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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
As a perhaps unintended consequence of Domscheit-Berg's sabotage of Wikileaks, a large collection of US cables has leaked without the Wikileaks redaction to remove names of individuals.
The person Snorrason who is quoted as blaming this on Wikileaks itself is one of Domscheit-Berg's associates.
Ten Reasons to Move Cheney s Book to the Crime Section.
A letter proves that in October 2002, Bush and B'liar had already agreed to attack Iraq without UN support.
Defeating neo-Nazis by laughing at them: the stork that wrote Mein Krampf (my cramp).
An Iranian opposition group says that opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has been held in total isolation for 42 days in an attempt to brainwash him to confess some sort of crimes.
A retired general says that the deficit-reduction agreement is an opportunity to reduce excessive and increasing military spending that harms national security.
This is because a country's military strength is only one aspect of its security. Wounding its people to keep the army going is in the long term a path to weakness.
One issue he did not mention is that use of the military can harm a country. The unjust war of aggression in Iraq has damaged the US, though less than it damaged Iraq. The quagmired war in Afghanistan may not have made Afghanistan much worse than it was 10 years ago, but has not made it much better either, and it has damaged US security.
Libyan rebel fighters seem to have carried out bloody reprisals against Gaddafi's supporters in Tripoli.
Just because they fought and replaced a brutal dictator does not mean they should act like him.
Karzai leaked information about talks between the
US and the Taliban,
effectively blocking the talks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: organize meetings with
your congresscritter to say, "Jobs
not cuts".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama to
investigate Bush and Cheney for authorizing
torture of prisoners.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: if your senator or congresscritter is in the supercommittee, go to his office and say he should work for the people, not for business.
You could also say, "Jobs not cuts. Tax the rich and end the war, and avoid cuts."
Spanish police attacked harmless protesters and journalists at the protest against the expense of the pope's visit.
Ai Weiwei has published an article about incommunicado imprisonment in China.
The government of Thailand is on a rampage, imprisoning people for "insulting the king".
In practice, any criticism of the monarchy is treated as an "insult".
The mere idea of such punishment is unjust, regardless of how the details are handled.
Matt Taibbi explains how the SEC protected the banks it was supposed to regulate.
He also explains how New York Attorney General Schneiderman wants to prosecute banks' fraud, and how the corrupt Obama regime is trying to stop him.
If a candidate does not recognize truth of evolution, that
is a sign of wilfull ignorance which is likely to affect his actions in other areas too.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If a candidate advocates free software, that is a diagnostic for a resistance to being bought by megacorporations.
Thugs (probably working for Assad) attacked Syria's top cartoonist and broke his hands.
Auditing the Federal Reserve system revealed secret bailouts amounting to 16 trillion dollars.
It also revealed that the Federal Reserve has allowed its directors to maintain financial conflicts of interest, owning parts of banks that are being bailed out.Architectural treasures in Libya are being looted from museums and caves.
If NATO indeed bombed Leptis Magna, it has some explaining to do. Why didn't it have procedures in place to prevent that? Will they never learn?.Bahrain's king
promised civil trials to arrested protesters, and to give back jobs to protesters who were fired. He also forgave them for the crime of insulting
him, which should
not be a crime at all.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There was no real evidence that Iran was behind the protests in Bahrain; that was just government spin, meant to cut support for the democracy movement.
Hundreds of workers collapsed at Cambodian sweatshop making clothes for H&M. Maybe some toxic gas was involved.
A US appeals court ruled that filming police officers at work is protected under the First Amendment.
This court's jurisdiction covers Massachusetts and some other states. Massachusetts was one of several states which had laws against recording conversations without getting permission and tried to use them to ban such recordings.
Homeless people in many US cities face barriers to access to toilets and water to drink..
In the US: join the "National Nurses" campaign on Sep 1 to push for a stock transaction tax.
"Child" pornography is being used as an excuse to threaten all American internet users' privacy.
The term "child pornography" is dishonest. The censorship of it puts young lovers in direct danger of prosecution.
Many published works are disgusting, but censorship is more so. In the Internet, enforcement of censorship puts other rights in danger.
Please support demandprogress.org's campaign against this bill.
The Indian government has promised to adopt a strong anticorruption law, and Anna Hazare suspended his hunger strike.
People have criticized Hazare in various ways. It is true that he is connected with the BJP, the Hindu extremist party. Dalits have condemned his movement as "upper caste", and maybe they are right. Still, it is good to cut down on corruption.
Researchers argue that world food prices exceeding a certain level tend to cause riots, that this may have triggered the Arab Spring to occur this year.
They also predict that, starting in a few years, food prices will exceed the riot level all the time.
Local people have sabotaged Shell's oil export pipelines in Nigeria after Shell fired the pipeline guards rather than give them a raise.
It is possible that this amounts to a sort of protection racket, if the guard companies encouraged the sabotage. That would be unjust, but it's a smaller injustice than the massive damage Shell has done to the people of those areas of Nigeria.
However, this form of sabotage adds to the damage suffered by them.
Eagles' Don Henley: EFF, Google "aid and abet" criminals.
Someone found me his concert program, which includes LA, Santa Barbara and Saratoga CA in September. Would anyone like to organize protests at them?
Shaker Aamer has been in prison in Guantanamo for almost 10 years.
Despite being "cleared for release" in 2007, the US continues
to keep him imprisoned without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Aamer is a witness to torture of other prisoners, which went as far as killing some.
The UK government gave evidence about him to the US, evidence that
might prove his "confession" was extracted by torture, but on the
condition that Aamer's lawyers not get access to it. Aamer's UK lawyers won a case in a UK court to get his lawyers access to this evidence, but it does him no good since the US refuses to allow him justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
76 congresscritters signed a letter to support the AT&T/T-mobile merger, repeating AT&T claims that have already been debunked.
Here's their letter, and here is the list of these congresscritters.
If one of them is yours, please phone and say, "Shame on you." Otherwise, phone and say, "Don't do that."
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The US has killed yet another al Qa'ida leader, and presents this as a significant victory.
I don't expect this to have much effect on al Qa'ida. The specific group that was headed by Osama bin Laden has done little for years beyond make plans. The substance of al Qa'ida is an ideology rather than a centralized organization, and as such, it cannot defeated by attacking its leaders.
The tie-in toys for Disney "Cars" are made in a Chinese sweatshop by child laborers.
You can't determine that fact by looking at the toys themselves, but their other flaw is obvious: they are a media tie-in. Giving kids such toys is media manipulation, and it teaches them to find such manipulation acceptable. It is better to teach your kids to resist. This resistance will help them become good human beings instead of good sheep.
The UK spends more on subsidies for films that promote smoking than on efforts to discourage smoking.
This is what you get when governments buy into the idea that the way to serve the public is to give handouts to business.
The manufacturer of Listerine tried to discourage awareness that such mouthwashes can cause cancer of the mouth.
Uri Avnery celebrates the Libyan people's victory over Gaddafi, and explains why NATO's assistance was morally obligatory.
He also argues for an obligation to intervene against Assad in Syria. I would agree, if Syria had a viable armed rebellion as Libya did. (The Libyan rebels could not have defeated Gaddafi without help, but the point is that they held substantial territory on their own for long enough to receive support.)
The Syrians don't have a rebellion, they have a nonviolent protest movement, and that can't be aided by outside military force.
Since Obama has the sole authority to approve or reject the Keystone XL pipeline, the White House protests at which hundreds continue to be arrested will show whether he is capable of refusing to be the flunky of the oil companies.
Everyone: call on Cisco to ask China to stop persecuting activists for suing Cisco.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating has melted so much Arctic ice that it was possible to row a boat to the north magnetic pole.
China is building many nuclear reactors from an old design, and political influence appears to be involved in purchasing decisions.
The UK finance minister calls tax evasion "morally repugnant". However, he shows no intention to change the laws that allow many multinational corporations to pay no tax in the UK.
So what's the moral difference? Is making lots of money and paying no tax only immoral when it happens to be illegal?
Ron Paul attracts support from Progressives for his oppposition to wars in Asia and the War on Drugs. Unfortunately he also opposes Social Security, Civil Rights and abortion rights.
I am still not sure he is worse than Obama.
Charles Monnett, the US government scientist who discovered drowning polar bears, has been unsuspended — but not returned to his old job.
A retired senior police officer was accused of organizing the murder
of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI has a system called eGuardian that keeps track of suspicious activities such as photography and taking notes in public. Plus once in a rare while a criminal. The ACLU is trying to find out how they use it.
The State Department's "final" environmental review of the
tar sands oil pipeline is missing crucial topics.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Protesters in Chile call for far-reaching reform.
The recession that may never end provides an opportunity for cooperatives.
China plans to officially legislate its practice of imprisoning dissidents for months without telling their families what happened to them.
This unjust Chinese law would carry no more ethical significance than the law that set up Guantanamo military kangaroo courts.
Chilean police shot and killed a student in the midst of a massive
protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The CIA is censoring a book by a critic, banning him from stating things
that are already public knowledge, just to hamper criticism. This is part of a general Obama practice of defending even the
nastiest government practices.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Spain will adopt a constitutional limit on deficit spending, in effect denying itself the one remedy for a recession.
States should pay down the national debt in good times, so they can use deficit spending when it is needed: in bad times.
Obama plans to eliminate some "unnecessary" government regulations, at least one of which protects public health.
US union leaders asked Congress to investigate how Colombia's government
used US aid to attack unions there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
All "free trade" treaties undermine democracy, and this one also attacks the idea of justice in by imposing in Colombia a policy of punishing Internet users merely accused of sharing.
France refuses to sign a UN declaration on human rights and the Internet because Sarkozy insists that copyright is just as important as human rights.
The article confusingly refers to copyright as "intellectual property", a term that spreads confusion whenever it is used.
It is not known who organized the attack near Eilat last week; Israel retaliated by attacking the usual suspects.
US citizens: tell Obama
to stop protecting the banksters
as New York Atty General Schneiderman investigates their mortgage fraud
against the public.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I added, "If we don't put some of the banksters in jail for this, they will start again as soon as our backs are turned."
The European Cybercrime Treaty offers many countries an excuse for
dangerous secret surveillance of their citizens. Australia and Canada
propose to be next.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Libyan rebels are preparing to attack Sirte with captured heavy weapons, while NATO attacks Gaddafi's bases there.
Craig Murray points out that this NATO attack is not necessary to protect civilians, and rather endangers the civilians there.
While the rebels understandably would like to capture Sirte, is that enough reason to attack a city whose population supports Gaddafi? Simply encircling it on the land side and encouraging unarmed people to leave the city is likely to be enough, now that Gaddafi has no chance to win.
Why Brazil organized the UN occupation of Haiti, and why it may be
planning to pull out.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
How to Avoid Bush's Iraq Mistakes in Libya.
Now that Chinese dissidents who are suing Cisco for making censorship/surveillance equipment for China, the police are trying to intimidate them into drop the case.
This article says that shortages of oil and usable fresh water, and soil degradation, will make soon it necessary to move to move to organic farming in a big way.
This could be a way to increase employment, but it won't be easy: most Americans know nothing about farming, and it isn't easy to learn if you are not young.
If the US wants to cut the deficit over 10 years, it only needs to follow the existing laws.
Corruption and brutality prevail in the Afghan police, whose officers rape and murder with impunity.
This reflects the general corruption of Karzai's regime, so more time and money are not likely to change it.
Bernie Sanders proposes to eliminate the regressive cap on the Social Security payroll tax.
Wikileaks cables show that the US government regarded the UN "peacekeeping" occupation of Haiti as crucial for US interests there.
In addition to introducing cholera there, these troops helped, by their mere presence, in the imposition of the Burmese-style rigged election.
Governor Perry tried to collude with a Swiss bank to let investors buy life insurance policies on the state's teachers' lives.
250 protesters have been arrested at the White House, opposing Obama's
oil pipeline designed to use Canada's heavily polluting tar sands oil.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Protests are planned in Ottawa too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
South Africa's new chief justice considers homosexuality a disease, and tends to go easy on abuse of women.
South Africa has been cursed by bad presidents after Mandela. If you are reading this, you could probably do better.
Young bankers are unhappy with their pay, what with 100-hour work weeks.
Perhaps the banks will need to hire twice as many people and ask them to work only 50 hours a week.
Walmart is trying to buy influence in Boston by giving money to local charities, in order to overcome political opposition to its opening a store there.
Anyone influenced by this is a fool, but there are lots of such fools. For instance, there are people at MIT CSAIL who admire Bill Gates because he gave money and got their part of the building named "Gates". As if this were more important than the harm Microsoft continues to do.
People should think of these "donations" as lobbying activities. They will probably stop if Walmart's lobbying campaign succeeds.
Glyphosate does not kill "Roundup Ready" GM crops, it does kill
beneficial fungi, reducing their yield to no more than non-GM crops.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
France will increase taxes on the rich, along with cuts that are likely to increase the recession.
Gaddafi's snipers still control some parts of Tripoli, and are firing inaccurate missiles at Misrata from another city. They cannot hope to win a war that way. It is pure viciousness.
If Qatari troops were present involved in taking Tripoli, that would be the sort of help that the rebels should have got in March.
The FBI has thousands of informers in mosques in the US, many of them blackmailed, trying to lure in would-be terrorists. Often it seems they manufacture the "terrorism", preying on confused people who would never have made a real plan on their own.
Apropos of Anna Hazare's protest fast, 4 MPs in India were arrested for selling their votes.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who stole many as yet unpublished leaked documents from Wikileaks in 2010, has destroyed many or all of them.
Thanks to his betrayal, we will not get to see the US no-fly list.
The Chaos Computer Club has expelled him for trying to use their name to promote his own nebulous substitute for Wikileaks.
Here is a discussion of the implications of his actions.
Since a year ago, we have seen many people and organizations make accusations against Wikileaks. Domscheit-Berg's accusations, coming as they did from an insider, sounded very bad. But now we see that he cannot be trusted and his accusations should not be believed. There are reports he is cooperating with the FBI. Perhaps his sabotage of Wikileaks' operations and his accusations were all part of that "cooperation".
California approved use of toxic methyl iodide as a pesticide. Farm workers are scared.
In 1994, Mitt Romney argued for abortion rights. His argument remains valid although he ceases to heed it.
The Koch brothers have campaigned against security precautions for chemical plants, arguing that terrorism is not such a big danger and doesn't justify causing so much trouble for business.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
That argument is not valid about a chemical plant which could poison thousands of people, but it is valid for the much smaller problems that other possible terrorist attacks could cause.
The same argument applies much That is right — so when will this same principle be applied to the measures that cause trouble for us?
Harsh state laws that attack illegal immigrants seem to have chased most illegal immigrants away from some states, leading to collapse of certain businesses.
Some aspects of these laws are specially cruel, but the basic point of not allowing illegal immigrants to remain does not seem wrong to me. Convincing US citizens to do the jobs formerly done by illegal immigrants may require increasing the wages and improving working conditions. It may also require job training, which I doubt these states have provided.
15% of Americans now get food stamps. Many are employed part time and can't live on that.
Many companies prefer to hire more part-time employees just so as not to pay them benefits such as health care. A national health system would eliminate this perverse incentive.
Governor Perry published a book last year which condemned Social Security as unconstitutional.
