businesses will have to hire citizens. If citizens won't accept the job without a higher salary and better working conditions, the businesses will be compelled to improve wages and conditions. That is unpleasant for businesses, and good for the people. But it takes time for the labor market to adjust to that.
Stephenie Jimenez got a scholarship to a private school, which offered her a rare opportunity for social mobility. But she recognizes that lots of other people from poor families could be successful with a good public school system.
France has adopted new laws to prevent clothing publicity from teaching people that women should be dangerously thin.
"Democrats have no business rejoicing at the Trumpcare disaster."
Wall Street Democrats are not on our side. We have to defeat them in primaries.
World population growth, and plans for farming in Africa, could eliminate wild African elephants, and wipe out lots of other species.
The article proposes ways to limit the disaster, but keeps its eyes firmly shut to the best solution: keep the human population down. We should give people everywhere contraception aid, and offer incentives for people to get themselves sterilized. Let's aim to cut the human birth rate in half, so the population will start slowly decreasing to a sustainable level.
Around 1900, poor working stiffs recognized that the rich "robber barons" were keeping them down — and they supported the progressive movement and then the New Deal.
Today's robber barons have used the consolidated, corporate media to convince the working stiffs that the robber barons deserve what they have taken, and it's the urban middle class (or what's left of it) that is making them poor.
A leak of the Macron campaign's internal documents seems, on initial examination, not to contain anything scandalous.
Macron says that some of them are fake.
It seems to have been published in the hope that voters will assume, "Where there's a leak, there is wrongdoing." But that doesn't seem to have taken hold with the voters.
This contrasts with the Democratic Party officials' leaked emails, which proved that they were secretly biasing the primary race in favor of Clinton and against Sanders.
The thug that shot Jordan Edwards will be charged with murder.
The US government is working with cattle companies to convince people to eat more beef and dairy products.
Eating a lot of beef is bad for health, and maintaining a lot of cattle contributes substantially to global heating.
We have to consider this another example of the harm done by having plutocracy instead of democracy.
If the troll's Dontcare bill passes, Republicans will have American blood on their hands.
The Dontcare bill offers companies an excuse to reduce the scope of the medical coverage that they provide to employees.
It would gut Medicaid along with Obama's insurance law.
It would allow insurance companies to deny coverage for certain treatments to those that already suffer mental illness from being raped or experiencing domestic violence.
When people complain to Cloudflare about neo-Nazi material, Cloudflare sends their personal information to the publishers of that material, who sometimes use it to harass and threaten those that complained.
I wonder, does Cloudflare follow this same nasty practice for all the sites that use it?
I agree with Cloudflare, however, in opposing attempts to ban neo-Nazi sites. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to take a position we disagree with, even one we despise. Remember, there are people who despise your views, too, but they should not be able to kick you off the internet.
US officials that now participate in sending arms to Salafi Arabia may be guilty of war crimes.
Americans remember only the parts of US wars in which the US was attacked or in which Americans acted admirably. They forget the parts in which US armed forces committed enormous terrorism.
I was particularly interested by the point about using the terminology "ground zero" to equate the September 2001 terrorist attacks (about 3000 victims, mainly American) with the US use of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hundreds of thousands of victims, mainly Japanese). I have generally rejected the use of the term "ground zero" for the World Trade Center because it struck me as tendentious, but I never before understood why this was so.
A new approach to economics recognizes the limits imposed by nature and the needs of society.
Darwinian economics is another new perspective.
The pace of activism against the troll and his saboteurs is increasing. People are not getting tired of fighting back.
Asking citizens to monitor each other for the thugs is very dangerous.
North Korea has missiles, but even their medium-range missiles rarely work. The ICBMs are pretty much theoretical.
California has a chance to put strict limits on the surveillance capabilities of thugs.
Congress is considering a law to reauthorize vague and abstract patents on computing activities.
Australia's minister in charge persistently lies about a violent attack on refugees that Australia has dumped on Manus Island.
Some decades ago, it was the Stalinists that stuck to official the lie no matter how absurd it became. Now it's the capitalists.
US border thugs routinely lie to Central Americans who want asylum, denying them the chance to apply for asylum and the possibility of protection from immediate danger.
Tillerson proposes to disconnect US foreign policy from the stated values of the US (human rights and political freedom).
The sad and ironic thing is that this would be very little change, as the two have been mostly separate for a long time. The US been allied with repressive Salafi Arabia for decades. In the 1970s the US arranged murderous military governments in several countries in South America.
And that's just a fraction of the instances.
Activist Desiree Fairooz has been convicted of laughing at the blatantly counterfactual testimony of a senator.
Two others were convicted of being present before the hearing wearing KKK robes.
The Republican Party is the enemy of everything the United States stands for.
The number of prisoners in the US sentenced to life in prison keeps increasing. There are now 162,000 of them.
"Prosperity gospel" preacher Benny Hinn has been raided by the US. His "prosperity" doesn't come from worshiping — it comes from the worshipers to whom he promises riches, and apparently from the US treasury.
The troll is trying to follow the same bogus economics that Reagan followed: the idea that tax cuts will lead the rich to increase investment and produce growth, a little of which will "trickle down" to the rest of us.
It isn't good for the budget or the country, but it's great for dooH niboR.
The US has had plenty of growth since Reagan. None of it reached the non-rich; the rich kept it all. What we need now is not growth, it is to take our fare share from the rich.
There was no "hiatus" in global heating. Rather, denialists seized on the way science handles a minor anomaly in important data by proposing and testing various explanations for it.
We don't need to know exactly where the water rose over the seawall to recognize a flood. We shouldn't need to know every detail of how the temperature of the ecosphere is rising to recognize that it's going to swamp our world, nor that the only way to prevent that is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a lot.
US law has been used before to keep advertisements and snooping out of certain areas of our lives.
Let's do it again!
(It is regrettable that the article refers to publications as "content".)
SCROTUS have proposed a law to bar the FCC from requiring any kind of network neutrality.
The imposed government of Flint has threatened to seize the homes of people who have not paid their exorbitant water bills.
Those bills are for water that has to be filtered since it still has too much lead.
The government of Flint is nondemocratic; the people of the city cannot replace it. It was put in place by the Republicans that dominate Michigan as a whole. Naturally it acts to oppress, since that is its purpose.
Windows 10 S ("S for Straitjacket") does not allow users to change the default browser or the default search engine.
Walmart and True Value have or will stop selling neonicotinoid pesticides and plants grown with them.
I expect that farms use a lot more neonicotinoids than home gardeners, but this is a significant step forward.
Too bad our government is so submissive to business that it can't take necessary decisive action that large companies oppose. It reduces us to begging companies to stop doing wrong.
As I suspected, the US federal claim that even an insignificant falsehood in a citizenship application is grounds to revoke citizenship was first presented under Obama.
It is to Obama's shame, and Holder's that neither of them objected to this. Of course, neither do the troll and Sessions.
Google outsources the checking of its algorithmic classifications to a company called Leapforce. The company just cut all its full-time workers to part-time, cut their wages, and discharged many of them.
It did this in a strange way — a new, replacement company has been started up which is hiring only some of the workers, and it seems the company Leapforce will be shut down.
The article doesn't explain the motive for doing it that way, but I suspect it is an end run around US labor law — essentially, a way to cheat some of the workers.
Senator Feinstein persistently opposes single-payer medical care. Perhaps her reason is that she depends on money from insurance companies.
South Dakota Republicans are attacking the right to protest.
Many intellectuals think about the future of humanity based solely on their own fields of thoughty, ignoring and thus implicitly denying the ecological and climate disasters that humanity is building up.
I wish the author would reconsider the name "Anthropocene" for the new geological epoch that is the result of human activity.
Meanwhile, the oil companies pay attention to the coming disaster — but only how to profit from it.
They too underestimate the consequences that would result from 4C of global heating.
Preventing an ice age in 50,000 years would be a good thing, if it were not a side effect of an even bigger disaster in a few decades from now. The avoided ice age would imply 4C of global cooling. The Thermocene epoch could ultimately involve more than 4C of heating.
The House of Representatives passed an even worse version of the SCROTUS medical disinsurance bill.
It seems they papered over the denial of coverage to people with preexisting medical conditions with a limited amount of funds to cover some of them.
Then they rushed it through to deny the opportunity for informed public criticism. There was no emergency here. Any legislator who rushes a controversial change for no urgent reason is trying to screw the public.
It is foolish and misleading to call that bill "Trumpcare". The troll tries to shock us, but in some ways he is totally predictable: he will never care about Americans in general.
I have decided to call that bill "Dontcare".
Forest Service's "Independent" Report on Atlantic Coast Pipeline Written by Pipeline Company Contractor.
A study documents how effectively money buys votes in congress.
The ACLU is suing the US government for arbitrarily searching Aaron Gach's phone.
Saying curse-words boosts one's physical strength.
I have a hunch it boosts firmness of will under some circumstances.
There are proposals for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Growing a tree seems simple, but growing billions of trees is a lot harder than just planting them. For instance, they could be killed by global heating effects such as drought, floods, or tropical pests. A dead tree doesn't sequester carbon.
An interview with Desiree Fairooz, with more detail about the events of her arrest and prosecution.
It seems she was expelled originally for laughing, but prosecuted for objecting when she was expelled for laughing.
Putin has got support from Turkey, Iran and the US for a plan to establish "humanitarian safe zones" in Syria.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block Dontcare. More precisely, any law that undermines Medicare and Medicaid, defunds Planned Parenthood, or takes health care away from sick people.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject EPA budget cuts.
Everyone: call on professional golf tournaments to stop using the troll's golf courses.
US citizens:
condemn
the Dontcare bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Everyone: Urge Canada to protect the Boreal forest.
The last stage of Tory "welfare reform" was an arbitrary maximum limit on annual welfare payments. This was supposed to pressure people into working, even disabled people and people for whom working is logistically impossible.
This policy is a catastrophe for the non-rich, but not for the Tories that set it up. On the contrary, it achieves their goal: to drive the non-rich into ever-worse poverty, to the point that they become a timid and un-resisting underclass, useful for intimidating everyone else.
There is one good effect of the policy: that it encourages some women to have abortions rather than babies. In our overpopulated world, with the human population still growing, people ought to ask themselves, "Is it right for me to have a child?" If it would be difficult for you to support one, that is the indirect way that the world shows you that you shouldn't have it.
However, the Tory choice to send this message by denying support to children Tories consider "excess" is cruel and destructive. It condemns real, live children to grow up in poverty, hunger and stress, which gratuitously stunts them for life.
A Republican congresscritter revealed the cruelty of Republicans by blaming individuals for all their medical problems.
What Republicans are really saying is, "If you weren't born rich, you deserve a life of shit." They say this to serve the people they work for: the rich.
The US Justice Department will bring no charges against the thugs that held Alton Sterling down and shot him dead.
This could reflect a new policy of supporting thugs no matter how flagrant their crimes. But it will take more than one occasion to see if it is a new policy.
Varoufakis gives quotes to prove that "bailout" of Greece was designed from the start to be a disaster.
I disagree with Paul Mason's judgment of Tsipras. Each stage of "bailout" only makes Greece weaker.
Eliminating today's plastic straws is environmentally necessary.
Remembering the US war crimes of the Korean War.
The two governments ruling parts of Libya may be making some sort of agreement for peace with each other.
Ukrainians that collaborated with the Nazi occupation later led guerrilla resistance against Stalin. That makes it hard to judge those who fought them on behalf of Stalin.
Poor areas of Caracas have broken out in riots.
The Tories, extractivists rather than conservatives, plan to rewrite all of British law bypassing Parliament, if nobody stops them.
The nocebo effect: how imaginary damage can cause real pain.
Among the refugees imprisoned by Australia on Nauru, 50 have threatened or tried to burn themselves to death.
Wisconsin had a law that denied human autonomy automatically to every pregnant women who had a history of using certain drugs. It has been ruled unconstitutional.
Women have a moral obligation to the good health of babies they will have — if they intend to have babies. (Aborting a fetus eliminates the issue because then it won't become a baby.) But women are not incubators. Being pregnant doesn't take away their human rights.
Us border thugs jailed Baxter Reid for being one hour late in leaving the US. He was not late by choice — he was delayed in departure by Canadian immigration.
Countries have a right to deport those who willfully overstay a visa. But no country can excuse punishing people who in trying to carry out their visa requirements encounter delays beyond their control. That is the act of people whose goal is to cause suffering and use rules as an excuse.
The United States should give Reid an apology and fire those responsible for this treatment of him. If the government does not nip this in the bud, soon we will hear about visitors that were jailed because they had a heart attack before their visas expired, or their departure flight was canceled, or their taxi had a collision on the way to the airport.
In many US schools, the staff go out of their way to stigmatize students from poor families. Anyone who would even think of this should not be working with children.
It seems to me that schools are doing the wrong sort of background check on their staff. Contempt for some set of students — whether it is poverty, or an ethnic group — is the biggest danger to the students.
How the NRA's resistance to gun control ties in with traditional US racism.
The thug that killed Walter Scott, shooting him in the back as he was fleeing, has pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges.
A prosecutor in Texas is on trial for illegally rigging a trial, which caused an innocent man to be executed.
When adults need to borrow money from their parents to buy a house, this exacerbates inequality — between those whose parents have that much money and those whose parents don't.
The troll's saboteurs in the USDA have cancelled new nutritional standards for school lunches.
That shows how much he cares about poor rural children.
The new Congressional budget saved funding for the EPA and for scientific research, which the troll wanted to kill.
Americans have learned that Democrats such as Clinton favor the rich. Strangely, they believed the troll when he said he was different.
Americans need to elect politicians like Senator Sanders and Senator Warren, who really don't favor the rich.
When the troll gave a speech for the NRA, guns were banned in the hall.
His bodyguards understand that this is necessary, even though he says it isn't.
Andrew Cuomo is a plutocratist Democrat; he favors progressive policies as long as they don't cut into the income of his bankster supporters.
The Safest Way to Protect Water from Fracking is to Ban Fracking.
This is doubly the case since each gram of gas extracted, no matter how, contributes to global heating.
We need to keep 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and we might as well start with all the reserves that require dangerous procedures (such as fraction) to be extracted.
A forest fire in a fallout-contaminated area near Fukushima is lifting the radioactive fallout into the air.
Whether this event has a significant effect would depend on the current wind. The radioactive atoms will drift for a while with the wind, then fall down somewhere else.
The troll's political philosophy is not neoliberal, nor antisocialist ("libertarian"). He is an authoritarian.
The troll tells so many falsehoods that the Washington Post fact checkers cannot keep up. An average of almost 5 per day.
The handful of scientists that deny global heating and its human causes have published arguments in a paper. This article shows its errors.
The Circle is like a cartoon parody of Facebook, and the real Facebook is more dangerous.
Make sure your browser blocks Facebook's Like buttons so that they can't snoop on your browsing.
"The higher the inequality, the more likely we are to move away from democracy."
Equality of opportunity includes more than just the opportunity for an adult trying to enter a certain kind of work or school. It also includes the opportunity for a child to grow up into a capable adult. That requires good food, good medical care, and a life without high stress.
US citizens: call on your senators to support sanctions against the Philippines because of President Do-dirty's crimes.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the Dontcare bill.
US citizens:
submit
a comment urging Nebraska to refuse to approve the Keystone XL
pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Australia's rare red-finned blue-eye fish is threatened with extinction by an immigrant brought from the US. To protect it, people are building three artificial springs to which to transplant populations of the fish.
Peru's Plans to Cut Air Quality Rules Would Smooth Sale of Top Polluter.
Lots of French voters loathe Macron for the right-wing labor law "reforms" that he imposed on them a year ago.
Since the only reason to want Macron to win is that he's not a racist anti-truther, France will be better off if he can't "govern successfully". A sufficient leftist majority in legislature could stop this.
Wealthy Americans get, on the average, far more government entitlements (money and tax breaks) than poor Americans do.
A racist supporter of the troll faces charges for harassing a black protester.
Hamas has adopted a new charter that accepts coexistence with Israel with the pre-1967 borders.
This ought to make peace possible, but it would require dismantling Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. I think Netanyahu and other right-wing Israeli leaders will find another excuse to avoid that and continue the occupation.
Barack Obama's $400,000 Speaking Fees Reveal What Few [progressives] Want to Admit. Namely, that he was never committed to fight the plutocrats.
I could see this before he was elected, which is why I didn't vote for him.
As brain scanning technology advances, we will need to have laws to protect people's privacy and autonomy in their minds.
But that won't be enough, because our thoughts can have visible effects in tiny actions of our muscles.
Devices are being designed to watch how fast people walk, to deduce their state of health or to identify them.
New Orleans prosecutors harass investigations by public defenders by filing criminal charges against them over doing their jobs properly.
Everyone: support the California bail reform bill.
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to reject the Dontcare bill.
Everyone: state your support for the Paris climate agreement.
It isn't enough to avoid global disaster, but undermining it would hurry the disaster.
What the Battle of Puebla can teach us about the injustice of international debt, in 1862 and still today.
Everyone: call on Bethune-Cookman University to cancel its speech invitation to DeVos.
US citizens: call on Nebraska to refuse the permit for the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
It looks like the US and Salafi Arabia are about to bomb Hodeida. This would make the famine in Yemen deeper, causing misery for 19 million people.
Salafi Arabia has no legitimate justification for attacking Yemen, and the US has neither justification nor reason to do so.
The Salafi Arabian defense minister says Iran is trying to "control the Islamic world".
This is absurd, since most Muslims are Sunnis and they would hardly follow Iran. The reason he made the claim is to distract us from what Salafi Arabia is doing to the Islamic world.
A thug shot at a moving car and killed 15-year-old Jordan Edwards.
Can you guess his racial background?
15-Year-Old's Death Shows What Can Happen When Cops Shoot at Cars.
The other countries that were in the TPP plan are trying to continue with it.
The TPP is a malicious plan to give businesses more power over people and states, so they can take a bigger share of production and wealth. The result, as we know from 30 years of this approach, is that the non-rich get less.
The latest SCROTUS plan to repeal Obama's medical insurance plan has split the Republican Party.
Tasmania (a part of Australia) punishes protests if they inconvenience business.
What that means is that the government of Tasmania takes the side of business against its citizens.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign the discharge petition for the bill to require the troll to release his tax returns.
Everyone: call for criminal charges against the thug that killed Jordan Edwards.
Housing prices in London are falling. This is good news for poor people that actually live there.
The troll is rushing to install a missile defense system in South Korea before the Korean people and politicians can debate whether they want it.
It would be a very good thing to cancel the Korea-US business supremacy treaty. All those treaties are designed to reduce democracy in all the countries that sign them.
However, when the troll says such things, he usually is not serious, just trying to provoke a reaction and then offer some other option.
US border thugs deported a family to Honduras while their lawyers were presenting their asylum case.
The officials displayed trollish contempt for the very idea that people have legal rights.
The FBI, which uses criminal methods to inculpate people every day, should not dare try to say what is or is not legitimate journalism.
UN Accuses Saudi Arabia of Using Terror Laws to Suppress Free Speech. I'm glad to see some criticism in the UN for that repressive and fanatical state.
The Tory outsourced system for cutting support for the disabled, after it has crushed their spirit, starts pressing them to explain why they haven't committed suicide yet.
The Tories are lower than vermin.
The troll's budget is designed to enrich the rich. The people's budget, written by the progressive caucus, is designed to help the non-rich.
The troll wants to shut down Arpa-E, which funds long-term research in generating and using energy more efficiently.
We can guess his motive: more efficiency would lead to less demand for fossil fuels, and less profit for fossil fuels companies.
Not all systems for saving energy are good; some have too high an ethical price. For instance, the app described in the article is a dangerous surveillance system. I will never have the portable phone that the system presupposes.
Senator Warren rebuked Obama and other Democrats for ignoring the harm done by plutocracy.
Most people who are terminally ill would rather die at home, but many families can't cope with that.
Not too long ago, ex-presidents of the US didn't hire themselves out to companies.
Facebook Helped Advertisers Target Teens Who Feel "Worthless".
Heavy use of Facebook tends to make some people feel worthless. We could call this "vertical integration of exploitation."
How does the surveillance state watch thee? We can't count the ways, but here's a list of quite a few of them.
We need general laws to prohibit most systems from collecting data about people, or even identifying them at all.
The UK hounds poor people for small fines that they cannot pay, by adding ever more fines. Jerome Roberts found that his $100 fine was increased to $1500 because he could not pay it.
Jerome Roberts killed himself because, once they denied him use of his motorcycle, he could no longer make any money.
Most of the victims pay the fines eventually, perhaps instead of eating, but this becomes a substantial drain on poor people's income. This resembles the practice of Ferguson, Missouri, and many other US towns that get a lot of their income by fining poor people.
The practice of escalating fines to make people pay them presumes people have money and simply refuse to pay. In a society so unjust as to force millions into poverty, such as the UK or the US, that assumption is false; the system of fining to collect fines is an additional injustice visited on the poor.
The real solution, though, is to give poor people more money. Then they will be able to pay their fines when first levied.
The troll is going to honor the President Do-dirty with a visit to Washington.
We must suppose that he will receive this honor for being a bully and showing contempt for human rights in the Philippines.
Online sales stores are working together to use personal profiles to mislead the public about what the normal price of products is. They arrange to give people the idea that they are getting a discount, when in fact they are paying extra.
This is so pervasive that the concept of "the" price (for a given product) may no longer make sense.
Economists claim that the market is excellent because it determines the proper price for each good. I wonder if they are worried about this.
A right-wing campaigner that seeks to ban abortion entirely has been nominated as assistant saboteur of public communication in the Department of Health.
The troll is placing a religious extremist that opposes birth control in charge of a big contraceptive program there.
The EPA is now the Environmental Pollution Agency. It is soliciting excuses to allow more pollution.
Companies are still moving thousands of US jobs to other countries where pay is less, and the troll isn't doing much if anything to stop it.
If your boss tells you "We are moving this work to another country, and first we want you to train your replacements," be brave! Quit before doing that — and organize your coworkers to quit too.
As the article points out, direct transfer of specific jobs is a very small part of the overall job transfer out of the US due to business-driven globalization. Its overall global effect is that companies pay workers less, anywhere in the world.
The troll has found Sebastian Gorka's antisemitic ties too embarrassing.
The US is protecting the Syrian Kurds from Turkey by stationing US troops on the border between them.
The situation is complicated, with the Kurdish northern region of Iraq allied with Turkey and not with the Syrian Kurds.
Apparently the troll's praise for Erdoğan was as insincere as almost everything else he says.
The troll's threats scared many in Central America out of fleeing to the US. But their lives are in danger at home, so they are recovering their courage to try.
The troll is looking at changing the US constitution so he can sue those that publish accusations that he denies. That would include anything which is negative about him, since he calls such facts "false news".
This announcement came just after he reminded Americans that May 1 is "Loyalty Day", on which we are supposed to remember our loyalties to the principles of the United States, such as freedom of the press.
In Norway, A Growing Movement Builds an Oil-Free Future.
In Washington DC, students that got a voucher and transferred to a private school did not do any better subsequently, and in many cases did worse.
The only "persons" whose rights matter to the troll are businesses.
Humans emit 100 times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
It would be easy for an internet army to rig the 2018 election.
Of course, it is even easier for insiders. It is a mistake to depend on computers for elections.
However, saving paper ballots for an audit is no use if state laws make recounts almost impossible, as we discovered in 2016.
Taser is storing the video from thugs' body cameras, and wants to analyze it all.
Body camera footage should be saved only when there is a specific justification for doing so These videos should be held by the state and used only as evidence for specific crimes, as specified by law. No company should ever get its hands on any of these videos, except those which are published.
US troops have returned to Helmand, where their previous "victory" proved to be entirely transitory.
The US-supported Afghan government cannot defeat the Taliban. It can't even stand against the Taliban for more than a few years without US troops to prop it up. But US soldiers can't defeat the Taliban either. They can only push it down.
The Taliban are stronger than the corrupt Afghan government because the Taliban inspire real support from a segment of the population, but the Afghan government gets no support except what it pays for.
Is it worth a forever war just to keep the Taliban from winning in Afghanistan?
Interviews with women in the army of the Syrian Kurds.
The few refugees that escape from Raqqa confirm that the civilians there are faced with starvation if they stay, but PISSI will try to kill them if they leave. While there, they are used as human shields.
The US persistently refuses to give the Kurds much in the way of weapons. I think the US has been planning all along to betray the Kurds to Turkey once PISSI is defeated. The increasing tyranny of Erdoğan apparently appeals to the troll, which makes that suspicion even more plausible.
Approaches for resisting climate trumpery so as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Food and Water Watch says that protecting food and water safety now requires avoiding climate chaos, so it intends to campaign for that.
"There can be no greater crime against humanity than the foreseeable, and methodical, destruction of conditions that make human life possible."
The only way to prevent extinction of the vaquita porpoise is to catch all 3 of them and move them to protected waters.
The election of Obama, and that of Trump, both reflect that Americans are desperate for politicians that will serve the public rather than the rich.
In each case they didn't get it. (To be fair to Obama, he tried to go further on medical insurance, and was blocked by Republicans and business lobbying.) The general point is that the US political system is no longer a democracy.
Sanders recognizes this, which is why he aims for a "political revolution".
Doctors are starting to measure the phenomenon that childhood stress tends to cause medical problems that take many years off people's lives.
The US is causing childhood stress for millions of children in some other countries. Meanwhile, right-wing antisocialist policies are causing child stress for millions of children in the US.
If saying hello to each student on entering the classroom makes a big difference to the class, this is one example of why large classes will tend to be bad classes, no matter how capable and assiduous the teacher is.
The US has put sanctions on doing business with Russia, but a loophole permits JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to continue.
Facebook has agreed to censor publications to Vietnam's specifications.
(Please don't refer to publications as "content".)
The
Three
Hot Trends in Silicon Valley Horseshit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The troll has given prominent anti-semites important platforms.
His own personal relationships with some Jews do not cancel that out.
US drug companies have increased the price of some kinds of insulin to the point where some diabetic people can barely afford to stay alive.
This wouldn't happen if we had a single-payer Medicare for All system.
The troll's appointee for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior, to be in charge of approving or disapproving mining and drilling, has made a career of lobbying for polluting projects.
The troll proposes to eliminate courts that block implementation of his illegal proclamations. This is, in effect, a proposal to eliminate the independence of the US judiciary — an attack on the constitution.
The frightening thing is that the troll and the billionaires that mostly control Republican legislators might actually be able to do it. The level of civic virtue among Republicans is too low to assure failure.
A Democratic Party campaign funding organization analyzed the 2016 election defeat, and refuses to say what it found.
But if the findings have to do with fund raising and expenditure, it is clear they are looking for the failure next to the UV streetlight because that's the only place they can see through their UV-filter glasses.
US citizens: stand up for the Clean Power Plan.
US citizens: phone Republican leaders to oppose their plans to cut medical care.
US citizens: oppose the NRA's bill to deregulate silencers.
US citizens: oppose the "CHOICE" Act — don't give banksters the choice to cheat people more.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the troll's plan to allow offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic and Arctic coasts.
US citizens: support the senators who have objected to bombing Hodeida.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the 100 By 50 Act, which establishes the goal of eliminating all fossil fuel use to generate electricity in the US by 2050.
US citizens: tell Congress: don't pass any tax cuts for the troll.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the new, even worse medical insurance proposal, which would attack Medicaid as well as endangering Americans with preexisting medical problems.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Melting ice in Antarctica could subject the US east coast to 12 feet of sea level rise.
800,000 people's homes in New York City could be underwater. Parts of Boston too.
And of course Miami and New Orleans.
Saboteur Pruitt is sabotaging the EPA's climate science pages.
When two Dalits got high scores on the entrance exam for the Indian Institute of Technology, local bigots attacked their house with stones.
Nobody was hurt, but it shows the nature of the hatred that Dalits in general have to face. Most Dalits, like most non-Dalits, can't get into an exclusive school, but they deserve decent treatment anyway.
Erdoğan has underlined his repressive vision for Turkey by blocking access to Wikipedia.
The New York Times hired a right-wing columnist who presents global heating denial salted with falsehoods. The Times said it would do fact checking on that columnist's writing, but didn't effectively do so.
China has jailed visiting Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che.
Due to the hostility between the two countries, Taiwan's government is in no position to press for his release. It's possible that the motive for doing so is political pressure on Taiwan.
Selling abortion medicines without prescription seems to be safe, and it would protect women from antiabortionist repression.
The US is apparently going to escalate its bombing campaign against al-Shabaab in Somalia, reducing the care taken to avoid civilian casualties.
The troll wants to put a persistent antiabortion campaigner, who also opposes effective birth control, in the Department of Health.
The troll set up a phone number for people to report crimes committed by unauthorized immigrants. The system is entirely useless for curbing crimes or catching criminals. Its sole purpose is to spread, by existing, the impression that they commit a lot of crimes.
People immediately began reporting supposed crimes by aliens of another sort, flying in UFOs.
In general, the victims and witnesses can't tell whether the person who committed the crime is an unauthorized immigrant, unless they know that person. However, Serious investigation says they commit fewer crimes on average than US citizens.
The NSA said it will stop examining Americans' email merely because it mentions some coordinates associated with a foreign surveillance subject.
This is a small change in the right direction, but I emphasize "small". The fight to disestablish massive collection of data about our activities is just beginning.
The Australian national thugs snooped on lists of journalists' past communication records without even a warrant.
A warrant should be required to start keeping records of anyone's communications.
Humpback whales sometimes organize to block orcas from hunting other kinds of prey.
Are they smart enough to realize this will indirectly protect the humpback whales from being attacked by orcas on other occasions?
North Korea fired another ballistic missile.
I get the impression that King Kim and the troll have the same approach to peace negotiations: act as bellicose as possible, hoping to get the "best deal". Unfortunately, that resembles a game of chicken.
Progressive activists should focus their campaigns on changing powerful repressive institutions. Trying to silence right-wing speakers is wrong, and protesting them tends to be a distraction from substantive issues.
Missouri's insane new law requires schools to report all fights between students for prosecution, and makes fighting a felony.
Prosecutors will decide which students to prosecute. I suppose they will usually prosecute blacks and not whites. But it is vicious prosecute students for this.
Ivanka Trump is soliciting foreign donations for a fund for "female entrepreneurs".
Some Republicans are campaigning to move the Republican Party out of global heating denialism.
Please don't legitimize these denialists, in many cases paid to campaign or deluded by paid campaigns, by calling them "skeptics".