Student Paul Donnachie in Scotland was convicted of the crime of insulting and defacing (but only notionally) an Israeli student's Israeli flag. He also called Israel a "terrorist state" and called the other student a "terrorist".
Donnachie needs to learn that he does no good for the cause of peace by being crude. However, what he said about Israel is simple truth. Israel has committed acts which perfectly fit the usual definition of terrorism: for instance, the bombing of civilians in Gaza with the aim of making them drop their support for Hamas. Violence against civilians for a political purpose.
There is no reason to believe that the Israeli student Reitblat is personally a terrorist, so Donnachie owes him an apology for that. However, to punish mere insult as a crime violates the basic human right of freedom of speech.
A study predicts increased CO2 emissions from northern soils, so global heating will cause more global heating.
Hamas harasses and arrests political activists in Gaza.
Hamas also blocks Palestinians from leaving Gaza to study — ironically, just what Israel used to do to them.
The price of gold has risen 70% this year, but the countries where it is mined get little benefit because foreign businesses keep it.
Some reasons people stay with abusive lovers.
A US judge ruled that police need a warrant to get cell phone location data.
Other judges have made different rulings, so I expect the Supreme Court will make the real decision.
Did Obama Order Tar Sands Protesters Jailed?
Exposed: Shell's poor safety record for oil drilling in the UK.
New Zealand is considering signing a treaty that requires political censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This treaty is an injustice. Freedom of speech must be defended even when it involves statements we despise.
If New Zealand wants to cooperate with other countries against organized crime, it can take the other proposed steps without signing the treaty.
A Halliburton executive publicly drank some of Halliburton's current
fracking fluid as a stunt.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I call it a stunt because it proves nothing significant about fracking and safety. Even supposing that fluid is safe, next month Halliburton could switch to something else, which isn't. And it says nothing about other companies.
If a law required all companies to use a fracking fluid that is safe for humans and other species, and that wouldn't pollute wells, and to get approval of the ingredients to prove it, that would be more than a stunt.
The rogue terror groups in Gaza acceded to Hamas' cease fire with Israel, under Egyptian pressure.
Now the challenge is to undo the distractive effect of these attacks, which gave Netanyahu a chance to make security the main issue.
Why there is no need to cut Social Security.
Divisions among the rebels in Libya will make establishment of a new government difficult.
A crucial difference between Libya and Afghanistan is that the US set up Karzai's "government" and is thus fully responsible for it, including its corruption. The Libyan rebels' shaky government was not set up by NATO even if NATO help create the opportunity for it to exist, and NATO must avoid getting drawn into a role in setting one up.
Horrible things may happen if Libyans do this badly, but Afghanistan shows that horrible things could happen if NATO gets involved.
Colombia's former president, Alvaro Horrible (that sounds much like "Uribe" in Spanish, and is more accurate) used US funds to spy on and smear political opponents, dissidents, and Supreme Court judges.
Democracy in Colombia is hardly "thriving" — in fact, it is planning a law to punish Internet users on mere accusation of copyright infringement, in obedience to US demands.
The US and Afghanistan are planning a deal to keep US troops there (and the war going) until 2024.
The megacorporations that want special tax breaks on their foreign profits "to create jobs" refuse to say how many jobs they have in the US, and how many in other countries.
But it seems they have cut almost 3 million US jobs in the past decade. So it seems unlikely that they will go in the opposite direction.
The one kind of tax change that really would help jobs in the US is to establish a national health care system. The current system of paying for health care through employment discourages employing people in the US.
US citizens: sign
to say you agree with Warren Buffett
that taxes on rich people should be increased.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: sign this petition urging This American Life to make its show about software patents available in a format that isn't patented.
100 were arrested protesting our right-wing president's tar sand oil pipeline, and many were jailed to discourage further protests.
The special "safety conditions" that the company agreed to are minor and insignificant, or just repeat what the law requires.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The arrested protesters say, We need company in jail!
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The credit rating agencies that rate countries' debts have a conflict of interest, says a former executive.
US citizens: call on Obama to pressure Iceland to stop killing endangered fin whales.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dominique Strauss-Kahn may run for President of France if the rape charges are dropped.
There may be doubts about whether he raped a chambermaid, but we know he is guilty of unspeakable acts in his role as head of the IMF.
Some towns near Fukushima will be uninhabitable for decades.
A state in Germany has banned the Facebook "like" button for the surveillance it does.
Facebook "like" buttons track users even if they are not logged in on Facebook..
The private prison operator CCA turned a prison sentence into a death sentence by denying medical care to a prisoner who had a heart attack. But this is just the worst example of CCA's cruelty. So the ACLU wants CCA's contract cancelled.
2,000 corpses have been found in unmarked graves in Kashmir, apparently Kashmiris secretly killed by India.
India promised to give Kashmir a referendum about whether to be part of India, but never carried it out.
Calling on the FDA to ban antibacterial soap that does no good and can indirectly do harm.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of scared Mexicans have had RFIDs implanted on the belief that this can help track them if they are kidnapped.
There are just two problems: 1. RFIDs only track you when you go near an antenna, and 2. the kidnappers would cut it out of you anyway.
Our Brave New Marketing World.
I don't have a frequent-purchaser card from any retail store, but I do sometimes use the numbers of other people.
Uri Avnery: The Palestinian attack in the Negev was the miracle Netanyahu was waiting for: now he can use "security" to distract attention from all criticism.
His conclusion: campaigning for other social issues cannot ignore the issue of peace with Palestine.
Parts of Tripoli have risen up against Gaddafi as the rebel troops outside close in.
I am sure the rebels will move as fast as they can; but as they advance into into the city, Gaddafi will have lots of opportunities to slow them down. I fear that his troops will crush the uprisings. Given their propensity to randomly shell civilian areas, I think they'd be glad to kill these anti-Gaddafi Libyans even if there is no hope they can win.
There needs to be a way for them to surrender instead — and provisions need to be made to heal the conflict with the tribes that have been Gaddafi's supporters.
The Pope's visit to Madrid was spoiled by a storm.
I would have said it was a "sign from God", if I thought there was one.
South Africa seizes the children of Zimbabwean women who are caught begging.
I don't believe that countries are obliged to admit any number of poor migrants. BUt these are not ordinary migrants. They are refugees from Mugabes tyranny, which is supported by South Africa.
Meahwhile, nothing can excuse telling these women to "get a job" when there are no jobs and they have no papers, or "find a decent house" when they are destitute, or demanding they pay to take a class. (Whose idea was that fee? The IMF's?) If South Africa wants to have a policy of taking the children of destitute refugees, it should come out and say so, not set up a catch-22 for them.
I also wonder what conditions these children are being kept in. I have a feeling that institutions for poor children in South Africa are also not very good conditions to bring up a child. Are they better than standing with mom at an intersection to beg?
Ohio's right-wing governor Kasich attacked state workers' bargaining rights, but progressives have set up a referendum which he now fears he will lose.
The US is poisoning troops and civilians in Afghanistan by burning waste indiscriminately.
The same was done in Iraq (and maybe still is).
A Greenland glacier is melting at record pace.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Don't buy property within a few meters of sea level.
Drugs are present in all rivers and lakes, and they cause medical problems for fish and shellfish.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many political activists in Egypt face charges of "insulting the military".
People have a human right to insult anyone and anything; any state that puts people on trial for doing so, convicts itself.
The US military is going overboard to push Christianity on soldiers, and spending hundreds of millions to do it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The result is to make non-Christian soldiers feel pressure to convert.
Mountaintop removal coal mining poisons the oldest soil in the world, killing sensitive species, and does not even provide the jobs that are promised.
Scientists researching chronic fatigue syndrome receive death threats.
Climate scientist Jason Box will risk arrest to protest the plans for the tar sands oil pipeline from Canada, along with one to two thousand others.
Texas Governor Perry claims Texas has done better on employment than most of the US. Texas' unemployment rate is 8.2; the US as a whole is a little over 9.
Vietnam has sentenced human rights defenders to years in prison for peaceful political advocacy.
An Argentine government commission ordered all ISPs to block access to a site that has published leaked government emails.
A dangerous trend: many employers are using Facebook for recruiting.
I fear this will develop into an unofficial requirement for many people to use Facebook on pain of not getting hired.
Obama really loves secret military operations, and has given them dangerous autonomy.
Two former Guantanamo prisoners, who released without charges, were then imprisoned on their return to Tajikistan after a trial that was even worse than a Guantanamo trial.
Arizona wants to prohibit nonprofits (such as shelters for battered women) from even discussing abortion. The ACLU is fighting back.
More instances where the US military tortured prisoners by making them feel they were drowning.
Two prisoners were really drowned.
A French businessman says he will pay the fines for all women fined for wearing burqas.
That is good, but what about those of us who are men, or who are not Muslims? The right to cover one's face in public should not be limited to women, or to those with religious motivations. If face recognition cameras are set up in the streets, covering your face will be the only way to resist total surveillance.
Perhaps this response will lead to reconsideration of these laws.
Judging Obama by the advisers he kept, and the ones he sacked.
Syrian dissidents are planning to meet in Istanbul to form a unified front.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Of the 145 protesters in a Fortnum & Mason store, 30 are being prosecuted — the ones that had leaflets.
By choosing to prosecute these protesters, instead of making Fortnum & Mason pay taxes as they demanded, the UK government shows that it values the budget deficit as an excuse to make poor people suffer.
By treating possession of leaflets — proof of a political role — as an "aggravating" factor, it shows that the real defendent here is the idea of protest, and reaffirm that "aggravated trespass" is just an excuse to prosecute protesters.
A Palestinian TV show that satirized officials has been banned by the Palestinian Authority.
The PA now has an opportunity to demonstrate its readiness to respect human rights, by cancelling this decision.
The Libyan rebels have taken Zawiya, cutting off Tripoli from the rest of Libya and cutting off its supply of gasoline.
Tripoli is now cut off in all directions. I hope that the rebels will not cut off food to Tripoli's civilians.
However, tribal divisions are a problem for the rebels.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Even after Jamaica's debt was restructured, over half of national income goes to paying the debt, hurting education, health and housing.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which was introduced by UN "peacekeeper" troops, could be ended if proper efforts were made: but they are not being made.
Amnesty International calls on Egypt to drop charges against an activist for his Twitter comments.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The SEC regularly discards the results of investigations that don't lead to prosecution. This protects the suspects — executives and corporations.
Governor Perry followed a sensible Keynesian policy of deficit spending to create jobs in Texas.
Thus, his condemnation of government spending is hypocritical.
Adel Al-Gazzar was held unjustly in Guantanamo, then released. When he got home to Egypt, Mubarak's regime imprisoned him.
US citizens: call on the Supercommittee to cut military spending, not social spending.
US citizens: Tell Congresscritters
stop hiding from the public
behind paid-attendence private meetings.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Americans:
support
the 10th anniversary campaign
for a thorough and
honest investigation of the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Only a proper and uncorrupted investigation can establish who was responsible and who wasn't.
US citizens: call
on the DOE to make its fracking regulations strong.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
When companies want to conceal things, they typically claim they need to keep secrets from their competitors. Even if that is indeed one of their motives, there is no reason to grant it any validity in an issue of public safety or health. When those are at stake, or any issue more important than the profit of any one company, businesses should be required to reveal any information that the public needs.
However, I think this reason is a front. If all the companies in a certain field were required to publish certain information, each company would gain something and lose something. If he can see your secrets, that is compensated by the fact that you can see his secrets. Once each company knows all, they would all become more efficient. Why would they object strenuously to this?
My theory is that what they really want is to keep their dangerous practices secret from the public, but they can't admit that, so they talk about keeping secrets from each other, and politicians whose support has been procured in some other way can cite this as their public reason.
Canadians: sign this petition to oppose the increased police spy powers that the government wants.
The government plans to give the police people's Internet and cell phone data tracking without a warrant.
The fact that it plans to slip this into a big "omnibus" bill displays its contempt for the citizens.
A Massachusetts citizen who made a video of a policeman beating a prisoner with a flashlight (and calling him racial insults) is now threatened with prosecution for recording it.
Chinese political prisoners are suing Cisco for supplying equipment that helped China censor them.
In London, with over a million security cameras, one crime got solved each year per thousand cameras.
US citizens: Tell Senator Reid to support Sander's bill to increase taxes on millionaires.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US hospitals and medical insurance companies are locked in a twisted battle over prices and reimbursements.
The solution to this is lear: a single-payer system as in Canada or England. Those systems work fine, except when right-wing governments try to sabotage them, and even then they are still better than the US system.
India's government backed down and gave Anna Hazare permission to hold a hunger strike for 15 days.
I suppose that if he isn't ready to stop in 15 days, they will be compelled to extend the permission, or else play out the same hand that they lost last time. However, what's really important is ending the corruption. That is a hard fight, but the support that Hazare has gained through his arrest may help.
An executive of Goldman Sachs changed his name and went to work for Rep. Issa, blocking regulations that might reduce the company's profits.
5000 protested in Spain against the public funds spent on the pope's visit.
Palestinian infiltrators attacked a bus as well as military targets near Eilat. Israel retaliated by bombing Gaza.
I have no way to evaluate whether the people attacked in Gaza had any relation to the attack, or whether they were combatants. What does the "Popular Resistance Committee" do?
The US and several European leaders called on Assad to resign.
Sometimes NATO bombs in Libya kill civilians, and US media cover it up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
These incidents are not culpable — such things are unavoidable even with good will. But that is no excuse for denying they occurred.
A UK man paralyzed except for his eyes is suing for the right to be helped to die.
700 people have been imprisoned for the riots in the UK.
How many bankster have been imprisoned for looting billions? None.
The London riots prove CCTV is useless for deterring street crime.
Maybe CCTV can be used to identify large numbers of rioters and prosecute them. But that is the wrong thing to do, since it seeks to bottle up the pressure that other unjust government policies create.
If CCTV can identify the banksters and bring them to justice, then it might be of some use.
Texas Governor Perry blocked disabled veterans from voting.
Pakistan's military demands the US get authorization for drone attacks in Pakistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, it seems to be unable to gain US compliance with this demand.
Physicians for Human Rights has evidence that doctors and other medical personnel in Guantanamo disregarded signs of torture of prisoners under their care.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
South Koreans are suing Apple for putting a surveillance feature in the spyPhone.
Everyone: call on Brazil's president Rousseff to veto a law that would ruin Brazil's forest production.
Paul Graham: Technological progress regularly converts appealing things into addictive things, so the world gets more addictive.
A medium-size oil spill in the North Sea highlights the increased danger of oil platforms that are still operating decades after they were put in place.
Merkel and Sarkozy proposed strict economic controls on euro-zone countries including a requirement for balanced budget every year.
This is fiscal insanity since it would mean no way to stimulate the economy in bad times such as these.
If sustainability of the economy were included in debt ratings, the US would have been downgraded years ago.
A skeptical treatment of the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.
I can't evaluate most of his claims myself.
Murdoch's News Corporation hounded whistleblower Robert Emmel into bankruptcy by suing him for all sorts of things. It lost the lawsuits but ruined his life.
Omar Awadh Omar claims UK intelligence agents and FBI agents beat him up after kidnapping him in Kenya and taking him illegally to Uganda.
After millions of Indians supported his anti-corruption campaign, Anna Hazare refused to be released from jail, and launched his hunger strike there.
US citizens: tell Obama: enough cuts, the US needs jobs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US should imitate Europe — on democracy, on the environment, and on social programs.
The Righthaven lawsuit mill has to pay $34,000 in defense lawyers' costs for frivolous suit, won by the defense based on fair use.
US citizens: tell Obama to oppose the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the FCC not to allow cell phone system shutoffs as a means of sabotaging protests.
Homeopathic Thuggery: a big homeopathy corporation has threatened a blogger who pointed out that its "Oscillococcinum" product has no active ingredient.
The most powerful potential US military adversary, China, has one aircraft carrier that belonged to Ukraine in the 90s. Does the US need 11 carrier groups? Does it need an army that could fight all the world's other armies put together?
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Maybe there is a reason for that. Maybe the Washington power elite is planning to do something so horrible that the whole rest of the world would want to attack. Broiling our planet, perhaps?
Richard Clarke, who was Bush's Director for Counterterrorism, accused George Tenet (then CIA Director) of concealing crucial information from him in August 2001 about people subsequently accused in the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The only motive I can imagine for him to conceal this is if Bush or Cheney had ordered him to conceal that information; and the only plausible motive for that is if they were somehow complicit in the attacks.
This is not proof. There might be some other explanation that doesn't suggest itself to me. But this is enough reason to have a new investigation — a thorough and honest one this time. (Bush's investigation was hamstrung and corrupted.) That is why I signed the ae911truth.org petition for a new investigation.
Fannie Mae, a semi-government mortgage lender, has been pushing banks to foreclose rather than give borrowers some slack.
Tropical bird diseases are spreading north due to global heating.
The ACLU is suing to block a Kansas law that bans health insurance from covering abortions.
I am an ACLU member. Are you?
Just maybe the US will turn away from subsidizing ethanol made from corn.
Using a subsidized farm crop to make fuel means it gets grown instead of food, and that drives food prices up. Meanwhile, growing this corn is not very efficient, so it doesn't do much to reduce global heating.
A GM corn variety specialized to make ethanol production more efficient threatens to ruin corn grown for food.
It is lunacy to do genetic engineering in a plant whose pollen spreads far on the wind.
US citizens: support measures to protect manatees from being killed by speedboats.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
So many get killed this way that it puts the species at risk of extinction.
Senator Leahy wants to end US aid to certain Israeli military units which have a habit of harming innocent Palestinian civilians.
In the US: tell Obama, block the AT&T/T-mobile merger.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Karzai has still not figured out how to deal with the vote-rigging in the Afghan parliamentary election last September.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, he rigged his own re-election too.
Gaza is turning to organic agriculture to cope with the siege.
Massive fraud by banks: 92% of foreclosures in New York City lack proper documents.
Watching TV may lead to earlier death. Or perhaps people watch TV because of something else that causes a tendency to die earlier.
If sitting a lot leads to earlier death, I hope that my working 10 hours a day on the computer doesn't have the same effect. Unlike TV, which I more or less do without, the work I do on the computer is important, and I would not want to leave it undone.
India has arrested Anna Hazare, and 1300 supporters, to stop him from starting a hunger strike as a protest against corruption.
If someone can show me a site for coordinating resistance to this act of tyranny, I would appreciate it.
Amnesty International says that the government of Malawi is planning to shoot protesters tomorrow.
Journalists and human rights advocates have met with violent repression there recently.
A News of the World reporter's letter says that the paper's editor and senior reporters approved the illegal phone tapping, and shows that Rupert Murdoch gave misleading evidence to Parliament.
Proposing that we shun violent entertainment.
I avoid violent video, not as a boycott but, rather because I don't like the feeling it gives me.
In 10 years, the US has spent around 11 trillion dollars on "national security". Did that make Americans any safer?
If it were established that this spending did make Americans safer overall, some parts of it might be exceptions. For instance, I am sure that the conquest and occupation of Iraq had the opposite effect.
But even if it were possible to make Americans safer through a war of conquest and occupation, that would not make it legitimate.
US citizens: tell congressional leaders they should insist that the members of the deficit-cutting committee stop accepting funds from military contractors, and publish details of any meetings with those contractors' representatives.
The EFF says that BART violated two federal laws by shutting off cell phone service in stations.
An al-Jazeera journalist who went home to Palestine on vacation was arrested a week ago and remains in Israeli prison.
Israel pressures many Palestinians to turn informer. And if they have no truthful accusations to report, they can report false accusations.
Israel approved another large block of construction in a colony in the West Bank.
However this has no effect on peace talks, because Israel's years of construction of these colonies had already killed them.
100 Irish occupied Shell's pipeline construction site in Rossport, Ireland.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Four protesters were violently injured by Shell's private and public police.
Explanation of why Shell's pipeline is dangerous, and the local reaction.
China praises the UK for endorsing political Internet censorship.
BPing the Arctic: How Shell's Dangerous Drilling Is Being Fast-Tracked.
Israel says it will build over 4000 more apartments in areas it calls East Jerusalem.
These are presumably in territory captured in 1967 that Israel has relabeled as "Jerusalem".
Protecting forests on Lombok, Indonesia.
The UK says it has asked intelligence codebreakers to help decrypt Blackberry messages of possible rioters.
The article is mistaken about a crucial fact: aside from special "enterprise" systems which the rioters generally did not have, RIM can decrypt these messages, and the police can subpoena the decrypted messages from RIM.
The police know this. So why would they ask code-breakers to go to work on these messages? The only plausible motive I can see is to avoid the need to show cause for subpoenas — and that is contempt of justice. Either that, or this is just PR, following the general strategy of using the riots to distract attention from the banksters' much bigger looting, and far more numerous killings by the police.
Israeli soldiers arrested the site director and chairman of the Freedom Theater in Jenin.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The main UK banks still invest in cluster bombs even though the UK has signed the treaty to ban them.
Warren Buffett asks why "shared sacrifices" don't include him and other super-rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
New Zealand's Parliament passed a law to punish Internet users for file-sharing. Parliament could easily be fined for this.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Chase Bank is offering some people $1000 to accept a credit card and spend $500 of their own money through it.
How the Koch brothers bought an election so as to bring back segregation.
The police in Long Beach say that photography and "taking notes" are suspicious behavior just like trying to get samples of infection diseases.
After BART cut off phone service in its stations to sabotage a protest, it has gone further and banned protests, assemblies, and all "expressive activities" in them.
You can complain to the FCC about this.
Thousands protested at a toxic factory in Dalian, China, and the state said it would move the plant away.
Bachmann opposes extending unemployment coverage, to keep taxes low for corporations.
A teenager reports on brainwashing in a Christian camp.
UK citizens: sign this petition against government interference with public communication.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Texas Governor Perry collected 17 million dollars in campaign funds from people he appointed to public office, and 6 million from people he appointed as regents of Texas universities.
Those are just two of the items in this list of his misdeeds.
Gaddafi's forces are losing ground on three fronts.
This may be partly due to the destruction of many tanks and other heavy weapons, but I suspect the main reason is that his soldiers have lost heart.
Wood, charcoal and edible mushrooms in Japan are affected by radioactive contamination, joining straw and animals that ate it.
The Bureau of Investigation has counted up casualties from US drone attacks in Pakistan, and found some 2900 — almost 50% more than the US acknowledges. Some 380 were civilians, and 160 were children.
In particular, the US claim that no civilians have been killed in 2011 is false.
Mitt Romney says, "Corporations are people."
Studies find wealthy Americans show less empathy, less compassion, and less awareness of other people's feelings than working Americans.
The War on Drugs is fueling murders of Women in parts of Latin America.
What else would you expect from a war that's on drugs?
The US commission on fracking recommended stricter regulation.
This is despite having been filled with people with financial ties to the companies that do fracking.
The commission did not address the question of whether fracking ought to be allowed.
Republicans are pushing for school vouchers in 30 states.
American voters have nearly always rejected school vouchers, and unless it has changed recently, public opinion opposes it. Republicans get away with this and many other policies that Americans don't like because the mainstream media distract attention from them.
China is having trouble clamping the lid on microblogging, as some citizens use it to resist oppression.
Chinese demand is fueling elephant poaching in Africa.
Families face eviction in the UK because a child is accused of participating in riots.
If large numbers of downtrodden people are evicted, they should unite on the streets to resist — for instance, to block evictions, and punish the big looters in the banks.
Someone in the UK should start an "Old Labour" party that will firmly defend the rights of the non-rich as the Labour party once did.
Genetically engineered tobacco plants produce HIV medicine.
This is an example of genetic engineering I think is basically good and safe.
US citizens: tell the Department of Health and Human Services that insurance coverage for contraception must apply to all employers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Respecting religious freedom for everyone means that the employees decide, not that employers decide.
Of course, if we had a sensible and efficient national health system, the employer wouldn't be involved in it so this issue would not even arise.
Texas Governor Perry, a likely 2012 Republican candidate, is a religious lunatic and a global heating denier.
From what I've seen of Obama, he will not dare confront Perry's lunacy in a clear and forceful way.
Two former mercenaries in Iraq say they were imprisoned and tortured by the US military for reporting their employer's crimes to the FBI.
We knew there was lots of corruption in Iraq; Cheney set the tone for it. This shows the corruption used torture to protect itself. It also shows that torture was a systematic machine, greased and ready to be applied to anyone including heroic and patriotic Americans.
The existence of a torture machine threatens everyone and everything. Once it is running, its victims can't be limited to Iraqi rebels (not to say torturing them is excusable, but some such as Obama may not care about them).
I wonder who stopped the FBI from investigating and prosecuting. Surely it would have wanted to protect its informants. Only someone very high up could have stopped it. Cheney, perhaps?
The Afghan government is still not fit to take over Bagram prison.
Given the pervasive corruption of the Karzai regime, starting from Karzai himself, I doubt it ever can be fit.
Offshore windmill farms are good for wildlife.
The London police seem to have killed over 300 prisoners in the past decade, but the mainstream media say they suffer from too much restraint.
The government uses the minor looters in the streets to distract attention from the big-time looters in the banks and boardrooms.
Al Jazeera's whistleblower site has corrected some of its problems, but still requires impossible commitments.
President Ouattara's troops are committing atrocities against former Gbagbo supporters.
A US-built model village in Afghanistan, now abandoned, shows how US aid programs waste money and benefit only some businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Google+'s "real name" policy puts business ambition over user's rights and safetly.
South Korea will relax a rule requiring major web sites to demand user's state ID numbers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
They really ought to get rid of national ID cards.
AT&T accidentally leaked a report showing that its pretended excuses for buying T-mobile are bogus.
Everyone: call for EU sanctions against Syrian oil.
In the US: support the striking Verizon workers.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The company tried to impose cuts on the workers despite massive profits.
6 Pakistani soldiers were convicted of killing an unarmed prisoner.
They should all be sentenced to life in prison, but not execution, because execution is barbaric.
The crucial thing for Pakistan is to properly investigate such crimes when there isn't video to prove them.
Oil companies say the world has oil for 40 years at current rates, but a group of scientists who formerly worked for oil companies say that peak oil is just about upon us.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Countries such as the US, that failed to adopt policies to shift away from fossil fuels since 35 years ago, will be hit strongly by this.
One response will be to substitute coal, and natural gas obtained by fracking. But these increase the contribution to global heating, so they are a smooth path down to death valley.
The Wisconsin recall elections removed 2 out of 6 Republican senators who were challenged — enough to hamper Walker.
Mexican police frequently plant evidence as an excuse for searching people's homes, and torture people into confessing to possess them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Israel's proposed new law not only declares Arabs second-class citizens, it also imposes Jewish law. This means theocracy instead of democracy.
Arctic ice is disappearing 4 times faster than the IPCC report said in 2007.
The richest Americans are rapidly increasing their incomes and wealth. Many of them used the financial crisis to do it.
LinkedIn has abandoned the practice of user's photos in ads, due to criticism from users and regulators.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This victory shows that enough pressure from users can make Facebook stop it too.
I intentionally did not use these companies' spin terminology to describe this practice. Their spin terminology makes it sound like this is a way to help users connect rather than what it is: exploitation of them.
San Francisco police shut down cell phone service in BART stations to prevent people from organizing a protest.
Vietnam has imprisoned a dissident blogger.
Can anyone tell me what the penname Phan Kien Quoc means? "Quoc" (in a certain tone) means "country", and my guess is that this name makes some sort of patriotic comment.
Forensic experts in the trial of Guatemalan soldiers who massacred civilians have received death threats since the trial ended.
This show that Guatemala has not yet escaped from the menace of murderous soldiers like the ones just convicted. That menace will get worse if the right-wing ex-military candidate wins the election.
A classical musician alleges that copyright collecting societies' inflexible policies are a major obstacle to the success of art music new enough to be copyrighted.
Wang Lihong faces 5 years in prison in China, after a manifestly unfair trial, for "assembling a crowd to block traffic". In other words, a nonviolent protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's committee to study fracking was told to presume it can be done safely, and not to investigate whether that is true. Then it was packed with people who get money from companies that do fracking.
We need leaders who can dare tell any company to take a flying leap. To restore democracy, lots of companies are going to have to do this. Anyone who hesitates too long before giving that command can't possibly do the job.
Exxon Seeks Legal Immunity For Corporate-Sponsored Torture.
Contrasting Anarchism with the disorder: an Anarchist take on the UK riots.
I sympathize with Anarchism, and I like to see parts and aspects of society work well through mutual aid, but I think we need a state so we can tax the rich and restrain their power. (That's what democracy means.)
French Farmer Advertises Against Advertising.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It is probably helpful, but doesn't solve problem.
Execution by lethal injection pretends to be painless but is actually quite a messy business.
However, the main reasons to eliminate the death penalty are (1) it ends investigations to clear the name of someone wrongly convicted, and (2) it cheapens human life.
Global heating has stopped for the past decade because the short-term cooling from increased sulfur emissions have masked the long-term heating effect of CO2.
This effect can't last — we will soon feel the effect of the CO2 we have already poured into the atmosphere, and the additional CO2 we continue to emit.
Meanwhile, global heating deniers get treated as serious scientists by the BBC because it misapplies its requirement to be impartial.
That requirement ought to be applied to political issues, not to science.
In Bahrain, the state's repression forces have blockaded Pearl Square to pre-empt protests there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
I won't call them "security forces". Security for the people is not what they are working for now.
Obama has continued increasing military spending. If there is no budget deal, the default reductions of the debt-ceiling agreement would reduce military spending to the level of 2007. It would still be a lot higher than during the Cold War.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If we are to have cuts, we should cut the military more than that. Military spending produces fewer jobs than other government spending, so we should take all the cuts from the military.
To do even better, we could cut the military further, and increase social spending, all within the unwise requirements of the debt ceiling deal. If we do this enough, we could stimulate the economy, which is what it needs.
59% of Americans want to remove all US troops from Afghanistan within a year.
The mainstream media have mostly stopped talking about the war.
Maybe that means the government would like Americans not to think about it so they won't push harder to end it.
The UK government proposes to follow China by censoring messages sent on the Internet.
Dangerously, the Labour Party supports the plan.
Others warn that restricting communication without trial tramples the freedom of speech.
I do not sympathize with gangs whose main purpose is to steal goods whose lack won't kill them, or with racists that murder from bigotry. But any new police powers, if created, will be used against meaningful political dissent as well.