However, the Republican Party still merits Chomsky's term: the most dangerous group in human history.
Brazilians Sick of Corrupt Politicians Hit the Streets to Protest Austerity Measures.
Plutocratist politicians speak of "reforms" when what they mean is to eliminate workers' rights and reduce their pay.
PISSI terrorists may be sneaking into Europe by posing as wounded Libyan soldiers.
Many countries are adopting the US system of plea bargaining, which effectively denies most accused people a trial.
US citizens: call on Zinke to preserve national monuments.
US citizens: Tell the troll not to interfere with states that have legalized and regulated marijuana.
US citizens: tell Congress not to pass any tax legislation until the troll publishes his tax returns.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to force vote before General Mattis attacks the Yemeni port of Hodeida, pushing Yemen into famine.
US citizens: call for immediate suspension of Jared Kushner's Interim Top-Secret Security Clearance.
Tennessee's governor encourages state agencies to subcontract jobs to a company that he profits from.
He's a Republican, naturally. Republican officials feel that, in the troll's wake, no corruption is too blatant.
Greenpeace says that palm oil company IOI Group has made progress in ending deforestation, and has dropped its pressure campaign against that company.
Slavery in India is tied up in social networks that make it very difficult to put an end to.
Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping was given a suspended sentence — for a bogus crime, in a secret trial, after 2 years of imprisonment with torture.
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo fear that the right-wing government of Argentina will cover up the 1970s murder of their children with systematic lies.
Union organizers in the right-wing southern US have to reach out to an entire community, not just the workers in a particular company.
Kayla Greenwood, whose father was killed by Kenneth Williams, begged the governor not to execute him.
It is a moving letter, though I denounce the idea that the state should reduce someone's punishment because that person became religious.
The governor, standing firm for the principle that the state is mercilessness, carried out the execution anyway.
Most of us will not be sentenced to death, but we could easily be hit by that immoral principle in lesser ways.
Holocaust denial was an early example of the sort of systematic lie-fabrication campaigns that the right-wing now uses derail serious political discussion based on facts.
Politicians today sometimes advocate laws and repressive policies for no evident reason except to harass their opponents.
The article errs in putting gun control in that category. Guns really are dangerous, especially to the families of their owners.
Although human greenhouse gas emissions seem to have leveled off, the rate of increase in the atmosphere is rising. Evidently the heat has damaged part of the Earth's natural CO2 sink.
The US government has made submarine-launched nuclear missiles accurate enough to destroy Russian ICBMs.
That was a foolish and dangerous thing to do, since it gives Russia a reason to fear a US first strike, and thus a reason to launch its missiles on warning, thus increasing the danger of accidental nuclear war.
The US government is arguing, before the Supreme Court, that the slightest omission in an application for citizenship, even failing to mention that you once went to a meeting of any club or once drove faster than the speed limit, is ground to revoke citizenship.
The worst plausible projection of sea level rise is 8 feet by 2100.
Sanders and two Democrats have a proposed a bill to move the US rapidly towards renewable electric generation. New fossil fuel pipelines would be banned.
The aim of the bill, which SCROTUS will surely block, is to change the debate.
Obama demonstrates his loyalty to rich investors by going to their event for $400,000.
What I rebuke Obama for is not the fact that he is working for pay, but who he is working for.
The reason I didn't support Clinton in November was that she would clearly have been even more of a supporter of the banksters than Obama was.
A website offers advice to women in the US that want to use abortion drugs and can't consult a doctor.
Former US intelligence personnel warn that the US is on the verge of going to war with Assad's forces based on intelligence conclusions that they have chemical weapons, without making really sure — much as it did against Iraq.
The conclusions were wrong in the case of Iraq.
Most of the plastic that finds its way to the North Atlantic ends up in a garbage patch in the Arctic Ocean.
The cheater has proposed tax cuts designed to benefit himself personally (and other rich people).
This is the result of changes that are supposedly to help small businesses, but will help large businesses more.
For decades, Republicans have proposed tax cuts that reduced most people's taxes an insignificant amount and mainly benefited rich people. The natural concomitant is spending cuts that mainly hurt the poor or middle class. The total outcome is dooH niboR.
Bluefin tuna are being fished to extinction. 90% of the fish that are caught nowadays are not old enough to reproduce.
Why the UK is sinking in respect for press freedom.
Barrett Brown was imprisoned again — for giving interviews to the press.
Le Pen resigned as president of her political party, for electoral reasons. The party appointed a replacement that dabbled in holocaust denial.
It is wrong to prosecute holocaust denial, as France does, because freedom of speech includes the freedom to express any views about history. However, the people who say such things do not deserve respect or support.
Some Republicans in Congress are joining a bipartisan global heating caucus.
North Carolina Republicans are trying to reduce the size of the state supreme court, so that Governor Cooper cannot appoint anyone. A Republican judge was so incensed at this that he resigned and gave Cooper a chance to appoint his successor.
The troll has appointed a number of hate group activists to various US agencies.
"Free" western countries voted to put Salafi Arabia on the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
As sea level rise forecasts for California increase, it appears that inundation threatens houses, beaches, roads, bridges, railways, and nuclear power plants.
40,000 houses could disappear beneath the Pacific Ocean, or San Francisco Bay, in 70 years.
Of course, global heating could go even faster if some new positive feedback appears.
SCROTUS have proposed the "Regulatory Accountability Act" to make regulations more accountable to the companies they are supposed to regulate.
The idea is that regulation should be so gentle that it won't hamper companies from making people sick or broke.
Republicans have campaigned for years to turn "regulation" into a smear term so they can permit businesses to harm and cheat the public with no regulations to hold them back.
The troll's budget would eliminate spending to support women's rights, world wide.
The ACLU is campaigning to hold prosecutors accountable for their decisions, with the goal of reducing mass imprisonment in the US.
Harvard is starting to respond to years of pressure to divest from fossil fuels. It will "pause" in buying such stocks.
Seems more disappointing than exciting.
The arguments for tax cuts for rich corporations are bogus.
Systematic repression of democracy supporters in Hong Kong.
Islamist terrorists now aim to expel or kill the Christians that remain in Egypt.
Russia wants the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send an investigation team to Khan Sheikhun to verify whether the deadly chemical released there was Sarin. The western countries in the organization voted against this, leading to suspicion they are covering something up.
Assad and Russia together can surely assure the safety of inspectors from their side, and if the rebels refuse, the onus will fall on them.
The copyright industry wants to convert the head of the copyright office into its own servant by having the president appoint him.
I expect this to make it very hard to get any significant DMCA exemptions in the future. The DMCA exceptions process is basically a distraction, meant to divert energy away from campaigning to repeal the unjust sections of the DMCA. But it has provided limited relief from the wrong, because the copyright office has granted some exemptions. If it stops, maybe we can mobilize opposition to the DMCA again.
Nonetheless, I oppose this change, and I hope some organization will start a campaign against it that I can support. I do not believe in endorsing a change for the worse on the supposition that it might spur opposition.
The idea that copyright should "balance" interests of copyright holders with those of the public gives the copyright holders too much importance. Copyright is supposed to balance one aspect of public interest with another aspect of public interest.
The campaign to raise the federal minimum wage has grown considerably stronger since two years ago.
SCROTUS will not support it, but the effort is worth while because it shows that they stand for low wages.
We All Need to Defend Speech We Hate. Even right-wing bigots such as Ann Coulter or the troll should not be blocked from speaking to people.
A sex robot with AI could eventually become a diverting companion, but it would tell various companies everything about you.
If you use your imagination, a fantasy that costs you nothing can be as enjoyable as an expensive robot, and it won't spy on you.
The troll plans to "renegotiate" NAFTA, not kill it.
In principle, renegotiation could make NAFTA less damaging, or more damaging. NAFTA is damaging because it is a business-supremacy treaty, and we can't expect the troll to oppose that in general.
It is also quite likely that ultimately he won't do anything; that this is a preparation for forgetting about the issue.
Turkey has begun bombing the Syrian Kurds.
Erdoğan has a history of grasping for excuses to start wars. He started a civil war with the Kurds of Turkey in order to rerun an election and get more votes. He is likely to grasp this excuse for all-out war against the Kurds of Syria.
Pakistanis are defending the student, Mashal Khan, who was accused of blasphemy and murdered.
Alas, it seems that this is more because they think the accusation was erroneous than because of new-found respect for freedom of speech.
A state investigation found that capital trials, and executions, in Oklahoma are so slipshod it strains belief.
I disagree with the supporters of execution, but still I am surprised they are so careless in deciding who to kill.
McDonald's has offered fixed-hours contracts to many of its workers in the UK.
The troll is not following his pledge to punish companies that send US jobs to other countries.
How SCROTUS want to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau totally ineffective.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans replaced public schools with privatized charter schools do a lousy job, and are segregated too.
The Senate's Trump-Russia investigation is a phony — it is not actually investigating.
It seems that Heath Mello, the candidate that Sanders recently campaigned for, doesn't actually advocate restrictions on abortion. He says he is opposed to that.
1/3 of the primary and secondary school students in the US have been given computers to use, and these nearly always spy on the student.
The EFF doesn't mention that devices are fundamentally unjust because they contain nonfree software.
US citizens: Oppose expanding US immigration prisons; spend the money on something that helps people.
US citizens: tell the troll not to use the US military as political props.
US citizens: Tell Congress not to mess with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Reporters Without Borders says that freedom of the press in Britain is in danger from Theresa May's prohibition on publishing leaks.
In Afghanistan, abortions save lives, but they are still illegal.
The troll wants to cancel programs that help cities protect environmental security and public health.
The troll threatens to abolish several national monuments.
US and UK laws against "supporting terrorism" are blocking humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Two elected Hong Kong legislators, barred from the legislature by henchmen of China, have now been arrested and charged with a forbidden protest.
It seems the US is not the only country that fabricates charges to repress political protest.
Where Is the Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders of Foreign Policy?
The troll has retreated from most of what he said he would do about international trade.
Olive Beddows begged her husband to kill her so she would not die in a nursing home. He tried, but failed. I suspect he couldn't bring himself to hit her hard enough, what with loving her so much.
I fear they will put her in a nursing home, even if not right away.
Milwaukee County Jail guards killed prisoner Terrill Thomas by denying him water for 7 days.
New Report Reveals Trump Is Not Punishing Corporations That Offshore American Jobs, But Awarding Them New Government Contracts.
Israel can't cope with nonviolent Palestinian protest and opposition except to smear it as "support for terrorism".
Marwan Barghouti, one of the leaders of the prisoners' hunger strike, was convicted in Israel of murder — but the Inter-Parliamentary Union says his trial was unfair and that his guilt is not established.
The article describes how unfair trial, even pretrial torture to extract false confessions, is standard practice in Israel when dealing with accused Palestinians. More information about that.
Israel has blocked lawyers from meeting with the hunger strikers.
Could Barghouti Become Israel's Peace Partner?
Israel is selling natural gas from a field underneath Israel and Palestine. Naturally it isn't giving Palestine any say or any share. Basically that is theft.
However, the most important thing about fossil fuel deposits is not who gets to burn them, but avoiding burning them at all. If the pipeline from Israel to Europe is actually put to use at the scheduled completion in 2025, Israel and Palestine will both be doomed. There is no possible good in spending money to build a pipeline in these circumstances, regardless of who will get paid for a while.
Extremist "settlers" repeatedly attacked Palestinian shepherds, driving them off their land. Israeli thugs naturally did nothing to stop this. When nonviolent Israeli activists came to support the shepherds, the "settlers" attacked them too.
On one occasion, they attacked Israeli thugs as well. But that is no longer necessary; the thugs have learned their lesson and now blatantly give the Israeli terrorists full support.
The troll has had a very successful 100 days when it comes to giving favors to the companies that have invested in his presidency.
Kucinich has launched a campaign against siphoning off money from public schools to fund privatized charter schools.
One of the troll's executive orders gave Saboteur of the Interior Zinke an opportunity to allow drilling for oil and gas in national parks.
George Monbiot: "I would love to elect a government led by someone both competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot paper. The choice today is between brutal efficiency in pursuit of a disastrous agenda, and gentle inefficiency in pursuit of a better world. I know which I favor."
Russians are getting angry at the massive corruption of the high officials.
Some companies are promoting ethical clothing — less pollution and decent treatment of workers.
Labour proposes to continue taking Britain out of the EU but preserve almost all of the EU's laws.
This might perhaps avoid most of the harm that the Tories will end up doing. It will also avoid nearly all the possible good of leaving the EU: eliminating plutocratic laws that give business too much power and oppress countries such as Greece. However, the Tories don't want to eliminate those laws anyway — quite the contrary, they are looking for an excuse to make those worse.
US citizens: call on Congress not to spend any money on the troll's border wall.
US citizens: stand for network neutrality yet again.
Arkansas governor Hutchinson rushed to execute a man whose trial was a series of bullshit and whose defense attorneys omitted the most obvious steps.
In effect, Hutchinson said, "Never mind justice, let's kill someone."
Humans emit 100 times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
Islamic States terrorists may be sneaking into Europe by posing as wounded Libyan soldiers.
Brazilians Sick of Corrupt Politicians Hit the Streets to Protest Austerity Measures.
Plutocratist politicians speak of "reforms" when what they mean is to eliminate workers' rights and reduce their pay.
Erdo�an has underlined his repressive vision for Turkey by blocking access to Wikipedia.
The
Three Hot Trends in Silicon Valley Horseshit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the senate to pass SJRes 40, which would call on the troll to certify that Salafi Arabia is not arming al-Qa'ida before selling the former any more arms.
I would go further. The US should refrain from meddling in Yemen. By doing so, it has prolonged the civil war there which has since led to famine.
More fundamentally, Salafi Arabia is responsible for the spread of virulent, jihadi forms of Islam, that have reached the point of murdering the believers in civil, neighborly Muslims. It has funded this for decades.
The US has done plenty to inspire Muslims' hostility: first supporting Israel's occupation of Palestine, and since 15 years ago fighting wars of aggression in the Middle East. However, these work together with the spread of Salafism.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at (202) 224-3121 and say, "I urge you to invoke the War Powers Resolution to force a debate and vote before the U.S. helps Saudi Arabia push Yemen into famine by bombing the port of Hodeida."
More info is in this petition, which I suggest signing.
How to solve the problem of troll armies?
Restrictions on abortion perpetuate economic inequality, as well as being fundamentally unjust.
Nonetheless, I won't say it is wrong for Sanders to support an anti-abortion progressive Democrat against an anti-abortion bankster-subservient Republican.
100 Days of Gibberish — Trump Has Weaponized Nonsense.
The State Department was promoting the troll's private business, the Mar-a-Lago club, but it stopped when people named and shamed it.
In a few decades, Mar-a-Lago will become simply Mar due to sea level rise. But that's likely to be after the troll's lifetime.
Natanyahu gave the German foreign minister an ultimatum: "Cancel your meetings with Israeli human rights groups or I won't meet with you." The minister did not obey.
Ivanka Trump met with derision as she claimed that the troll is trying to help women.
It may be useful to let her speak occasionally before a live audience, so that she can't pass off bullshit as believed.
But not very often.
Putin persecutes Jehovah's Witnesses because they are pacifists, and calls them "violent extremists".
Due to Tory cuts in support for the poor, 3 million British children can't eat right at the times of year when school is not feeding them.
The Koch brothers spend 3 million dollars to press the troll's saboteur appointees thru the Senate.
Dmitry Bogatov is being prosecuted in Russia for messages that others sent through his Tor node.
In a free country, nobody would be prosecuted for those messages, not even those who sent them.
Two Supreme Court justices say the court has a tendency to take the side of violent thugs against their victims.
If you ever serve on a jury, keep in mind that thugs have lots of practice in lying in court. They have practiced presenting lies smoothly to make them sound plausible. One thug's testimony supports another's because the system ensures they have a chance to coordinate their stories. This should raise a reasonable doubt about whatever they say.
With South Florida including Miami facing inundation due to global heating, the wiser property owners are starting to sell. Property values could collapse to near zero once the public realizes the land will cease to be land.
In effect, coastal land is a bubble, and the sooner these bubbles burst, the less harm they do.
It's more or less the same for coasts around the world, though the local rate of sea level rise varies. (It is faster in Florida because the land is sinking.) The inundation of ancient ports around the Mediterranean will be a terrible loss for all humanity, not just for the people who live in them.
I propose that the US government should buy out non-rich homeowners who bought before a certain cutoff date, but only up to a certain limit. That would save the poor from being wiped out, while not wasting money on wealthy people who don't face being wiped out, and avoid creating a "moral hazard" of encouraging people to buy properties at risk.
Those who bought their homes after the cut-off date could receive a buy-out reduced by 4% for each year between the cut-off date and when they purchased the property.
That would be the sensible thing to do, but I'd be surprised if it were done.
The Tories' intentional delay in welfare support has driven the need for food banks to a record level.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
Most of the people granted asylum in the UK are promptly made homeless and destitute, because the government won't support or help them.
The Tories fight to the last drop of oil combustion against renewable electricity generation.
The International Criminal Court has received a complaint about the mass murder of President Do-dirty of the Philippines.
Privatizing state assets generally means the new owners make a killing at state expense. Here's how it happened to the UK's military housing.
If the private financier that wants to buy is in favor of the deal, that's enough to show the state should reject the deal.
The US bail system regularly ruins the lives of poor people whenever they are accused of a crime. If they make bail, they go away with debts they cannot pay. If they don't make bail, they lose their careers and their homes. That's regardless of whether they are ultimately convicted of the charges.
Many people make false confessions just to get out of jail.
Obama's campaign against PISSI has been advancing slowly but surely. "Only Trump can save ISIS now."
Almost 90,000 jobs have been lost in US retail stores since last October — and this could be just the beginning of a disaster that affects millions of jobs.
In a physical store, you can buy anonymously. Internet purchases are a surveillance system. That is why I have never bought anything over the internet. Please buy in physical stores by preference.
Calling on Disney, PepsiCo, and the Gap to quit the US Chamber of Commerce.
Al-Sisi's military regime is shooting prisoners, and losing the war in the Sinai that it provoked by the bloody coup against the elected president, Morsi. Once Islamists in Egypt saw they would not be allowed to win democratically, they were motivated to join an armed uprising.
Islamists do not respect human rights either, but under a system of free elections it would have been possible to vote them out of power. Al-Sisi does not allow opposition at all.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let the troll kill funds for protecting Americans from toxic pollution.
The petition's author lived in near toxic industry, and both her children got peculiar diseases from that.
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop advertising on the right-wing bigotry site Breitbart.
Amazon does a lot of worse things, which is why I urge people not to do buy from Amazon at all.
"Public Goods" Made America Great And Can Do So Again.
Among public goods, we should count free software and free educational resources.
The US government is prosecuting 200 protesters for the "felony" of participating in a protest where someone broke windows.
Even for those who broke the windows, 10 years in prison is repressive in the extreme.
Most of the troll's executive orders don't really change anything. They only start a procedure that might possibly change something.
That doesn't make them harmless. The agencies that will carry out these procedures are run by saboteurs appointed by the troll, and they will do their utmost to take advantage of these opportunities for sabotage.
Three journalists have been murdered, one by one, in the Maldive Islands.
It goes with the tyranny that was set up after the overthrow of the only elected president, Nasheed. I suspect that oil interests played a role in the coup that overthrew Nasheed, because he campaigned at the global level to curb the greenhouse gas emissions that will eliminate the Maldive Islands.
Trumponomics: Neocon Neoliberalism (and unilateralism) Camouflaged with Anti-Globalization Circus.
Houston's newly elected prosecutor has decided to stop prosecuting possession of marijuana, and to stop keeping people in jail for months for being poor.
New Orleans is taking down monuments that support the pro-slavery side in the US Civil War.
Nazi lawyers studied the US race laws that were designed to keep
blacks and Chinese down, as a
guide
for designing laws to keep Jews down.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Cornel West: give up on the corporate-friendly Democratic Party and start a new one.
I am not sure whether we have a better chance of a progressive victory with or without the Democratic Party.
Japan is failing to abide by an agreement to protect the survival of bluefin tuna.
Unroll.me Head 'Heartbroken' That Users Found Out it Sells Their Inbox Data.
Three women explain why they needed late-term abortions.
Banning them is terrible cruelty, based on many cases on willful denial of reality. That's faith for you.
What "tax reform" means to SCROTUS, and to the cheater.
Likeliest Outcome of Tax Reform is a Deficit-Financed Tax Cut for the Rich That Will Expire in a Decade.
In the UK, unauthorized immigrants are afraid to see a doctor lest it lead to deportation.
People living in precarious circumstances should ask themselves, before they make a child, whether it is right to make a child live in precarious circumstances. However, it may be that they can't get reliable birth control or abortions because they fear seeing a doctor.
"We scapegoat and impoverish young people while destroying the world we older, luckier ones inherited. As abdications of duty go, this one is absolute."
Consigning most young people to a precarious and painful life results from the callous political plutocracy squeezing on one side while growing global population, global heating, and overusing the world's resources squeeze on the other size.
Humanity can't continue its profligate resource use. But it could, if it tried to, enlist everyone in reducing resource use and reducing the birth rate, while treating everyone as worthy of a decent life.
Canadian Oil Firm Pulls Out of National Park in Peru's Amazon.
When the troll says, "America First", it means "Hungry People Last."
Killer Gorsuch voted on the Supreme Court for executing a man immediately rather than examining DNA evidence which could have proved he was innocent.
The Massachusetts Democratic Party is considering a resolution to criticize Israel's colonies in Palestine as an obstacle to peace between Israel and Palestine. There is a lot of opposition to acknowledging this basic fact.
Trump's Bombings May Elicit the 'Mother of All Blowback'.
Should we endorse an anti-abortion Democrat as a replacement for a right-wing Republican?
I probably would not, because I think that abortion rights are very important.
The US Treasury denied Exxon's request for permission to operate oil wells in Russia.
The troll has given Wall Street a big handout with three executive orders.
British colonists captured Australia in a long slow series of battles, massacres, and hunting aboriginals for sport.
I read in The Other Side of the Frontier, by Henry Reynolds, that colonists would often take the most fertile land in an area for farming or stock raising, and demand the aboriginals live on the rest of the area; but that fertile part was the biggest part of their food supply, so this condemned them to fight or die.
US 'Deep State' Sold Out Counter-Terrorism to Keep Itself in Business. Basically, weakening al-Qa'ida was subordinated to other interests such as supporting Salafi Arabia.
This is ironic given that the harsh Salafi approach to Islam is what built today's jihadi movement.
The troll has pushed for a new attack against the guerrilla group al-Shabaab. Humanitarian aid organizations warn that this is likely to block aid to the region controlled by al-Shabaab, which is suffering from famine.
Activists in Uganda are campaigning for the state to provide menstrual pads to the nation's schoolgirls, many of whom miss school because they can't afford to buy the pads.
One of them has been imprisoned for insulting the president for his refusal. To punish people for insults is a sign of tyranny. (Are you listening, France, Turkey, Russia and others?
Science has already been politicized, by those who want to disregard knowledge in favor of fantasy. We who want to pay attention to knowledge must not hold back from campaigning for that.
Prosecuting female genital mutilation in the US.
An arms merchant who supplied arms to Liberian tyrant Charles Taylor has been sentenced to prison.
Chris Packham made a video recording of hunters in Malta shooting migrating birds, and hunters falsely accused him of physically attacking them.
The hunt in Malta is authorized, but since it endangers some species of birds, Malta must change its policy.
Practical advice for how to talk with relatives and friends that support Trump, so that they might start to listen.
Instead of the incoherent war on painkillers, the US should aim for harm reduction.
Untreated pain is part of the harm that we should aim to reduce. And an addiction to pain killers, kept in check by medical attention, is not as bad as continuing agony.
The US denied reporters access to the zone in Afghanistan where it dropped the large conventional bomb. No one can verify any claims about what was or wasn't destroyed.
Even people whose families lived in the area can't get information.
Specific reports covered almost 300 civilians killed by US bombs in Iraq and Syria in one week in April. The actual figure is probably several times that.
Orwell's point is valid: we are morally obliged to judge the killing of civilians by the same standards no matter which side does it. Zinn's point about inevitable casualties is also valid, but that doesn't mean that all civilian casualties constitute war crimes. No army can completely avoid killing or wounding civilians; every army has an obligation to make a real effort.
There are reports that the troll has more or less countermanded Obama's precautions in the US military. Perhaps the casualties in April occurred at a higher level than was normal for the past few years.
It may be anachronistic to apply today's standards to use of chemical weapons during and shortly after World War I. While there was a treaty that prohibited them, all the main combatants used them or tried to, and all were targeted with them.
Why not probe Israel's influence in the US government? There's plenty of evidence of it.
Everyone: call on the US media to stop glorifying war and weapons.
US citizens: oppose the misnamed "right to work" bill, intended weaken unions and pave the way for cuts in wages and workers' benefits.
44 million Americans have student loans, and almost half have fallen behind on payments.
One way to fix this problem is to allow people to get rid of those debts through bankruptcy — an option that Republicans eliminated around 15 years ago.
Saboteur Pruit has turned the EPA into the Environmental Persecution Agency.
Welfare for a single mother in Mississippi is a swindle: get $200 of aid, and pay back $2500 a few years later if the father doesn't pay for it. The slide into the trap is made smooth with lies.
Part of the state's job is to help people avoid the situation of having a baby and no money for food. The first step is to teach everyone what that is like, and offer reliable birth control to all.
A Republican businessman was so sleazy that he squeezed money out of the Republican party.
The troll's "Buy American" policy has loopholes to protect Wall Street's profits from manufacturing in other countries.
Bhikkhu Bodhi: in Buddhist terms, global heating denial shows the combined effect of ignorance and craving.
Two groups of Republicans have agreed on a compromise plan for how to cut off medical coverage for millions of Americans.
Users are suing Bose for distributing an app, to set parameters in its headphones, which also snooped on the users' activities.
The suit accuses that this was done without the users' consent. If the fine print of the app said that users gave consent for this, would that make it acceptable? No way! It should be flat-out illegal to design the app to snoop at all.
Dow Chemical is lobbying the US government to discard its own study which showed certain pesticides endanger wildlife.
Nuclear power companies are making taxpayers pay to keep dirty nuclear plants running.
The longer a nuclear power plant keeps running, the more dangerous it gets. The environment inside the reactor is corrosive; things change their shape and move, and it is hard to tell what's going on inside. Instead of paying extra to keep these plants running, we pay to build storage and renewable energy capacity.
Companies used donations for the troll's inauguration as a way to obtain changes in laws and regulations.
Gordon Sondland wanted to donate a million dollars to the troll's inauguration, but when people saw his name on the donor list, he said he had changed his mind for ethical reasons. But actually he funneled the money through four front corporations.
Washington DC thugs illegally infiltrated inauguration protests.
As US Prepares to Gut Net Neutrality Rules, Canada Strengthens Them.
We are at the edge of having antibiotic resistance make surgery dangerous.
The UN Security Council has threatened North Korea with sanctions if it continues nuclear testing.
This warning has the support of China, so Mr Kim will find it difficult to defy. It has a chance of succeeding as a diplomatic solution to the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons.
The [US] Government's Own Data Shows Country of Origin Is a Poor Predictor of Terrorist Threat.
The FBI is now eagerly protecting Americans from unstable fantasy supporters of PISSI.
There must be hundreds of these. They are not totally harmless; a few of them might someday commit solo terrorist attacks with cars, but the chance any particular one would do so is small.
Although the FBI says it is protecting us from very dangerous people, it does not seem to consider them very dangerous when they are released from prison.
Russia has banned the Jehovah's Witnesses church, labeling it as "extremist".
The sect has peculiar, unfounded beliefs, and strictly shuns anyone that leaves or is kicked out, but it does not do anything to outsiders that goes beyond minor annoyance. Its members deserve freedom of speech and freedom in religion just as the rest of us do.
Don't Underestimate the Harm 'Brittle Masculinity' Can Do to the World.
Somehow I never learned that I was supposed to appear strong because I'm male. At least one bad thing I escaped!
The Tories are moving UK step by small step closer to a one-party state.
Organized public revulsion against Bill O'Reilly struck home and compelled Faux News to stop giving him a platform.
The boycott was about his odious conduct towards women he personally met, perhaps dozens, but the main harm he has done to America and the world was through right-wing bullying and falsehood. We need to organize boycotts based on that, without waiting for personal wrongs to emerge.
SCROTUS are selling access to congressional staff.
The town of Washington Court House, Ohio, prosecutes people for trumped up crimes when they have a drug overdose.
Somalia's children today are starving for the debts of the former dictator Siad Barre.
This kind of injustice has happened in many countries. The tendency to insist that dictators' victims pay the dictators' debts is why banksters encourage dictators. Thus, we need to replace it with the principle that loans to dictators are never repaid.
The Australian prime minister trusts the "wisdom and judgment" of America's racist bully president.
This should demonstrate to Australia that their prime minister has no wisdom or judgment.
With Corbyn, Britain has a chance to decide that it is wrong for some people to be so rich, and to demand they give the rest a bigger share.
Many prisoners in Pennsylvania state prisons come from Philadelphia, and many of them are held far away from there. The result is that nobody in their families can afford to visit them.
That makes them less likely to find a way to stay out of prison once they are released.
Forbidding anyone who was ever in prison from visiting a prisoner has the same effect of directing prisoners to become career criminals. It is a reflection of the attitudes that make the US #1 in imprisonment. The US asks, "What might that ex-con do if he visits a prisoner," and not, "What might that prisoner do, after spending the prison term out of contact with family?"
The policy of excluding former prisoners from all but menial work, and from most educational opportunity, also pressures them into a life of crime.
If you see something, it's often better not to say anything. How to decide?
Persecuting people who drug themselves into insensibility is not a solution for the factors that make them look for a way to do that.
But some of them might die because their friends have learned that taking such people to a hospital is dangerous for them.
Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti explains the hunger strike he is participating in.
Gush Shalom comments on the trial of Marwan Barghouti.
How Israel punishes prisoners who are sick for participating in the hunger strike.
One effect of expensive rents is that people are invited to pay the rent in sex.
Agreeing to sex as rent is a solution for one person, in the sense that person obtains lodgings for less money. However, when you look at society as a whole, this doesn't make the situation any better. If X obtains lodging this way, some Y becomes homeless.
To improve the housing situation for everyone in the short term, we need either rent control or a lot of new housing construction. A lot of new housing construction will drive rents down while making space for more people. Rent control won't increase the amount of space available, but it will enable all the renters to get food as well as housing.
In the long term, having fewer children will help tremendously.
Because Kemal Hawwash has endorsed a boycott of Israeli products, Israel will never again allow him to visit his relatives in Palestine.
The Palestinian campaign for BDS is a nonviolent, political response to the violence of the occupation. Israel's refusal to let its supporters visit Palestine, just like its refusal to let them visit Israel, is a violation of their human rights.
The absurd trial of Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour.
Arabs in Israel are prosecuted for "incitement" under very loose criteria, while Israelis are never prosecuted, not even for specific death threats.
Reanalysis of old diet studies casts doubt on the idea that saturated fats lead to heart disease.
This supports the idea that the cause of the increase in heart disease is sugar.
A pundit says that the new political division in France is "for globalization" or "against globalization".
I think the crucial point is not to allow globalization to occur in a way that gives business more power over states and people's. That's the kind of globalization we have had.
US banking sanctions against Iran, which were never entirely lifted, are causing UK banks to close the bank accounts of Iranian students in the UK, putting them in financial trouble.
ACLU: the PAT RIOT Act was designed to vacuum up Americans' communications so the FBI can find them and read them.
Then the government pretends that only foreign terrorists are being searched.
Apple forbids recyclers of Apple computers from extracting any usable spare parts from them, by imposing nasty contracts.
Apple's conduct should be forbidden by law so that no company can ever do this.
US citizens: phone your senators to protect the regulation to
limit
leaking or frivolously burning natural gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Fresno Shooting Decried as Anti-White Hate Crime, But Truth Is Complicated.
It seems that many hate crimes are the outgrowth of "mental health issues that were never properly treated". Most of the culprits choose blacks or women as victims.
Trump to Erdogan: Congrats On Your Dictatorship!
Terrorist groups will exploit disasters, and food and water shortages, caused by global heating.
The article calls the disasters "natural", but that is incorrect.
The Pentagon denies the facts in order to refuse to acknowledge that it bombed a mosque in Syria.
The troll's business partners in Indonesia are trying to overthrow President Widodo.
The US should change its institutions to avoid further "wars of choice", since they are likely to destroy other countries and could conceivably destroy the US.
The troll is doing exactly what is likely to start another war in the Middle East, exactly what will make it a disaster, and exactly what will make peace impossible.
Is it possible that that is not a coincidence? That some influential interests in the US desire exactly that?
The War on Painkillers: Florida has sentenced thousands of old people to long prison terms (basically, life in prison) for selling a handful of painkiller pills.
When thugs lead businesses such as United Airlines to expect the their help in confrontations with the public, they encourage companies to treat the public harshly.
United's policy decision to order Dr Dao off the plane to make room for a pilot was wrong, but it was the thugs that started the violence on that day.
However, at a deeper level, it is the political influence businesses have gained over what should be democracy is the reason that thugs are there encouraging businesses to use thugs to intimidate the public.
Puerto Rico is covering up the birth defects caused by Zika by piecemeal denial.
The military rulers of Thailand have declared that mocking them is a crime.
Freedom of speech includes the right to criticize, offend, insult, even mock anyone (and any group, organization, practice or belief).
Please don't visit Thailand for tourism.
AIs that work by trained neural nets, rather than full understanding, take on bias embodied by the connotations of words that they use.
The only known way to avoid this effect is via human-level intelligence.
Hundreds of thousands of people have installed spyware on the phones of other people they know, to track their movements and actions.
I think it is wrong to do this to your own children. It is like putting them in a prison.
Palestinians in prisons in Israel have started a hunger strike to demand that Israel allow them family visits according to its laws.
Holding Palestinians from the West Bank prisoner outside the West Bank (for instance, in Israel) violates the Geneva Conventions.
Right-wing Democratic Senator Feinstein is meeting lots of criticism from progressive constituents for the floppiness of her resistance to SCROTUS.
It's true that one senator can't overcome SCROTUS. All the Democratic senators together sometimes can't stop SCROTUS. But they can stop SCROTUS from passing legislation — and they can contribute to the swell of opinion that will elect a progressive Congress.
The Democratic Party Must Finally Abandon Centrism.
When you threaten to transfer back a substantial part of what the rich have taken from the poor, the rich scream as if they were dying. And they claim that we will lose gigantic amounts of (nonexistent) trickledown from them.
Thus, if we fail to make the rich scream, it means we are not trying hard enough to make them share the gains with the rest of us.
Islamists in Jakarta succeeded in stirring up religious vote to defeat the governor of Jakarta.
Even worse, they did this by accusing him of "blasphemy". That was unjust at two levels, since (1) it was false and (2) it is an injustice to make that a crime at all.
We are making great progress towards eliminating various tropical diseases that infect large numbers of poor people.
Along with this, we need to make great progress in reducing the birth rate, or we will increase other replacement afflictions.
ACLU: Teens Who Engage in 'Sexting' Should Not Be Prosecuted as Sex Offenders.
Detroit Needs Affordable Water, Not More Shutoffs.
US citizens: Tell Democrats: Stand strong. No cuts to Planned Parenthood.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Wall Street pay its fair share of taxes.
US citizens: tell Democrats in the Senate not to surrender our rights if Republicans take the budget hostage.
US citizens: call on senators to tell Salafi Arabia not to attack the Yemenite port of Hodeida. That bombardment is causing famine in Yemen.
Democrats that serve Wall Street use Russia as a smokescreen.
Could a Tax on Meat Help Us Save the Planet?
Even if a tax on fossil fuels solves most of the problem, there ought to be a special tax on cows because of their methane emissions.
Uri Avnery: Palestine's Nelson Mandela.
The article mentions Menachem Begin, leader of the Irgun. It also mentions that Palestinians that fight to end the Israeli occupation say they should be treated as prisoners of war.
Ironically, that's what the Irgun said the same thing to the British, who treated them as terrorists.
The troll's men now say they want to prosecute Wikileaks and maybe Julian Assange too.
Prosecuting Wikileaks would endanger journalism in the US.
With the influence of unpredictable warmonger Bannon gone, watch out for the influence of the predictable warmongers, the neocons.
The IMF is trying to pressure India into "labor market reforms" that would probably, as such things typically do, make for increases in production for the benefit of the rich, together with reduction in income for the poor.
In some states, irate people have got rid of robots that give out traffic tickets.
Other robots that snoop on people on the street can do much nastier things than give you a fine.
Democrats that serve Wall Street use Russia as a smokescreen.
US citizens: call on Saboteur of Homeland Security Kelly to bring Juan Manuel Montes back from Mexico, since he was deported unjustly.
Exxon is asking the State Department (run by a former Exxon CEO) for a waiver to permit it to drill for oil in Russia in despite of US sanctions against that.
DNC chair Tom Perez is holding back from criticizing Wall Street even while touring with Sanders.
Arkansas Fights to Execute Two Men Without Testing DNA Evidence That Could Exonerate Them.
This is standard practice for cruel systems of "justice": they don't want anyone even to imagine doubting their decisions.
The UN Security Council has threatened North Korea with sanctions if it continuous nuclear testing.
This warning has the support of China, so Mr Kim will find it difficult to defy. It has a chance of succeeding as a diplomatic solution to the problem of North Korea's nuclear weapons.
For the Israeli army, shooting a Palestinian teen in the back is "professional error".
Apparently "error" covers lying about the events, too.
Beyond apartheid to ethnic cleansing: the rabbi that leads a significant Israeli electoral party calls for expelling all non-Jews from Israel.
US citizens: call on the Labor Department to proceed with rule to require retirement investment advisers to act in their clients' best interest.
US citizens: call on senators not to fund the troll's anti-immigrant plans.
In the US: join the People's Climate March on April 29.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject any proposal to undermine the funding for Social Security.
Several leaders of the Hindu theocratic party BJP will face trial for participating in the destruction of a famous historic mosque.
The mosque was built hundreds of years ago by Muslim conquerors on a sacred Hindu site and destroyed an old Hindu temple. By modern standards, that was a crime too. However, there was no need to respond to an ancient crime with a new crime. The former, destroyed Hindu temple cannot be brought back. The site is nothing special for Muslims; moving the mosque to another site, if necessary taking it apart stone by stone and rebuilding it elsewhere, would have restored the site to Hindus without destroying the mosque.
In restitution, the mosque could have been moved to another site.
Mélenchon aims to save the European Union by correcting its great wrong: subservience to business and banksters.
The EU and the IMF have imposed austerity on France, barring the French state from doing anything to reduce the unemployment and inequality that feed both right-wing extremism and Islamism.
The paramilitary youth auxiliary of Burundi's dictator chants to murder and rape people opposed to the dictator.
Facebook Wants [its useds] You to Stare Even More at the Real World Through Your Phone Camera.
A "cashless" economy is one where the banks have power over everything.
US border thugs arrested Juan Manuel Montes when he didn't have his wallet on him, and deported him without allowing him to get his wallet and show he was protected from deportation.
Those agents spit on the law they were supposed to enforce, just as they spit on Montes's rights. "We can take away your rights by closing our eyes to them and saying we don't see them." These little not-sees deserve a sharp punishment.
When the troll negotiates with China, he asks for advantages for Ivanka's business.
The troll has backed off canceling the nuclear agreement with Iran. That is a relief, since this agreement is the best chance of avoiding Iran's getting nuclear weapons.
Brain scans give a concrete and measurable meaning to the "higher state of consciousness" produced by psychedelic drugs.
In some parts of the US, global heating will mean that a wildfire burns your house.
Sanders, with DNC chair Tom Perez, are campaigning to elect progressive Democrats.
The tax on sugary drinks in Berkeley, California, reduced sales by 15% compared with nearby towns.
It's a shame that people are buying more water, rather than drinking more water from the faucet.
Jail for a Joke: Student's Case Puts Free Speech under Spotlight in Spain.
What could be wrong about assassinating a high official of a dictatorship?
Criminal groups are moving in on the areas of Colombia which the FARC used to control.
On the idea of shooting down North Korean test missiles.
As the Indian government ramps up hostility and threats towards Muslims, few Hindus support their rights. Christians and Dalits face repression there too.
Modi supports bigotry by doing nothing to discourage it.
Alex Jones' lawyer claimed in court that what Jones says in his radio shows is just an act designed to manipulate the public. In other words, it's all dishonesty.
The European Union favors multinational giants in agriculture — no wonder over 1/3 of the farms have disappeared since 2003.
Americans need to be educated about what science means and why we need it for understanding how the world is.
Students, sometimes supported by faculty, are imposing censorship on some US universities.
Precisely because the troll uses bullying and censors those who oppose him, we need to reject censorship.
US thugs have a long history of teaching children to report on their parents.
Resistance to this recruitment is important, but I hope young people will see the difference between snitching on your parents for using pot and reporting theft.
We should not let sports teams extort public money for their stadiums.
It would be useful to have state laws that prohibit city governments from directly contributing in any way to the construction of stadiums.
Virginia legislator Mike Mullin proposes to narrow the intake of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Groups of right-wing fanatics are circulating lies to justify a future campaign to massacre progressives.
Multinational corporations are lobbying all around the world to pay less in taxes.
The result is that (1) we pay their share, or (2) our governments are impoverished and can't carry out their responsibilities, or (3) a combination of the two.
United's bloody removal of Dr. Dao should not be blamed on the algorithm that selected him rather than some other passenger as the one to remove. It was the fault of United executives and managers that chose the policy of pulling passengers off planes by force.
What US national parks will look like in 2050 if we don't stop global heating.
The UK plans to cancel the citizenship of Assad's wife.
She is clearly supporting a tyrant, and may be guilty of some crimes. But it is always wrong to strip people of their citizenship for crimes.
Greenland's Zachariae Isstrom glacier is breaking up. Over time, this will raise sea level by half a meter.
That is in addition to the sea level rise from other sources, which is predicted to be up to meter by 2100.
Of course, other un-predicted melting could occur too.
The enemies of Assad are in many cases just as bloodthirsty as he.
"Leaders such as Turkish president look at Trump and Putin and conclude democracy can be made to be what you want it to be."
The referendum was not held in a free and fair way.
A shrinking glacier in Canada caused the Slims river to disappear completely in just four days.
Why poor Americans use check cashing services and payday lenders. It's not that they are unaware of the costs.
Overall, it seems that they are living so close to the edge of being broke that they are constantly pushed around by short term necessity. They can't afford to deposit checks in a bank that won't charge a fee.
The solution to this is to make things better for the poor.
When the CIA threatens to destroy Wikileaks, it threatens freedom of the press in general.
How Google, Facebook and Amazon subverted the internet and converted it into a platform for massive surveillance monopolies.
At the practical level, the "war on drugs" is implemented in a racist way. When Sessions says he wants to "bring it back", it means he wants to accentuate the racist repression of it.
It's easier to understand what white privilege means if we recognize that there are other dimensions of privilege and they all operate simultaneously.
"Most of the world's nuclear warheads are now in the hands of men who are prepared to use them."
Human-caused global heating is on the verge of going faster than all natural events in the entire 420-million-year record of past climate.
Canada says all the right things about global heating, but in its actions it continues extractivist policies.
Erdoğan seems to have has succeeded in changing Turkey's constitution to give the president power to do what he likes.
The vote was close, and the opposition says it will challenge a large fraction of the votes.
Everyone: join the March for Science on April 22.
Everyone: demand justice for the anti-Trump protester that was mauled by thugs while handcuffed and pinned down.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block gay-hating Mark Green as Saboteur of the Army.
Analyzing bureaucratic rhetoric: the tricks used by United Airlines and thug departments everywhere to evade culpability for mistreating people.
This form of rhetoric is designed to create the impression that the abuse was the inevitable action of a system for which no one is responsible, so the victim did the abuse to perself.
Rigidly idiotic US consular staff demanded an interview with a baby to see if it was a terrorist. The baby was unable, however, to answer their questions.
The callous practices of consulates, including unlimited delays, often ruins people's travel even when there is no particular suspicion.
Combining this with the practice of making airline tickets nonrefundable shafts people doubly. Most people cannot afford to buy new tickets if a visa delay stops them from traveling.
Activist nuns are pressuring for an investigation of the root causes of Wells Fargo bank's practice of cheating customers.
The acting saboteur of civil rights in education is opposed to civil rights.
The problem US blacks confront goes deeper than the poverty that increasing numbers of them grow up in and spend their lives in. (After all, that's happening to whites, too.) They still experience the aftereffects of discriminatory law (first slavery, then segregation), which propagate from generation to generation. The US and various states owe compensation to the descendants of people who were victimized in that way, and the compensation has to be enough to undo the lasting harm.
As for education, ideally we would provide every child with a good education and a safe, unstressful environment to learn in. We don't have to use race as a rough approximation for having a disadvantage. What this requires is money, but we could get it easily if we defeat dooH niboR.
This 2013 article by Richard Falk has been cited as an example of "antisemitism".
There is nothing antisemitic in that article. It criticizes US policy towards the Muslim world and towards Israel, and it mentions the extent of political influence that Israel exercises on US politics (through its lobbying arm, AIPAC, whose conference was recently protested by many American Jews). But there is nothing in Falk's article that expresses any attitude about Jews.
Falk points out that various Israeli officials have also described the occupation as a policy of apartheid.
Falk condemns Palestinian war crimes, too, to the extent that the Palestinian Authority asked him to resign from his UN post.
Notwithstanding these facts, an organization called "UN Watch" cited Falk's article as supposed proof that Falk is antisemitic while calling for the UK to expel him.
Republicans have eliminated the retirement funds set up by some cities.
Drone assassinations killed lots of civilians when they were run by Obama with restraint. Because we didn't take that power away from him, it has now been inherited by the new inhumane bully as president.
Maryland will locally replace the funding for Planned Parenthood that the US government has cut off.
SCROTUS and the troll have attacked women's health care 6 ways.
Philosophy in India treats Dr Ambedkar's ideas as untouchable.
Today's right-wing, including the Republicans, demonizes George Soros and attributes to him almost magical powers to defend free elections and freedom of speech.
The FCC proposes an absurd definition of competition between ISPs, designed to allow them to gouge customers.
That reflects the general policy of Republicans to help business against Americans.
In the US, cities with more immigrants show increases in wages.
It is possible that immigrants increase wages in a way that would work for everyone if everyone did it. But it is also possible that immigrants increase wages in a city by pulling good jobs away from other cities.
Labour pledges to make large companies show full tax returns.
The troll is quietly planning to reopen US coasts to oil drilling, in cahoots with oil company lobbyists.
The cheater has cancelled his pledge to reduce US interventionism.
US citizens have strong and pressing reasons to care what is in the troll's tax returns.
[Proposed] Censorship at the [US] Border Threatens Free Speech Everywhere.
A moment of carelessness reveals Iran's strict TV censorship.
In general, the way to keep your children safe from the occasional adult that might want to do them harm is to let your children learn how to handle doing things alone.
Age 9 seems rather late for a child to start walking around the city alone. The children in my elementary school walked to and from school at age 6. This was not in some quiet rural village — it was in the center of the world's largest city, in Manhattan.
Hungarians protested in Budapest against the law to shut the Central European University.
The Hungarian right-wing regime has a strategy of undermining democratic government and human rights in ways that hold short of stirring up strong opposition.
A clever ad-blocker can now detect ads semantically, and even distinguish Facebook ads from the rest of Facebook. Is this useful? Not for me.
I'm not interested in blocking ads from appearing on my screen. I object to most internet ads because they are surveillance systems and I resent being tracked.
Ironically, it seems that this clever ad-blocker allows ads to surveil in the process of detecting them. From my point of view, this defeats the purpose.
As for distinguishing ads from other material on Facebook, why even think about it? Facebook is a surveillance system, pure and simple. The ads do surveillance and everything else does surveillance. To avoid being tracked by Facebook is simple: don't have an account, and block its other surveillance methods.
The aspect of Facebook that does require blocking in a browser is the Like button, which does surveillance even on users that don't have Facebook accounts. But it's not an ad.
The Bahrain Grand Prix car race brings reporters that give repressive state a pretty image. The reporters will be deported if they cover anything but the race.
US citizens: support the Electronic Privacy Act.
US citizens: Call for requiring the troll to consult congress before attacking Syria.
Massachusetts citizens: call on Massachusetts to fund family planning activities.
Stanford University is trying to censor a conference about sexual assault whose organizer wants to use a picture of the troll.
The conference is to consider the Title IX requirements that cover how schools handle accusations of sexual assault.
Everyone: call on advertisers to drop Bill O'Reilly's TV show.
Being used by Facebook tends to be bad for your mental health.
Saboteur of Education DeVos has come to the aid of student loan companies that have been caught taking advantage of the students that borrowed from them.
After Yahoo gave China information about users that were dissidents, it set up a charitable fund supposedly to aid Chinese dissidents. A lawsuit accuses Yahoo of diverting that money to other uses.
The reporting on United's bloody ejection of a doctor seated in his assigned seat has got many issues wrong, often in ways that help diminish United's responsibility.
Indeed Americans tend to grasp at excuses to let companies get away with abuses — including the abuse of making software proprietary.
The Heatland Institute is sending disinformation packets to high school science teachers, trying to encourage doubt about global heating.
The cheater wants to give multinational banks a tax cut even on top of all the tax dodging they do.
Manafort is accused of getting lots of money from pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine while serving as the troll's campaign chairman.
I don't think this by itself constitutes a crime or a treason on the troll's part, but it adds to suspicion there was one.
Christian theocrats in the US have learned to support politicians whose conduct they consider totally un-Christian, if it helps them impose their strictures on the rest of us.
I would not call Bentley a "pervert". I don't think having an affair with someone is wrong, but they say they do. However, using public funds for it is a violation of public ethics.
Uri Avnery doubts that Assad used Sarin recently, because he had nothing to gain from doing so.
A progressive humanist student in Pakistan was lynched by a mob of religious fanatics.
Syrian rebels and Assad are mutually allowing besieged villages to evacuate.
This is a step towards stabilizing their fronts and calming down the war.
The troll has enabled Republican-controlled states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood for women's health care because it does abortions.
A "spiritual festival" in India took place in an area next to and on the Yamuna river, and wrecked the area so badly that environmental remediation will take 10 years and cost around ten million dollars.
Massachusetts citizens: support the campaign for ranked choice voting in Massachusetts.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act.
US citizens: visit your congresscritter to stand for net neutrality.
US citizens: call on congress to demand that the troll get permission before any further escalation in Syria.
US citizens: meet with Congresscritters to support net neutrality.
Please explain that network neutrality should be even stronger: ISPs should not be allowed to take any notice of what is inside your packets.
US citizens: participate in a Spring Break Resistance event.
The troll approved use of a very large bomb to attack PISSI's tunnels in Afghanistan. The bomb's blast is destructive up to a mile away.
Previously, the US had refrained from using this bomb out of concern for casualties to civilians.
The likely quantity of civilian casualties would depend on how many civilians are to be found in the area. One extreme is that the area is deserted with no reason for concern. The other extreme is that it is a city with thousands of civilians within a mile. Does anyone know how it was this time?
Aside from that, I don't think the size of this bomb makes any ethical difference.
Here's what to show Christians that support the troll.
Uber hacked Lyft's ride-management server with phony accounts in order to identify people that were driving for Lyft.
The Republican "budget director" admitted, using Republican code, that he wants to attack progressive taxation, Social Security, Medicare, and other government services.
The troll's "America first" turns out to mean "US military first".
The troll plans to shut down Obama's medical care program by eliminating the subsidy part. Many Americans will be unable to afford it.
One of the few good things that the troll said he would do was to eliminate the Export-Import Bank, which provides public subsidy to businesses. Not surprising he changed his mind.
Chechnya is imprisoning gay men and torturing them — murdering some of them.
If you have a meeting with the troll at Mar-a-Lago, don't eat anything!
Assad has attacked foreign journalists that tried to cover Syria.
US ISPs gave thousands of dollars to a few legislators that have served them well. But that's a tiny fraction of the millions the ISPs will make by mistreating their customers. The legislators should say they were cheated.
California's central valley is attracting commuters who work in the San Francisco Bay area, with the result that local people are becoming homeless.
The Thai military government has banned people in Thailand from communicating by internet with three exiled dissidents.
A California thug that beat up a man for jaywalking is facing a criminal investigation.
Tory underfunding is driving the National Health Service to collapse.
For instance, doctors are quitting because the shortage of doctors has increased their workload. In the struggle to cope with acute illness, prevention has been cut.
Tories hope to destroy the NHS as an excuse to replace it with a US-style system where only those who can pay get care.
Keeping British medical care functioning requires making businesses pay their taxes.
Years of Tory contempt for disabled people has taught a segment of the British public to regard disabled people as nuisances.
Under Title IX, US college students accused of any level of sexual misconduct can be expelled with no chance to defend themselves.
One, who maintained he was harassed by the other, killed himself after he was declared guilty.
Eritrean agents are pressuring Eritrean exiles in the Netherlands.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let the troll weaken the funding system for Social Security.
United Airlines has a systematic practice of ordering passengers off the plane and threatening them with violence.
It's not a matter of a few "bad apples", it's the way the barrel was built that makes all the apples in it go bad.
And it's not just this one company. Big companies tend to have rules that forbid staff to act humanely, because their policy is that the customer is always wrong.
Why are the companies so big? Because the US and other countries make it too easy for companies to merge. We need to keep them small so as to preserve competition. In addition, the "efficiency" they achieve by merging is a nice way of saying "fewer good jobs".
Some states are prohibiting marijuana stores from keeping records of who their customers are.
This should be extended to all stores!
An internet controlled cooking device was working fine, then the manufacturer sabotaged it remotely so as to require communication through a remote server.
US citizens: call on Congress to use the War Powers Act to prohibit escalation in Syria and Yemen.
The Tories have run out of ways to impoverish people who are unable to work or excluded from work, so now they are impoverishing hard-working people too.
Both kinds of cuts are wrong. The Tories tried justify the former by demonizing people who can't work. Now they have to demonize people who work but get low pay.
The overall aim of Tory policy is to enrich the rich as much as possible and damn the harm done. They don't admit this, but the facts show it is true.
Uganda spits on freedom of speech with the arrest of someone for insulting the president.
Lead bullets don't have to hit you to hurt you — or animals.
San Francisco thugs that shot Amilcar Perez-Lopez in the back and killed him will not be prosecuted.
Sadly, Sean Spicer's Hitler Comments Serve as a Useful Distraction for Trump.
The ACLU explains what is unjust about "extreme vetting" for people visiting the US.
Anthony McDaniels of Chicago was arrested by thugs and imprisoned on their testimony, but it seems they were lying and just wanted to harass him and take his money.
Poisonous snakes kill hundreds of thousands of people a year, but no one keeps track.
This is a lot more casualties than terrorists cause.
The NAACP proposes that electricity should be a basic human right, and thus people should not be disconnected from it.
SCROTUS propose to make the office of Registrar of Copyright a political office so that businesses can have more control over copyright policy.
A series of Republican deregulation proposals: how they would benefit shady businesses (including giant ones) and hurt Americans in general.
This is normal because regulations generally protect the public from being shafted by businesses.
We need to regulate business or it will screw us.
The troll supports a tax break that would enable giant US companies to avoid $300bn in taxes.
The troll has proposed a sneaky way to create an excuse to reduce Social Security, a few years from now.
The existing Social Security tax is regressive, and we could make a better system, but SCROTUS will only want to make it worse.
Hamas is changing to accept coexistence with Israel.
As Palestinians remove the remaining excuses for Israel's occupation of Palestine's territory in the West Bank, will Israel end the occupation?
What it's like for Palestinian families to be raided by Israeli thugs, their tools stolen, and their workshops closed.
Facebook tolerates incitement to violence, when it is from an Israeli and is directed at Palestinians.
Florida thugs beat up anti-war protesters.
Will they be prosecuted for their vicious way of "serving" the public?
Everyone: call on Faux News to fire Bill O'Reilly and stop tolerating sexual harassment.
United Airlines had thugs brutally pull a passenger off a plane so it could it seat one of its pilots instead.
This was not a case of overbooking, and pulling a passenger out of per confirmed assigned seat is legally not equivalent to denying boarding.
The CEO of United responded with typical corporate PR manipulation, even telling lies about the poor 69-year-old doctor, until public condemnation made him back down.
Many media outlets publicized the passenger's irrelevant previous criminal history, nothing really horrible, to smear him.
The incident illustrates the point that companies shouldn't be allowed to decide their own "terms and conditions".
If United had kept offering higher and higher rewards for someone to switch to another flight, it would probably have found a willing taker eventually.
There was no reason, under the circumstances, why the thugs should have done what United asked. But I would guess that they didn't give it a second thought. The airlines have the principle that "the passenger is always wrong", and the thugs tend to be people who put a high value on authority and making people obey any sort of authority.
United's high-handedness follows on from the TSA's high-handedness.
Pairs of Android apps can collude to transmit personal data to servers. A study found tens of thousands of pairs that collude.
The troll made lots of promises to voters, and has gone back on lots of them already.
In the US: protest on April 15 to demand that the troll release his tax returns.
The troll and his men have no idea what their policy is regarding Assad and Syria.
Destruction of coral reefs could cost humanity a trillion dollars, not to mention hundreds of millions of dead people, and thousands of extinct species.
Noel Conway, dying of motor neuron disease, will have a chance to plead in court to arrange to die when he chooses.
Instead of growth, economics should aim for a world in which everyone thrives.
A UK undercover thug has been accused in court of planting weapons to frame people.
Sessions is trying to escalate the War on Drugs.
Sessions is going to abolish the Commission on Forensic Science so that the US can keep jailing people based on junk science.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block arms for Salafi Arabia until it cooperates with aid for civilians in Yemen.
I'd rather cut off arms for Salafi Arabia entirely, but this is a step in the right direction.
50 American women a month are shot dead by men that they were in relationships with. All in all, this is a considerably bigger danger than terrorism, though not as big as cars or tobacco.
(I use the word "partner" only to refer to business ventures.)
Evidence from blood of the deceased, and from the empty warehouse that Assad's air force attacked, shows that the former were poisoned by Sarin and that it didn't come from supplies stored there.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act and the Corporate EXIT Fairness Act.
US citizens: Call on Democrats in Congress to cosponsor the Social Security 2100 Act.
Philippine Death Squad Whistleblower Arturo Lascanas Flees to Singapore.
Too bad the US also makes its whistleblowers flee into exile.
UK politicians foment hatred towards refugees and the state makes them live with rats. Despised for not speaking English, they have to beg for English lessons.
The brutality of shari'a law manifests itself in a part of Indonesia where the state has given extremist Muslims permission to impose that on the population.
Leaked emails show Shell's CEO knew he was approving a large bribe for Nigerian high officials.
An Irish judge had the good sense not to hold a school liable after children fell down while running in a school yard and one broke her arm.
Attempts to find institutions at fault for accidents are driven in the US by the fact that poor people have no medical coverage to pay the cost of treatment. In Ireland, they don't need to sue to pay for their medical care. The US should follow Ireland (and every European country, and Canada) and set up Medicare for All.
The troll is escalating various US wars, bombing more often in several countries, and killing a lot more civilians.
ACLU explains how the troll's bombardment of Syria was illegal under US law without Congress's approval.
It should be noted that Obama's initial stated motive for intervening in Libya was to protect civilians — but this morphed into a campaign to depose Qadhafi. The troll's initial stated motive was to punish (and could morphed into a campaign to depose Assad).
A punishment, even if deserved, is not as pressing as protecting civilians.
"Global Britain", the right-wing plan for getting out of the European Union, means a bank and arms merchant for global dictators.
China conceals the number of people that it executes.
Disguised lobbying groups connected with big pharma are publishing AstroTurf ads against laws to reduce drug prices.
Food service workers in the US now feel compelled to hide their union organization activities.
Activists have launched a series of protests in banks that fund oil pipelines, where they drop oil on one of the protesters.
They clean up the oil before leaving.
North Carolina plutocratist legislators propose to give agribusiness substantial immunity for damages done through polluting practices.
If they only have to pay for the physical the damage they cause, and only to the fraction of victims with the means and time to sue, they will intentionally continue the practices.
The European Parliament reproached the agreement that allows Europeans' personal data to be shipped to US companies even though they don't protect privacy according to EU law.
The cost of cancer treatment in the US is toxic — it kills patients.