The UK riots reflect the existence of an underclass which has no opportunity and sees that the police hate it. The UK must focus on removing the pressure which led to the riots, not on how to bottle it up better. These fires will burn themselves out, but running society for the wealthy few will keep starting new ones.
Canada's right-wing government is trying to authorize warrantless digital spying, and buried it in a larger bill hoping to avoid attention.
The ACLU is suing to stop the practice of jailing people who can't pay fines because they are destitute.
Everyone: Support Amnesty International — call on the Chinese government to investigate the arrest and torture of human rights defender Mao Hengfeng.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Rep. Lee's bill to remove all Bush forces from Iraq this year. Also send mail using this page.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
When You Play the Plurocrats' Game, They Win: On Civility and Half Measures.
Right-wing extremists are winning, and they didn't do it through civility. They don't deserve any civility.
There were protests across India against GMO agriculture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I think that "Quit India Day" used to be the date of protests against British rule. They are quite right to recognize that patented seeds are another kind of colonization.
See also this article.
The London riots are the result of a system of great inequality, leaving large parts of society with no opportunity to escape squalor, together with a history of hundreds of unpunished killings by police.
Obama announced standards for fuel efficiency for trucks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This seems to be one area where Obama really does something good. I wonder how long it will take before the Tea Party attacks it. If they are against making lightbulbs more efficient, it would only be natural for them to take the same stand for cars and trucks, and everything else.
US environmental organizations have sued to block the NRC from licensing any reactors, saying its standards are dangerously lax.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Japanese citizens organized to map radiation levels since the government doesn't bother to.
Panama Trade Deal Would Undercut Efforts To Get Rich Americans To Pay Taxes.
Hundreds of thousands protested against Chile's right-wing president. Then a few started violence, which is a side issue.
UK rioters rammed and killed three British Asians with a car, apparently as an act of bigotry.
These riots seem to consist mostly of looting local businesses, reminding me of the riots in Watts in the 1960s. There is nothing ethical, let alone heroic, in these explosions. However, it would be folly to ignore the causes, which have to do with government policies.
ACLU: balance the budget by reducing imprisonment.
China accused Ai Weiwei of tax evasion after interrogating him 50 times about dissident activities.
If a European country (such as Germany) defaults, poor countries might feel bolder about defaulting.
France may be the next target of European austerity program.
The main good that the EU has done for most people who live in it is in improved social programs, and the misguided response of budget cutting is being seized as an opportunity to wipe that all out.
Ralph Nader: Time to Cap the Tea Kettle — Throwing America Overboard.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A sworn enemy of the EPA is on the budget-cut congressional "supercommittee".
Economic Crisis or Nonviolent Opportunity?
I think the term "collapse" is an exaggeration, at least at the preesent time, but some of these ideas could be useful.
US citizens: sign the Contract for the American Dream.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
UNESCO condemned the NATO attack on a Libyan government TV station.
Moktada Al-Sadr warns the US to remove the Bush forces from Iraq on schedule, or face attacks.
Maliki is negotiating to keep some Bush forces in Iraq, knowing he will never get it through Parliament anyway.
A secret US military force of 60,000 troops operates in 70 countries. In some of them, it operates as a death squad.
Businesses are lobbying to block the EPA from regulating toxic chromium ions in drinking water.
Chomsky: Public Education Under Massive Corporate Assault — What's Next?
The corporations that pollute our water supplies are setting up phony efforts to present themselves as the providers of water.
Assad ignored pressure from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia, and continued the military attack on Syria's nonviolent protesters.
Piers Morgan, as editor of the London Mirror, published fabricated accusations against Greg Palast to undermine his exposé of Labour Party corruption.
US Expands Its Presence in Mexico, Ramping Up Drug War.
I wonder when they will begin drone strikes.
The execution of an Indonesian worker in Saudi Arabia has spread a wave of revulsion against the rigid and cruel Saudi version of Islam.
Iranian activists warn that removing the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the "terrorist organization" list would anger all Iranians.
The inclusion of any organization in this list should not be an administrative decision which carries a message about policy. It should be decided only by a trial.
Barney Frank firmly refuted NPS's right-wing spin about budget cuts.
In the US: rally on September 15
in favor of recognizing Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops continue to delay ambulances taking injured Palestinians to hospitals.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians in Nabi Saleh, where a weekly protest is held, report that Israeli soldiers are firing randomly in the town.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
If you watch the Youtube video, be sure to watch in HTML5. Don't install Flash Player in your page — it is nonfree software with malicious features.
Israeli school textbooks teach racism towards Arabs, says an Israeli professor of education.
Israel is preparing to make democracy subordinate to religion.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The UNRWA says that there is a clear link between expansion of Israeli colonies in the West Bank and demolition of Palestinian structures.
The Israeli army destroyed 3 Palestinian wells near the Jordan River in order to give the water to Israeli agricultural colonies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
That area is part of "Area C", the area in which the Israeli army maintains total control. The UN has documented the persistent systematic oppression of Palestinians in area C, designed to make them move away.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians are squeezed with water shortages all around the West Bank, since Israel has taken 90% of the area's water resources.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
When I was in Ramallah, I saw that the Palestinian buildings all had large water tanks because water was available every third day — or less.
Bahrain repression is getting worse.
A group of Spanish priests joined with Secular Europe to oppose a plan to spend over 80 million dollars in public money for a papal visit to Madrid.
The London riots are the result of poverty with no opportunity. All it took was a spark to set off the rage.
Rioting turned out to be the only way these young people could get any attention to the lives they were subject to.
The police deserve this rage, and so does the state which practices Hooverlike authority during a depression, but the rioters attack others who just happen to be at hand. That's wrong and will cause suffering to innocents.
Michelle Bachmann supports family values, so she voted twice against increased parental leave.
Iraq is entitled to compensation from the US for the destruction caused by Bush's invasion.
The Bush family should have to give all its wealth and possessions as the first installment of this compensation.
Everyone:
sign
this petition
calling on countries friendly to Syria
to pressure Syria to end repression.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
If Obama approves the Keystone XL tar sand oil pipeline, that will be the biggest contributor to growth in Canada's carbon emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors doing housecalls keep their patients healthier, and even reduce medical care costs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
While Obama opposes a lawsuit to block Medicaid cuts in Washington, Congressional Democrats support it.
The problem is, Obama has made a deal with health insurance companies but he has not made any deal with the American people.
Obama didn't want to protect the US from the cuts of Republican knives, he just wanted the appearance of not having a choice.
The International Labor Organization voted for a convention to give domestic workers basic labor rights.
However, there remains the job of implementing this in the countries of the world, and even in the US there will be opposition.
Obama has changed very little about US overseas military activity compared with Bush.
Germany's interior minister is using the Oslo massacre as an excuse to attack anonymity on the Internet.
Thus one right-wing attack leads to another.
Businesses are trying to bully Germany into continuing to use nuclear power.
Converting to renewable energy is a necessity. What would these countries do if there were a Fukushima-like disaster near their factories? Of course, they would demand to place the costs on others and not them, but even after achieving that it would hurt their production. When companies demand short-term goals override long-term needs, that makes them enemies of society.
These companies deserve to be picketed in other countries.
Meanwhile, the fact that companies can do this illustrates the damage that "free trade" treaties do.
Opposition legislators shut down India's parliament in a protest against corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The BJP is a Hindu religious extremist party. The ruling Congress Party was once lead by Nehru, but now has no philosophy except to please international business.
IRS Buckled To GOP Pressure On Secret Donations, Lawyer Says.
In Valley Where SEALs Died, U.S. Raids Boost Taliban Support.
Several Arab countries including Bahrain and Saudi Arabia withdrew their ambassadors to Syria in response to Syria's assault on protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is the right thing to do, but it is ironic given that Bahrain is treating its protesters in much the same way as Syria.
Rumsfeld says there was no waterboarding at Guantanamo, but victim testimony shows similar sorts of torture were used.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq has paid millions in speaking fees to former US officials. Any relationship whatsoever with that organization is supposed to be a crime, since that organization is on the "terrorist" list, but the US seems ready to accept excuses in this case.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq may well deserve the label of "terrorist", but it was never given a trial to prove it should be in this list. That is one injustice. And even if it is proved to be a terrorist organization, punishing any and all contact with it is too much.
In the future, the US will label all organizations as "terrorist", and punish those associated with any organization if and when it wishes to.
A mercenary translator in the Bush forces is suing Rumsfeld for having him tortured. Obama tried to protect Rumsfeld, but a judge allowed the suit to proceed.
Everyone: call on Illinois to free several men convicted of murders that DNA now shows were committed by other people.
These men were coerced, tricked or bullied into false confessions as teenagers, and the officials now would rather keep them in prison despite their almost certain innocence.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the bills to make
police need a court order to get cell phone location data. Also send
mail using
this
web page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Despite the lies you will hear from the establishment, the US soldiers recently killed in Afghanistan did die in vain.
"In vain" is not adequate to describe those who are killed in Iraq. They died doing harm.
An Atheist and rationalist form of Christianity is developing in the Netherlands.
Major US ISPs made a deal with Hollywood to abuse their customers. The EFF has suggestions for a way to make the deal somewhat less abusive.
I don't criticize the EFF for pushing to ameliorate some details of the deal less bad. Hollywood will resist all these suggestions, but it doesn't hurt to try.
What would hurt is to let these details distract us from the basic evil of this deal, regardless of excuses. Censorship is evil, and making it a little less bad does not make it acceptable. We must get rid of this deal.
I wonder if a state could ban ISPs from acting in accord with this deal. That is something worth pushing for.
The article lists "intellectual property" as a "related issue", but it isn't an issue at all. It is a confused way of mixing up many unrelated laws, and gives a misleading idea of each one of them.
The "government" of Somalia now has control over Mogadishu, the main city and past capital, after a military campaign by the foreign troops that keep it in power.
The foreign troops that gained territory in Mogadishu should not be called "peacekeepers" — that is blackwhiting (see 1984). They are a foreign intervention that aims to impose a foreign-backed "government" which has hardly any popular support among the people it now tries to rule.
I don't know how much popular support al Shabaab has, but it can't be less.
America will need people who are not for sale.
12 million people are at risk of dying from hunger in Ethiopia, Somalia and nearby countries.
Shell's oil spills in Nigeria have made areas uninhabitable; in other areas, people still live but their only income is from stolen oil.
A US court supported US government domain seizures, ignoring the usual first amendment law.
The IMF has attacked Greece's public medical care system; many poor people can't afford the new fees, and hospitals are often out of supplies.
However, it is worse in the US where around 15% of the population is uninsured and many more have to choose between medicine and food.
ALEC lobbies for lax regulations of oil drilling — no wonder BP is the main donor for its annual meeting.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Governor Walker cut public health and addiction reduction funding, then rejected federal grants that would have made up for some of the cuts.
This demonstrates that the state deficit (which he created with a tax cut)
was just his excuse to do what he wants to do: make poor people suffer or die.
Governor Walker passed a law requiring voters to show state ID, then closed several ID offices to make it hard for poor people to vote. But he was compelled to reopen them, and even extend their hours.
If you haven't yet signed the petition calling on the Attorney General to block all these voter suppression laws, please sign.
Ralph Nader is working to encourage a progressive opponent to challenge Obama for the 2012 Democratic nomination.
German police say that full body scanners are useless because they give a tremendous rate of false alarms.
In the US: participate in a "Jobs not Cuts" rally.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
China demanded that the US cut spending, even its already inadequate social spending, to reduce its debt.
What kind of Communists are those, eh? Of course, China's social spending is even less than the US's.
US citizens: tell Congress to fund regulation to protect people from business, not subsidies for businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
In the UK, a political motive for a minor offense is now treated as making it worse. That threatens democracy.
Uri Avnery expects that the cost-of-living protesters in Israel will recognize that the cause that makes their life impossible is the occupation.
A protest in London, accusing the police of a gratuitous killing and lying about it, turned into a riot.
To change the unjust system, people must get very angry, then control that anger and focus it on winning their demands. Egyptians have set a great example, which Londoners must learn from.
The NRC's plan for stricter nuclear power plant safety standards are an improvement, but fail to address the danger of the "pools" where used fuel rods are stored.
The minister who pushed for the UK's punishment-upon-accusation copyright law had made up his mind before the sham public consultation about it. That was a sham.
Why banning anonymity on the Internet would be a big injustice.
"Real name" policies endanger those who are unprivileged or vulnerable. Many of them use pseudonyms on Facebook, too, but Facebook does not know.
How Rupert Murdoch has harmed society overall.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Haiti's senate rejected the president's 2nd pick for prime minister.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Since President Martelly was imposed by a Burmese-style election,
There is no reason for anyone to cooperate with him. Worse, he seems to propose nasty right-wingers.
The US keeps 20,000 prisoners in long-term solitary confinement, which is inhumane and must stop.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If you have a cell phone, it is the snitch in your pocket.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This is why I don't have one.
Right-wing Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin asserted, without proof, that the Oslo massacre was carried out by al Qa'ida. When this proved false, she insisted she was right in spirit anyway. She was criticized for this.
The paper's ombudsman defended her, and said her critics (who called for accurate and factual reporting) were no different from right-wing hate-mongers.
US citizens: take action against Obama's proposed free exploitation treaties with Korea, Panama and Colombia.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
All the free trade treaties attack democracy in every country that participates in them.
The WIPO Broadcasting Treaty threat returns from the grave.
The article misleads by using the term "intellectual property" to describe what this treaty would do. If you think that tells you something about the treaty, it means you have have been misled by confusion of that term.
The US Secretary of Defense says that modest cuts in US military spending would be "doomsday", but can't give any reasons for it.
US military spending is six times that of China, Iran and North Korea put together.
It is also known that US military spending exceeds all the rest of the world's military spending.
Taliban express willingness to negotiate about US/NATO withdrawal.
Oil companies are apparently using fake Twitter accounts to present an appearance of public support for the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
Call your congresscritter and push back!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-244-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If the US subsidized small farms instead of agribusiness, it would make tens of thousands of jobs and improve Americans' health.
Turkey's internet filter plan has been delayed until November.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The government says the delay is for technical reasons, but strong opposition might still kill the plan.
Students are protesting Chile's right-wing government and harsh social policies.
The New York Times doesn't dare call right-wing false "history" false — not even the extremist claim idea that Hitler was gay and that Nazism was created by gays.
Five police were convicted of covering up the killing of refugees fleeing New Orleans during hurricane Katrina.
Protest in Washington DC against the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
James Hansen and other scientists published an open letter calling on Obama to block the pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here is their letter.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Since we can't safely burn this oil, we don't need it.
Tens of thousands protested in Syria after the army attacked peaceful protests in Hama.
Protesters at BP's New Orleans office dumped oil just recently taken off Mississippi beaches, to remind Americans that the oil is not gone and neither is the damage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US government, which tried all along to downplay the big spill, gave permission for offshore drilling in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is foolish to drill for oil in such dangerous places, because available reserves of fossil fuels are so large that we cannot dare burn them all.
US citizens: call on the US not to veto UN recognition of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Jewish Voice for Peace explains why it supports this campaign.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Help get out the vote for Wisconsin recall elections on August 9 and August 16.
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, was punished for alleging within the state that the UK had a policy that permitted collaberation with torture. His claim has been vindicated by the documents just recently reported.