The Justice Department reported that over half of the times that DEA thugs seized people's money, it had nothing to do with any criminal investigation. The thugs took money because they could.
New York State will no longer charge 17-year-olds as adults.
The article also points out that nowadays there are few decent jobs a person can get with a criminal record. In effect, the record destroys a person's life, and there is no way out except crime.
The troll is considering stationing nuclear weapons in South Korea, or assassinating North Korea's troll.
Storing nuclear weapons in South Korea would be a gesture, since the US can hit North Korea with nuclear weapons from the sea already. Whether the gesture is likely to do good or harm, I can't guess.
Assassinating the troll of North Korea would throw North Korea into total confusion. We can't predict what would happen then. Even if North Korea is not yet in position to retaliate with nuclear weapons, it would probably end the truce and resume actively fighting the Korean War.
New York State is planning to eliminate tuition fees in city and state colleges, for students whose families are not wealthy.
This is an important thing to do, but society must also provide a decent life for people who aren't able to graduate from college.
Australian wetlands have been contaminated by coal dust from a nearby coal export terminal.
This happened because of a powerful storm. Storms happen normally, so one must expect it to happen again. One thing global heating tends to do is cause more powerful storms.
Protests often succeed in changing the general public mind, which is a crucial preparation for changing government policy.
The Taliban in parts of Afghanistan have authorized polio vaccination.
It was very dangerous of the US to hide its search for Osama bin Laden behind the mask of polio vaccination.
Utopian Thinking: Free Housing Should Be a Universal Right.
The article gives too much legitimacy to a supposed "free market" principle, but that is not a matter of principle at all. Markets are a useful system, and we should use them where they give good results. Where they are harmful, we should not let them cause suffering.
Moreover, it is a mistake to assert a privilege for the "free" market. every market is based on certain rules, and there are many legitimate ways that the rules could be chosen.
Global heating is killing the Great Barrier Reef right now. Scientists say the reef is at "terminal stage".
A $15 Tax Bill Nearly Cost a Family Their Home. If the Republicans get their way, that will happen to many families. But not wealthy ones.
Gibraltar the tax haven and smuggling hub harms the UK and continental Europe alike.
A major Bolivian environmental protection NGO received an order to remove its massive research library from the university in Cochabamba in 48 hours. When the organization said that was impossible, the rector demanded immediate removal and threatened to have students attack the organization (and destroy it, presumably).
It is apparently because the organization criticizes the state's oil extraction.
Why Tax Resistance Under Trump Needs Its Antiwar Edge.
An election was held in Kashmir, but hardly anyone voted. They protested instead.
Hungary is on the verge of adopting a law to make the Soros-funded Central European University move out of Hungary. Large protests opposed this.
The ruling right-wing party has undermined democracy to the point that it can do basically whatever it wishes. But it has mostly held back from doing things that arouse great opposition.
25 years ago, even right-wingers wanted to avoid global heating disaster. One who did so now reports that the world economy keeps growing even though human CO2 emissions are not increasing.
That point is important, but the article also repeats errors that right-wingers have always done for the benefit of the rich. For instance, he talks about how fast the "average Briton" is getting richer, when in fact most Britons are making ever less. Apparently he divides total income or total wealth of everyone in the UK by the number of people there, and gets a number which is rising because the rich are getting more.
The main US newspapers ran 18 articles praising the missile attack on Syria and none criticizing it.
UN Ambassador Haley asserted the US now intends to fight for regime change in Syria.
The troll criticized previous presidents for getting the US into such quagmires. It was one of the few good things he said. I guess we should not be surprised that he has abandoned it.
The troll is moving ships in a way that suggests a threat to attack North Korea.
This is potentially a dangerous game.
A study reports that one hour a day using social networks correlates with a 14% decrease in overall happiness, for children in the UK.
This does not prove the social networks make children unhappy. They could be turning to those networks because they are unhappy.
The UK is faced with preserving many historic church buildings that are no longer wanted as churches.
I suggest converting these churches into condos, preserving the outside structure and some particularly interesting parts of the inside. This has been done in Boston.
Dorit Rabinyan basks in the light of Israel's politically-based rejection of her book for the national school curriculum. Her book was alleged to promote a threat of encouraging mixed marriages.
Who should young Britons blame for exit from the UK? Old people, the many who voted for it? Or themselves, the many that did not vote?
Both, of course.
It is vital to recognize your own errors, to learn to do better. But that's no reason to let others off the hook.
America's Health Care System Forces Citizens To Turn To Crowdfunding To Survive.
As long as few people do it, it can work for many of them. However, I don't think millions of sick Americans are likely to find enough money this way to pay for their treatment.
Some US states continue to resist the US plan to turn drivers licenses into national ID cards.
The iPhone 7 has DRM specifically to brick it if anyone other than an authorized repair agent fixes it.
The term "lock" is inadequate to describe this sort of malware. Let's use other words that show what's really going on.
Endangered species protection has saved many species. Here are some new examples.
It can continue to do so, as long as we keep up doing it, and as long as the threats are what we have known in the past.
However, when global heating messes up nearly all the ecosystems on Earth, our protection measures will be unable to cope with that. And we won't have much attention to spare for that when we can barely keep most humans fed.
In the long term, California's aquifers keep draining. Wet years don't replenish as much as people take in dry years.
Driverless cars will have trouble dealing with many problems in the surrounding environment, which human drivers can recognize without difficulty.
Don't try using them in Iraq, for instance — they don't recognize shells exploding.
Young Americans increasingly long for a 1950s world in which the men work full time and earn enough to support the whole family, while the women stay at home.
I can understand the appeal of that, in comparison with today's world, in which a couple must both work full time, if they can find work, and even that barely supports a family.
Why have things got worse? Part of the responsibility lies with plutocracy and business-supremacy treaties, which have knocked down wages in real terms for most Americans. Part of it lies with the fact that we are taking from the Earth's ecosphere above its rate of regeneration. Global heating is going to reduce everyone's standard of living, except the rich if they can buy their way out of their fair share of the damage.
The ethical way to shield yourself partially from the effects of this is to avoid having children. The way to fix the problems for real is to defeat plutocracy.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for US states to find drugs to execute people with.
Since I think the death penalty is wrong regardless of how it is carried out, I am bemused by the focus on side issues, such as which people are fit for execution and which are not, or the method to be used.
An indigenous group in Canada rejected a billion dollar offer that involved accepting a natural gas export terminal. Their salmon run, and their global ecosphere, are worth far more than that.
Bravo!
President Maduro of Venezuela banned opposition leader Capriles from politics, nominally for 15 years.
This is the act of an arbitrary government, and can't be justified.
He continues arresting opposition politicians.
What makes me sad is that the opposition is right-wing, and its intention is to surrender the country to the multinationals. I can't see a good outcome in any direction.
On the issue, in Paraguay, of permitting reelection of presidents.
Allowing a president to be reelected is not necessarily bad in itself, but it can be part of a scheme to suppress democracy.
With highway blockades just about the only form of protest that the major media notice, Minnesota is moving to punish them prohibitively.
Australia cancelled the visit of Bassem Tamimi, Palestinian nonviolent protest leader and human rights defender.
Feed the Starving? Guns Are the True Cause of Famine.
Most farms could use a lot less pesticide and produce the same.
Pandas began eating bamboo 2 million years ago, but they still have not properly adapted to digesting it.
Apple is being sued in Australia for illegally bricking devices that had been given "unauthorized" repairs.
That practice is illegal in Australia, and in the US as well.
British Columbia has prohibited employers from requiring women to wear high heels.
I support this policy.
Democrats can't win in West Virginia as long as they keep pretending that self-described "job creators" will make it prosperous.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote on bombing Syria.
Michael Cox, on resigning from the EPA, says that Saboteur Pruitt arouses the derision of the staff.
Alas, that is probably what he wants to do.
Bombing Syria was the troll's "wag the dog" moment.
Others support my guess that his real motive was to distance himself from Putin in the public mind.
I think that a president who will launch missiles for political reasons is very dangerous.
The troll's bombardment of Syria was illegal because he did not ask Congress for permission.
Congress would probably have given permission, but that does not excuse him for not asking.
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban toxic paint-stripping chemicals and make manufacturers switch to the safer alternatives.
Everyone: call on Nebraska to block the Keystone XL pipeline.
Rich Americans have a much longer lifespan than poor Americans.
It is 14 years longer for men, and 10 years longer for women.
A big contributor to this is that poor people are denied necessary medical care in the US.
Republicans to American workers: If you can't make us richer, we are arranging for you to die.
Bombing does not make the troll "presidential".
The US has backed off from demanding Twitter identify anonymous dissidents that work in US immigration.
Bernie Sanders: Although Assad as a war criminal is not entitled to complain, bombing Syria can put others in danger.
California's long drought is over, but global heating will bring further droughts, even longer and worse than this one.
Scientists have figured out why global heating causes extreme weather in temperate zones.
The UK government appears to have cooperated with Rio Tinto mining to block a visit by a victim from Madagascar to the company's annual meeting in London.
I distrust on principle all "offsetting" schemes and all claims by companies that they protect the environment in some subtle way. Big companies have so much temptation to falsify these things, and so little scruple about doing so.
Nine-year-old Ridhima Pandey is suing the government of India for exposing her to future global heating that will result from the government's present policies.
There is a substantial chance those policies will kill her, so her lawsuit is quite justified.
US citizens: State your support for Sanders's planned Medicare for All.
Two former Israeli security chiefs warned that Israel is drifting into tyranny.
Readers of this site will have seen that Uri Avnery has chronicled Israel's advancing repression of its citizens for years.
The troll is strewing the government with officials that advocate torture and want to imprison people without trial until the US ends a war (i.e., forever).
If the US wants to call them prisoners of war, it should treat them according to the Geneva Conventions.
Gorsuch auditioned for the job of Supreme Court saboteur with a series of dissenting opinions showing plutocrats he was their man.
Most Americans have learned to reject the tiny threat of terrorism as an excuse for massive surveillance.
Employees in the US are surveilled intimately.
We need laws to protect employees privacy from their employers. If more employees had unions, they could stop this on their own.
Guber says it will leave Seattle if drivers there are allowed to unionize. The drivers say that would be victory.
They only work for Uber because they feel compelled to do so to compete with other drivers, so if Uber disappeared, they'd be safe.
How about passing laws requiring all transportation options to permit getting a ride anonymously and paying cash? That would drive Uber away for sure, and good riddance!
The market game worked tolerably well in the age when masses of workers' work was needed — with the addition of regulations and social welfare programs to take care of those who couldn't possibly work. In the age where millions of people can't do any work that gets paid, we have to change these rules.
However, it is a mistake to evaluate society in terms of people's chances of getting into the top 20%, or top 50%, or top 5%. No matter how we arrange the rules, only 1/5 of the people can get into the top 20%. The right criterion is how well the people in the bottom 20% live.
We all need freedom as well as material things. When the article uses the term "open source", it neglects that aspect of what software does to its users.
Google Play sends app developers the personal details of users that install the app.
Merely asking users' "consent" for this is not enough to legitimize it. We know that most users have given up on reading just what they are "consenting" to, and the reason is that they are accustomed to being told, "If you want to use this service, you must consent to blah blah blah."
To truly protect people's privacy, we must stop Google from getting this personal information in the first place!
Guber drivers are suing Guber, accusing it of programming its software to cheat them and passengers through misinformation.
Some US thug departments are making systematic efforts to avoid killing — and it works! Instead of shooting people dead, they arrest people alive. Even people who really are dangerous.
Who could possibly dislike this? Sessions can. More generally, Republicans with simmering anger against minority groups or poor people can resent not having the chance to kill someone.
A bill in Arkansas to allow parents to leave children unsupervised from time to time was defeated.
Any parent who doesn't act as if leashed permanently to per children is at risk of imprisonment.
The troll launched 60 cruise missiles against one of Assad's air bases.
The troll's pretense of caring about Syrian children is completely incredible.
This also raises the question of what his real reason is. Perhaps he is looking for a public way to give the impression he's not friends with Putin.
I am not sorry for Assad or his soldiers. There is some sense in sending Assad a message to "stop using chemical weapons", if it does not mean continuing to fight him (which would have the problem of whose victory one is fighting for).
The president should have to get permission from Congress for such attacks.
Mining magnate: "We all had slavery in our supply chains."
Some in Australia propose to deploy cooling systems to protect a few often-visited parts of the Great Barrier Reef.
Coral reefs are needed for more than just tourism. They are essential for many species to survive, including many that humans eat.
At least the discussion of the issue will remind the public that there is a serious problem. Australia must throw off the dominion of the planet-roasters, then cut down rapidly on its carbon emissions.
The US border thug agency has demanded Twitter identify the users of an account that makes critical posts and identify themselves as disaffected government employees.
The US owes its existence to anonymous pamphleteers who condemned the injustices of the (British) state. The right to anonymous publication is just as important today.
Republicans changed the Senate rules so that Supreme Court nominees cannot be blocked by filibuster.
Putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court will do lasting harm to the US.
Democrats have gained something by trying their best to block Gorsuch. The Republicans will suffer the odium of having changed the rules to force him through.
The US border thugs, their impulse to cruelty now unleashed by the troll, are deporting unauthorized immigrants who were previously accepted and leaving their US citizen children behind alone.
Maribel's dilemma may become easier to resolve as Republicans continue changing the US to be more like Mexico.
It would be dishonorable for these children to legitimize the cruelty that has been visited on them. They should chant frequently, together, "Shame on Republicans. Down with Republicans."
Proper scientific study of medical or neurological differences between males and females must separate the variable of sex from others such as body weight and life experiences.
A one-day general strike in Argentina protests falling real wages.
Rep. Nunes, citing critics, has "temporarily" got out of the way of the investigation of ties between the troll's team and Russia.
A bipartisan bill in Congress proposes to curb "forfeiture", which is a de-emotionalized term for "thugs take your property on some random accusation without ever trying to prove it."
Bills in Congress would take away loopholes that multinationals use for tax-dodging.
Do you think Republicans will support them?
The progressive candidate recommended by Correa narrowly won the Ecuadorian presidential election.
The Israeli state plans to make a list of people that advocate boycotting products of Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. A thousand Israelis protested defiantly saying, "Add me to your list".
They showed real courage. It's safe for me to advocate this boycott in the US, though recent politically biased laws now penalize any company that follows the boycott. In Israel, its supporters face real repression. Under a law passed a few years ago, anyone advocating such a boycott in Israel is subject to essentially unlimited financial penalties — as much as any inhabitant of the colonies wishes to impose.
Israel designated Palestinians' land a "nature reserve" so they cannot grow anything. Just now it uprooted olive trees planted there.
Nature reserves are useful, but an occupation government has no right to impose such decisions on the occupied people.
An appeal court ruled that existing US nondiscrimination law is violated by workplace discrimination against homosexuals.
I suppose this will go to the Supreme Court, but the argument seems valid to me.
For many Americans, it's Medicare or death. Politicians take notice.
Left-wing criticism of Israel often seeps over into antisemitism. This article analyzes the border zone.
Interview with Diane Nash, leader of nonviolent protest against racist US laws.
The same day that Tom Price bought stock in pharma companies, he also called an official of a pertinent agency to lobby against changing the way Medicare reimburses them.
The official was at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation.
Russia Bans Picture of Vladimir Putin in Drag.
US citizens: support Sanders's plan to extend Social Security.
How much damage will the Keystone XL pipeline be responsible for?
The pipeline, if built, will transfer around 30 million barrels of oil per year (83 thousand barrels per day). That is 0.086% of current oil consumption.
The pipeline is planned to operate for 50 years, long enough to reach visible disaster. Thus, its oil will be responsible for about .086% of the damage. The responsibility is shared by the mines where the oil is extracted and the plants that burn it, so let's say 1/3 of the responsibility falls on the pipeline.
The disaster is likely to destroy most of humanity and most of humanity's goods. We can estimate the size of this disaster as roughly equal to the economic value of all of humanity's possessions. That is around 360 trillion dollars.
.086% of that is around 310 billion dollars. 1/3 of that roughly 100 billion dollars. That is a rough estimate of the economic damage that the Keystone XL pipeline will be responsible for. It amounts to about 2 billion dollars a year, if they keep it running for 50 years, but breakdown of society may make that difficult before 50 years from now.
Thanks to Michael Hannon for finding these data.
Dutch Men Walk Hand in Hand for Solidarity After Gay Couple Attacked.
The UK is rationing glucose blood test strips. This puts diabetics in danger.
A tax increase can save their lives.
Smoking Causes One in Ten Deaths Globally, Major New Study Reveals.
In 2015 that amounted to over 6 million people killed.
New Brunswick Becomes First Canada Province to Offer Free Abortion Pill.
This is very wise — considering the costs of each additional human being.
Neighborhoods of poor people are often "food deserts", but non-rich people who remain in a gentrified neighborhood find it is a "food mirage" — the fancy stores no longer sell the staples that they can cook every day at home.
If the UK leaves the EU, it will in desperation allow the US EPA to regulate its food safety.
Even under Obama, the EPA had a tendency to surrender to business. Republicans are taking this to extremes. That's a danger to Americans, and if Britons don't cancel the decision, it will be a danger to them too.
"Robots & AI Will Likely Claim Your Job, Sooner Than You Think." The article predicts that 75% of Americans will lose their jobs by 2025.
The article mentions that 45% of working-age Americans are permanently out of work. That figure includes disabled people and people caring for family members; I don't think, however, that the fact that they don't have paid jobs reflects an economic failure. However, a substantial part of them have given up on finding work, and that is a real failure.
Republicans and Democrats are equally opposed to the government's elimination of the weak FCC rules for ISP privacy.
Hindu extremists in India murdered a man who was driving a truck containing cattle.
Such gang violence is spreading in India with encouraging from governments and the governing Hindu-nationalist party.
In the US, right-wing extremist movements they use immigrants and homeless people as the targets, and Muslims. In India they use Muslims and Christians as the targets, and sometimes Dalits. But it's the same tactic.
"I tried to represent an undocumented man rounded up by ICE. I couldn't even find him."
Why You Shouldn't Be Comforted by Internet Providers' Promises to Protect Your Privacy.
The right regulation for ISP's handling of data about customers' browsing is that they should forget it instantly, never showing or even keeping a copy.
Assad seems to have dropped Sarin on a rebel-held Syrian town.
I would not put it past him to do that, but I have to wonder why he would do it. It makes little difference to the military situation, but spurs international condemnation of him. What does he think he has to gain?
I agree that it is important to punish a state that uses chemical weapons so as to discourage other states from adopting the practice. But what practical method is there to punish Assad? Only a big escalation of the war could do that, and that in itself would be a crime. And what force in Syria could deserve support in fighting Assad? The Arab rebels are Islamists, even when they are not al-Qa'ida or PISSI.
The only entity that deserves support is Rojava, but Syrian Arabs would not tolerate being part of a mainly Kurdish statelet. In the absence of an Arab force to ally with, there is no realistic way to punish Assad. There might perhaps be someone in his part of Syria to propose as his replacement, but that proposal would not be practically possible.
In the long term, perhaps Rojava could inspire a similar secular democratic movement among Syrian Arabs. But that would take years.
Erik Prince's new company is a sort of Blackwater for China.
The troll removed Bannon from the National Security Council.
That will hamper him from pushing the US into an unthinking war.
Russia wants to follow China in crushing the internet as a vehicle for dissent.
Russia proposes total surveillance of social networks.
The US government has disconnected its wars entirely from the people. It doesn't need public support for wars with few casualties, and it ignores public opinion entirely.
The low casualty figures are partly because most of the killing is done with drones.
Republicans promised they wouldn't repeal the legal requirement for insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions. So instead they propose to allow insurance companies to charge an arm and a leg for treatment for preexisting conditions.
It has the same result, but it's more deniable.
Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia are prosecuted as "extremists" because they are pacifists and decline to join state propaganda activities.
The Snyder-imposed government of Flint, Michigan, is hounding residents to pay old water bills that were charged for poisonous water.
Immigration thugs have a policy of capturing witnesses in courtrooms and deporting them. This undermines justice for everyone.
The Protecting Data at the Border Act would protect US citizens from arbitrary searches of their digital devices or service accounts as they enter the US.
Human rights apply to foreigners, too. I think foreigners should have a way to ask, before they buy tickets, whether the US would demand to investigate them in any of those intrusive ways. If the US says at that time that it has no wish to do search, then that foreigner would be treated at the border like a US citizen: searching per devices or accounts would require a warrant. If the US says at that time that it might search devices an accounts, it is not too late for that foreigner to decide to stay away.
US universities have been ordered to use unfair procedures to adjudicate accusations of rape, or unwelcome touching. They fall way short of our standards of criminal justice.
Historical precedent suggests we are propelling Earth to "palms in the Arctic" levels of heat.
British comedian Frankie Boyle skewers the troll. Example: "If the Queen ever has to shake Trump's hand, she will put on so many gloves she'll look like Mickey Mouse." I was laughing out loud all through it.
However, I had trouble understanding one sentence because of a confusing pronoun: "Admittedly, any expert psychologist will tell you that torture does work, but only if you first threaten them with bare electrical wires."
Who here are the people to be threatened? They could only be the victims — but that would seem to assert that torture works, and surely that wasn't what Boyle intended. Eventually I figured out that "them" was used confusingly as a singular pronoun, an ill-advised practice. Boyle should have written, "threaten per with bare electrical wires."
US citizens: Support the People's Budget.
US citizens:
tell
your senators to reject Gorsuch because of his complicity in
torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Here is more information about what he did.
US citizens: stand for network neutrality.
Please do this even if you have done it before.
Mexican State's Drop in Crime Seemed Too Good To Be True. In fact, it was true, and it was caused by allowing drug traffic.
It seems the War on Drugs is as futile and destructive in Mexico as it is in the US.
Many homeless families in the UK are being housed in remote places from which it takes a long time to get to school, daycare, work, or even a supermarket.
This is the result of long-standing Tory policies, accepted by B'liar as well, that have reduced the supply of housing available for this purpose and encouraged speculation in apartments.
At least the UK still has a policy of giving homeless people housing. Except when it offers people housing that they can't live in, and then uses that worthless offer as an excuse to wash its hands of them.
The US, for the most part, tells people and even families they can live on the street and be harassed by bigots (some of whom are thugs).
Global heating and its effects are changing the genetics of species around the world, affecting their behaviors, their metabolism, and in some cases their shape.
In many cases this adaptation is due to loss of genetic diversity, since it takes much longer for new diversity to arise. Many of these species won't be able to keep adapting to further change at the same rate, let alone the faster changes we must expect a few decades from now.
The troll's "grab the pussy" tape won him support from people who felt powerless and took it to mean, "I'm so powerful I can get away with anything." They enjoyed the vicarious feeling of power. How pitiful.
I fear this is the Republicans' strategy to overcome the demographics that work against them.
The troll's business ally in India is also a right-wing extremist that threatens human rights.
A US high school won't let Bryce Maine choose his grandmother as prom date, because anyone over 20 is considered a threat to the graduating students' safety.
Remember when teenagers said not to trust anyone over 30? Now the school says not to trust anyone over 20.
Senior prom is one of those occasions on which people are pressured to waste their money on foolish luxuries. Do you actually need to spend that money to discover that it isn't important?
Iceland will require companies to prove their pay rates do not embody gender bias.
The FBI and various thug US departments are systematically using face recognition to recognize masses of people. In some cases, they match everyone they find.
New York City is preparing to match the faces of everyone that drives in and out of the city.
This creates a danger of total tyranny. I think Stalin is a better comparison than Hitler. The practice should be illegal.
No one (and that includes the FBI or any thug department) should be allowed to keep photos of everyone, or a large fraction of the population, neither alone nor in cooperation with others, nor allowed to take photos of everyone that passes a certain point or object except under a very specific court order.
Scott Gottlieb, nominated as Saboteur of the Food and Drug Administration, was paid by pharma companies while he condemned measures to stop companies from selling opioids.
The problem of opioid addiction seems to be the result of the harm done by dooH niboR and plutocracy in general, so the real solution is not in restricting availability of opioids but in changing the factors that lead so many people to want to drug themselves into insensibility. However, Gottlieb is evidently inclined to sell out and should not be an official.
The US plans to demand that travelers give access to their email accounts, meaning basically all their private communications.
This would apply even to people that don't need a visa.
It would be anxiety-provoking to plan a trip to the US and face the danger of being denied entry and losing what you've already spent on the tickets. Don't expose yourself to this — stay away from the US.
I fear that if the US does this, other countries will follow. The US introduced the nasty practice of demanding fingerprints from visitors, and already several other countries have adopted the practice, meaning that I will never go there again.
For the UK, leaving the EU implies sucking up to every tyrant with money, even Salafi Arabia.
UK's "Need" for trade deals will be an excuse to ignore human rights in other countries, as well as workers rights both there and in the UK itself.
The head of (renamed) Blackwater met with an associate of Putin to set up a secret communications channel between the troll and Putin.
Removing the UK from the EU is an excuse to give billionaires "freedom" from regulations that make them pay decent wages and protect us from them.
The European Parliament voted to ban use of palm oil for biofuels.
Amir Taaki, British developer of Bitcoin software, went to Rojava to help the Syrian Kurds. He wanted to help them technically but they conscripted him as a soldier. Since he returned to Britain, the UK treated him as suspected terrorist, giving incoherent reasons, and refuses to let him travel.
Maybe they want to stop him from contributing to Bitcoin software.
The troll refuses to tell the American people how many US troops are fighting in Iraq and Syria. It states a number which is false.
Only whistleblowers will tell us how our government is fighting wars, which reinforces the point that democracy depends on whistleblowers and we must do away with any and all surveillance that threatens whistleblowers.
Ethics Laws Will Sideline Jared and Ivanka (from giving the troll "advice" about several important issues).
Gambling machines are so addictive that many gamblers feel frustrated when they win.
It is an absurd idea to prohibit gambling, but the modern practice in which the state promotes gambling is an attempt to compensate for the tax revenue that companies and the rich have learned ways not to pay any more.
Painkillers are also addictive, and many Americans choose the one for the same reason they choose the other: loss of hope for anything better.
That's because America does not create any good jobs. Plutocrats won't let Americans have good jobs; they want all the income for themselves.
In the next decade, soon automation (promoted by plutocrats) will get rid of many of the existing good jobs.
We Americans had better set up a progressive government before plutocrats kill us.
The troll's support for nearly all tyrannical regimes has encouraged repression and puts human rights defenders in greater danger.
In Europe, national governments will tax car manufacturers and use the money to pay for emissions testing. The manufacturers will no longer pay for it.
We should do this with testing of medicines, too.
The cheater put his business into a trust, but he can secretly get any amount of money out of it whenever he wishes.
Carter Page, former advisor to the troll, is accused of giving documents to a Russian spy in 2013.
New York City thugs infiltrated Black Lives Matter protest groups so as to read their communications, while making videos of them to intimidate them.
We need to teach thugs that condemning their violence is a form of defense of law and order.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali criticized Muslim women who don't fight to free women living under sexist Muslim regimes.
People have the right to practice a religion, but no religion justifies denying human rights to anyone.
I don't agree with the position, attributed to her in the article, that mosques and Muslim organizations in general are a "conveyor belt" to terrorism. For instance, I don't think that those with a Sufi alignment do that. I suspect that Salafi-aligned ones do that.
US immigration thugs held Rony Chavez Aguilar in immigration prison for three weeks, with no warrant, while denying him the opportunity to show a judge that he can't be deported because he is a US citizen.
The Tories have found an excuse to push some more children into poverty: cut welfare support for children after the first two.
The world's population is still increasing, so it is important to adopt policies that reduce the birth rate — but not this way. Punishing parents after they have children is too late to influence their decision, and taking it out on the children is totally unjust. Children don't choose their parents, so they can hardly deserve poverty because of anything thy did. Growing up in poverty can stunt their mental and physical development permanently.
The first step should be to make sure all potential parents have access to effective birth control, and to counteract the natalist pressure they feel. Meanwhile, we can provide more support to people that adopt existing children rather than making new ones.
Even in generally democratic Tunisia, disrespect towards Islam is treated as a crime.
The West's advice to the pieces of the Soviet Union, based on neoliberal ideology, led most of them into great inequality and great poverty, with a decrease in economic activity. It proves to have been very bad advice.
In reaction, Russians turned from democracy to a strongman. Not that he is really doing very well in making ordinary Russians wealthier.
Best Buy management knew that its employees were collaborating with the FBI to search customers' equipment.
Republicans seek to make Medicaid require a drug test, or even exclude people without jobs.
More and more Americans have no jobs, because the economy has no room for them. They are not included in the official unemployment rate because they have given up looking for work (usually because they know full well they wouldn't find any).
More and more Americans turn to drugs to escape from despair. I can't understand them — I felt plenty of despair, but the idea of becoming an addict was never tempting. But it's a fact that they do. There is never a justification for imposing drug tests, except when a driver appears to be dangerously intoxicated.
This scheme amounts to a plan to kill many poor Americans, which will be an increasing fraction of Americans as the plutocrats reduce the share of income that goes to everyone else.
If your relative dies because the rich made per poor or denied per medical care, think of it as murder. Indeed, why not hold the funeral as a protest rally? Go out on the street chanting, "Republicans murdered my ____".
This is not to claim that Democrats are necessarily better. We should select the ones like Sanders that oppose plutocracy, and reject the ones like Clinton that support it.
Russian disinformation seems to be preparing for a possible invasion of Lithuania.
US citizens: call on your senators to cosponsor the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act.
US citizens: call on congressional Democrats to campaign for Medicare for All.
US citizens: call on the EPA to investigate collusion between EPA staff and Monsanto.
US citizens: call for banning trade in shark fins in the US.
Many species of shark are endangered by this practice.
New York City insists on treating Lisa Davis and Lisa S Davis as the same person, even after they have both explained the problem.
One is white and one is black. The black one gets frequent fines from the racist state for a variety of tiny offenses, which remain on the other one's record and threaten to mess up her life.
This case joins many others to demonstrate that pleading guilty to try to make trouble go away can blow up on you. They offer you a deal and they don't tell you the fine print.
I wonder if Lisa Davis can get her name changed to Lisa Other Davis while letting Lisa S Davis keep their own shared official identity.
The troll wants an advocate of mega-mergers as the saboteur in charge of anti-trust enforcement.
Disney World seduces half its visitors to wearing trackers that monitor their every move.
Even nastier, they demand people's fingerprints. For that reason alone, don't go!