Now he asks whether the head of the UK's supposed torture investigation had seen this policy while claiming it did not exist.
The Mexican marines are disappearing people suspected of participating in drug gangs.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
75 years ago, Dr. Ambedkar published the text of a speech he had been denied permission to present: Annihilation of Caste.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2024-04-25 because the old link was broken.]
The task still remains to be done.
The CIA insisted on a drone attack in Pakistan, ignoring the Ambassador to Pakistan, and created lasting hostiliy.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
The US has spent as much on ICBM defence as it spent on going to the moon, but there is no evidence that the system could work at all.
The greedy Kook brothers have teamed up with religious extremists to sabotage voting in Wisconsin through disinformation.
Republicans claim that their victory in the debt ceiling crisis they created is a precedent for future harsh cuts in social spending.
The secret UK torture policy document permitted intelligence services to work with other countries that were committing torture.
The ACLU is asking various US states and cities to disclose their procedures for getting people's cell phone location data.
This is part of why I won't carry a cell phone at all. Another reason is that many of them can listen and transmit the conversations in their vicinity.
ACLU Director Romero debated former Bush regime officials who were responsible for torture, surveillance, and imprisonment without trial.
The usual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico was at almost record size this year.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
And another dead zone, almost as large, has been discovered.
US citizens: send a message to Clinton saying don't approve the Keystone XL pipeline to transport tar sand oil from Canada.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the "PROTECT IP" act. Also use this page to send email.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Shell Oil disregarded its own supposed standards in dumping oil in Nigeria, and cleaning up the contamination will cost a billion dollars.
95 congresspeople signed a letter calling on Obama to withdraw all troops from Iraq this year.
How US representatives voted on the debt ceiling budget cuts deal.
US citizens: call on the USDA to adopt firm rules to protect small farms from predatory practices by large agribusiness.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Four Guatemalan officers have been sentenced to life in prison (effectively) for a massacre of civilians.
If the right wing takes power, such massacres may again become standard practice in Guatemala.
The debt ceiling deal creates an opportunity to cut nuclear weapons.
The Bahraini suppression forces raided the office of Doctors Without Borders and took away a staff member. They have got no word of him since.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US supports the Bahraini regime's repression.
Around 80% of American Jews and likewise American Muslims support the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
5 reasons why Congress must use tax increases, not just spending cuts, if it is going to cut the deficit.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Cutting the deficit now is stupid and harmful economic policy, and aside from discussing which way is better or worse, we should continue to condemn politicians who voted that decision and demand that they change it.
US citizens: phone your senators via (202) 244-3121 to say they should oppose provisions in H.R. 1540 that would make imprisonment without trial the permanent policy of the US. They should close the Guantanamo prison, end the practice of imprisonment without trial in the US, and give every prisoner a real trial (not a military kangaroo court) or release him.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Japan's nuclear regulatory agency asked a nuclear plant operating company to pack a public meeting with supporters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Super-wealthy CEOs have accused Obama of "class warfare".
The ultimate joke is that Obama is a center-right politician who would hardly do anything controversial. This is the standard right-wing tactic of condemning a position a little less right-wing "Liberal" to distract from real Liberal positions.
The US rich have been fighting a class war against most Americans for years. Americans need to fight back: tax the rich and their businesses, and break up those businesses, and terminate the unfair treaties they have imposed.
Greece is being forced to sell off massive state assets in a hurry, which implies selling them for far below their value.
Greece should insist on renationalizing later any properties that were sold below a reasonable price, or that are important to the country's well-being.
ALEC has convinced several states to oppose EPA regulation of CO2 emissions, claiming that the global heating is good.
The UK government has acknowledged that copyright law today is too restrictive.
Blizzards, tornadoes, continent-wide heat waves... the weather is not crazy, it is doing what climate scientists predicted. Just a little sooner than they predicted.
The Security Council condemned Syria's bombardment of Hama, but without sanctions.
Google says there could be 250,000 patented ideas implemented in one smart phone.
I estimated in 2004 that there might be 100,000 patented ideas implemented in GNU/Linux. Dan Ravisher found 286 patented ideas in Linux, and a magazine estimated Linux was .25 percent of the GNU/Linux system at that time; multiplying 300 by 400 gives 120,000.
Since this is just an estimate, it is clearer to present it as 100,000 and avoid an impression of any greater precision.
US physicians spend nearly 4 times more on health insurance administrative costs than Canadian doctors.
The article suggests a technical solution, as the authors choose not to focus on the real issue that Canada has an efficient single-payer system where the US has wasteful and greedy insurance companies.
The US experienced extreme weather this year that fits the effects that global heating is expected to have, but the mainstream media tried to avoid the connection.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the US government to crack down on banking practices that prey on the poor.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The UK census promised Britons that their information would never be disclosed, but disregarded legal doubts about whether police or spies can demand copies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Texas Governor Perry is feeling the heat for planning an event with religious extremists.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In India: call on PM. Singh to block a bill that would encourage genetically modified seeds.
US citizens: call on the government to freeze Pentagon spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Iraqi protesters demanding human rights and democracy were beaten by the police of the "democratic" regime established by the Bush forces.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli "settlers" attacked Palestinians who were caring for their sheep, and gravely injured an international visitor.
[Reference updated on 2018-07-17 because the old link was broken.]
A German regulator says that Facebook's face recognition is illegal.
Just as Bush I showed Iran that hostage taking works, Obama has shown the Republicans that hostage taking works for them too.
The ransom that was paid.
Here's what's bad about Obama's budget deal with the Republicans — and a few ways it could have been worse.
The budget deal between Obama and the Republicans will force further cuts in state programs to help the poor.
The only good thing in the deal is that it creates a possible opportunity to cut military spending.
But we need to fight to make that happen. The nearly unstoppable bipartisan committee in charge of further cuts could do just about anything.
There is no guarantee it won't cut Social Security.
Israel's response to Palestinian nonviolence threatens Israeli democracy.
Many Israelis are in the streets protesting the high cost of living. They mostly don't talk about the fact this is due to the tremendous subsidy given to the colonies in the West Bank. 2 billion shekels of annual subsidy is over half a billion dollars.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli Supreme Court has ordered the demolition of an "illegal" settlement after 5 years of delay.
I put "illegal" in quotes because all the settlements violate treaties about the treatment of conquered peoples. The "illegal" settlements are illegal under Israeli law also. But the government supports them too.
Why the US is unable to avoid financially supporting the Taliban.
The rise in global food prices is mainly due to biofuel subsidies.
In Boston: rally to demand an investigation of whether Faux News and other Murdoch media used phone tapping or other illegal methods of investigation.
By criminalising dissent we put democracy in peril.
Robots are cheap enough to replace even Chinese sweatshop workers.
Craig Murray warned in 2007 that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won and that the "government" is just a bunch of drug traffickers.
How many more years of "good progress" that leads nowhere will it take before we pull the plug on it?
Organized crime is driving species to extinction, and little resources are devoted to preventing this.
Perhaps it would be useful to run commercials in China explaining that viagra is far more effective than tiger parts.
Lethal radiation levels have been found in some spots in the Fukushima reactors.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US medical insurance companies are booming because they have raised premiums while delivering less care.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli troops entered Qalandia in Palestine and caused a riot, then shot at random and killed two bystanders.
The term "refugee camp" might give the wrong idea of Qalandia. The refugees have been there for over 60 years; the camp is now an urban neighborhood full of medium-size apartment buildings.
A woman's life was ruined and her husband was deported after a false accusation of theft by a guard in Wal-Mart.
That false accusation would only have caused a brief annoyance if it had not been followed by repeated violations of the couple's rights. Suing Wal-Mart is appropriate, but while that might teach the store a lesson about making false accusations, it won't teach the "justice" system anything about handling them.
American parents have become hysterical over mostly imaginary dangers to children — such as when people photograph them in public places such as parks and malls.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thus paranoia is now being exploited to impose surveillance on US Internet usage.
Libyan rebels captured Zlitan, from which Gaddafi's forces were bombarding Misrata.
Media Malpractice: how mainstream media misreported the debt ceiling debate.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Tens of thousands protested again in Bahrain.
Syrian protesters called for international pressure against the tyranny there.
The Libyan rebels attacked the Islamist militia that killed General Younis.
Roundup-ready GMO foods are being defeated by mutant weeds that resist Roundup.
The article is mistaken about one thing. What stimulates the evolution of Roundup-resistant weeds is not the presence of GMO genes in crops, but the use of Roundup. To stop the process, it would be enough to stop using Roundup. It would not be necessary to eliminate those genes where they have spread to other fields.
Reform-minded thinkers in the UK call for a "public jury" to take power away from the greedy elites.
In the site known as Ayodhya, reportedly where Rama was born, Hindu fanatics destroyed the centuries-old Babri mosque some years ago, claiming that Babur destroyed a Hindu temple to build it. Now a study claims the previous structure was actually a Buddhist study hall (vihar) and was destroyed by Hindu fanatics almost 2000 years ago.
The article refers to that Muslim conquerer as "Babar", but it's usually written "Babur", and I think it is preferable to avoid confusion with the better-known-elephant Babar.
Greeks are protesting against austerity by refusing to pay.
Who's Grabbing Africa's Land? U.S. Speculators, Including Universities.
It is not too late to grab this land back from foreign purchasers. The dispossessed peasants can do it if they take up arms.
The UK will require all drivers' license applicants to say yes or no to donating their organs.
This will avoid a shortage of organs due to people who didn't confront the issue enough to answer.
Secular and Islamist Egyptians are showing some strain, but agreed to unite for secular political demands.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Eritrea's government is suspected of covering up a major famine.
General Younis in Libya was killed by an Islamist militia that is part of the rebels.
South Carolina Governor Haley, who signed a bill to require voters to show government ID, offered to drive poor voters to the DMV office so they could get ID to vote with — but ducked out when a voter really asked for such help.
Please don't use Flash Player to watch the video — it is proprietary software and has features to surveil and restrict the user. The text of the page says enough.
Sea Shepherd is being sued by illegal tuna fishers after freeing tuna which are being fished to extinction. Its main boat might be lost.
More about the suspension of US government scientist Charles Monnett, who has not been told the accusations against him.
How Germany plans to phase out nuclear power soon and reduce its carbon emissions too.
Syrian tanks attacked protesters in 4 cities, trying to pre-empt the possibility that Ramadan might strengthen the protests.
Murdoch's men got lots of information by tapping phones and cracking computers, but they can get even more by looking at what users of MySpace give them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
And so can anyone else that runs a social network site that you use. And it's especially bad if you give your real name.
In the US, mining companies get away with murder while environmental defenders go to prison.
A Dutch band visiting Palestine was tear-gassed during a performance by Israeli troops.
The USDA deleted a report summarizing research on how farming fuels antibiotics resistance, and banned its author from talking to the public about the matter.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This is another demonstration of how big business controls our government. We must take that power away, and smash big business so it can't threaten our freedom and lives any more.
The debate about the debt ceiling pseudo-crisis is nonsense because it is based on six fundamental lies.
The US appeals court for patent issues ruled that natural human genes are patentable, accepting the biotech industry's excuse.
In the US: protest
Tuesday at noon at offices of Republican officials for their
insistance on hurting the poor to help the rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell your governor
to stay away from Texas Gov. Perry's
prayer meeting with right-wing extremists.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In several recent decisions, the US Supreme Court has twisted the law to give businesses the effective power to trample mere humans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Europe's new anti-semitism is reaching the violent stage, egged on by a broad right-wing hate campaign, and it reminds Uri Avnery of the wave that led to Nazism.
Everyone: sign Amnesty International's petition opposing the planned law in Saudi Arabia to ciminalize dissidents.
Obama has made a deal with auto companies to increase fuel efficiency standards gradually over 14 years.
This seems to be a real achievement.
It seems that Murdoch's business is associated with cracking people's computers as well as listening to their phones.
Wikileaks cables show how the US worked with Canada, France and the UN to remove Aristide from Haiti and later oppose his return.
The Obama regime continued this policy, contrary to what it told the public.
Cables also demonstrate US and other countries' support for a nondemocratic election.
Israel has demolished the Bedouin town of al-Araqib 28 times in the past year, planning to plant a forest over it, and now is suing the villagers for the costs of demolition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose HR 1981, the data retention bill. Also send a message through this page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Obama's right-wing plan to win the "center"?
Several secretive right-wing groups have spent millions to redirect national debate towards the unimportant goal of reducing deficits and away from what people really need.
A progressive president could have counteracted the campaign, if we had one.
A firefox add-on warns you if you visit a site that is part of Murdoch's empire.
There is evidence that environmental pollutant chemicals are causing obesity in humans and even in animals.
Everyone: rebuke the racist school in Arkansas that denied a Black student the chance to be valedictorian, and discourages Blacks from studying in the first place.
A senate committee is voting on extended warrantless wiretapping authority, while the public is distracted by the debt-ceiling pseudocrisis. The votes will be secret for 3 weeks, but each senator can say how he voted.
US citizens, if your senator is named in this file, ask him how he voted.
Guatemala's next president is likely to be a former general accused of crimes against human rights.
If Guatemaltecos wants security, they must not hand power to the right-wing, which would be capable of killing a lot more than 6000 people a year.
Starbucks faces labor actions in Chile and the US.
Public wifi spaces in Beijing have been nearly eliminated by government identification requirements.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Breivik the Norwegian killer is insane, then so are Bush and Obama.
A British Muslim who called for murder of MPs who voted for war in Iraq has been sentenced to at least 12 years in prison.
It is legitimate to punish people who call for the murder of others. The politicians who voted to invade and conquer Iraq should not be murdered. They are entitled to a fair trial. If convicted of the crime of aggressive war, they should be imprisoned for life, not executed, because the death penalty is barbaric.
However, the conviction for "collecting documents" is just an excuse to punish people for what they are presumed to be thinking.
The US economy has hardly grown at all in 2011, due to Republican-imposed austerity policies.
The US government refused to tell us whether it tracks Americans through their cell phones without warrants.
If phone companies keep these records, they will be available to the police on some conditions. Whatever the conditions may be, I think that's enough reason not to carry one.
Republicans want to make it harder to close a tax loophole than to cut Social Security benefits.
A Republican senator proposed substantial cuts in military spending.
The Taliban are willing to agree to peace, and break off with al Qa'ida, in exchange for a firm US commitment to leave Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose Rep. Grimm's attempt to make it hard to blow the whistle on crimes by banks and financial companies. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The Libyan rebels' military commander, a former Gaddafi minister, was killed in cloudy circumstances, and this seems to have sparked off factional fighting in Benghazi.
The article says that an Iranian general has taken unofficial control over Iraq's politics.
If it is true, it would be poetic justice for Bush and his war of conquest. Whether it is any good for Iraqis, I suppose it depends on what Iran does with this power.
However, I am not sure the report should be believed, simply because it says nothing about Muqtada al-Sadr, who is very powerful in Iraq. Although he is a Shi'ite, his power base is Iraq; I have doubts he would want to be a puppet for Iran's rulers. I could always be wrong, but the article doesn't address this and that makes me doubt.
US citizens: take action against Obama's NAFTA-like unfair-trade treaties.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A court ordered a British ISP to block access to a site with links to unauthorized copies of movies, using the same system previously used to block access to "child pornography".
This is why the copyright industry pushed for censorship of "child pornography".
Our society tends to overreact to any perceived danger to "our little babies" (even if they are teenagers), and this provides an easy route to manipulate society into dangerous and unjust practices, such as censorship.
Tea Party To America: If We Can't Have You, No One Will.
Citizen action in the US has made a dent in the adoption of new unfair trade treaties being harder. But this is not yet victory.
Defending democracy in the US would be easier if Obama were its friend instead of its enemy.
US citizens: call on Obama to honor Americans who opposed the practice of torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Pakistan represses Balochi separatism with torture and murder.
Two senators face an uphill battle just to make US spies admit that they have stretched the U SAP AT RIOT act to do even more spying on us than it was supposed to permit.
As Norway rejects using the massacre as an excuse to attack citizens' freedom, it follows the ideals on which the US was founded.
These are ideals which the US has abandoned.
Two 14-year-olds were put on the sex offender list for life after a prank.
In the paranoid climate of the US, only a fool would (1) have children or (2) have any dealings with children.
A TV company, Newport, used a bogus copyright threat to try to censor information about covert consolidation of news with other TV channels.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
A record company executive was fired after he noted that file-sharers were also its best customers.
A bill requiring ISP data retention in the US is advancing in Congress.
This is a dangerous expansion of government power and it will cause other problems in addition to increased government surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
This bill goes in the wrong direction. The US government already does have too much surveillance power. What we need now is to reduce it, not add more.
Thus, the ACLU calls for drastic reforms to reduce government secrecy.
US law should stop companies from providing technological support to repression abroad.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Perhaps this law should apply to repression in the US too.
The US government scientist who first warned that global heating threatens polar bears has been suspended and accused of some sort of misconduct.
People suspect this is meant to cover Obama's plans to authorize dangerous undersea oil drilling.
Everyone: call on India, Brazil and South Africa to pressure Syria to acknowledge whatever has happened to the 3000 people who have been disappeared in recent months.
The US also disappears people. I would like to support a similar campaign against that.
As the US military counts days to the elimination of its prejudice against gays, it maintains an unconstitutional prejudice against atheists.
Iranian democracy supporters say that a foreign military attack would be a disaster.
Senator Manchin makes millions from coal mining. No wonder he protects coal mining and blocks efforts to reduce global heating.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
By contrast, Senator Franken is campaigning to block the merger of AT&T and T-mobile.
Calling on Obama to honor Americans who have opposed torture.
Obama continues to authorize some forms of torture.
US citizens: call on Obama to protect federal whistleblowers, and pardon the ones he has prosecute.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
Wells Fargo Bank is being sued for predatory lending discrimination against US Blacks.
Governments in Africa are eliminating clinic fees for pregnant women, which were imposed by the IMF.
Canada's government, at the highest level, blocked Fisheries Dept. scientist Kristi Miller from talking to the press about her discovery, which shed light on the mysterious death of salmon on the Pacific coast.
In some years, up to 95% of salmon returning to spawn die mysteriously. Miller found evidence that a virus (as yet unidentified) is at work.
The article also explains how global heating might be responsible for this, and could be responsible for the spread of other salmon parasites too.
Raquel Nelson was convicted of homicide for crossing the street with her child, who was hit by a drunk driver.
Why prosecute someone like that? It could be part of the Republicans' war on women.
US citizens: tell Atty General Holder to block Republican state laws that require IDs for voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If Obama were a Liberal we wouldn't have to pressure him to protect the voting rights of minorities.
The EPA has wimped out and published non-binding "guidelines" for mountaintop-removal coal mining, which won't protect ecosystems or public health.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Here's info on evidence linking mountaintop-removal mining with double the rate of cancer and with 1.5 times the rate of birth defects.
A summary of the medical case against mountaintop-removal coal mining.
An Israeli peace advocate compares the two boycott movements: Gush Shalom's boycott of products of the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, and the broad PACBI boycott of Israeli institutions.
He notes that the latter boycott, which I agreed to follow in my recent visit to Palestine and Israel, effectively rejects the whole Israeli peace camp. That is why I think that boycott is too broad. I support Gush Shalom and its boycott.
The Palestinian organizers of the broader boycott have indeed given up on nearly all of the Israeli left. They have concluded that trying to work with the Israeli left is useless, because it failed before. I can't deny that it failed, but I disagree with the view that Israeli support for justice for Palestinians is irrelevant.
The Republican budget cuts plan is class warfare. It would cause disastrous decrease in programs that help the poor to survive.
A study suggests that children subject to corporal punishment in school become worse at decision-making than children not punished that way.
This one study isn't enough to prove the conclusion
Press reaction to the Oslo massacre shows that "terrorism" has no meaning for the US and its mainstream media except as a stick to beat Muslims with.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The broadest sensible definition of "terrorism" is "violence against civilians in general, used as a political tactic." By that definition, the massacre is terrorism but just barely. It was aimed at a specific political party rather than at Norwegians in general.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, support Rep. McGovern's campaign to close the School of the Americas (or whatever they call it this year).
The School of the Americas has taught torture and repression for several decades to the enforcers of many US-supported tyrants in Latin America.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Obama is working to promote growing genetically engineered crops in wildlife refuges.
State assets stolen by despots: World Bank report details daunting obstacles to recovery.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in prison for blocking an illegal oil and gas auction that Bush had set up.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans demand a balanced budget constitutional amendment, but only when they can't pass the laws they wish.
GOP Leaders Voted For Three Of The Biggest Debt Drivers, Costing $3.4 Trillion
The prescription drugs plan did a job that needs to be done, but it's a job that other developed countries do far more cheaply because they stand up to business more.
Raquel Gutierrez: Why is the US so afraid of me?
Armed Israeli "settlers" burnt Palestinians' olive trees, and the Israeli army intervened to prevent local firemen from putting out the fire.
The government destroys Palestinians' trees too. It plans to demolish a well used to water 4000 date palms near Jericho.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli civil society is pushing back at the prohibition of boycotts.
Israel sent ten ships and boats to capture a boat with 16 unarmed people trying to reach Gaza.
Prisoners from Gaza (in many cases imprisoned without trial) have not been allowed visits from their families for many years.
Israel has effectively admitted that the recent tear gassing of the village Nabi Saleh was a collective punishment, not defense.
Boehner's plan to damage Social Security and Medicare would create more poverty than any law in recent US history.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to sign the Lee/Jones letter calling on Obama to remove all the Bush forces from Iraq this year.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Right-wing European politicians are trying to use the Oslo massacre as an excuse for more Internet surveillance.
That would be folly — governments are potentially far more dangerous terrorists than an isolated person.
Oklahoma's noncompoop governor says, "Pray for rain".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It might work if they pray to the Green Party.
The UK government reneged on its commitment to remove innocent people's DNA from government files.
Ralph Nader's comments on the US debt ceiling issue.
Walmart, Target and Macy's, among others, don't care that they are selling products made in factories where workers are more or less tortured, and even raped by management.
Protesters from all over Spain have converged on Madrid.
Governor Walker legislated that voters must show state IDs, then closed many ID offices so poor people can't get IDs.
Jamaica, being driven into poverty by debt, has been suggested as an example for Greece to follow.
Argentina would be a better model.
The Libyan rebels have agreed that Gaddafi can stay in Libya.
US funds for freight trucking in Afghanistan have gone to the Taliban.
And the companies involved keep getting contracts.
A range of US mainstream media assumed that the Oslo bomber was an Islamist extremist. And when they found out he wasn't, they continued trying to spin this to blame Islamist extremists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Assad seems to say that Syria will allow opposition parties, but it hard to take this seriously while killing of protesters continues.
China is trying to discourage press coverage of the high-speed train crash.
Dow Chemical will get away with massive ground poisoning because the victims were not allowed to make a class-action lawsuit.
My Doctor's Office Asked me to Lie
In the US: participate in a mass occupation of Wall Street starting September 17.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition telling Democrats in Congress to stand firm against cuts in Social Security, etc.
Big company CEOs got a 23% raise last year, but the US minimum wage buys less than in 1956.
Most jobs pay more than minimum wage; but many jobs have wages calibrated against the minimum wage. As the minimum wage goes down, their pay goes down too.
The US crisis is not about debt. What it needs is to raise the empathy ceiling.
To continue growth in energy usage at the same rate as in recent centuries, in 1400 years we would need to use the entire output of the Sun.
Growth in energy usage will be compelled to stop long before that point.
If US corporations were persons, would we judge their actions as patriotic?
Google deleted a large number of accounts to enforce its requirement that Google+ users give their real names. For some users, this means deletion of all their accounts.
You should never give your real identity to such services.
The scientific study of people who are inclined to become the dogmatic soldiers of authoritarian leaders, and the others who take advantage of them.
Norway will meet terror with more democracy, not less.
Protesters in Egypt were attacked by armed thugs, who must have been sent by some arm of the state.
The WWF has a certification program for timber, meant to show the timber was obtained without destroying the environment, but critics say the rules are so lax that it does not work.
Meanwhile, if only 19% of the world's timber is certified, it is not clear this does any good.
Executives and an editor of An Ecuadorian newspaper were sentenced to prison, and impossible fines, for libel against the president.
It is fundamentally unjust to prosecute libel as a crime. I am very disappointed that this is being done by someone I admired.
Are poor people poor because they make decisions badly, or do they make decisions badly because they are poor? Right-wingers say it's the former, but there is evidence it's the latter.
Some experiments suggest that the mental faculty of making decisions carefully (cognitive control) gets temporarily fatigued each time it is used. For poor people, many small daily decisions require this faculty, so it is fatigued much of the time.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Norweigan terrorist that killed around 100 people in Oslo was a right-wing extremist with neo-Nazi ties.
The right-wing press (including Murdoch's London paper, the Sun) tried to claim it was an Islamic terrorist.
The Federal Reserve made 16 trillion dollars in secret loans to companies in recent years.
Mexican police are kidnapping people off the street and disappearing them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Obama regime claims that drone attacks in Pakistan have not killed civilians, disregarding children known to have been killed.
Wikileaks cables show that the US demanded total obedience from the president it installed in Haiti after kidnapping Aristide.
UK police told Uncut protesters they would not be arrested if they left the store where they were protesting. The police were lying: they already planned to arrest the protesters anyway.
You can't trust the word of a policeman.
The judge appointed to investigate Murdoch's newspapers' phone tapping has personal links to Murdoch.
Craig Murray believes he was chosen specifically to undermine the job he is tasked with, and so was the judge in charge of the inquiry into UK collusion in torture.
US citizens: meet at your congresscritter's local office (see http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/congress/) at noon on July 26 and say, "Just increase the debt ceiling."
The idea of putting human genes into monkeys and producing an animal a little more similar to humans distresses some people.
It is very unlikely such experiments would result in an animal with mental characteristics that would make it count as human. If so, it would deserve certain rights in accord with those characteristics. Provided we respect those rights, what is there to be upset about? People produce children with random combinations of genes every day.
Congress is considering a sleazy change in FCC rules to let mobile phone companies buy parts of the TV spectrum, forbidding use for WiFi.
Saudi Arabia has proposed a law that would jail dissidents by labeling them as terrorists, and authorize warrantless wiretapping, imprisonment without trial and trials that don't follow standards of justice.
More information about what this law would prohibit.
Too bad the US sets the bad example of doing all of those things.
The prosecutors of Casey Anthony withheld exculpatory information and knowingly lied in court.
This may not have affected the verdict, since she was acquitted of the murder charge, and this evidence might not be relevant to the lesser charges she was convicted of. But if there is no conviction to overturn as a consequence, what will teach these prosecutors and others not to lie in court again? Next time they might succeed in framing someone.
To prevent that, we need to punish them, but how? Can they be disbarred for this?
After protests in Malawi, the government struck back against journalists who covered the protests.
US citizens: tell Congress to block changes to the Endangered Species Act that would block new listings of species.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: sign this petition in support of recognition of Palestine as an independent state.
In the US, the very rich pay a lower tax rate because they don't need to work.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Corporate profits in the US are booming but they are not hiring anyone in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs to increase corporation taxes and use the money to give people jobs. Obama knew this two years ago. Now, however, he has accepted the Republican goal of "deficit cutting".
Dissidents in Gambia are threatened with execution for "treason" which consisted of handing out t-shirts that criticize the government.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Haitian families previously left homeless by the earthquake have been evicted from their refugee camp.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Climate change will "exponentially" increase the scale of natural disasters -- so when are we going to take this threat seriously?
If we wait until 130-degree temperatures are common in the summer, it will be too late to prevent things from getting even worse.
In protests in Malawi against state corruption, dozens have been killed and hundreds arrested.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Russia, a prominent opposition figure's wife is apparently being framed.
Removing the Mujahedin-e Khalq from the "terrorist organizations" list could deligitimize the Iranian opposition, by lending credibility to the regime's claim that the opposition is a tool of the US.
The very existence of a list of groups that have been declared as "terrorist" without a trial threatens freedom of association. That is a separate issue, but closely related to this issue.
The multi-level game of bluff in Israel's threats to attack Iran.
Business flunkies in Congress want to legalize bribery by weakening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The idea of drinking 8 glasses a day of water is medically bogus and promoted by water companies.
In some areas, allowing cows to graze in a natural way grass restores ecological diversity and puts carbon into the soil.
Global heating will shrink many European rivers in the summer.
Not only will rain reduce, but meltwater from glaciers won't be available either.
The movie companies that shut down the sharing site kino.to, then insulted and threatened its users, wanted to prove how much money they had "lost" (more correctly, not gained) because of the site's operation. They buried the results because they suggest that it tended to increase their income.
The Sierra Club is trying to turn off coal burning in the US for public health.
Coal companies do not like being criticized. They threaten to punish the University of Wyoming for a sculpture that links the burning of coal, through global heating, to the infestation that is destroying most of the pine forests.
The coal companies say the university should show "gratitude" for its funds, but since when does gratitude include keeping silent about a practice that endangers our world?
The State Department has obstructed government oversight of its mercenary army in Iraq.
Don't trust the vague claims that food companies make about benefits of "probiotic" bacteria.
It's not impossible for certain bacteria to provide health benefits, but that doesn't mean these products do you any good.
A new euro-rescue system will offer Greece the chance to shed around 20% of its debt.
It is important to establish the principle that creditors lose when they push a country to poverty — and when they make foolish loans. However, 20% may not be enough to let Greeks out of debt slavery.
The UK has convinced the main payment companies to participate in a scheme for extrajudicial punishment of web sites accused of unauthorized commercial redistribution.
I don't oppose the application of copyright to commercial redistribution (except for practical use works, since those ought to be free). However, extrajudicial punishment of anything whatsoever is a threat to basic principles of justice.
Study of Earth's past climate shows that doubling the CO2 in the air is likely to result in 3 degrees C of global heating in a few centuries, due to "fast feedbacks". (At least half of that will occur in the next few decades.) This could easily cause sea level to rise 50 to 80 feet.
In the longer term, due to slow feedbacks, the temperature would rise even more.
Hundreds of thousands protested in the main cities of Syria.
Even killing protesters has not crushed them.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress to support the creation of a Palestinian state when the issue is brought to the UN.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Retired CIA agent Robert Baer says that an interviewer misrepresented him; that he never intended to say that an Israeli attack on Iran was a certainty — only that there are suggestive danger signs.