The article says that nowadays many theme parks demand visitors' fingerprints. Can anyone send me more information about that? For instance, the names of some other parks that do that?
The US ambassador to the UN boasted of making other country's diplomats afraid to mention Israel's colonies in Palestine's territory (the West Bank) and December's UN resolution that the US didn't veto.
The troll's agents in the FCC are trying their best to let prison phone companies gouge inmates and their families mercilessly.
The people that run those companies will exploit any loophole, even one that doesn't exist (because it will work until a court says it isn't valid). Prisons should not be allowed to charge prisoners for their phone calls within the US — calls are so cheap that there is no point in doing so.
Corporations Use End User License Agreements to Create a Parallel Legal System.
EULAs should be denied legal validity. More precisely, any contract that companies say you agree to in order to use a product you have bought should be automatically void.
Don't assume people can't live without accepting EULAs. I have never accepted one — anything that has an EULA, I refuse to use. You can, too!
Jewish Voice for Peace posted a smear article that was published by the Israeli government.
Here's what JVP has to say about it.
Here's the smear itself.
Reading between the lines, we can see the usual Israeli practice of saying its critics are "anti-semitic" (or even criminal), when really what they are doing is criticizing Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Some are condemned for participating a Palestinian human rights lawyers' group, Al Haq. Ms Wilkommerson was arrested for trespassing in office of the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces. By any chance, was her presence there a nonviolent protest?
One point that is true is that various US states have passed laws against any sort of boycott of Israel, even the boycott I support of products made in Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
Israel has given up on convincing American Jews to support the occupation, and now seeks rather to repress whoever wishes to oppose it.
UK welfare cuts will "will push a quarter of a million children into poverty". For Tories, that's considered a step forward.
It will also be a disaster for people whose relatives die. One man with cancer needs to die by Wednesday or his family will lose around $60,000 over a period of time.
Russia has censored the web to block calls for anti-corruption protests.
The Russian state considers corruption a vital industry and protects it at the expense of human rights.
Outrage Makes You Feel Good, But Doesn't Change Minds.
Right-wing Christian congresscritters cite the bible to argue against giving food to the hungry.
Anyone who's poor doesn't deserve help, according to their kind of Christianity. I wonder if it's same the perverse Christianity that believes that "good" people get the divine reward of wealth.
US workers have been showing for years what causes them to die of despair. It's the companies that have destroyed their jobs.
The "centrist" Democrats failed to offer them a serious hope, so they gave the troll a try. I hope they are sane enough in two years to recognize how he betrayed them.
It appears that the troll is reneging on federal support for students that were led into debt by private colleges that cheated them.
Naturally he'd want to do this, since he ran such a "school".
Tom Price, Saboteur of Health and Human Services, seems to have committed insider trading when he was a congresscritter.
The Tories are cutting welfare for single parents, disabled people, young adults, and widows.
Meanwhile, prices of all sorts of products are rising.
Last-resort help for those at the edge of the abyss is disappearing.
These cuts, to be followed by more cuts and more cuts, will force millions of Britons into the workhouses that have already been approved.
This is to reduce taxes on those who inherit houses.
This prediction is a simple extrapolation from what the Tories have been doing for the past 7 years. Step-by-step impoverishment of the non-rich is the Tory way.
US citizens: call on Nunes to resign as chair of the House Committee on Intelligence.
US citizens: call on all Democrats running for office in 2018 to support Medicare for All.
The EPA disregarded its own scientists and rejected a petition to ban the brain-damaging pesticide chlorpyrifos.
The EPA did that sort of thing under Obama too, which reflects the fact that Obama was a right-wing Democrat rather than a real liberal or progressive.
The troll ordered Department of Energy employees not to use the term "climate change".
Ironically, the term was adopted because Dubya's officials ordered employees of some departments to stop saying "global warming". The term "climate change" makes it easy to duck the fact that the change, overall, is going in one specific direction.
Employees are still permitted to use the terms "global heating" and "climate mayhem", which give a clearer idea of what is really happening and what its results are likely to be.
8% of the adults in the UK can't afford to eat properly. That's Tories at work.
Here's a list of Republicans that voted to allow ISPs to sell information about their customers' browsing.
The FCC's ISP privacy regulations were inadequate for real privacy, but that is no excuse for replacing them with nothing.
Economists studying real-world data found that industrial automation in the US is already eliminating jobs massively and driving wages down.
This particularly hits the white workers without college degrees, and may explain the cause of their epidemic of suicide.
It is probably the reason why most of them voted for the cheater, giving him enough votes that Republican voter-suppression could deliver a fraudulent "victory".
Gary, Indiana, illustrates what happens after automation destroys the good jobs in racist USA. The whites were able to leave; the blacks were stuck there amidst the decay.
Now automation is coming for the whites as well.
Anonymous internet payments using pay phones.
US citizens: tell Congress to preserve Title X funding for contraception and other family planning.
Massachusetts citizens: Tell Massachusetts legislators not to launch a war on marijuana.
Everyone: call on KitchenAid to stop sponsoring golf tournaments in the troll's golf course.
US citizens: 16 non-Republican senators have not committed themselves to filibustering Gorsuch. Two of them are even thinking of voting for him.
If one of them is your senator, please phone per office now to insist on a filibuster. Say that Gorsuch threats such gory damage to Americans that it is their duty to fight to the end.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Pocan-Amash-Lieu-Jones letter, which calls on the US to justify its support for Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen.
An artist is facing condemnation for making a painting of murdered Emmett Till while being white. This condemnation is in the name of a supposed "principle" that certain topics are the property of certain groups, and that no one else has the right to say anything about them. If they do, that is called "cultural appropriation".
We must reject this "principle" in the name of intellectual freedom. No topic belongs to a specific group; anyone has the right to comment on any topic.
If you think a person lacks the understanding to comment intelligently and wisely about on some topic, you can say so.
A lawsuit against the troll, for egging on his supporters to attack some protesters, will proceed. The judge rejected his arguments for dismissal.
Laura Kipnis wrote a book about her experience with the forces of prudish censorship and repression in the university where she teaches.
Washington has loved military dictators for decades, but the troll loves al-Sisi to an amazing degree.
President Do-dirty's murder campaign failed to make Davao safe from other criminals. Nor for the former thug that testified he killed 200 people under Do-dirty's order.
Their standard practice was to kill witnesses too.
Tory tax cuts show that dooH niboR still rules Britain.
Right-wingers got clever in the 1980s. They make a tax cut that saves lots of people a little bit, but mainly benefits the rich. Then they make cuts that screw a fraction of the non-rich. Then they say, that most poor people are better off &mdash just a little. But not enough to compensate for the falling wages.
A law passed in 2016 makes torture illegal. Will the troll manage to make the US a torturer again despite that law?
The troll plans to cut foreign aid, which will cause economic loss as well as suffering around the world.
Laura Lee, Northern Ireland sex worker and law school graduate, is suing to overturn the law that makes it a crime to hire her for sex.
It is ironic that one of the harmful effects of the law is that clients don't call her from their personal phones, so she cannot identify them. The danger of being arrested is hardly the only reason not to have a call to hire a sex worker in your phone records. If I were going to hire a sex worker, I wouldn't do it from my own phone. I wouldn't want her to know my name, not unless we had a deeper relationship than just sex.
The reason I have never hired a sex worker is that I look for an affectionate relationship, not solely sex. I recognize "You'd have to pay me to have sex with you" as a rejection, so I am not interested in her.
There is a push to extend copyright power in the US.
This is dangerous, and totally false to the legitimate purpose of copyright (to benefit the public with more works).
The troll's plans would pressure young Americans to join the army.
A Spanish woman was convicted of cheering for the assassination in 1973 of Franco the dictator's designated successor. The court ruled this was "glorification of terrorism"! But the killing of tyrants is rebellion, not terrorism.
Franco committed massive terrorism. After the final success of his military coup, when the Spanish Republic had surrendered, he had tens of thousands of its supporters killed as prisoners.
ETA has committed terrorism on other occasions, but not that one.
Several European countries have raided the local offices of Credit Suisse, as well as their own citizens, looking for the fruits of tax evasion.
The state of Georgia fights hard to keep the official version of its laws copyrighted and unavailable to the public.
The rich are not wealth creators, they mooch off the people who do the work.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Access to Legal Counsel Act.
US citizens: oppose two bills, one designed to provoke conflict with Iran, and the other that would ban US companies from boycotting products made in Israel's illegal colonies in Palestine.
US citizens: call on state legislators to stop ALEC from voiding cities' minimum wage laws.
US citizens: phone your senators to
filibuster
to block Gorsuch.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A study suggests that many white males, without college degrees, are dying of despair because they have no hopes of a good job.
If this is true, the fact that some of then die using opioids is a secondary detail. It is plutocracy that is killing them.
US Jews protested at Israel's pro-occupation lobbying group's congress.
FBI agents who immigrated from some suspect Muslim countries are constantly at risk of being railroaded out of the agency simply for following the rules.
Right-wing media campaigns are harassing nonpolitical US government employees, trying to make them resign in favor of extremists.
The troll is putting more US troops in Syria, but we don't know how many or what they are doing. Neither does Congress.
The Koch brothers are lobbying for a chance to rewrite the whole US constitution.
To do this in an age of plutocratic power would surely result in a far worse constitution.
Economists urge Ecuador not to go back to plutocratic government.
It's impossible to shift Colombian farmers from coca to some other crop as long as subsidized crops from the US undercut them in everything else.
The Australian Automobile Association found that new cars on sale now give 25% worse fuel efficiency than they claim to give.
100 men in Papua New Guinea are on trial for murdering people they accused of being witches.
Americans stopped doing this around 300 years ago, but superstition about witchcraft are still dangerous to people in many parts of the world.
Russia is putting Tatar dissidents in mental hospitals by force, and accusing them of "terrorism" based on no evidence.
The troll's sabotage of our climate defense plans has now been fully launched.
Global heating is likely to kill billions of people. We have no way to estimate more precisely than that, but it is clear that this sabotage is likely to increase the death toll by hundreds of millions if not more. It could make the difference between killing two billion and killing nine billion. (The current population is around seven billion, but humans, madly, are still increasing it.)
His saboteurs are steadily deleting scientific data collected by years of Arctic research, while also planning to stop the research itself.
Even if the research is resumed in 4 years, which won't be easy if the equipment has been destroyed and the teams dispersed, the loss of the past data would spoil some possible uses of the future data. Even the interruption will make that difficult.
I can imagine denialists' arguing, "Your conclusions are wrong because you tweaked the data from before 2017 when comparing them to the post-2020 data", a step which will be necessary because the new equipment constructed in 2021 won't be exactly identical to what the saboteurs are tossing in the trash now.
If you are thinking about having children, meditate on the fact that the troll's attack on our ecosphere is likely to kill them before they are old.
Tom Price, Saboteur of Health and Human Services, seems to have committed insider trading when he was a congresscritter.
Venezuela reversed the ruling that stripped Congress of its powers.
A thug was sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing a 6-year-old. The boy and his father were in a car and the father had his hands up.
Thugs in Paraguay raided the headquarters of the main opposition party and killed one of its activists.
Pence's Vote Delivers Death Knell to Family Planning Safeguards (that require states to fund Planned Parenthood).
Women will die from this, and babies will be born with birth defects.
A lot of military veterans become thugs, and some of them tend to be violent toward the public.
Diversity Doesn't Make Racism Magically Disappear.
Some states are working on laws to replace the incomplete ISP privacy rules that the Republicans just got rid of.
The Minnesota bill will change little; ISPs will simply arrange for nearly all users to "consent". To institute real respect for privacy at this level of internet use, one has to go further. For instance, to forbid ISPs to make note of, or tell anyone, anything about a user's internet traffic, except under the authority of a specific court order.
See Surveillance vs Democracy for more about the issue.
Democrats ask Gorsuch to help them find out who is funding the political ad campaign in favor of his nomination.
US cruelty towards immigrants now extends to arresting them when they visit a government office to apply for permanent residency, accompanied by their US-citizen spouses and children.
Two Arab journalists are suing to be removed from the official United States assassination target list.
They say that they were included in the list by an algorithm. In effect, by a killer robot. Here's more info.
What this shows is that an "unbiased" algorithm does not necessarily imply it is doing the right thing.
Uri Avnery: Terrorists are often made in prison.
We'd be safer if we put fewer people in prison. Perhaps it is impossible to eliminate prisons, but we could make them smaller.
Some SCROTUS now say that years of campaigning based on repealing Obama's medical insurance plan was a sham.
You can't assume they are telling the truth about anything, including this. Maybe they seriously intended to repeal it, but never thought it through; now perhaps they'd rather say they never meant it than say they were defeated.
Those Indecipherable Medical Bills? They're One Reason Health Care [in the US] Costs So Much.
Japan's pervasive racism measured: 40% of foreigners living in Japan have faced housing discrimination.
The US has racism too, but has made stronger efforts to try to stop discrimination.
Japan goes to great lengths and great expense to keep killing whales, even sending naval patrols to keep Sea Shepherd away.
British young adults 18 to 21 are planning a large protest on Sunday against the cuts that are likely to make them homeless, or dangerously thin.
It's a Housing Class War as the Tories Set Their Sights on Young People.
Flynn asked for immunity from prosecution in exchange for full testimony about the relationship between the cheater's team and Russia.
Depression Is Leading Cause of Disability Worldwide, Says WHO Study.
The amount of depression has increased 20% in the past decade. It would be interesting to know what caused this.
The League of United Latin American Citizens, and OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, were lured into attacking Americans' privacy by Comcast's money.
It is impossible in practice for consumers to eliminate nasty EULAs by "voting with their wallet". Only regulation can do the job.
Regulations create the opportunity for class-action lawsuits to enforce them.
North Carolina has repealed part of HB-2, the part that forced transsexuals to use only bathrooms for their birth gender, but at the same time it has reinforced the ban on anti-discrimination protection for gay or queer people.
In 1970 America had many black-owned businesses, even banks; but most of them disappeared after Republicans smashed anti-trust law.
Acosta as Saboteur of Labor would knock down minimum wages and subject workers to unsafe conditions.
The troll is making Americans more insecure, regarding the big dangers that most Americans face.
Prosecutors got evidence that Bannon committed voter fraud, then decided not to prosecute him.
Perhaps Republicans are only really concerned about voter fraud by hypothetical Democrats.
The Brazilian congresscritter that organized the impeachment of President Rousseff has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Global heating is shifting the ranges of many species, while others can't move; when pests, disease vectors and pollinators shift, that messes up ecosystems.
Russia Investigation Heading Toward a Train Wreck Because Republicans Don't Care What Happened.
The troll is dragging the US into an inhumane war in Iraq and Syria.
The US must stop using bombs against PISSI fighters that are using human shields. Bombs are too powerful. There are other weapons that can be used, that won't destroy the whole building.
Venezuela has taken away the powers of the legislature (now controlled by the opposition) and given them to the presidency. This means that democracy in Venezuela is openly at an end.
Ivanka Trump's role in his administration is to lead people to expect him not to do his worst.
Gay rights activists say that the troll's officials are working to undermine gay rights in many little ways.
South Australia will install an enormous solar power system together with enormous batteries it can use solar energy at night.
The article describes the batteries as "100 megawatts", which is the wrong dimension to measure the capacity of a battery. But this sort of project is what the world needs — and not just in one place.
Taxing disposable cups could be an effective way to encourage reusable cups.
Domestic Abuse Should Be Punished More Severely Than Non-Domestic, [UK] Judges Told.
The argument seems valid to me.
The troll decided to ignore Bahrain's repression and sell it fighter planes anyway.
Bahrain has no real need for fighter planes, but the sale will enrich some of the troll's cronies. That seems to be his principle arms policy goal.
The US claims to support human rights and democracy around the world. This has been partly false for a long time, but there is a kernel of truth in it. The troll is getting rid of that kernel of truth, and doing it so blatantly that associating the US with human rights or democracy will be seen as ludicrous.
That won't help global human rights, though. The rivals of the US are no friends of democracy or human rights.
Noel Conway, dying slowly from motor neuron disease, may have to commit suicide long before it is time, so that the UK will not imprison his family for helping him.
I wonder if there is a technical solution in his case. If he hooks up, while still able, a machine that will inject him with a lethal dose if three days go by without his pushing a certain button, he will be able to commit delayed suicide, but no one else will have triggered it.
Perhaps his friends would be punished for helping him construct it. There seems to be no limit to how far "authorities" will go in imposing the torture that they have legislated.
The troll's deportation campaign has terrified immigrants, so that they no longer dare complain when employers cheat them.
Perhaps that is the substantive motive for the crackdown: to facilitate exploitation of workers.
Global heating has been relegated to a low profile in Europe's politics.
EL Salvador has banned mining for metals.
In El Salvador it is probably unfeasible to regulate mining adequately to protect the environment. Even the US doesn't seem to be able to do it.
Censorship in Russia is vague, with no clear rules, so artists generally self-censor.
The Tories want to use exit from the EU as an opportunity to quietly "tweak" lots of laws while bypassing Parliament.
We can all imagine what kinds of changes Tories will sneak in: weakening human rights, deregulating business, and reducing taxes for the rich.
Kansas Republican legislators have decided never to let a Democrat get credit for bringing a bill to the floor of the house.
Who will pay for the troll's frivolous border wall? The troll wants to make people around the world pay with their lives and health.
The UK will not prosecute the thugs that piled on Julian Cole and broke his neck and ended his life as a person. (His body remains "alive".)
This is a common pattern, to let thugs get away with crimes.
Rep. Nunes cancelled any more hearings in his supposed "investigation" of ties between the troll's team and Russia. There are signs this was because Sally Yates, former attorney general, was going to testify.
Why does Yates need a public hearing in order to tell us what she knows? I have not seen any explanation offered, but I am sure she could say it to a reporter and reach the public just as well.
Amal Clooney reminds people to preserve evidence of PISSI's war crimes for the sake of future prosecution.
Alia Ghandi arrived from Iran to visit her sister, a US citizen. Border thugs put her in jail and won't let anyone talk to her. They also refuse to say why.
As Trump Complains About Alleged Surveillance, Republicans Gut Internet Privacy Rules.
That's a Republican for you. "Mistreat powerless people, not elites like us!"
Senator Wyden plans legislation to limit searches of phones and computers at the US border.
Republicans in Vermont just banned fracking in that state.
Amazingly, Republicans can actually do a good thing once in a while.
The Dead Sea catchment basin had a megadrought 120,000 years ago, coinciding with a period of temperatures considerably warmer than now.
Global heating may give us a repeat of that.
A Taiwanese human rights activist was disappeared while visiting China.
SCROTUS voted to let ISPs sell customers' browsing data, and did so with no conceivable pretext, thus demonstrating the extent of plutocratic corruption in the US government.
All the demand for this vote came from the ISPs that want to profit from it.
A student at Rollins college was suspended for saying he felt unsafe in class after another student talked about beheadings under Shari'a law. The suspended student was judged to have made the professor feel unsafe by saying this.
The people that made covert videos and edited them to present false accusations against Planned Parenthood face criminal charges for that.
Is it possible to reduce great inequality without a drastic war?
World War II was not very violent inside the US, but it did reduce inequality in the US. Maybe this suggests a way to find a method that doesn't involve violence somewhere else, either.
If the great inequality keeps growing, it will lead to violence far worse than any world war.
Waikiki is forcing homeless people to move somewhere else by arresting anyone that sits or lies down on the sidewalk.
The result is 83% fewer homeless people in Waikiki. That would be a great achievement if it were achieved by helping people get housing — but it's unexcusable to achieve such a "step forward" through punishing those who are weakest and worst off.
If the homeless people organize, they could hold a sit-in and pack the jails, as civil rights protesters did in the 1960s.
US immigration thugs selected for deportation immigrants who are visible leaders in their communities.
Companies often use feminism the way they use environmentalism — lip service only — and this includes female CEOs as well as males.
British anti-deportation activists chained themselves to a plane to stop a quiet attempt to deport people who were refused asylum.
One says her ex-husband says he will murder her if she is deported.
The troll asked Carl Icahn for advice on eliminating regulations. Icahn suggested ways to increase his own profits.
The thug that killed Eric Garner has a long history of unjustified violence against the public. If the New York Thug Department cared about that problem, it would have fired him long ago.
Better late than never.
Rape victim agrees with judge: warning women to avoid getting drunk does not constitute putting the blame on victims rather than on rapists.
This is a crucial distinction. Making oneself vulnerable doesn't excuse a serious crime, but it is good to avoid.
An Israeli thug beat up a Palestinian truck driver apparently over an issue concerning parking. It is reportedly common practice, but this time it was caught on video.
Sounds like the way blacks in the US are treated.
Mnuchin showed contempt for ethics requirements by plugging his company's product during official business. Compounding the offense, he shows no sign of starting to divest from that company, and his other companies.
Researchers are suing to reject the stretched interpretation of the CFAA that was used to hound Aaron Swartz to death. It could be used to imprison them for their research, too.
New York thugs are being sued for systematically making false charges against gay men who go to the toilet.
UK "charities" for the homeless make them work 40 hours a week for very little money. In effect, they are like a workhouse.
As more Britons become homeless, these low-wage businesses will increasingly undermine full-wage employment, decreasing the number of full-wage jobs. That will make more Britons homeless. The result will be a great success for British employers.
The troll ordered the EPA to "review" (i.e., sabotage) Obama's climate protection regulations.
Japan will restart some unsafe nuclear power reactors.
The troll plans to escalate the war in Yemen, for no other reason than to make Iran unhappy.
Many lone terrorists, both Islamist and Christian, have a background in domestic violence.
This may offer a practical opportunity to identify potential terrorists and take action. It's true that only a small fraction of those who commit domestic violence will be terrorists, but they all call for some sort of action anyway.
"We pay our elected officials to take care of our communities and our planet. Since Trump took office, the GOP has set out only to destroy."
After 12 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes.
Apple should not control what application programs users can install. That censorship is a malware functionality, but it's not the only one that iThings have.
Erdo?an asked Germany to spy on 300 supporters of G�len, but one German state warned the supporters instead.
Paris thugs killed a Chinese man who answered the door without putting down his scissors. He couldn't speak French and surely had no idea who was banging on the door.
Nearly all the European countries are failing to carry out the weak commitments they made in the Paris conference.
Amnesty International says that the US failed to take proper precautions to avoid killing civilians in its recent bombing in Mosul.
"All terrorists are politely reminded that THIS IS LONDON and whatever you do to us, we will drink tea and jolly well carry on. Thank you."
That is the courageous response to a campaign to make a people panic and do stupid things: help each other refuse to panic.
The troll repeatedly fails to oppose right-wing terrorism and bigotry against blacks. Now he has said nothing about the terrorist murder of a black in New York.
More confirmation that the US crime wave from 1960 to 1995 was caused by mass lead poisoning.
The troll's attacks on journalism are giving aid and comfort to attacks around the world.
Since SCROTUS couldn't repeal Obama's medical insurance plan, the next step is for Saboteur of Health Tom Price to mess up the system quietly.
Immigrant domestic workers in Jordan are effectively slaves. If they leave their employers, they are supposed to be deported, but they are often imprisoned instead.
The situation in the UK is almost as bad. The UK generally just deports them.
Suggestions for how to talk with your children about your abortions.
Some women — apparently a substantial fraction — are so traumatized by giving birth, and subsequent social and state pressures, that they feel they went mad for several years afterward.
You can avoid this if you stop at zero children. An abortion is, in general, far less traumatic than giving birth.
Gangs kidnap street children in Vietnam and bring them into the UK where they are forced to work indoors growing marijuana.
A specific solution for this particular problem is to legalize marijuana. However, enslavement of workers happens in many areas of work, so no area-specific solution can get tackle the whole problem.
An experiment will study injecting aerosol into the stratosphere to see whether that can reduce global heating somewhat.
This is not the best way to try to do it. I would do nothing about the other big effect of CO2: ocean acidification, which is likely to wipe out all coral and shellfish.
Another method of geoengineering that could address both problems is to strew minerals in the sea so as to stimulate growth of sea life. Giant icebergs do this to a substantial extent, but we don't need icebergs to dump minerals: ships can do it.
Putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court is an explicit part of a right-wing campaign to destroy the regulations that protect Americans from being crushed by corporations.
Banks are monitoring account records, purporting to identify those who enslave prostitutes through patterns of ordinary activities such as purchases at drug stores and restaurants. These patterns could just as easily show up in many kinds of life and business activities, one of which non-coerced prostitution. If one of them appears in your account, it could cause you substantial trouble.
This is one more of many reasons to pay cash.
Some US states threaten people with years in prison for covering their faces in public. This was intended to stop Ku Klux Klan mobs from terrorizing blacks, but the law applies to solitary individuals too.
Nowadays, the effect of this is to bar people from protecting themselves from pervasive face recognition cameras. We cannot stand for it.
The troll's energy policies are bad for US employment as well as for the climate.
They are great for fossil fool plutocrats, though.
Workers at Santander Bank, from all around the US, are protesting at the headquarters against its bad treatment of the workers and the public.
The latter includes pressuring staff to sell financial instruments that aren't really in the customers' interests, as well as breaking various laws.
Activists are aware of the danger of scarcity of fresh water, but the measures they propose to stop this are totally inadequate.
We need to curb global heating (which makes arid regions drier), and curb population growth (which increases the demand for water).
The troll's attack on the poor is not over.
The Knight First Amendment Institute is suing to get information about US practices in forcing arriving travelers to show what is in their computers, in the absence of probable cause or a warrant.
Just getting more information would not make the state respect our rights, but might aid subsequent efforts to do so.
Theresa "Snooper" May took up the demand to deny Britons strong encryption.
Thousands of people protested against corruption in Moscow and other Russian cities. Thugs arrested them violently on absurd charges.
Those arrested included opposition politician Alexei Navalny.
The EU has permitted the dangerous merger of Dow and DuPont.
Mass protests may not win a fight on their own, but they create power that can change politics.
The worst mass extinction in history was due to global heating that reached an average temperature 14C above current temperatures.
Erdo?an is threatening military confrontation with Greece, to get more votes in the referendum to declare him a dictator.
Protesters Target Connecticut's Uber-Wealthy with 'Tax Bills' in Bid to End Loophole.
The FBI's facial recognition database is "out of control".
I would not criticize it for being wrong 15% of the time. On the contrary, it is dangerous because it is wrong only 15% of the time. If it were wrong more, it would threaten us less. If it were wrong 99% of the time, it would be a lot safer.
Likewise, the way to defend blacks' rights is not by making the system recognize them more accurately, but by making it recognize both blacks and whites much less often.
Hong Kong will prosecute leaders of previous street protests.
I suppose when Lam talks about "reuniting" the population, that means in prison.
I've been told that there are people who are trying to analyze treatment of personal data in terms of toxic waste. The idea seems good to me. Can anyone put me in touch with people who propose that idea? Please write to me at rms@gnu.org.
Finland has conquered homelessness through the "housing first" policy where anyone that becomes homeless is immediately provided with permanent housing.
It turns out that this facilitates helping with whatever other problems person may have.
US farmers are installing cracked firmware in their tractors because that is the only way to fix them.
This is a perfect illustration of the tyranny of proprietary software.
When a White Republican Gets Spied On, Privacy Suddenly Matters.
Technological change is not just technology — it drives political change. Thus, technological advances can make most people worse off.
See also gnu.org/philosophy/stallmans-law.html.
Corbyn insists that Parliament make the detailed decisions about how to change UK law when it exits the EU.
All the nuclear states that signed the non-proliferation treaty are violating the requirement to pursue nuclear disarmament.
The pause in fighting in Mosul is enabling some civilians to get out. They couldn't get out before, because PISSI threatens to kill those who try to leave.
The house that the US bombed may have been an example of a war crime by PISSI, in setting up their gun position on top of civilians. But that was not an excuse for the US to drop a bomb that would destroy the whole house. There were other ways to attack those PISSI fighters; there always are.
Reject the Cruelty of a Me-First Age That Renders the Lonely Invisible.
Muslims condemn Islamist terrorism, over and over and over.
The article's analogy between Muslims and inhabitants of Kent is flawed. No one commits terrorism in the name of Kent. If someone from Kent commits terrorism, that person's connection with Kent is an insignificant detail. However, some Muslims commit terrorism in the name of Islam, so the fact that they are Muslims is crucial. Likewise, some Christians commit terrorism in the name of Christianity, so the fact that they are Christians is crucial.
There is no reason for most Muslims to apologize for Islamist terrorism, since they are not responsible for it. However, it is very important for them to condemn Islamist terrorism, and political Islamism, because that will help steer confused and alienated Muslims away from Islamism and terrorism. It behooves us to highlight their frequently expressed condemnation rather than to deny its existence.
The same applies to Christians in regard to right-wing Christian terrorists. And if some people in Kent start to commit terrorism in the name of Kent, it will be imperative for everyone in Kent to denounce such terrorism.
The troll's intensified bombing of Mosul and Raqqa is consistent with the idea of "non-interventionism" which he said he believed in. He said he would make that war more savage, and he seems to be doing so.
The troll's bullying of the press follows on from Dubya's bullying of the press.
Israel and the US use their clout to impose the pretense that Israel is not practicing apartheid.
Nearly 15% of Female Undergraduates at UT Austin Report Being Raped.
The Government Is "Incidentally" Sucking up Tens of Millions of Americans' Communications a Year, And It's a Privacy Nightmare.
The NSA uses misleading language to misrepresent its practices.
A UK minister proposed to ban companies from offering solid encryption, but the plan was quickly quashed.
Bravo to those that opposed this. The casualties of the small recent terrorist attack on Parliament were insignificant compared to those of the accidents that happen in Britain every day, but those who advocate total surveillance will seize on them as an opportunity.
Nigel Lang's life was damaged irrevocably when thugs accused him of possession of "child pornography" based on making a typo in a search.
It is wrong to prosecute people for "possession" of copies of any sort of works, no matter how bad the making of those works may be.
Riot Police in Belarus Attack Protesters Calling for End to "Dictatorship".
Iraq Suspends Mosul Offensive after Coalition Airstrike Atrocity.
We can't tell whether the troll has made this happen by relaxing rules of engagement.
A Chinese who is a professor at an Australian university was arrested in China when about to return to Australia.
One must suspect this is because something he taught or wrote is officially disapproved of.
China has once again imposed its own agent as chief official of Hong Kong.
The loss of Arctic sea ice could wipe out beluga whales along with polar bears.
The head of the congressional committee that is supposed to be investigating links between the troll's campaign team and Russia snuck off to tell the White House about evidence that he hadn't shown to the committee.
In effect, he betrayed the committee's mission.
Gorsuch helped design legal excuses for Guantanamo imprisonment without trial.
This demonstrates his unfitness to be any sort of judge.
Gorsuch resembles the troll in lacking an aspect of compassion.
One of SCROTUS's last-minute changes to its plan to cut off poor Americans from medical care was requiring mothers to go back to work within two months after giving birth, or else lose coverage.
US law today is so lax on state surveillance that it would permit the president (any president) to arbitrarily spy on political opponents.
We must change the law to restore the rights that the constitution is supposed to give us.
PISSI says that US bombing has damaged a dam near Raqqa, and the dam may now collapse. Civilians are evacuating some part of Raqqa.
Nobody should bomb dams. The US should not bomb dams.
Gorsuch is a judicial extremist — his extremely weak interpretation of the law that offers support for education of disabled children was just overturned unanimously by the Supreme Court.
SCROTUS offer multinational corporations a giant tax cut in two different variations.
Digital interruption devices have taught people to multitask, and now many find it difficult to focus on any one thing.
Progressives have the support of the majority of Americans. We can aim to be much stronger than the Tea Party AstroTurf campaign.
Many US Christians
will
stick with the troll no matter how many of
them he kills, because he appeals to their prejudices.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The Fossil Fuel Industry's Invisible Colonization of Academia.
Energy researchers at Harvard, MIT, Stanford and other universities are funded by fossil fuel companies.
The West's Throwaway Culture Has Spread Waste Worldwide.
The Top 10 Threats to the Most Biodiverse Place on Earth.
A Louisiana thug has been convicted of manslaughter for killing a 6-year-old boy.
His father, the driver of a car, had his hands up, but they shot at him anyway, killing his son.
Singaporean blogger Amos Yee has been granted asylum in the US. He was jailed in Singapore for criticizing former ruler Lee Kuan Yew, but ostensibly for "hurting the religious feelings" of people of some religions.
"Hurting the religious feelings" of people in some group is part of freedom of speech. So is criticizing a current or previous official.
What's the worst that could happen in the US with existing massive surveillance? Terrifying repression.
The Keystone XL pipeline has been "approved" by the State Department, but construction is not really approved. We still have many opportunities to stop it.
Democrats should go beyond defending Obama's incomplete socialized medicine and advocate Medicare for all.
An appeals court in Colorado ruled that fracking must not be allowed except when it protects public health and the environment.
Since the Colorado legislature is pro-fracking, I fear it will repeal the law which the court decision is based on.
RAND study: Russia has a military advantage because it's not fighting as many wars as the US and doesn't maintain 800 foreign bases.
Farm work in the US pays so little that only unauthorized immigrants want to do it.
The US population is growing because of immigration, so we need to reduce either the birth rate (already around replacement level) or immigration.
If these immigrants could not come, the farms would be unable to find workers for the pay and working conditions they now offer. They would have to pay more and offer benefits. The US would have to set up a system that enables citizens and authorized residents to make a living from doing various such jobs.
That is a change we need. But it would make dairy products more expensive — so we would need to provide more money for poor people to buy food. (These changes are needed anyway, and we should fight for them anyway.)
It is a mistake to argue, therefore, that the current economic role of unauthorized immigrants implies they are inherently necessary and that all immigrants should be welcomed.
However, this article does show why reducing immigration is a more complicated matter than simply deporting more people.
Eric Trump contradicted himself in one speech, saying that he will keep the troll out of family business interests and that he will brief the troll on them regularly.
Unfortunately, the only way to make the troll stop violating the US Constitution is to impeach him, and SCROTUS won't permit that.
Tasmania's extractionist government plans to remove protection from most of its forests and encourage cutting them down, even though local wood processors say they will refuse to buy the wood.
Several US states have passed laws punishing companies and organizations that support boycotts targeted at the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
A preschool in Illinois suspended a boy as punishment for bringing a used shell casing to school, and for playing pretend that toys were guns. (No word on whether the other children were playing the same game at the same time.)
A racist terrorist visited New York City to murder blacks from sheer racist hatred.
A US or Iraqi plane bombed a house in Mosul, and over a hundred civilians were buried in the rubble. It appears that PISSI fighters were firing from the roof.
Was it a wrong decision to bomb that house? I don't know enough to judge. In war, mistakes happen; there is no way to avoid them all, but there are ways to make them happen less often.
It appears that rescuers could not approach the house until the buried civilians had died, but I think this wasn't their fault. The house was in the middle of a battle.
Putin, while meddling in the French presidential election, says he wouldn't ever do such a thing.
A study estimates that 10 million jobs in the UK could be replaced by automation by 15 years from now. That's roughly one third of all jobs.
I suppose the situation in the US is roughly similar.
Under a plutocratic state, this will be a disaster for all working people, an opportunity to drive wages and working conditions down, and destroy what remains of unions. If roughly one third of all people die from this, the plutocrats won't mind. Meanwhile, technocrats will admire the deadly efficiency of it all.
In a democratic society, we can choose which kinds of automation to permit. We need to restore democracy, urgently, for this reason among many others.
Advice from Turks about how to resist tyranny.
The Toronto school system will no longer arrange student or staff trips to the US, in response to the uncertainties created by the troll's harassment of visitors.
Climate scientists disagree about whether there is a danger of a rapid release of Arctic methane that would cause fast global heating.
How much should the world bet on the theory that this can't happen?
US citizens: oppose making Jay Clayton head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We don't want another crony to pretend to regulate corporations.
US citizens: state your opposition to proposed laws that undermine funding for unions (and thus tend to eliminate unions).
US citizens: phone 202-688-0631 to talk with your congresscritter and support funding for contraception, in the US and outside.
US citizens: stand for the National Environmental Policy Act.
Everyone: Call on banks not to fund the Keystone XL pipeline.
The wife of an exiled Rwandan opposition leader was arrested secretly, and has been charged with crimes such as "revealing state secrets".
The government of Rwanda has operated in a tyrannical manner for many years.
Wikileaks revealed that the CIA has been putting malicious hardware systematically into iPhones since 2008.
The people suing about getting cancer from Roundup are mostly agricultural workers, but home gardeners may be affected too.
The Senate voted to let ISPs sell users' data to advertisers, even sabotage their browsing.
We have lost this battle, but the Obama-era regulations were inadequate anyway. An ethical ISP should not keep any record of your internet contacts except when ordered to by a court.
A general roadmap to avoid global heating disaster: cut greenhouse emissions in half each decade.
Keeping mind what is adequate will help us avoid distraction with inadequate measures.
Belarus arrested authors, publishers and journalists at a literary festival. Some were tortured.
The UK is sending more Afghans back to Afghanistan even as violence there increases.
The US spreads the idea that violence is ok as long as it is done dispassionately.
Capitol thugs arrested disabled protesters in their wheelchairs.
A man in the US has been ordered to decrypt some disk drives and faces imprisonment for the rest of his life unless he does so.
The mere possession of a copy of any publication should not be a crime.
Two parents in Texas face criminal charges for forgetting their baby on the sidewalk and driving away.
The baby has been taken away from them and will be given to strangers if no suitable relatives are found to care for it.
The UK captured two men in Iraq and handed them over to the US in Afghanistan to be tortured for 10 years. They are suing for damages, and the UK state will defend itself with secret evidence that the victims and their lawyers are not allowed to see.
That's not justice. They can basically get away with making up anything at all.
Anti-vaxxers in Italy led to an increase in cases of measles.
Everyone ought to be vaccinated.
The Tories are being investigated for illegal campaign spending which might have been crucial in "winning" the 2015 election.
El Salvador is considering a bill to legalize abortion in limited circumstances.
It is not enough, but it is at least a step forward.
Imprisoned Turkish journalists report abuses and solitary confinement.
1000 refugees have walked from the US to Canada seeking a chance to apply for asylum there.
Gorsuch showed his pro-business, anti-human approach to law in the case of the (about to be) frozen trucker.
He's so bad that the US Chamber of Commerce loves him.
Thousands of bulges have appeared in the tundra of Siberia, each based on a gas pocket which contains lots of methane.
US immigration thugs targeted Austin for raids to punish the city for its sanctuary policy.
Unauthorized immigrants are already being scared away from reporting crimes committed against them, and they will avoid testifying about crimes.
They will be even more reluctant to report crimes committed against other people, or testifying about such crimes.
The UK threatens to turn into more of a tax haven. Tax havens are bad for their non-rich inhabitants.
The ACLU accuses a US border thug of raping two Guatemalan women at the border.
The Westminster [terrorist] Attack is a Tragedy, but It's Not a Threat to Democracy.
Tories are the threat to democracy.
Neil Gorsuch Is Not Another Scalia. He's the Next John Roberts.
(The first one reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act into vacuity after leading people to think he wouldn't.)
The troll had lawyers threaten to sue a woman for making a web site that made fun of him.
As I understand it, he hasn't got a leg to stand on, but he's trying to intimidate her.
Anne Frank Center Calls For Resignation of Trump Adviser Sebastian Gorka.
Five Creepy Things Your ISP Could Do if Congress Repeals the FCC's Privacy Protections. US ISPs did these things until they were prohibited.
Former Trump Campaign Chief 'Offered to Help Putin Advance Interests.'
Arctic Ice Falls to Record Winter Low After Polar "Heatwaves".
The troll intends to cut EPA funding so we will be in the dark about how things get worse.
Gunshots in the US cause an average of $700 million dollars per year in medical costs. But it is hard to get data to study this, because the gun lobby has persuaded Congress to ban funding the research.
The National Rifle Association says it campaigns to implement the 2nd Amendment, but in practice it operates as a lobbying campaign for gun manufacturers.
David Ben Gurion warned in 1967 that prolonged occupation of newly conquered Palestine was likely to convert Israel into an apartheid state. Other subsequent prime ministers recognized that this was happening, and so did Desmond Tutu.
Today's Israeli politicians say that recognizing this constitutes "Israel-bashing" and "antisemitism."
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect funding for arts and humanities.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Kansas Supreme Court Rules That a Reclined Car Seat Is Suspicious Behavior & Can Be Used by Police as a Justification for Warrantless Searches.
A part of Australia has mostly eliminated its restrictions on abortion, but abortion still requires a doctor's approval.
It makes no sense to make it harder to have an abortion than to have a baby, when the baby is more dangerous in every way. It is more likely to cause the woman injury, illness or death. It is more likely to cause depression. It is more likely to ruin a couple's relationship, over time. It is also almost certain to exacerbate the world's ecological problems.
It is more likely to compel parents to demolish their consciences in order to make as much money as possible "for the baby". If you want to keep your self-respect without the need for strained excuses, above all don't have a baby.
Why Denying Refugees the Right to Work Is a Catastrophic Error.
Putin used the seizure of Crimea for a PR campaign by saying, in effect, that he was making Russia great again.
Global heating is increasing the amount of rain in many parts of the world. In Minnesota "thousand-year" floods have become five-year floods.
The US bombed a school in Raqqa where refugee families were living and killed over 30 people.
Europe's Treatment of Child Refugees "Risks Increasing Radicalization Threat."
Honduras, Where Defending Nature Is a Deadly Business.
This violence was unleashed by the coup, which Clinton at least winked at. After the coup, she supported the coup-installed government in several ways.
I expect the troll to continue this support.
Bike-hires become even more intrusive with a system of rental that tracks all the bikes all the time.
The troll is filling key government departments with military lobbyists.
UK thugs cracked the email accounts of Greenpeace protesters.
Since they had no legal authorization to do this, they could get in big trouble. However, I am confident the Tories will find some excuse to protect them. In their view, laws are tools to maintain their power.
US representatives did not attend a meeting of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which was going to question about them about some US human rights issues.
The troll is showing his contempt for human rights.
SCROTUS have made the bill to repeal Obama's medical insurance system even nastier, to satisfy extreme right-wingers, and the troll is threatening to punish congresscritters that don't vote for it.
Those that do vote for it will be punished by their constituents, when the see how it kills their relatives.
The troll's example of disregard for ethics rules has percolated down through cabinet secretaries and officials.
White House officials plan to meet with a leader in anti-Muslim bigotry.
More information about the electronics ban on some flights to the US.
The rule would increase the danger that a plane could be destroyed by a fire in the hold. The lithium batteries that power laptops are normally permitted only in the cabin.
Others join me in suspecting this policy has commercial motives.
New Pun: President has no heart.
1.5C of heating will start the permafrost in Siberia melting.
That probably means global disaster, eventually.
Many land-rights campaigners in Brazil are being murdered by land-grabbers.
The UK threatens to punish lawyers if they accused a deceased former minister of lying about repression in Kenya before its independence.
US tax accountant companies lobby to stop the IRS from offering a simple alternative.
Suppliers of Lowe's in the US and Walmart in Brazil Linked to Slave Labor in the Amazon.
Faux News fired a commentator for claiming that GCHQ might have snooped on the troll.
If he indeed said "might", then we know it was true.
We know that GCHQ snoops on Americans and gives the data to the NSA and CIA, to circumvent the law that says the latter can't snoop on Americans. (The NSA returns the favor by snooping on Britons for GCHQ.) They must have done this to the troll, because they do this to everyone.
I have no knowledge about whether Obama specifically ordered snooping on the troll.
India is starting the final stage of forcing everyone to submit to biometric identification, excluding people from many activities as well as many kinds of welfare benefits unless they have been identified.
While the people quoted in the article are most concerned for the harm done to those who reject biometric identification, I am most concerned with the harm of the biometric identification system itself. It is tyranny, pure and simple.
A Thousand Miles from Moscow: how Putin Forged his Russian Heartland.
Some US media are rushing to the conclusion that the troll conspired with Russia — and presenting no proof of this.
I think the question needs to be investigated, but really it is a side issue. We know that he "won" the election through cheating. We know he violates the constitution through foreign conflicts of interest and is making decisions to enrich himself. We know he wants to incarnate dooH niboR, and kill many thousands of Americans each year (far more than Islamist and right-wing terrorists put together).
We don't need any more than this to conclude he should be impeached.
The US now requires all laptops to be in checked baggage on flights to the US from certain countries or airports.
Experts can't see how this could make sense for security of the flights. I wonder if the motive is to disadvantage Emirates airline — because it will have that effect.
It's clear that putting your laptop in checked baggage is a risk to your own security. I'd recommend you make a connection in Europe if you are going to any of those countries, rather than check your laptop.
I recommend avoiding Egypt, Turkey, Salafi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, simply to protect yourself from their governments. It is dangerous even to make a flight connection in the airport of Qatar or the UAE.
Bangladeshi leather workers have no protection from toxic chemicals; almost everyone that lives in the leather production district dies before age 50.
The practice is protected by business-supremacy treaties, which forbid the richer countries from banning the importation of leather made without safety gear.
The article dwells on the fact that child laborers are among those being poisoned in this way, but I think that is a side issue; it is no more acceptable to do this to adults than to children.
News reporting should stop reporting so much on what the troll says.
That will reduce the effectiveness of his distraction tactics.
The distraction game is played at multiple levels. Some of the issues listed in that article as things the troll tries to distract us from are themselves secondary, distracting us from issues of primary importance.
At present the main issue is to keep Gorsuch off the Supreme Court.
Don't wait to start resisting the troll's measures for consolidating permanent power.
The troll has put unofficial political commissars into various government departments. The political commissar's job is to monitor what the department does and report back to the troll.
No Africans were present at the African Global Economic and Development Summit, because the US denied visas to everyone that applied.
The FBI was investigating possible collusion between the cheater's campaign and Russia, 3 months before the election.
That the FBI said nothing about this before the election, while casting suspicion on Clinton based on nothing but having another file of mail to look at, adds up to partisan meddling.
We need an investigation of possible collusion between the cheater's campaign and the FBI.
The Pentagon has not been audited for 21 years, and part of the reason is that contractors struggle to prevent the audit.
Could it be that those contractors have something to hide?
How the arms industry stirs up fear of terrorism in order to sell more arms.
19 Republican congresscritters have signed a statement calling for action to curb global heating.
They called it "climate change", a term I avoid because it fails to do justice to the magnitude of the problem.
Pregnant asylum seekers in the UK shun prenatal care, afraid that the NHS will charge them a lot of money.
Asylum seekers in the UK live essentially in penury.
Plutocracy creates an air of legitimacy by disguising itself as a fictitious meritocracy. But even a real meritocracy is not good if it increases inequality.
It does make sense to promote capable people to positions of greater responsibility, because we all depend on having those jobs done well. But this presupposes that they do those jobs honestly.
Atlantic City and Miami Beach look at the future of being destroyed by the rising ocean (global heating) working against the sinking land.
You can preserve any place if you keep raising it, but we can't afford to raise all of America's coast by several feet. The only strategy we can afford is decarbonization.
Ivanka Trump is Complicit in Her Dad's Mission to Get Rich at the US's Expense.
The Sami ("Lapps") in Norway have persuaded a large pension fund to divest from the companies building the Dakota Access pipeline.
The Washington DC thugs violently attacked a protest, and threaten protesters and reporters with ten years' imprisonment.
The state is now collecting protesters' data from Apple and Facebook. (To cloud your mind, those companies like to say that your data is "in the cloud". In fact, it is in their servers.)
It seems that thugs have already looked through the accounts of some of the protesters, through their own phones.
In Russia, people who criticize the state are threatened with exile, seizure of all their property, as well as false charges.
The US isn't as bad as Russia yet, but it is heading in that direction.
Giving workers the right to refuse some imposition is of little benefit to desperate workers who can't afford to refuse anything. And increasingly that's what workers' life is like.
What we need, therefore, are employment rules that put all workers in the position where they can afford to refuse impositions, or where they must at least be paid for their impositions.
If Guber had to pay drivers for all the time they are on call, for instance, they would have the means to be on call less of the time.
Some Republicans now propose an increasing carbon tax to replace specific federal regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I'm in favor of this — but in order to achieve the goal, the tax will have to be big enough to affect most spending decisions. 15 years ago, mostly painless measures could have saved the ecosphere. Now we need to act quickly.
The troll's proposed ambassador to the EU dares to recognize that the Euro is responsible for Greece's suffering.
This is one of the troll's few good sides: refusing to abide by the established neoliberal globalization consensus.
A large protest, mostly peaceful but with some violence, shut down a talk by Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley. The troll responded with a vague threat to cut off federal funding for the university.
I am in favor of protesting that extremist, but against using violence to stop a speech.
The most significant point here is that the troll has stated support for Yiannopoulos personally. He and his associates can no longer deny their ties to his extremism.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Medicare and Medicaid.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the bills to abolish many regulations that protect our health and rights from businesses.
The troll's son, Donald Trump, Jr., was a patent troll.
The US joined with Salafi Arabia to make this year's G20 statement about global heating weaker than previously.
The fanatical colonists of Ariel, in Palestine, tried to launch a prosecution of Gush Shalom for informing international scholars that Ariel is not in Israel. But no prosecution occurred because, it seems, Israel has no law against informing people of this fact.
As repression increases around the world, I accumulate a list of countries I choose not to visit. In some cases, it is just a matter of comfort — they tend to be hotter than I like, and since I have no particular reason to go there, staying away is the cheap and easy method to avoid the heat.
In some countries, I fear repression. Pakistan might persecute me for blasphemy; Turkey might persecute me for condemning would-be tyrant Erdoğan; Thailand might persecute me for recounting an episode in the life of the former king. Egypt's repression forces might imprison anyone, based on a whim or a confusion; they don't need a rational reason. I recommend everyone stay away from Egypt.
Then there are the countries that I would be happy to visit if I could do so without having my fingerprints taken.
But the only country I have reason to expect would refuse to let me in is Israel. I support the boycott of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory, the boycott that Gush Shalom led until Israeli law was changed to reduce to penury anyone advocating that boycott. I would not be allowed entry.
I have visited Israel three times, but now I know there will not be a fourth visit unless Israeli policies change.
I hope that Israel will agree to end the occupation/siege of Palestine, and cease to maintain colonies on its territory. Then the reason for the boycott would no longer exist, so I would no longer support it. Perhaps then I could visit Israel again.
This satire about the troll's budget was recommended seriously by the White House.
The Miami prison thugs who cooked Darren Rainey to death across two hours in a shower will not be punished. The prosecutor decided not to charge them.
Most prosecutors systematically let thugs get away with murder. Shame on the thugs and the prosecutors!
US laws about sex with minors, and sexual images of minors, are inconsistent and make no sense. The purported justifications for them are absurd exaggerations.
Supreme Court rulings allowed rich people to exert tremendous influence in congressional elections.
Gorsuch is likely to push this even further.
The UK government's surveillance camera commissioner warns that a regime of total surveillance and tracking is developing.
To avoid that result will require far more than insisting on the weak limits of current law.
To win back the support of the working class, Democrats have to do more than criticize Republican sabotage. They must support programs to restore democracy and redistribute wealth, as Sanders does.
The Saboteur of Homeland Security demonstrated his total contempt for Democratic legislators, meeting with them only to refuse to answer any of their questions.
The troll's education budget offers lots of funds for privatizing public schools.
Officials refuse to recognize that providing breakfast in school helps children learn. Being hungry all day is quite a distraction from studying.
If we had a proper social support system, it would give children food at home.
Just when the US has been taken over by planet roasters, China is becoming the world leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
In the US, the big corporations control the state. In China, the state controls the big corporations. It seems this makes an important difference.
The troll and his agents are already preparing "emergency" attacks against civil liberties, to take advantage of the next opportunity provided by a terrorist attack whose perpetrator isn't a right-wing bigot.
The party of political Hinduism won the election in India's largest state (Uttar Pradesh), and its state leader calls for repression of Muslims.
That party, the BJP, was associated with a massacre of Muslims in the state of Gujarat. Indeed, Prime Minister Modi was directly associated with that. I fear we will see repression and massacre in Uttar Pradesh.
The Republican Party is the party of Scrooge: the poor deserve whatever harm the rich do to them, because it's their own fault for being left standing in the endless game of musical chairs.
Roy Schestowitz reports being censored ("shadowbanned") by Twitter for posting about Twitter censorship.
This kind of censorship is not obvious to the one being censored.
Technology and business are ready to eliminate fossil fuels, more or less. The main obstacle is the power of the carbon lobby, which operates through manufacture of doubt based on the power of plutocracy.
We must destroy the falsehood-industrial complex before it destroys civilization and most species on Earth.
When the carbon bubble bursts, it will cause a financial crash. But the longer that waits, the bigger the crash will be. Putting this off is much worse than postponing the visit to the dentist, which is only likely to make you lose a tooth or two. It's like postponing the checkup for cancer.
A rather unfriendly article is forced to admit that Minnesota's progressive governor has made things a lot better there.
The tobacco industry developed a strategy to overcome damning facts: a system for provoking doubt about firmly established conclusions. It worked so well that many other businesses adopted it, and last year it enabled brash liars to take over the US government.
The troll continues packing federal agencies with corruption agents. He's turning all Washington into a swamp.
Each week that the troll delays the retirement savings fiduciary rule enables banksters to take roughly half a billion dollars from American savers.
This is an estimate, not an exact figure. Perhaps the real amount is only a quarter of a billion. Or perhaps it is three quarters.
Millions of old or disabled Americans can remain in their homes because of the government's meal delivery service, Meals on Wheels. The troll would like to eliminate this because the military-industrial complex needs more profits.
Simply eliminating the requirement for insurance to cover IUDs will put some women's lives in danger, while driving many more women and children into poverty. It is foolish for any state to fail to subsidize birth control for the poor.
Put together, Republicans budget cuts would kill thousands of Americans. They would be be almost a hundred times as deadly to Americans as Islamist terrorist attacks.
In the longer term, the troll's most deadly act will probably be the continuation of global heating, which is likely to kill billions of people starting a few decades from now.
Saboteur of Health and Human Services Tom Price was confronted by a man whose life depends on Medicaid, which Price aims to rearrange gradually down to nothing.
According to a leak, fired prosecutor Bharara's office was investigating Price for illegal insider stock trading while he was a congresscritter.
The troll's main "counter-terrorism advisor" Sebastian Gorka is accused of joining a Hungarian antisemitic fascist group before moving to the US.
The EU demands Facebook and Google block fraudulent business offers and those that violate EU consumer protection law.
The US needs a single-payer medical system. With people unhappy with Obama's half-way system, yet dependent on it for their survival, we must go forward rather than back.
The Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision assumed that outside political campaign groups were independent, but in fact they often coordinate with the candidate's campaign.
The CFPB makes credit bureaus fix their mistakes, and they make a lot of mistakes.
Small-scale farming, with more people working the land, could restore rural towns as well as the carbon in the soil.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter today to oppose the SCROTUS plan to slash US funds for medical care.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to preserve the Environmental Protection Agency.
US citizens:
tell
the State Department you oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Cleveland has given the thugs that killed Tamir Rice no punishment, and only a dispatcher got a minor reprimand.
The dispatcher made a dangerous mistake, but thugs should not be so quick to shoot anyone.
Qatar refuses to correct the laws that effectively enslave foreign workers. Instead of correcting the system, it covers up.
The real threat to the safety and freedom of Israelis does not come from Palestinians. It comes from the ultra-orthodox Jews.
Their version of Judaism is as unjust towards women as the Salafi version of Islam. Both of them are enemies of human rights.
The ultra-orthodox are trying to take over Israel by overbreeding. There is no reason to permit any group to do that.
Uri Avnery explains why the concept of war crimes, and punishment for them, is essential to stop wars from turning into unlimited massacres.
Syria shows an example of what happens when the laws of war are discarded by various sides in a war. Israel is fundamentally similar, except that the Palestinians, in a weak position, can only commit small war crimes. Therefore, all the big ones are committed by Israel.
A UN agency published a report recognizing Israeli apartheid; the troll pressured the UN Secretary General to demand that the author retract it.
The author refused to retract it, and resigned instead.
US ISPs are presenting legal confusions when arguing to abolish FCC privacy rules.
What the troll's policies have in common is cruelty. (Except to the rich.)
US schools don't teach that the famine that made so many Irish people emigrate to the US was caused by landlords that exported food.
US officials: what we bombed was not the mosque. Look, the mosque is
still there.
Local people: what's still there is
only
part of the mosque.
This has the air of an honest mistake. Mistakes are not unusual in war; they may be especially in war. That's why the decision to fight a war includes the decision to make lots of honest but fatal mistakes.
The troll's budget would make old people go hungry in order to feed the military-industrial complex.
The cheater wants to eliminate the alternative minimum tax so that he won't have to pay tax any more.
Gorsuch believes that corporations are entitled to the same rights as real persons, and is likely to completely eliminate all limits on campaign spending by rich people.
The 'Fearless Girl' Statue Sums Up What's Wrong with Feminism Today.
The UK now has low unemployment, but real wages keep falling instead of rising.
While non-governmental causes play a role, ultimately it is the Tory government that decides to push wages down.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
Congress has recommenced the old practice of imposing drug tests on people collecting unemployment benefits.
This serves no legitimate purpose, but it is handy for manufacturing an excuse to despise the poor. Rich people use drugs too, but they don't need unemployment benefits.
American Law Mistreats Mothers and Pregnant Women in the Name of Protecting Children (or rather, fetuses).
Anyone who is pregnant has a duty to insure that the future human being to result from the pregnancy is healthy — but only to the extent that person is capable of doing. It is cruel to demand a human function to a superhuman standard.
It is extremely dangerous for medical personnel to report pregnant women for prosecution. If they keep this up, women will stay away from prenatal care.
A US envoy met with leaders of the Israeli "settlers" that colonize Palestinian land, thus creating the biggest obstacle to peace.
Under Obama, the US was an ineffective and useless force for peace. It appears that the troll will make the US a force for apartheid.
The troll wants to eliminate the agency that subsidizes low-income housing. This could make hundreds of thousands of Americans homeless.
DeVos says she now loves public schools — but only privatized, unaccountable "public schools".
Since the cheater used to run a for-profit college that cheated students, it is no surprise that he is now acting to promote that kind of business.
Republicans want US thugs to have more military gear.
This would mean more Americans killed through haste, negligence, or heart attacks.
Americans, contact your city government to push for a local law requiring the thugs to get city council approval for all acquisitions of arms or military equipment, regardless of where it comes from. Even if it is a "gift", the thug department should have to get city council permission to accept it.
The troll's saboteur in charge of Medicaid wants to kick most of the children off, and make the program so expensive for patients that they will go bankrupt.
SCROTUS and the troll want to cut the WIC budget which provides food for babies and pregnant or nursing women. The budget is already insufficient, so that some of the eligible people are left out.
7 groups were blocked from entering the US to perform at SXSW.
It seems that immigration thugs suddenly reinterpreted the rules so that "internationally recognized" entertainers must get a work visa even to perform unpaid — and didn't inform people. Even if it isn't racist, it is the act of a jerk.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block Gorsuch.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your senators (each of the two) at 1-844-373-7977 and tell them to block Judge Gorsuch, with a filibuster if necessary.
US citizens: oppose use of pelagic longlines on the Pacific coast; they kill marine mammals, sharks, sea turtles, even birds.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Jay Clayton.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to block Gorsuch with a filibuster.
Everyone: tell Florida's governor to stop blocking State's Attorney Aramis Ayala, who wishes not to seek the death penalty.
US citizens: tell Congress not to shift funds from civilian programs to the military.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject moving funds from civilian programs to the military.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the nomination of Jay Clayton to run the Securities and Exchange Commission.
During and after the financial crisis, he helped banks get big bailouts and avoid responsibility. He should not be in charge of regulating them.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on US media to report fully on the famine in Yemen.
"To defeat terrorists" (I'd say, rather, terrorism), "we have to get inside their minds."
Everyone Loves Bernie Sanders. Except, It Seems, the Democratic Party.
In other words, establishment Democrats are still subservient to the plutocrats and the banksters.
Pakistan asked Facebook and Twitter to identify suspects to be
prosecuted for "blasphemy",
in
order for Pakistan to execute them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
For this and various other reasons, Islamic law is the enemy of human rights, and deserves to be condemned rather than respected.
A mass protest movement is developing against Belarus's repressive president.
A proposed law in Spain would create a special agency to investigate whistleblowers, which would be allowed to disregard the usual protections for citizens' rights.
Citizens of Massachusetts: take action to stop the state law that would punish organizations that support a boycott of Israeli businesses.