Human actions are never a certainty. Look how many times Obama says he is opposed to something, then "compromises in" when Republicans firmly insist on it.
Greg Palast: make the Republicans pay the debts they contracted under Bush.
Greg Maxwell posted 18,000 old scientific articles on JSTOR as an act of defiance against the parasites that restrict access to science.
Now it's the US' turn to have a fatal heatwave.
This is a tiny taste of what it will be like in 40 years, if we don't cut greenhouse gas emissions in this decade.
Everyone: State your support for Aaron Swartz.
US citizens: tell the government that US health care plans should cover contraception at no charge, as preventative medicine.
The US is trying to extradite people accused of sharing for trial in the US.
This is possible in the UK because of its unjust extradition treaty with the US, which abolished the usual safeguards on extradition. I am not sure the US can get away with this anywhere but in the UK. This is another reason why the UK must cancel its unjust extradition treaty with the US.
This article uses terminology I think is unadvisable. For instance, it refers to music as "content" and it uses the enemy's propoganda term "piracy" to refer to unauthorized copying. The latter is an especially harmful mistake since it legitimizes the War on Sharing in principle, so that only its methods can still be criticized.
The US has the highest imprisonment rate in the world, and employing prisoners for tiny wages is a great gift to business.
Now that free workers have to compete with prison labor, that keeps wages down in the US. Business must appreciate that too.
The usefulness of prisoners for business means that business promotes, and partly pays for, imprisonment. This encourages the state to imprison more people. It amounts to a predatory system, imprisoning people because it can.
Everyone: call on the security council to take action on Syrian torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Power plants on the great lakes devastate the fish stocks there.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Pelican Bay prisoners have ended their hunger strike in exchange for some small alleviation of the cruel conditions, like those Bradley Manning had to suffer.
That strikes me as mainly a defeat.
The trash vortex in the North Pacific is now twice as large as the continental US, and may hold 100 million tons of plastic.
The Bush regime blanked out 28 pages of the 9/11 commission report. There is evidence that this was to hide evidence tying some Saudi princes to the attack.
US citizens: call on the US government to cut off funds to the clinic owned by Rep. Bachmann and her husband, which tries to convert gays into straights through prayer.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Doesn't Bachmann oppose government spending such as Medicaid? It seems rather hypocritical of her to accept so much funds from a program she opposes.
Tens of thousands of people from poor countries do low wage jobs for US mercenary companies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and many of them were shanghaied and trafficked.
Loss of Arctic sea ice is killing polar bear cubs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Aaron Swartz has been charged with many federal crimes for downloading many articles from JSTOR.
The only wrongdoers here are JSTOR and the journals it hosts. They ought to make the articles available to the general public, with freedom to redistribute. And if they don't do this voluntarily, society should impose it.
The Colombian congress has elected a leader tied to the paramilitary thugs and to ex-president Alvaro Horrible.
US media persistently cover up the civilian deaths caused by Bush's occupation of Iraq. They pretend it was only "tens of thousands".
130 Republicans now in Congress were happy to raise the debt ceiling when Bush asked.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Resistance to antidemocratic "free trade" treaties is building in the US and in South Korea.
US aid to Afghanistan flows corruptly out of the country.
Unlike Obama and the Republicrats, the American people want to raise taxes and cut military spending.
Wal-Mart is America's chief corporate poverty creator, according to the SEIU union.
Striking workers at Cepcolsa Petroleo in Colombia were crushed by the army.
Cairn Oil got an injunction to ban Greenpeace protesters from posting photos of their sit-in.
Dissidents in the United Arab Emirates are on trial for "insulting officials".
To make that a crime is inexcusable tyranny in itself.
California prison guards say the inmates' hunger strike is a gang operation, but they refuse to allow the press to see for themselves. The idea that any prisoner could be coerced by other prisoners in a prison where the inmates are in solitary confinement for 22.5 hours a day seems ridiculous to me.
The judges who reversed the convictions of UK anti-coal protesters say that undercover police infiltrator Mark Kennedy operated as an "agent provocateur" and that his mere deployment by the police might constitute entrapment. Why does Kennedy deny he acted as an agent provocateur? Perhaps it is a question of semantics. The term "agent provocateur" normally refers to someone who cynically tries to lure dissidents into actions that would hurt their cause. Perhaps Kennedy had come to sympathize with them enough that he wasn't seeking to hurt them, and didn't expect them to be prosecuted once he supplied his exculpatory evidence. They were in fact prosecuted because the prosecutors withheld that evidence from the defense.
Spain's "indignant ones" are supported by 80% of the population.
Eyewitnesses to Syrian massacre: "Earlier in the week we had been told not to go to pick up the wounded.... Anyone who tried was shot, his body falling on top of the other victims." Many countries have tried to prevent treatment of people their forces have wounded. I recall reading that Israel did this in Gaza, and that
the US did this in Iraq.
Apple has proposed a disgusting idea: building cameras so they respond automatically to commands to switch them off. Apple also patented the idea, and the article confuses the patent with the idea itself, but they are not the same. Software patents are always a danger to programmers, but what's really scary about this idea is to envision doing it. If there were a signal that could shut off cameras, cops in countries from the US to Syria would broadcast that signal when they attack protesters. Of course, people would prefer cameras that don't respond to the signal, and this suggests someone has in mind to force cameras to implement it. Nonfree software can impose whatever restrictions its developer's heart desires. It is only a small step from today's Digital Restrictions Management, that restricts what you can do with images you get from others, to future features that would restrict what you can do with images you make.
Wikileaks shows that the US, under Obama, killed an attempt by Haiti to increase the minimum wage. Shame on you, Obama.
The constitutionality of Obama's health care law, specifically its requirement to buy health insurance, is likely to be considered by the Supreme Court. If it rejects this, it would have to reject the entire law. This law has some beneficial provisions but overall it was a sellout to insurance and the drug companies. It ought to be completely replaced with a single-payer plan. Whether court invalidation of this law is likely to lead there, I can't begin to guess, so I will leave such tactical speculation to others.
Internet Privacy
(in German).
Everyone: ask Elizabeth Warren to run for the senate in Massachusetts.
Everyone: tell US Airways it is not acceptable to kick someone off a flight for having sagging pants. I sometimes have sagging pants when I board a flight. That's because sometimes the "security" guards put me in jail by making me remove my belt. Then I am in jail for the whole trip and can't put my belt back on.
Annual US worker production has increased by 2 trillion dollars since 1972, but workers got only 10% of that. The rest went to the rich. Moreover, since the rich are better at avoiding or evading taxes, the result is a US deficit.
Australia will adopt a carbon tax, and reduce other taxes on non-rich so that it doesn't hurt them.
Palestinians in the West Bank are subject to a complex system of military rule. People are effectively compelled to confess to alleged crimes by keeping them in prison until they do.
If you want to protect children on the Internet, forget about so-called "child porn." The real danger is from insecurity — in their feelings, and in their mobile phones.
The US arrested two people, accusing them of working secretly as agents for the government of Pakistan. If a law requires the US and the American public to know the underlying source of information and identity of those attempting to influence US policy and laws — when they work for a foreign government — then we should apply the same policy to the larger, wealthier and more dangerous threats to our democracy: multinational corporations.
Several possible members of Anonymous have been arrested. Anonymous became famous last December when it organized distributed denial-of-service attacks against the web sites of companies that participated in the US government's distributed denial-of-service attack against Wikileaks.
Playing football often causes terrible brain damage, and the effects get worse years later.
A new party has been launched in Honduras to oppose coup-installed president Lobo.
Libyan rebels have refused to negotiate with Gaddafi.
Progressives in Congress are calling for a trillion dollars in arms cuts.
Peace Now has endorsed the boycott of products of the Israeli colonies in the West Bank, defying the law banning said boycott in Israel.
Americans for Peace Now have followed suit. With an important US Jewish organization going directly against Israel's fascist law, this has the potential to break the power of the Israeli right-wing lobby in the US.
Iran has attacked bases in Northern Iraq operated by a Kurdish group that Iran calls "terrorists".
This is comparable to US drone attacks in various countries.
Israeli Foreign Minister Lieberman has labeled the Israeli volunteers who provide gratis legal assistance to Palestinians as "terrorists".
Salvadoreans campaign to ban gold mining, so as to protect the river they get water from.
40% of US corn production is now used inefficiently to make biofuel, pushing up food prices. This is wasteful because it takes so much energy and water to grow the corn that it doesn't save much.
20 UK anti-coal protesters won their appeals against an convinction because of the police infiltrator's testimony that wasn't shown to the defense.
The Libyan rebels are racist, and have chased Libyan Blacks out of their homes, threatening to massacre them.
Instead of austerity, Greece could cut its weapons spending. But the US and Germany won't permit this.
ALEC is Milton Friedman's Little Shop of Horrors.
Crucial questions to ask Murdoch about his personal involvement in his company's phone tapping.
The NSA is doing research to identify dissidents through an artificial intelligence system that would look at mountains of personal information obtained through digital surveillance.
The mainstream US media are helping to cover up and legitimize the secret prison that the "government" of Somalia runs for the CIA.
The Arms Trade Treaty now being negotiated may omit anti-riot weapons.
Maliki is desperate to keep the US military in Iraq, so he may settle for mercenary "trainers".
The House of Representatives voted actively to protect secret corporate political campaign spending — specifically to block Obama from spending any money to limit it. The banksters have richly rewarded their bought congresscritters who harassed Elizabeth Warren.
Under Obama, the White House remains a science-free zone where marijuana is concerned.
Everyone: sign this petition telling world leaders, cut nuclear weapons, not things people need.
Ai Weiwei was not physically tortured, but he was subjected to prison conditions reminiscent of Bradley Manning's prison conditions. In addition, his wife was used as a hostage to make him confess financial crimes he did not commit.
Rais Bhuiyan, who was shot by white supremacist Mark Strohman in a racist rampage, is campaigning for Strohman not to be executed. Bhuiyan's heart is as big as Strohman's was small. But Texas Governor Perry, who resembles Strohman in having a strong desire to kill when he can get away with it, is refusing to listen.
Yemen has returned to mostly peaceful protests against the regime of President Saleh.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has firmly endorsed network neutrality, condemning "three strikes" disconnection laws.
The UK's prosecutors have repeatedly withheld exculpatory evidence from defense lawyers. This is not unusual in the US, too, but isn't often treated as a scandal because the victims are often poor.
It looks like the attempt to renegotiate the WTO treaty may fail. I hope they do fail, since any change that would be agreed on by today's business-subservient major states would surely be more bad than good. If indeed Obama blocks that, maybe there is a little good in Obama after all. But he can hardly claim much credit for this as long as he promotes other treaties that surrender power to business, such as those with Korea, Colombia and Panama.
Another Afghan warlord and drug runner who supported Karzai has been assassinated by the Taliban, leading to questions of whether Karzai's government can stand at all. The Taliban have fighters willing to take on suicide missions. Karzai and NATO have not.
Georgia's opposition and newspapers accuse the government of torturing news photographers into false confessions of spying. These photographers took photos of protesters who had been attacked and injured by police.
Iran is executing large numbers of people secretly, probably after meaningless trials or no trials.
House Votes for Dirtier Water and More Dirty Energy.
Human Rights Watch says that Bahrain has arrested 70 medical personnel and has sentenced 48 of them after Guantanamo-style kangaroo courts.
An Israeli general called for action to stop the "Jewish terror" of settlers against Palestinians, and said that a particular yeshiva is spurring this terror on. This yeshiva can be compared to the madrasses that spread Islamist extremism.
A retired CIA agent says that Israel is planning to attack Iran by September and that the Pentagon is already planning to join in. Neocons are trying to rehabilitate the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, which carried out terrorism in Iran in the 80s. The agent later said the interviewer misrepresented him.
One man, Noor Behram, photographs the remains of people killed by US drone attacks in Waziristan. He estimates 10 civilians are killed for each Taliban fighter.
Argentina is prosecuting the officers who tortured and murdered. When will the US do this?
The Shabab militia in Somalia is functioning effectively as a branch of al Qa'ida and seeks to attack outside Somalia. The Shabab militia exists because the US organized an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu to destroy the Islamic Courts government, which was the first government to control Somalia since Siad Barre in 1992. Its strict form of Islamic law must have oppressed women, but at least it offered an end to warlordism, and it did not seek to fight anyone outside Somalia. The presence of piracy and al Qa'ida in Somalia is the result of the US intervention. The US should have left the Islamic Courts alone.
Faux News built a special spy facility, the "brain room", to get people's personal information including their phone call records.
The Yellowstone oil spill shows that running tar sands oil through pipelines creates a special danger of spills.
Even if the pipelines are safe, extracting tha oil contributes greatly to global heating.
The carbon bubble: billions have been invested in petroleum reserves whose use as fuel would cause certain disaster.
Secret UN reports say that Sudan is massacring the Nuba people.
Supplies of phosphate rock, necessary as a fertilizer, are becoming limited. Phosphate is used wastefully: much drains into the sea and produces dead zones.
Global heating is manifest on Mt Everest, as well as in the swelling glacial meltwater lakes that burst and flood villages below.
Thousands of Israelis and Arabs marched in Jerusalem to support Palestinian independence.
Neocons call the Gaza aid sailors "supporters of terrorism", frustrated that Israel's government has given itself a black eye by stopping them.
Texas Governor Perry asked people to pray for rain, but it seems nobody listened to the prayers.
GOP Dogma on Taxes, Spending and Revenue vs. the Facts.
Republicans' attempt to bring back inefficient incandescent light bulbs was defeated, but they won't give up. I wonder when they will start fighting against building codes. Shouldn't you be free to build a building that will fall down if there is an earthquake? The market will convince landlords to tear down and replace such buildings — if something reminds buyers and renters to think about the issue. Unless there is a housing shortage.
Progressives hope to occupy Wall Street on September 17th to demand restoring democracy and an end to corporatocracy.
New York City faces a threat to its water supply from fracking near its water tunnels.
Under Obama it's business as usual for mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US psychiatrists, bought by the drug companies, are prescribing antipsychotic medicines to a wide range of Americans.
News of the CIA's spying under the guise of a vaccination drive has stimulated a campaign for people in Pakistan to refuse vaccination. Such campaigns are deadly. The suspicion of vaccination described in the article is part of the general lunacy associated with religion, and religion bears the principle blame for it. Nonetheless, it is valid to argue that activities likely to trigger that lunatic suspicion are harmful.
Israel is planning further political discriminatory laws, amounting to partisan, biased control over democratic activity.
Obama's proposed budget deal is extremely right-wing. The idea of cutting spending during a recession is Hoover-style absurdity.
Washington Post: Japan's economy is "threatened" by the government's practice of carefully verifying the safety of nuclear power plants before restarting them.
Republicans want to deregulate mountaintop removal coal mining, and say this is to "protect jobs", but these mines create few jobs.
Many Iranian women's rights activists have been imprisoned.
Lawyers for victims of drone attacks and their relatives will seek the arrest of a retired CIA manager for trial in Pakistan for his role in approving the attacks.
Proposing a replacement for the Kyoto treaty: giving each country a carbon emission quota in proportion to its population, then letting rich countries buy quota from poor countries. If the quotas are based on the 2010 population instead of the future population, that would give each country an incentive to reduce population growth.