Phone Senator Walter Timilty, Senate Chair of the committee (Phone: 617-722-1643) and Representative Peter Kocot, House Chair of the committee (617-722-2140), asking them to oppose this legislation.
Also, if your representative or senator is in the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight, phone that person. Here is the list of its members.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the troll's budget.
US citizens: Tell Congress not to permit sale of fighter planes to repressive Bahrain.
US citizens:
call
on senators to support the Keep It in the Ground Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the troll's partial ban on Muslims entering the US.
Yemen At 'Point of No Return' as Conflict Leaves Almost 7 Million Close to Famine.
Salafi Arabia's bombing campaign is responsible for this, and it is backed by the US.
The troll's budget would cut the EPA by 1/3, a boon for companies that are based on pollution.
Murderous cuts in scientific and medical research.
The Dream of a Paranoid Strongman and a Vicious Scrooge.
Just as dangerous are the increases in military spending. Even if they don't lead to a conventional or nuclear war, they would build up the invincible military lobby to a new level of perpetual demand.
If Trump Were a Clever Populist, He'd Demand Universal Healthcare for America.
The troll depends on billionaires that see all money as "theirs" and want as little as possible to go to anyone else.
Yelp is accused of bias in support of the troll, and against a company suing the troll for unfair competition.
Don't be misled: Sessions has not made peace with state-legalized marijuana, not even close.
Extreme air pollution in China is caused partly by polar effects of global heating.
That exacerbates the effects of the combustion that itself contributes to global heating.
Reversing policies of screwing the poor requires the non-poor to pay more taxes.
Especially billionaires must pay more tax.
US citizens: phone each of your senators to oppose Gorsuch.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
cpdaction.org emailed me this:
Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly ruled in favor of wealthy corporations and against the interests of everyday people. In cases where workers alleged sex, race, age, and other discrimination, Gorsuch sided with the employer in eight of the twelve cases.Judge Gorsuch thinks the rights of billionaire donors to make political contributions deserves more constitutional protections than the right to vote. If given a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, he'd make it harder for everyday people to have a voice in our democracy.
Judge Gorsuch has a troubling history of giving corporate bad actors unchecked power while ruling against protections for people of color, immigrants, women, and their families. He is also a staunch opponent of marriage equality, placing him far outside of the mainstream and on the wrong side of history. We need a Supreme Court that will protect everyone, not side with the wealthy and well-connected. Call 1-888-877-2040 now and urge both of your senators to oppose Gorsuch.
He would endanger access to abortion and even birth control
20 Tory MPs are accused of campaign finance violations.
Judges have blocked the troll's partial ban on Muslims, version 2, from taking effect. This is pending the final decision to be made later.
The troll, and most of the large companies based in the US, don't pay their fair share of taxes. They want to change the law so they will pay even less.
The troll has given the CIA free rein to use drones to kill people, world-wide.
US citizens: call on senators (specifically Democrats) to oppose Gorsuch.
Then phone your own senators (one after the other) via 1-888-877-2040 to tell them the same thing.
People for the American Way mailed me this:
With his history of favoring corporate interests above everyday people, it should be no surprise that the New York Times just reported that Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch has ties to reclusive Colorado billionaire Philip F. Anschutz. Formerly a lawyer representing Anschutz's companies in court, Gorsuch now owns property in Colorado with some of Anschutz's closest associates. Anschutz is reported to have provided funding to both the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, the two far-right organizations to which Trump outsourced the job of creating his list of Supreme Court nominees, from which Gorsuch was chosen.Between his close relationship with an ultra-conservative billionaire and his decisions that have favored corporations and harmed workers and consumers, it's clear that the majority of Americans who want to save our democracy from the influence of big money have a lot to worry about when it comes to this nominee.
The cheater's proposed budget would help businesses cheat poor people, and would protect men that abuse their wives or lovers.
Naturally.
30% of the children in the UK live in poverty. 20% live in poverty while their parents work.
This is the result of plutocracy. New Labour mainly served the rich but helped the poor somewhat. The Tories have pushed hard to drive the poor down.
Another advisor of the troll violated US ethics guidelines with a personal conflict of interest.
US citizens: phone Sessions's office and call for him to resign.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect funding for Planned Parenthood.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose two more of the troll's heating-denialist nominees: Dan Coats for Director of National Intelligence, and Sonny Perdue for Saboteur of Agriculture.
Climate Hawks Vote suggested saying this:
Hi, my name is ____, and I am your constituent calling from _____. I am calling to demand that Senator ____ vote to oppose the confirmations of climate denier Dan Coats for Director of National Intelligence and Sonny Perdue for Secretary of Agriculture. Can I get a commitment to vote against these nominees?
Dan Coats, Climate Denier
Sonny Perdue, Climate Denier
Five Democratic senators voted for Coats in the intelligence committee.
Snowden explains how NSA officials can look at any American's communications by saying the target is whoever person is talking with. It's supposedly illegal, but it happens all the time.
We need a system for spying whose manner of operation actually prevents this.
Where Free Speech Ends, Ignorance Begins. Universities must not censor the views that are presented.
Sumatran elephants have lost 70% of their habitat in a couple of decades, mainly due to palm oil plantations.
Many other species have also lost 70% of their habitat. Some species, limited to smaller ranges, may have already been wiped out.
Bald eagles are in danger due to lead in bullets (used to shoot animals that are then eaten by eagles).
The troll's Saboteur of the Interior revoked a rule that attempted to reduce this poisoning.
Intensive industrial agriculture is destroying soil rapidly. It cannot continue to the end of this century.
The term "people of color" endorses a racist outlook towards humanity by treating "color" as as a matter of essence, of the substance a person is made of, rather than as a superficial detail.
The distinctions we call "racial" are grab-bags of various details, each of which correlates more or less with certain ancestral groups. They are real differences, but not particularly important unless people make them so. So let's avoid using essentialist language to refer to them.
Americans are protesting with slings and crutches at their representatives offices, and convincing some Republicans to block the Ryan-Trump medical care crash.
A British colonel says that a company fighting in Afghanistan regularly dehumanized Afghan civilians and subjected them to violence for no reason, and said this was the fault of the commanders of the larger unit.
Israel's thugs and soldiers regularly damage Palestinians' bodies and property, and never compensate them for the damage.
The FBI's persecution of prostitutes includes a good measure of dishonesty to label prostitutes, customers, or their friends as "traffickers".
Policies that raise the sale value of housing have left poor people unable to find decent housing.
Monsanto corrupted the research into safety of Roundup in order to influence the approval of that pesticide.
The troll has nominated another Goldman Sachs employee.
The Obama regime was subservient to Goldman Sachs. The Trump regime is directly run by Goldman Sachs.
The only way to save the Great Barrier Reef is by curbing global heating.
Israeli thugs killed Matar after arresting him. Palestinian witnesses said they killed him in cold blood. Then, as usual, they arrested his whole family and ransacked their house.
Suspiciously, the Israeli thugs have not released video showing the killing.
Dalits in India are pressured into working as sewer cleaners, and because they are Dalits, the city doesn't bother to give them safety gear.
Yemeni Couple on Verge of Reuniting in US May Be Derailed by New Travel Ban.
Berkeley, California, is repressing homeless people, as it fills up with wealthy people instead of the progressives that used to live there.
Living on the street is already in effect a punishment. It can't be just for the "solution" for this problem to include further punishment of the homeless.
Anatole France: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
Zachard Fardon, fired by the troll as US attorney for Chicago, said that the Chicago Thug Department's habits of unjustified violence require outside intervention.
The prime minister of Japan is tied to a school accused of racism and cruelty.
The lack of hope for success in life is driving many young men in the UK to gambling.
I suppose others use drugs for the same reason.
If you see little to aim for in the way of personal "success", dedicate yourself to a cause worth fighting for — truth or justice. You can do some good that way. Campaign for free software, or to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or for racial equality, or to promote abortion and contraception rights and access. Or another good cause. This will give you a deeper satisfaction than gambling.
The Tories have squeezed almost 2 million disabled people into housing that's not accessible for them. They are trapped in their homes.
The Financial Benefits of the EPA Data Trump Doesn't Want You to Know About.
It appears that Russia is violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with a new cruise missile. What should the US do?
It is pertinent that the US has extended NATO, bringing in countries at Russia's border, and proposed to include Ukraine and Georgia. That's not an excuse for breaking the treaty, but it is a foolish and threatening practice, and implies that the US too should take steps to back off from confrontation with Russia.
Snowden: if the troll is offended that NSA agents can snoop on any American, including him, he should change that.
In Syria, attacking medical facilities became a standard tactic of war.
European countries want to make Google delete racist postings even when they are not threatening.
What David Duke said is false, and his racist attitude is despicable. However, freedom of speech means he has the right to say it. (European countries do not adequately recognize freedom of speech.)
I am more scared of companies that delete what they deem to be false, or despicable, than of David Duke's saying such things.
An AstroTurf group set up by Paul Ryan, with hardly any members except some rich donors, is getting lots of publicity campaigning for Ryan's medical care denial bill.
Shannon Hurd was sentenced to life in prison for stealing 14 dollars, then killed in prison by officials that refused to believe he had cancer. This is not unusual in US prisons.
Jeremy Hance wrote a letter to his daughter, for her to understand when she is older, about the culpability of today's adults for the global disaster she will encounter in a few decades.
The letter is so moving, and so full of truth, that people are likely to take every littlest detail for correct. Thus, I have to point out that Hance erred when describing the troll as "our next commander-in-chief." American civilians have no commander-in-chief, and we must never have one.
It's just a minor detail, but we may as well not spread an error that favors the troll.
More importantly, I think the letter doesn't follow the argument to its conclusion: we should not bring more humans into a world in which we would owe them such an apology. Even more so, seeing as each additional human augments the disaster we will have to apologize for.
I would like to see a letter "To the child I might have had: How relieved I am not to have had you. That means I don't owe you an apology for bringing you into a developing disaster, and I don't owe everyone else an apology for making all the environmental strains one human being larger."
We can still work to reduce the disaster. We can do this by putting our time into activism rather than into raising children.
The root cause of our failure to curb global heating is plutocracy: the political power of the rich. That is what sort of political system empowers fossil fuel magnates to veto adequate measures to reduce emissions.
Plutocracy gets its strength from power over many fields of life, and computing is one of them. Nonfree software is one of those forms of power. The free software movement, though I did recognize this at first, is one aspect of the fight against plutocracy.
It's a good idea for us in the software field to fight against plutocracy in our own field, since that is where we can achieve the most against it.
A European appeals court ruled that companies can order employees not to wear any visible symbols of personal beliefs (religious or otherwise). However, if the company is selective about which symbols to allow, this can be considered discrimination.
The decision seems correct to me.
Anyone:
donate
bitcoin to the legal
defense of a Russian activist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Here is background information: in Russian describes the predicament. I can't read it, but a friend read it for me and says it this is on the level.
They are asking for bitcoin donations at 1MCTLYKSAmBSjk8Tg32YcaUF9bKifHVA6N.
US citizens: call on Congress to save the Endangered Species Act.
Campaigners against extra funds for Seattle thugs say, first make them stop being racist.
Tasmania's extractivist government wants to cut down areas of rain forest which are home to endangered species.
The swift parrot is designated as critically endangered, with only 2000 adults living, and could have been headed for extinction by 2030, partly due to habitat loss.
I guess that this appears to an extractivist as an opportunity to eliminate the issue by wiping them out.
In the UK, printed book sales are increasing and ebook sales are declining.
Can someone find sales figures for the US to compare with this?
The reason I reject commercial ebooks is that they attack our freedom in several ways.
We-Vibe has been ordered by a Canadian court to pay customers up to $10,000 each for selling them a "smart" vibrator with an app that told the company how people were using it.
If an object or product is called "smart", you shouldn't trust it.
It appears the company lost the case because it had not asked buyers to consent to the surveillance. The next such manufacturer will put something vague about this in the "terms of service" so it can say it got "consent".
We need laws that limit the collection of data by businesses or services and which take the position that "consent is not an excuse".
The troll's supporters who intervened to change the Republican Party platform in regard to Ukraine act guilty about it.
The argument is speculation, not proved true, but something like it could be true.
The change the troll made in the Republican platform was for the better, in my opinion. I think it would have been very foolish for the US to escalate the Ukraine proxy war. However, I find the relationship between the troll and Putin to be alarming enough to justify an investigation to determine how far it goes.
Some gun nuts have a conspiracy theory that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, that the people killed there didn't exist. Naturally, they support the troll.
Following the troll's example, they insist on this with a lunatic rejection of all inconvenient facts, and harass and threaten the parents of children that were killed.
Northern Ireland thugs raided a workshop held by an abortion rights campaigner, looking for forbidden abortion pills.
I simply cannot understand why she, and so many people, feel "humiliated" when selected as a target by a repressive system. To me it seems like a badge of honor, and an opportunity for immediate action.
The Girl Guides of Canada have canceled group travel to the US from fear that some of the girls will be refused due to being Muslim or having Muslim-style names.
Remember the People America's Healthcare System Has Already Killed.
Dutch right-wing politician Wilders is exploiting the diplomatic row between the Netherlands and Turkey, just as Erdoğan is.
This reminds me of the way both Dubya and Osama bin Laden exploited their public enmity to recruit support. Each one was all the other could have wished for.
The US military wants to be allowed to declare war anywhere, "temporarily".
Quebec will systematically collect food for the hungry, food that supermarkets were going to throw away, and expects to reuse 8 million kg of food per year this way.
I'd estimate that is around 16 million meals per year.
"The president's budget won't balance federal spending one bit, but it'll move a lot of money up to the rich."
A balanced budget is not always a good idea. Deficit spending is the way to cure a recession. However, when business income is booming it would be wise to tax businesses more so as to reduce the national debt.
Republicans are not interested in the national debt except as an excuse to spend less on the non-rich.
US citizens: call on the EPA to preserve clean air standards.
A farmer who permitted a frack-well on his land says, "Don't do it!"
US citizens: tell Congress to ban trade in shark fin.
US citizens: call on all states to help parents keep military recruiters away from their children in high school.
It works to sign with JavaScript disabled if you use the Salsalabs method.
Obsession about the troll's ties with Russia — which may or may not add up to substantial wrongdoing — could act as a smokescreen for the many real wrongs he and SCROTUS are carrying out.
The plan to extend Heathrow Airport is accompanied by a supposed plan to "offset" the CO 2 emissions.
Supposing the offsets actually work — which is hardly certain — this would be adequate if present-day emissions were at an acceptable level. But they are already far too high, and this won't reduce them.
The troll's new choice for Saboteur of Labor is almost as bad as Pudzer.
The troll's nominee to head the Securities and Exchange Commission is another banksters' agent — much as turned out to be the case for Obama's nominee.
Republicans claim, once again, that US tax rates for corporations are too high.
"Corporation tax too high", according to Republicans, means "more than zero".
Watch out for plutocratist Democrats that would like to lead the "resistance" against the troll but ignore the rights of working people.
Canada's law against breaking DRM, imposed by US pressure, has been interpreted in the nastiest possible way.
Canada needs to get rid of this unjust law. Breaking DRM should be lawful; implementing DRM should be a crime.
The term "digital locks" is not a good way to refer to the malicious functionality of DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). Please join me in calling them "digital handcuffs" rather than "digital locks".
Citizens of Massachusetts: Support the Safe Communities Act, which would block state funds from being used to help deportation (or a possible "Muslim registry").
US citizens: call on Ajit Pai not to cut off old people from internet service.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to reject the NRA's plan to neutralize all states' regulation of guns.
The troll systematically attacks the credibility of all sources of information other than him.
He anticipated that the Congressional Budget Office would honestly report on the harm that the Republicans' medical insurance sabotage bill would do, so he attacked it preemptively.
The Dance of Death: seeing present-day global society as an empire in decay, searching to recover its former "greatness".
Privatized US immigration prisons are so dangerous that often prisoners ask to be put in solitary for their own safety. Others are put in solitary for "crimes" such as giving haircuts to other prisoners for a price.
The troll's Mexican wall would cause grave harm to ecosystems around the border, as well as emitting lots of CO2 from the concrete.
Some European countries banned Turkish officials from visiting to campaign for Erdogan's new authoritarian constitution. Erdogan's party responded to this with insulting trumpery and confrontation.
I think the insults and confrontationalism is another campaign activity. The idea is to manipulate Turks into regarding those European countries as their enemy and supporting Erdogan against them.
This is, I believe, meant to distract them from the principal enemy of freedom and democracy in Turkey: Erdogan himself.
The troll wants to whitewash the Guantanamo prison by pretending that it was perfect while Dubya was in charge.
State and local action can achieve 60% of the US commitments under the Paris climate agreement. The Paris climate agreement is considerably less than what the US needs to do if it is to do its share of avoiding global heating disaster. But at least this is a start at a start.
The Clean Power Plan would also avoid 6000 deaths per year, but the Republicans don't consider the lives of non-rich to be important.
Corporate Interests Give Tens of Millions to Dismantle Legal Rights of Consumers and Patients.
Republicans propose to nullify the FCC's privacy rules, demonstrating once again that they are always for business against the people.
The FCC's privacy rules are grossly inadequate because they regulate only how the ISPs can use the data they have collected. ISPs should not be allowed to keep any records of users' internet connections except under a specific court order.
Everyone: tell Amazon to stop advertising in Breitbart.
The troll's team were informed that Flynn was a foreign agent. They handled this the same way they handled the troll's foreign conflicts of interest — by denying it.
Uri Avnery: a single state comprising the territory of Israel and Palestine would inevitably be an apartheid state, and some day an Arab state. Jews, like Arabs, should insist on a separate state of Palestine.
Avnery mentions the tendency for Israelis to move to the US or Germany. Part of the reason for some Israelis to move is that they don't like living under the bigoted anti-liberal regime that tears up the principles of law, constitution and liberty, one by one, as they become inconvenient for the goal of apartheid.
US citizens: Demand that Congress reject the Republican "healthcare" plan.
Please sign this one, too.
US-backed anti-terror campaign in Kenya is based on torturing and killing those who are suspected.
As the war in Afghanistan slowly heats up, refugees are being forcibly deported there. They include children born in exile.
Many of them can't return "home" — they can only become refugees elsewhere in Afghanistan.
These refugees should not have had many children, but perhaps it was our fault not to provide them with reliable birth control.
The troll's new visa denial policy, aimed at all Iranians, will mostly hurt Iranians that criticize the Islamist regime there.
US citizens: defend the rule that retirement investment advisers must be loyal to their customers.
Pruitt, the troll's chief saboteur at the EPA, is appointing global heating denialists to many posts there.
The World Bank funded the expansion of a palm oil company in Honduras that is accused of attacking and killing local farmers that object to prior theft of their land.
Massive use of pesticides is causing massive harm — to humans and to ecosystems.
Puerto Rico's debt crisis is heading towards collapse.
Sad to say, the US government's "solution" will surely prioritize the banks over the people.
Most convicted sex offenders do not commit another sex crime. Of those not judged "high risk", only 5% were found to re-offend within 15 years.
So let's not make harsh laws that assume they are all driven "predators".
The price of water for families is increasing steadily in the US. In a few years, a substantial fraction of Americans won't be able to afford water.
Meanwhile, companies continue to be able to extract tremendous quantities and pay next to nothing.
If the US keeps washing away people's access to water, in a couple of decades it could resemble the corporate water grab happening now in Ethiopia.
Employees of Uber can't get other jobs — people assume they had to be assholes to get along at Uber.
US citizens: support bill to make hard work pay once again.
Signing this petition with JavaScript disabled does work, so disregard the statement that it won't work.
US citizens: call on the Senate not to defund Planned Parenthood.
EU citizens: use savethememe.net to phone your MEP to oppose plans for stricter copyright restrictions on material posted on a web site by users.
US citizens: US citizens:
defend
funding of the EPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Republicans keep showing that they despise the non-rich and seek to push them down. Some of the non-rich are so bamboozled that they prefer not recognize this fact.
It is possible to live without a portable phone; I do. For the sake of democracy and your freedom, you should do it too. But that won't save you enough money to afford medical coverage.
The partial ban on Muslims, version 2, is still wrong, very harmful, and unjustified. It eliminates many of the details that were clearly unconstitutional. Whether courts will accept it is hard to guess.
The troll's ferocious deportation scheme will be a gift to those who seek to enslave people, just as drug prohibition boosts smuggling.
The cheater wants to raise the rents of all poor people in the US. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lack either housing or food.
Apple and other companies have blocked, for now, Nebraska's right-to-repair law.
Here we see, in tangible form, the harm done by the term "intellectual property". They are talking about keeping trade secrets, a practice recognized as antisocial by the drafters of the US Constitution (they decided to permit patents as a way to discourage trade secrecy). By dressing it up as "intellectual property," they dress this harmful practice up as a principle that entitles them to screw their customers.
Can anyone put me in touch with the campaigners in Nebraska, or in Massachusetts?
The Bureau of Land Management is responsible for much of the environmental protection in the US, and the troll's saboteurs are at work there.
Greek protesters have blocked 20,000 auctions of seized houses in recent months.
Global heating of oceans is going faster than previously estimated, and the estimates for the past 50 years were underestimates too.
The US government is trying to pretend that deploying troops to fire artillery in Syria is not combat.
There is a difference between acting as advisors and fighting. Precisely because the distinction is meaningful, misrepresenting it is a lie.
Republicans Are Dismantling the Law That Protects Your DNA From Your Boss.
"Wellness programs" tend to be surveillance programs, which means people who oppose them are protecting society as a whole as well as their own freedom.
American protesters are facing years in prison for turning valves to shut off tar sands pipelines. They aim to present the "necessity defense".
What they did is just a part of what it will take to prevent the biggest mass murder in human history.
The ACLU is suing to have Sessions disbarred for lying in his confirmation hearing.
Bush-era neocons are still pushing their vision of power rivalry with Russia and China, although it is not the same as the troll's idea of rivalry.
The head Republican in the North Carolina senate shared news articles on Facebook—altering their headlines.
This is typical of Republicans today. The Republican Party has become the Anti-Integrity Party; its unofficial motto is "grab power and wealth by any possible means".
The troll's conflicts of interest continue unabated, including an apparent bribe from China in the form of rapid approval for trademarks for his business there. The Office of Government Ethics stated that, despite the troll's absurd claims, ethical rules for government employees do apply to his staff.
The article makes the mistake of using the term "intellectual property" as if that term had a coherent meaning. Many people believe that, and the confusion encourages bad laws.
When Pruitt admitted he denies the facts about CO2 and global heating, he also admitted lying to Congress previously about the point.
The Israeli soldier who murdered a Palestinian got a sentence "fit for a bicycle thief", less than Palestinian children get for throwing rocks at cars. But murderous right-wing Israelis say that is too much.
"Wake up and smell the apartheid", said Assaf Harel.
The ACLU has launched a "cities of resistance" program, calling on municipal governments to refuse to cooperate with some of the troll's cruelest policies.
As a 29-Year-Old Cancer Patient, I Find Paul Ryan's Argument Against Health Insurance Appalling.
Indigenous Americans brought their pipeline protest to Washington.
Bravo—but alas this protest doesn't block construction or operation of the pipeline.
How scholarship websites sell students' information to colleges and publishers.
The Department of Homeland Subjugation labels Black Lives Matter protesters as "terrorist suspects." New Anti-Protesting Legislation: A Deeper Look.
Shall we describe the Republicans' campaign to abolish effective protests a form of "judicial terrorism"?
The Theater of Security Agency (TSA) harassed Muhammad Ali Jr over his religion again.
The world's current famine is the biggest since 1945.
The Republican scheme for medical insurance would keep dooH niboR very healthy.
Sanders and other senators have proposed a bill that would make sure profitable companies pay their something closer to fair share of tax.
Women in Jamaica have launched a public campaign against sexual violence.
The troll has secretly appointed hundreds of second-rank officials that are essentially saboteurs.
EPA saboteur-in-chief Pruitt explicitly denied the basic facts about global heating.
Wikileaks has secret CIA files describing details of security holes, but rather than publishing these files, it will provide them to the software developers so they can fix the bugs.
I've seen people that hate Wikileaks say that developers should not trust this information if it comes from Wikileaks. This is irrational and absurd. A detailed report of a reproducible bug does not require you to trust everyone involved in forwarding it to you. You can verify it yourself.
Apple is campaigning against right-to-repair laws that weaken the unjust effect of the DMCA.
Last year, Michael Flynn was a foreign agent, lobbying for Erdogan's demands.
UK thugs were given a political mission to attack striking miners.
Turkey is no longer arming Syrian rebels, as it has made friends with Russia.
Russia is persecuting Jehovah's Witnesses for their pacifism.
The infrastructure of the US is in terrible shape after decades of insufficient investment.
The troll's plan to invest in infrastructure would be good except that he wants to give the money to companies so they can charge tolls.
The troll's glorious raid on Yemen turns out to have been a massacre across the whole village.
CIA Deputy Director Haspel, who was closely involved with CIA torture under Dubya, will have to testify about the CIA's destruction of evidence about the torture.
Philadelphia provides an example to follow for resistance to imposed privatization of public education. We will need it to rest Saboteur of Education DeVos.
US ground artillery is helping in the attack on Raqqa.
I don't see a great deal of danger in this, because it avoids the two situations where US troops tend to cause problems: acting as occupation troops over a civilian population they can't talk with and don't like, and fighting away from a battle zone.
The supposed cleanup of the Fukushima melt-downs is making no progress at all. They have not been able to build a robot that can explore the insides of the ruined reactors.
A lawsuit alleges that requiring people imprisoned awaiting deportation to work for a low wage is illegal forced labor.
An aboriginal American student was pulled out of class for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
The constitution defends a citizen's right not to recite that pledge.
The proper response to "My father fought in Vietnam and my husband fought in Afghanistan" is, "I am sure they wanted to serve their country. I deeply regret that politicians misused their loyalty."
Israeli Soldiers Stand By As Settlers Attack Civilians in West Bank Village.
Right-wing extremists (including supporters of the loser) now invent false history on the spot to suit their purposes.
The CIA has a group which studies and then uses the cracking techniques of other countries' crackers.
Perhaps it also arranges to make some other country appear to be the culprit.
The UK's tax on sugary drinks has pressured manufacturers to reduce the sugar levels of their drinks.
Los Angeles voters approved an additional sales tax to support housing for the homeless.
I honor their decision to pay more tax for this, but it ought to be a (progressive) income tax rather than a (regressive in effect) sales tax.
The Republicans' plan to "replace" Obama's medical insurance plan will result in a collapse of the insurance market. Millions of Americans will be unable to get any medical coverage.
It also bans using federal funds for Planned Parenthood's medical services including prenatal care and contraception.
EFF: Secret Court Orders Aren't Blank Checks for General Electronic Searches. Or at least, they shouldn't be interpreted that way.
The British Raj looted India for two centuries and was designed to make India less advanced. And it mostly succeeded.
A refugee arriving in Hungary was imprisoned automatically, paid the state around $2000 for permission to move to a tent city, and now faces being put automatically back in prison.
The government of Hungary has warped democratic structures to the point where it has total permanent control.
US citizens: sign call to protect federal regulation from SCROTUS.
US citizens: support providing lawyers to anyone held while entering the US.
Republicans have been using their control of Congress to reduce IRS audits and enforcement. That helps their rich paymasters evade more taxes.
Local and national battles against global heating are sometimes being won in court.
Bernie Sanders responds to a squeamish journalist who thinks it is wrong to use the word "lie" when the liar is president of the United States.
One last male northern white rhinoceros is protected very intensely in the hope it will father some offspring and preserve the species.
The White House is now a mouthpiece for Exxon.
Chinese feminist activists continue to advance their cause despite repression for any visible activism.
Women working in universities guide each other to navigate a complex landscape of sexual harassment hazards.
UK charities that say they help and serve homeless people also report them to immigration thugs.
A quarter of the deaths of children under 5 years old are caused by pollution — mostly water pollution.
Almost half of all the convicted criminals that were exonerated in the US from 1989 through 2016 were black.
This suggests that blacks have a bigger chance of being falsely convicted than whites do.
SCROTUS has a bill to cut Medicaid and increase insurance costs for old people. As well as repeal Obama's medical insurance system.
Anyone who loses insurance coverage for a couple of months would face a heavy penalty.
SCROTUS want to help US contractors violate workers' rights more easily. Always on the side of the wealthier against the poorer.
Annoying or harmful dress codes for women, requiring high heels or even dying hair, are common in the UK.
The troll made absurd accusations about "wiretapping" him, but this is only a distraction from his unwillingness to protect you and me from dangerous government surveillance.
Here's why it is dangerous.
UC Berkeley will have to block public access to 20,000 educational videos because it can't afford to make them usable by people with visual problems.
I agree with the goal of serving people with limited vision, but it is better to publish something most people can use than nothing at all.
I hope people save copies of these videos and distribute them elsewhere. Maybe you can save some yourself.
The article doesn't raise the question of whether these videos carry a free license. Perhaps they do. But they may carry a nonfree license such as the Creative Commons Noncommercial Sharealike license, which would be bad.
Version 2 of the partial ban on Muslims is still a gratuitous act of bigotry and still should be overturned.
I think it is an exaggeration to say it is "as bad as" version 1. It is not quite as bad, but it is nonetheless bad.
Khizr Khan, who rebuked the infant in the name of the US Constitution, finds himself blocked from traveling outside the US and has not been told why.
A mannequin presented to imitate a sleeping homeless person was used to catch someone who tried to kill the "person".
Using camera traps it should be possible to to catch people that steal homeless people's property. I have a hunch they will turn out to be people like this would-be killer, people that hate the homeless, rather than desperate people that want those goods.
Simple digging can make arid land retain rain when it falls.
The Tories plan to give the rich billions, while saying there is no money for important things such as the NHS, libraries, schools, etc.
US citizens: Oppose plans to inspect travelers' computers at the US border.
Everyone: Urge Paris not to buy trains from a Chinese company that pollutes a lake in Tibet with a lithium mine that Tibetans never had any choice about.
UN Experts Denounce 'Myth' Pesticides Are Necessary to Feed the World. They have accused pesticide companies of using various kinds of injustices to increase sales.
This is another case of plutocracy at work, and shows one of the reasons we need to break up large companies into many small pieces.
North Korea is holding all Malaysian visitors hostage.
Americans, and everyone else: don't visit North Korea unless it is absolutely necessary. To do so is to offer the tyrant of North Korea a hostage to use against your country.
If Britain can't get a good (for business) trade deal with the EU, it will "fight back" — by surrendering even more to big business in other countries.
US racists say that tying them to right-wing politicians is making their views acceptable.
They are sneaking dishonestly into the events of the antisocialists, and pretending to have support from them.
The troll said he had a secret plan to eliminate PISSI within 30 days after he was elected.
It's more than 40 days now, and we still haven't heard the plan, but it seems PISSI has not been eliminated yet.
A few foundations spent over 40 million dollars in the 2000s to stir up bigotry against Muslims in the US. We must suppose they have spent millions more since then.
While the bigots' description of Shari'a law is a caricature, we should not consider it innocent or harmless. It is true that Shari'a law endorses giving charity to the poor; that is one of the basic rules of Islam. It is also true that Shari'a law has principles and punishments repugnant to human rights — including the death penalty, applied for "crimes" such as blasphemy, and ceasing to be a Muslim.
Several members of the saboteur cabinet lied in their confirmation hearings.
Trumps out-of-control public behavior is very effective distraction.
It doesn't hurt him with his core supporters either, though they don't even come close to a majority.
Everyone: call for returning Kiarre Harris's home-schooled children to her.
US citizens: call for continued funding of Planned Parenthood.
US citizens: oppose union-crushing "right to work" laws.
Everyone: tell Wells Fargo, Citibank, US Bank and SunTrust Banks to
stop
funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
US citizens: call for a special prosecutor to address the relationship between Sessions and Russia, and related matters.
US citizens: endorse Sanders's progressive agenda.
A few plutocrats are rapidly taking the wealth away from nearly all Americans: in 2016, they took over $17k per household from the non-rich 90%.
A periodic "State of the Environment" report says that global heating's damage to Australia may already be irreversible.
The Senate passed a bill to allow chicken processing plants to conceal how many injuries their workers get.
Ben Carson, now a cabinet secretary, calls the slaves being brought to the US "immigrants" who "had a dream" for their posterity in the US.
Denialism at work: a fossil fuel organization, the International Energy Agency warns of an "oil shortage" in a few years. This conclusion might be valid, in the fantasy world where global heating did not exist.
I imagine a ship's cook reporting a scarcity of water as the ship sinks.
The UK's carbon emissions have fallen by 1/3 since 1990.
Previous governments made some efforts to reduce carbon emissions, but the Tory government has mostly eliminated these.
The troll's attack on clean air and water is running very fast.
Israel has rejected freedom of speech, passing a law that denies visas or residency certificates to those that advocate a commercial boycott of Israel.
The troll's travel ban, version 2, avoids the arbitrary cruelties of version 1.
It does no good for the US, since visitors from the 6 target countries were and are no significant threat to Americans. The policy is gratuitous harm.
Bahrain now dares to openly reject human rights by subjecting dissenters to military trials.
Proposal to sell high-calorie foods in plain packaging so that people won't be drawn to buy them.
Taking the UK out of the EU gives the Tories an opportunity to appear patriotic nationalists while trashing their country.
However, it is more than just a distraction. It will also serve as an excuse for trade treaties that destroy the real sovereignty of Britain.
A state in Australia will start taxing those that own apartments and leave them vacant.
I think it is a mistake to make an exception for holiday homes, because it will be easy for investors to pretend they spend holidays in the apartment in order to avoid the tax.
Food not Bombs activists stubbornly keep feeding homeless people, even though they are arrested and jailed.
They report about thugs that throw away the food so that nobody can eat it, and cruelty activists that steal homeless peoples' shoes or hit them with baseball bats.
It would be good to publish lists of the businesses that demand repression of the homeless.
The Palestinian residents of Hebron held a protest march against the
Israeli
occupiers that exclude them from part of their city. They were
attacked
crushingly.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
Right-wing trolls (including Trump) seek to provoke loud condemnation because it publicizes them to those who might support them. How to respond to that tactic?
People denied asylum by the UK, who can't get permission to go anywhere else, are forced to live in total penury, sleeping on the street and begging for food. Sometimes this goes on for many years.
The example of Enaya's husband illustrates how the UK interprets the criteria for asylum so strictly that it sends people back to face real danger.
US citizens: Support the Endangered Species Act.
US citizens: support legalization of importing drugs from Canada.
Everyone: Call on Nissan to stop advertising in Breitbart.
A crony of the troll says he was in indirect communication with Assange about release of Podesta's leaked emails.
It was legitimate for Wikileaks to release information demonstrating the corruption in the Democratic National Committee. However, I will be disappointed in Assange if he cooperated with the troll.
Across the US, local Republican legislators are trying new ways to hamper protests or punish protesters. However, the Arizona bill to hold protest organizers responsible for any and all violence (even by provocateurs) was defeated.
Even thug department chiefs say that involving them in deportations would undermine public safety.
Communities with lots of immigrants tend to be particularly safe, because immigrants commit few violent crimes and support catching and stopping violent crimes. If they become afraid to report crimes, criminals will feel empowered.
For 40 years, confused
use of US military force in the Middle East has
made things worse, for the inhabitants of the region and for the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the
old
link was broken.]
The troll wants to facilitate for-profit colleges to enlarge their businesses, which involve loans that most of their students have trouble paying back.
The largest banks in Australia put 10 billion dollars into fossil fuel projects, and only 3 billion into renewable energy.
If Sessions Had Nothing to Hide, Why Did He Try to Hide it?
There is a pattern of involvement between the troll's men and Russia, which adds up to a reason to suspect something scandalous or even treasonous.
Now we are informed that Flynn and Jared Kushner met with the Russian ambassador in December, and other members of the team were involved too, and they intervened to change the Republican Party platform as a result.
Many children and teenagers have sleep disorders caused by computers.
Sessions, as prosecutor, made a practice of prosecuting his political opponents using strained charges. Sometimes for money.
Sex education should be accompanied by love education.
The troll is spending taxpayers' money on travel at a fantastic rate.
State-subsidized tree plantations contributed to the great size of Chile's forest fires in January.
The troll has taken drone bombardment of Yemen to a new level.
A Chinese lithium mine in Tibet is poisoning the rivers.
Pruitt used a private email address to talk with lobbyists, and lied to the Senate about this in his confirmation hearing.
SCROTUS will stand firm in Pruitt's defense, on the grounds that this sort of thing is wrong only when Democrats do it.
How "Family Values" Conservatives Are Hurting Families.
Texas Republicans want to permit doctors to conceal from a pregnant women the fact that the fetus has an abnormality, so that she won't get an abortion.
The same Republicans wish to cut state support for mothers that are not affluent, including any that are tricked in the future into giving birth to a seriously disabled child.
I figure that "family values" means "spread adversity in the name of the 'strong father'", and it is really just an excuse to be mean.
Low oil prices are leading the main oil companies to lose interest in opening new strip mines for tar sands in Alberta.
It is beneficial that the low price discourages investment, but in order to lower consumption we need a high price.
The troll has proposed a plan to make child care cheaper for prosperous Americans.
Wells Fargo bank offers peculiar excuses for why customers that it cheated should not be allowed to sue.
Some scientists are refusing to review papers that don't come with complete published data.
A Norwegian news site is now requiring people to pass a test about the article's contents before posting a comment.
Antisemitism is becoming widespread among American teenagers. They seem to think hating someone is fun.
The troll may accelerate the decline of the US, but it started before him.
I think it is due to plutocracy.
Guber programmed its system for special treatment of people that might be investigating accusations of violating municipal regulations. The special treatment was that the system would say a car was coming, but no car would ever arrive.
Uber has the ability to do this because it forces all its clients to identify themselves — which is fundamentally unjust.
The troll regime has made a clear statement of how little it cares about human rights.
The troll's cruelty squad is entertaining plans to imprison children separately from their mothers, when they cross the border illegally.
The UK is cutting rent subsidies for poor people age 18 to 21, apparently assuming that at that age it is ok to live on the street.
Brazil has been hit with a get-tough-on-crime frenzy that includes torturing imprisoned minors.
Everyone: call on Target stores to sell "ugly" but usable produce, or give it away — but stop trashing it.
Human Rights Watch says that Do-dirty's death squads plant evidence to frame the people they have killed.
US schools are moving towards the TSA-style suspicion, which would teach young people to live in a tyrannical system of control.
Unlimited automation could split the world into the rich owners of robot factories and the starving "superfluous" ex-workers. It could end up as the Hunger Games or even with extermination of the latter.
To avoid this requires taxing the automated factories, or their products, to support everyone else. The article calls this "taxing robots", but it is not clear what that would mean. It would be meaningful if robots were units of comparable cost and productivity to each other, but they are not.
One of the leaders of Colombia's paramilitaries, the army-sponsored right wing terrorists, is on trial in the US for drug trafficking. His band of terrorists killed 270 people.
Paramilitaries also killed rural people to terrify their relatives into selling land cheap to the paramilitaries. And they accepted pay to help multinational corporations break unions. Overall, they were Colombia's biggest and worst terrorist group, more harmful than the FARC. And they still are. Now that the FARC has made peace, that is even more true.
How Mexico City tries to help Mexicans deported from the US.
When Will France Admit that Police Racism is Systemic?
Sessions had conversations with the Russian ambassador, while a senator, then denied them in his confirmation hearing.
There is a broad boycott of international-brand sodas in part of India.
The article presents this campaign in a way that seems incoherent. Some of the criticism is aimed at the sugar in most sodas, the growing of which uses up a lot of water. But if that is the point, why not boycott drinks with added sugar, regardless of who makes it? Why would a local brand be any less bad than a world brand? The think to do would be to boycott sugary drinks, which could have the byproduct of reducing obesity.
This is a separate issue from the worldwide boycott of Coca Cola Company, which includes all products of that company including fruit juice and water. (Coca Cola's bottled water in India is called Kinley.) This boycott is about the use of paramilitaries (right-wing terrorists connected with the army) to murder union organizers in Colombia. They do lots of other bad things too.
Spring came several weeks early around the northern hemisphere. This will invite many species to invade and destroy our ecosystems.
Americans with HIV infections fear that the troll will kill them by stopping government support for their medicines.
Soy plantations for Burger King are burning down Amazon forest.
SCROTUS defeated a bill to require the cheater to release his tax returns.
High officials, who are supposed to serve us, are not entitled to the same privacy rights as everyone else.
(Satire) Insecure, Frustrated Bully With Something To Prove Considering Career In Law Enforcement.
The troll's nominee to run Medicaid and Medicare is another saboteur.
The infant almost started a war with Iran a few weeks ago.
A Canadian doctor of Afghan origin who formerly lived in the US was interrogated for five hours when trying to enter the US. Eventually he was not allowed in. He had to beg for permission to call his clinic to cancel patients' appointments.
The US always had the nastiest immigration thugs. Now it is much worse. It is wise to stay away from the US.
A UN inquiry found that Assad's men deliberately bombed an aid convoy that the regime had authorized.
Facing years in prison for protesting is the new normal in the US.
The troll may have been inspired by Putin, who threatened Greenpeace protesters with many years in prison. But Putin didn't carry out the threat. The troll would do it.
The author meant to write "free rein". The metaphor is of letting a horse go however it chooses.
The troll proposes cutting EPA staff by one-fifth, eliminating key programs.
The troll's plans to cut EPA rules would allow industrial pollution to kill tens of thousands of Americans.
The Taliban are slowly gaining in Afghanistan, fighting against government soldiers that have no strong motivation to fight for the corrupt government. The US generals ask for more US troops, but the most those could achieve is to weaken the Taliban somewhat and stabilize the unending war.
The Taliban offered the US a peace deal in 2001. Repressive as they are, peace under the Taliban would have been better, both for Afghans and for Americans, than perpetual war.
Now PISSI is trying to recruit people there. It would be better if the Taliban had full control and could keep PISSI out.
The troll plans to try to cut back on protection from water pollution.
This would potentially threaten safe drinking water for 1/3 of Americans.
Wetlands could be destroyed, and endangered species pushed towards extinction.
The US military is exhausted from using troops too much and too long, but it doesn't need more money.
US citizens: call for ending the US intervention in Yemen.
The troll has tried to exclude non-citizens from US privacy law, apparently to make various agencies' data about them available for deportation. The ACLU is suing to defeat this.
Pollution dumped in the lakes is making Bangalore uninhabitable. The lakes catch fire and the canals spew toxic foam that can crack car windshields.
The level of corruption has made it impossible to control the pollution.
Perhaps Ulsoor Lake will have to be renamed Ulcer Lake.
Leaked emails, published by Wikileaks, tie a Turkish minister to an oil company accused of buying oil from PISSI.
The minister is Erdoğan's son-in-law, and possibly his intended successor.
There is no proof that the company bought oil from PISSI, but the fact that the minister lied about whether he had contacts with that company proves he is dishonest.
PISSI means the Pseudo-Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
As the infant checks White House staff's phones for encryption apps they might have used to send leaks, we should be reminded that officials can also use encryption apps to hide communications from public records laws.
However, there are many other ways they can do that which won't go through their phones at all.
Student Grant Neal was punished by Colorado State University for "raping" his girlfriend, based on a suspicion that her roommate had, while his girlfriend insisted no such thing had happened.
The EU has approved a reform to tighten up its CO2 emissions trading plan in the hope of making it actually reduce emissions.
I recommend a carbon tax — it is not as easy to game that.
A UK local government elected official faces prosecution for making a Nazi salute in order to accuse Tories of acting like Nazis.
In effect, saying "You are acting like a Nazi" may be a crime in the UK. The UK does not respect freedom of speech, neither in politics nor in regard to sex.
I don't think the Tory policies are as bad as those of the Nazis, but they are very bad.
US citizens: phone your local thug department and say, don't cooperate with deportations.
The page has phone numbers for the Boston area, but you can look up the number for your town wherever you are.
US citizens: call for ending military aid to Honduras.
The troll may be planning to stack "bipartisan" independent 6-person commissions with 3 Republicans plus 3 official non-Republicans that act like Republicans.
Privatization = Public Loss For All, Private Gain For A Few.
The Walled-Off Hotel — built right against Israel's annexation wall that runs through Palestine.
Hardly anyone reads a web site's "terms of service" before agreeing to them.
I do read them, because I am prepared to refuse to use the site if I see anything in the terms I consider unacceptable. Most people don't see a point in reading them, because they are not prepared to do that.
This points to the basic injustice: most users feel helplessly compelled to accept web disservices with their nasty terms. Even when there is a choice of disservices to use, they only rarely differ in the nasty terms.
I think the solution is that the state should set these terms, democratically. Rather than letting companies impose terms on the public, the public should organize to impose terms on companies.
That's what democracy means: that the many join together to stop the rich from dominating them.
Daniela Vargas faces immediate deportation after immigration thugs grabbed her after a rally where she spoke to condemn such practice.
She was brought to the US as a child, and was previously given protection from deportation. She was in the process of applying for renewal of this when the thugs grabbed her. Clearly their goal is to show that there is no such thing in the US any more as due process of law. Clearly this is meant to terrify immigrants.
If there were a hell, I'd suggest deporting all immigration thugs there, with no court hearing, along with other kinds of terrorists.
The Absent Corporation — companies that intentionally give no way to complain or ask for help.
Being mistreated or cheated by one of these companies is a cost of doing business with them, but they hope you won't factor that into your decision of whether to do it.
Canada is moving towards a province-by-province system of authorizing immigration.
A large area of permafrost in Canada is melting, which leads to release of lots of CO2.
In the US: join the People's Climate March on April 29.
US citizens: call on Sessions to resign.
The new saboteur head of the Interior Department has cancelled a regulation that forbade use of lead ammunition when hunting on federal lands.
Once the lead gets into the environment, it can remain there for millennia, poisoning animals (and occasionally humans) over and over.
Right-wing twitter-bots are inflating the retweets of the loser's tweets.
By His Own Standards, Attorney General Jeff Sessions Should Resign.
I don't think it is wrong for a senator to talk with the Russian ambassador. That alone would not even be suspicious. But it is a matter of public significance. This combined with other such matters add up to grounds for an investigation.
Meanwhile, for the attorney general nominee to lie about a matter of public significance in a confirmation hearing is inexcusable. Remember how Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for lying about whether he had sex with Monica Lewinsky)? That was a matter of no public significance whatsoever.
Republican Senator Johnson of Wisconsin is avoiding his constituents, and had a lawyer get an order telling Earl Good not to call his office or try to meet with staff.
Activists have announced a campaign of mailing him potatoes.
BBC TV Crew Attacked in China And Forced to Sign Confession.
Thugs want to prosecute pipeline protesters for setting their tents on fire. Rather than taking any care to find out who committed this "crime", they choose in a slapdash fashion.
Mike Pence used private email for security issues as governor of Indiana, and his account was cracked.
Rather than running a private server, he used a commercial email service, just begging to be compromised.
But that's no big deal. It's only wrong when Democrats do it.
Reasons not to fly Emirates airlines.
More-or-less repressive states use literary festivals to paint themselves as respecting freedom of the press.
It seems that an invited author that wants to use one of them to advance human rights by making contacts with people can perhaps succeed, but only by private activities. The more famous authors do more good by refusing to attend.
Jeff Sessions Must Now Tell America the Whole Truth.
The loser's recent speech shows that he has adopted much of the standard Republican dooH niboR platform.
Erdoğan's referendum on changing the Turkish constitution to give him great power is being held with no organized opposition — because the opposition is gagged or in jail.
The vote will not be free or fair. It will be illegitimate.
The New York City Council is considering a law to require the thug department to publish its rules for using surveillance technology.
Trump Wants You to Think All the Immigrants He'll Deport Are Criminals. They're Not.
"Smart" meters are snooping devices. I've said that for years. Now others are starting to be concerned about the matter.
The article doesn't say what specific issue the court decided, but in general legal "protection of privacy" in the US operates by putting conditions on access to data that has been collected. That's fundamentally inadequate.
Real privacy means stopping your "smart" meter from reporting on you at all.
If something is called "smart", be very suspicious of allowing it into your home.
Senator Santorum called Americans wanting medical coverage despite preexisting conditions "crooks" and "grifters".
What he means is that he and the rich people he serves want to wash their hands of all responsibility to the rest of society.
Russia and Syria recaptured Palmyra from PISSI, but PISSI planted lots of mines in the ancient ruins.
The Department of Homeland Suppression has decided to regard protests against the troll as terrorist in spirit. No terrorist acts have been associated with them, but those thugs are sure some will be.
The US State Department refused to meet with a leader of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Here is a list of myths that right-wing Democrats cite to excuse supporting continued plutocracy.
Right-wing plutocratist Democrats would not make anything better than it was under Obama.
Mussolini and Hitler gained power at first through democratic structures, then seized dictatorial power. (They were not the first: Julius Caesar and Napoleon III followed similar paths.) The loser's actions show quite a resemblance.
The mayor of Calais has banned giving food to the homeless refugees there.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose "concealed carry reciprocity".
This is a tricky and disguised legal scheme to make every state allow lots of unvetted people to carry guns.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Various countries have put together 200 million dollars to fund family planning aid, including abortion counseling and abortion, to fill the gap that the US is leaving.
They hope to raise additional funds in the next few months.
Although lead levels in Flint are down, it is still not safe to drink.
The troll's antisemitic insults against John Stewart show that this form of bigotry is embedded in his heart along with other forms.
When Celestine Omin tried to enter the US on a work visa, he was grilled by an immigration agent with vague technical questions, supposedly to prove he was really a software engineer.
The agent didn't understand his answers, and threatened to exclude him. Fortunately, other agents called his employer, who verified he is an engineer.
Regardless of details, it is absurd to ask a professional to prove his qualifications to someone who knows nothing about per field as a condition for immigration.
It is pointless anyway. What exactly is the wrong that agent was trying to prevent? That a company would arrange a work visa for the CEO's lover? That might be fraud, but there is no need to investigate such a suspicion at passport control.
Diane Wilson explains why she protested in Pruitt's confirmation hearing.
The Supreme Court made a decision that will help the battle against Republican gerrymandering.
This decision was almost unanimous — even Gorsuch could not have altered it.
Activist restaurant workers are suing Memphis thugs for snooping on them and sabotaging them.
"CloudPets" toys with microphones leak childrens' conversations to the manufacturer. Guess what? Crackers found a way to access the data collected by the manufacturer's snooping.
That the manufacturer and the FBI could listen to these conversations was unacceptable by itself.
When trolls enter a political discussion, here's how to win the audience to your side.
Up to 100 Gravestones Vandalized at Jewish Cemetery in Philadelphia.
Under Bannon's editorship, "Jewish" in Breitbart comments came to be used as a term of condemnation rather than as the name of an ethnic group.
When the troll finally stated disapproval of antisemitism, it was so weak that one can hardly believe he meant it.
An Israeli soldier shot Muhammad Amer Jallad in the stomach as he was running across a street to get a taxi to get to his chemotherapy appointment on time. It took him months to die, and Israeli soldiers kept his family away. His mother was allowed to see him just once and was not even informed when he died. His family still does not know.
The only way to reduce US medical care costs as the troll says he will do is with a national health service.
Watch out for those who want to use suspicion about the troll and his staff to push for a cold war with Russia, or even a hot war.
I think it would be good to relax tensions with Russia, and that the US should stop trying to constrict Russia by extending NATO. That doesn't mean we should tolerate a president who makes corrupt deals with Putin. We do need an investigation of this.
A lawsuit accuses PayPal of raising money in the name of many charities but not giving them the money.
The arrest of Deniz Yücel, a Turkish-German reporter for Die Welt, is getting lots of criticism in Turkey.
Women report pervasive sexual harassment in tech companies in Silicon Valley. Often it is worse in startups.
Being pressured to drink alcohol is mistreatment of anyone and everyone, even aside from the possible sexual pressure it might unleash.
SCROTUS held a hearing to give witnesses from fossil fuel companies a chance to argue that carbon emissions are less of a problem than currently acknowledged.
Actually it is much worse.
An entrepreneur who insulted the homeless of San Francisco has had a change of heart and proposes a plan to house 500 homeless people on a berthed cruise ship.
The ship would also rent rooms to tourists.
I think that his change of heart is sincere, and we should not hold his past callousness against his subsequent caring. However, the solution he proposes could not possibly work on a significant scale for adding either housing or shelter space in San Francisco. It might perhaps be worth doing with one ship, if there is a spare cruise ship available cheap.
In the UK, as in the US, plutocratist politicians aim to keep reducing inheritance taxes.
Meanwhile, they keep increasing the sales taxes that are most burdensome for people of low income.
These taxes fall only on the wealthy. They should be increased, and the paths to avoid them should be closed off.
People in several countries in Latin America are squeezed between water scarcity and privatization.
Israel designated some land in Palestine (specifically, in the West Bank) a "military fire zone" as an excuse to expel Palestinians. Now Israeli colonists are building a race track in that zone.
Apparently the designation was a simple pretext for ethnic cleansing.
Bigotry against Arabs in Israel leads repeatedly to hasty and false accusations against them. Israeli thugs, their chief, and the minister in charge are all guilty.
Bernie Sanders: On Anti-Semitism, Israel, and the Palestinians.
The infant has caused a big drop in tourism to the US. People decide that visiting the US is not worth even a small chance of being harassed at the border.
The UK is implementing a national identity card equivalent through a digital identity verification scheme that can't be trusted.
One of the troll's cronies says that antisemitic attacks are the work of Democrats.
It is absurd but typical. Republicans arbitrarily blame all bad things on Democrats.
Tibetan Women's Soccer Players Denied US Visas for Texas Tournament.
Maybe the troll thinks that Tibet is a Muslim country. Or maybe he was trying to hurt China by being harsh to Tibetans. Either one is dumb enough for him.
"Trump's America is great for holidays — if you enjoy vigorous frisking by men in uniform."
Papers link the murderers of Berta Cáceres to "special forces" trained by the US.
The US continues to "train" them. Apparently it doesn't train them in respect for human rights.
US immigration thugs have a long history of trampling laws in order to persecute someone. Even US citizens are not safe. The loser has given them encouragement to do this even more.
I refer to Trump as "the loser" sometimes, because he lost the election; the only reason he could pretend to win in the electoral college is that Republicans rigged the election.
Sessions ends US opposition to state voter ID laws.
These are voter suppression schemes, typically carried out by Republicans, so Republicans are in cahoots to support them. It is the only way they stay in power.
A former marketer for commercial colleges explains how they lured students, and why students default on their loans.
DeVos is likely to try to help these companies.
A bill in Hawaii proposes to allow MDs to prescribe housing as a medical treatment for homeless people with mental or drug problems.
Australia has allowed investigating some journalists' phone records without even a court order.
The UK is facing lawsuits about torturing Kenyan rebels to death in the 1950s.
The loser's latest absurd accusation is that Obama is organizing the nationwide protests against the troll.
The accusation is absurd, since Obama would have every right to organize protests against the troll. But it's also nothing like Obama. If Obama had had such a vigorous commitment to the progressive cause, we would have a progressive president now.
Shell Oil published a film in 1991 warning about climate mayhem.
However, Shell continued doing the things that have brought climate mayhem on us.
More recently, Shell lobbied successfully to keep disaster on track by weakening Europe's greenhouse gas reduction targets.
Each time the planet roasters succeeded in one country or region, that had the effect of discouraging climate protectors elsewhere around the world.
China is looking at an insane measure: paying people to have more children.
Yes, this would assuage a temporary economic problem — but it would make all the long-term environmental problems worse. There are other ways to take care of the old people. Those that are healthy could continue working. Meanwhile, automation could leave many working-age people without jobs; jobs taking care of the old and infirm would be welcome. The state could give money to people that take care of their aged parents.
A few Catholic churches in the Philippines are giving sanctuary to people that Do-Dirty's killers might want to kill.
A progressive "shadow cabinet" will respond to the Republican saboteur cabinet.
Microsoft is running a patent protection racket, threatening to sue users of free software.
Why does the Linux Foundation accept money from them?
Studies have found that vouchers for private schools don't help students do better than in public schools. The loser and DeVos want to ignore this.
Education is not their goal — enriching private business is.
Turkey has arrested a reporter, supposedly for supporting terrorism, but really for publishing leaked emails of a relative of Erdoğan.
Europe must not depend on Turkey for anything.
The amount the troll wants to add to US military spending would be almost as much as Russia spends. The US already spends more than Russia and China and several other military powers combined.
If the US didn't have such a big army, and had as a consequence not conquered and destroyed Iraq, the US would be a lot more secure today than it is.
The troll's "jobs czar" just finished imposing pension cuts on the unionized workers of a factory, and defeating the strike that followed.
Never trust a Republican to do anything good for workers.
Some homeless people in San Francisco frequent the library. Residents want the library to chase them away.
The solution is to set up another decent place where they are welcome.
A prestigious French historian was held prisoner at the US border for 10 hours as he was trying to go to a symposium.
It appears that the agents were on a power trip and didn't understand the law they were carrying out. The troll has unleashed all their worst instincts.
The US was already a bad place to hold international meetings.
More information about Henry Rousso and his background.
Law professors have filed an ethics complaint against Kellyann Conway as a member of the bar.
CPJ: In China, Sources Face Harassment, Jail for Speaking to Foreign Media.
The troll wants to scrap the rules of the Dodd-Frank law that were designed to hold banks back from causing another financial crisis.
Those rules are not strong enough, not as strong as what was repealed under Bill Clinton. We need to bring back the laws that avoided a crisis for 60 years.
Mem Fox reports on the cruel and idiotic contempt of US immigration thugs, as vented on her and others around her.
US citizens: call on your state governor to protect immigrants.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject union-crushing "right to work" laws.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Don't tweak NAFTA — kill it!
We need a law requiring the immigration agency to publish all its data about a particular person's interrogation or exclusion, if that person publicly asks. We must not allow the agency to hide its refusal to explain itself to the victim behind a facade of concern for the victim's own privacy.
SCROTUS wants to eliminate federal protection of consumers' privacy.
That protection is so weak that it is laughable, but a step in the wrong direction would make things even worse.
The UK plans to increase taxes on bookstores, after cutting Amazon's tax rate.
The Tories seem to be puppets of companies like Amazon.
In 2014, Congress was almost finished passing a law to increase transparency in responding to FOIA requests. Obama's Justice Department killed the bill.
That Health Tracker Could Cost You. Any devices to track your activities can help companies establish policies of discrimination.
Democrats abandoned the fight against monopolies (more generally, industry concentration) around 1980. The result was great concentration, encouraged by Bill Clinton and Obama as well as Reagan and the Bushes.
Arizona's senate has voted for a law that allows thugs to arrest everyone at or near a protest if they think violence might start. And to imprison whoever planned the protest, if anyone starts violence in or near it.
The NAACP has called for a boycott of North Carolina.
(Satire) All US parents were declared unfit, and all US minors made wards of the state, according to The Onion.
The troll's attack on freedom of the press has inspired a Cambodian attack on freedom of the press.
Jewish Centers and Schools Cope with Another Wave of Bomb Threats.
SCROTUS blocked efforts to investigate the troll's relations with Russia and his tax returns.
Paul Ryan has pretended for years to be moderate and reasonable, but actually he is a radical crush-the-weak Republican.
The IPCC is now nearly certain that humans have caused all the global heating in the past 60 years.
The troll calls the press an enemy. As the news publishers become dependent on tech companies, and in many cases are bought by tech companies, the troll gains the power to attack them through the FCC.
Media concentration also threatens honest, independent journalism. So the Republican plan to allow increased media concentration also threatens the free press.
US border thugs grabbed a group of homeless Hispanics as they left a church which offered them shelter for the night. Thugs handcuffed them and then questioned them.
UK universities have prohibited student events to protest Israel's occupation of Palestine.
The maker of a feminist Indian film is campaigning against the state's decision to ban it.
Sita Sings the Blues was also banned in India.
The UK deported Irene Clennell to Singapore, far away from her British husband of 27 years and her family, on the grounds that she spent too long visiting Singapore to care for her parents while they died.
The reply from the immigration authorities amounts to, "Our job is to be rigid no matter what the harm." They are run by Tories, after all. But no interpretation of their job can justify deporting anyone on short notice, or on a Sunday. What was the rush? What was the need for surprise? That must indicate a policy to fudge the legal rights of deportees.
An executive of the NRA says all progressive protesters are planning "criminal violence".
Meanwhile, Republicans around the country are planning to reclassify nonviolent acts (such as lying down on a street) as "violence". For Republicans, no truth is sacred.
Return to Main page.
Please send comments on these web pages to rms@gnu.org.
Copyright (C) 2017 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.