How to rescue the Arab Spring?
US citizens: sign this petition
to regulate fracking tightly.
Medical insurance companies will get a windfall of $200 billion from Obamacare, thanks to the absence of the public option which they killed.
A journalist in Honduras that opposed the coup against former president Zelaya has been assassinated.
The repeated killings of journalists and other opposition leaders shows that Honduran state remains oppressive.
Maliki's private military unit runs a secret torture prison. The Iraqi Parliament and the Justice Ministry ordered the prison closed, with no effect. I hope that Iraq achieves a true democracy with human rights some day, but what it has now seems like a step backwards from Saddam Hussein.
The US is investigating a CIA officer whose unauthorized abuse resulted in the death of a prisoner.
This investigation is proper, but they are not investigating the larger crimes that Bush ordered.
An ill-advised law is being promoted as a response to the acquittal of Casey Anthony. It would require parents to report a missing child within 24 hours on pain of imprisonment.
This law could definitely do harm. If a child runs away from home, a parent might very well regard escalating immediately to the police as crude and harmful to their relationship. I think that scenario is likely to be far more common than murders such as Casey Anthony was accused of. The U SAP AT RIOT act is another example of a harmful hasty legal reaction.
Human Rights Watch accused the Libyan rebels of vandalizing homes, stores and medical clinics in their recent advance in Western Libya.
Removing the top predators from an ecosystem can have disastrous effects on the whole system.
The elected officials debating how much to cut funds for the old and sick are all rich.
The Audacity of "Free Trade" Agreements: Obama's attack against American workers and unemployed.
The war in Afghanistan is now deadlier than ever for civilians. An article on a site I won't link to said that the Afghan parliament is talking about impeaching Karzai. But I can't see how they could find anyone to replace him with. Is there any honest politician in the Afghan government? Fighting to prop the government up is futile.
Gush Shalom petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court to overturn the boycott ban law.
The US will prod Guatemala to carry out the provisions of CAFTA that are meant to protect unions. CAFTA has not done Guatemala's union organizers any good. It is only good for corporations. Don't be taken in by Obama's show of caring about workers. If he gets the further unjust treaties he wants, he won't bother any more about enforcement.
Everyone:
sign this petition
calling on the Burmese Army to release
its political prisoners.
In the US: join the Week of Action,
July 16-22, against antidemocratic
"free trade" treaties.
Here's
more about why they are bad.
US citizens:
tell Attorney General Holder
to oppose various states'
show-me-your-papers laws.
US citizens: help expose ALEC,
the shadowy organization of businesses
to rewrite state laws to help them against us.
US citizens: sign this petition
to rebuke Rep. Ryan for voting for
handouts to oil companies while profiting from the same companies.
High fructose corn syrup contains mercury — enough to be dangerous.
Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that soldiers accused of torturing and killing civilians must be tried in civilian courts. Military courts have tended to defend murderous soldiers.
Medecins sans Frontieres condemned the US fake vaccination program in Pakistan for stimulating suspicion of other vaccination efforts.
Prisoners from Gaddafi's army say its morale is crumbling. Gaddafi will hang on as long as he can, since he has nothing to gain by surrendering. But that is not the case for his followers.
1700 prisoners in California are on hunger strike about inhumane conditions that amount to torture.
Soil microbes add positive feedback to global heating.
In the US: participate in event
to tell TIAA-CREF it must confront the
pressure to divest from companies that profit from the occupation of
Palestine.
US citizens: phone your senators and say, sign Senator Whitehouse's
resolution rejecting cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121,
888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
As asthma rates in the US increase, the cost of an inhaler has gone from 5 dollars to 60 dollars due to patents.
Senators asked the Department of Justice to push against state laws designed to impede voting, which might be unconstitutional.
Republicans target legal aid for the poor. Why help those poor people protect their legal rights? The ones violating them are probably rich, and Republicans want the rich to be able to get away with that.
The government-encouraged conspiracy between US ISPs and the copyright industry seems to aim to put an end to open WiFi networks in the US. In other words, they want to conscript every internet subscriber into acting as a copyright enforcer. To attack sharing is to attack everyone. That is what the US government is now doing. Americans' goal should be to make the attack fail to achieve its aim. One way to do so is to keep your WiFi network with no key. The ISP may eventually bother you about it, but you can expect to forestall it once by saying, "I had no key on my WiFi network." Wait till they actually threaten to do something and not just complain. With any luck, by the time the ISP bothers you a second time, enough to matter, some of your room-mates will have changed, and you can drop the service and someone else can subscribe instead. Another good response, that will also save you money, is to disconnect your broadband service. If you don't do file sharing, a slower connection will be good enough. Tell the ISP you have dropped your service because of their unjust agreement with Hollywood.
Facebook has a habit of handing over personal data to the police without ever informing the people whose data it is. Investigations into crimes such as arson justify search warrants and subpoenas. But the people whose data is searched should be entitled to a notification, and a chance to try to quash the subpoenas in court.
As part of the Republican War on Health, the House of Representatives voted for the Dirty Water Act.
A government report confirms that the EPA, under the Bush regime, disregarded its scientific data when deciding not to regulate perchlorate pollution.
An analyst says Greece will be forced to default, one way or another, and the euro countries have no plan to cope with that.
Why is the most wasteful government agency (the military) not part of the deficit discussion? The simple answer is: because politicians are not really interested in the deficit. Republicans want to cut spending that helps most Americans because they want to transfer wealth from most Americans to the rich, and especially to business. They mention the deficit only to achieve this aim.
As health insurance companies put the squeeze on Americans, many are tied to corporate jobs and cannot start their own businesses.
Attaching medical care to employment is harmful to Americans in two ways. It is directly harmful for workers because they lose coverage if unemployed. It is indirectly harmful because it acts as an incentive for business to reduce employment. A national health care system, funded by taxes not based on the number of employees, would encourage employment as well as avoid wasteful administrative cost.
An investigation into sexual abuse of children by priests in Ireland said the Vatican was "entirely unhelpful", and accused an Irish bishop who worked in the Vatican of playing a central role in covering up the abuse.
Thousands of women are raped and murdered every year in Pakistan for a twisted patriarchal idea of "honor".
(Saving 79 billion gallons per year) Environment America, together with several senators, have proposed a plan to reduce US dependencies on imported oil, through energy efficiency. This plan would save 79 billion gallons per year, over 1/4 of the current annual consumption of 291 billion gallons. Republicans won't support it, because on this issue they are working for the oil companies. They only talk about "energy independence" when it is a question of encouraging oil drilling in the US.
Humans Rights Watch reminds Obama that the US has a responsibility to investigate Bush and other officials for ordering torture. If the US fails to do this, other countries will have the duty to do it. Japanese soldiers were executed after World War II for waterboarding prisoners. Capital punishment is an injustice, so they should have got life imprisonment. Bush, who has confessed his guilt, deserves the same. Obama ended the use of waterboarding, but continues many other forms of torture. He too ought to be investigated.
In the current situation, this would eliminate a recurring hostage for the Republicans, which would be a change for the better. However, in the long term it seems like a bad idea to increase the president's power.
This means Chinese companies could offer uncensored browsing proxies to the residents of countries with filtered Internet access, such as Australia, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey and the US.
If this war were necessary, and if victory were possible, this setback would not be a reason to give up. However, the article explains why victory is impossible: the "Afghan government" is regarded as a bunch of racketeers because that's what it is. Ahmed Wali Karzai was one of the biggest racketeers.
The proposed prime minister of Haiti, Bernard Gousse, presided as minister over state killings; a Haitian organization has petitioned for him to be tried for them.
Colombian union leaders visited the US to campaign against "free trade". All the "free trade" treaties are daggers stuck into democracy. International trade benefits everyone as long as it does not give business any political power, but "free trade" treaties are designed precisely to do that harm.
A member of a Guatemalan army death squad was deported to Guatemala for trial.
Juan Mendez, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture, rebuked the US for denying him unmonitored access to Bradley Manning.
Manning's imprisonment conditions for most of a year amounted to torture. Many other prisoners in the US are held in similar conditions. The US continues imprisonment without trial, not only in Guantanamo but also in Somalia, in a secret prison where the prisoners cannot have lawyers and are held in conditions that amount to brainwashing. That article also explains how the "Somali government" set up by the US extends the area of Mogadishu it controls by bombing neighborhoods into rubble. Maybe someday it will control all the present-day area of Mogadishu, but the inhabitants will have perforce extended the city elsewhere, unless they have been killed.
One of the Gaza aid ships is on the sea headed for Gaza.
Spanish activists blocked from sailing started a hunger strike demanding the release of their ship.
US citizens: tell the FCC to block covert media consolidation.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say Congress should investigate illegal wiretapping by Murdoch's News Corp. Also send a message through this page.
Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Faux News called for jailing the people who grabbed and leaked Palin's email, but they don't seem to be concerned when sister publications in Murdoch's News Corp did the same thing to lots of people.
I think the perpetrators in both cases merit prosecution. Will Murdoch's crackers be prosecuted?
In the wake of a salmonella outbreak caused by eggs, the main US egg producers have asked for a law requiring better treatment of hens in egg farms.
Obama has effectively rejected the Democratic Party by presenting himself as a "mediator" between the parties. I don't think the people who associated Obama with "change" had cuts in social security in mind. They should tell him to run for the Republican nomination next year.
Republicans are against any and all energy conservation measures — even replacing incandescent lightbulbs with efficient flourescent bulbs.
Gaddafi has proposed to negotiate giving up power in Libya.
Thousands of Israelis have vowed to participate in the boycott of products of the settlements.
US anti-terrorist laws have blocked humanitarian aid to Somalia. This is, in effect, using hunger as a weapon against regions in which groups labeled "terrorist" operate, somewhat like the siege of Gaza. These laws do not prohibit aid to terrorists. They prohibit aid to groups labeled by the US as terrorists. Are the Somalian groups that oppose the US-imposed "government" really terrorists? I don't know.
UK police investigated and infiltrated women's suffragists the way they now investigate and infiltrate environmentalists.
Sign this petition to the House of Representatives to reject Obama's deal and protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
Obama is a Republican in Democrat's clothing. In the 1970s we had a name for people with his politics: "right-wing extremist". The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588
The US gives very little funding to defeat antibiotic-resistant pathogens, even though they kill more people than AIDS does. More research would be useful, but the first step to take against drug resistance is to stop feeding antibiotics regularly to farm animals.
What the Taliban didn't destroy, a Chinese mine will crush. I'm sure it is possible to mine nearly all of that copper while preserving the antiquities.
The CIA set up a phony free vaccination program to find Osama bin Laden's children in Pakistan. I am not sure whether this operation was good or bad, in principle. However, it was wrong to give children in Nawa Sher just one dose of vaccine when three are needed. Their families may think that their children have been properly vaccinated.
Israel adopted the law banning the advocacy of a boycott of the settlements, thus formally abolishing freedom of speech.
Italy's Choice:
Sharing or Censorship
(in Italian)
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A dangerous plan to build a road through the Serengeti has reduced — inside the Serengeti it won't be paved.
This averts the danger of immediate disaster for wildlife, but does bring that disaster a step closer.
Israel lied in the US hearing into the killing of protester Rachel Corrie, according to her father, who says he has obtained evidence proving this.
Obama's new secretary of "defense" repeated the Bush lie that the
conquest and occupation of Iraq was a response to the September 2001
attacks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Obama is trying to push Maliki to
let some of the Bush forces remain
in Iraq permanently.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, Americans must demand an end to this unjust and disastrous occupation.
Israel used Facebook to find the names of activists who planned to visit Palestine as an expression of support, so as to stop many of them from getting on their flights to Israel.
However, according to this article, many of these visitors were permitted to enter Israel.
Israeli police arrested a few Israeli leftist protesters who had come to the airport with signs, but did not arrest any of the right-wing thugs who beat them up.
Meanwhile, the police described the visitors who were denied entry as "hooligans".
The Collateral Murder video shows the results of an illegal order, according to a soldier who was there. If Bradley Manning leaked this video, he acted based on recognizing the need to fight these crimes.
The News of the World, the first newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, practiced illegal phone tapping on many people, paying police to help.
Why haven't the people accused of doing this been charged with the crime? There seems to be a long-term dishonest relationship between the newspaper staff and the police who would be the ones to arrest them.
How fear of "child porn" is promoted, worldwide, as an excuse to block file sharing.
For instance, it was used by the RIAA to set up the US Internet filtering scheme.
I've explained elsewhere that the term "child porn" is dishonest (most recently: here, here and here).
As the first article shows, censorship does not really address the real problem of child sexual abuse — apparently because it isn't really meant as one.
US citizens: tell the US Senate to reject military detention of US citizens.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Apple's mail service silently censors the mail people send.
As the corporate empire and the IMF leave governments with decreased power, politicians become mere entertainers and voting becomes useless.
A senate meeting concerned with new antidemocratic trade treaties was blocked by Republicans, who boycotted it because the treaties are not sufficiently nasty.
We can't count on this to save us.
A plea to release John Walker Lindh from prison.
The arid forest of the Chaco is being cut down by to be converted to farms.
To grow grain in an area where soldiers died for lack of water is going to require massive amounts of irrigation. In effect, Saudi Arabia's shortage of water is spreading to South America.
The inadequacy of US oil pipeline regulation was demonstrated by its failure to avoid a large spill into the Yellowstone river.
More on the UK's phony inquiry into torture of prisoners.
Thanks to human climate alteration, the teeming mackerel in a bay in Wales have been entirely replaced by jellyfish.
Thousands protested in Malaysia for clean and fair elections.
The state has arrested hundreds of protesters and organizers; some of them face years of imprisonment, which demonstrates that Malaysia is a tyranny.
The UK with its "aggravated trespass" excuse to imprison protesters is following the same path.
Five out of eight species of tuna are threatened with extinction due to overfishing.
Obama's
"remedy" for the educational harm done by underfunding and social
inequality is to test children more.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The US government refused to recognize the medical value of marijuana.
Help get out the vote for real Democrats to defeat the phony Democrats in the Wisconsin recall primary.
Unemployment in the US increased, as few new jobs were created.
The reason is obvious: Republican budget cutting. Obama said two years ago that he would stimulate the economy, but he has not strongly opposed the budget cutting; he has even adopted a budget-cutting commission, granting that foolish goal legitimacy. Either he's a weakling, or a fool, or he never gave a damn.
The last one seems most likely to me.
Michele Bachmann opposes freedom of speech, as well as many other parts of the US Constitution.
New oil drilling off Australia will threaten a marine reserve with rare and endangered sea life.
We can't trust what oil companies say about safety. They always say, "We maintain the highest safety standards," and that statement is worth exactly nothing.
The only way underwater drilling can be safe is if the drillers are monitored like prisoners on a chain gang — and if the inspectors care as little about the company's profit as the guards care about the prisoners' comfort.
Bradley Manning, American Hero.
The government of Bangladesh has done nothing to protect women from being tortured to death when they arouse the ire of religious fanatics.
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Israel blocked some 300 foreign visitors-protesters from entering to visit Palestine and express nonviolent support, calling them "pro-Palestinian radicals".
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Calling them "radicals" is a typical example of the lie that is told every day about anyone who criticizes Israeli policy. They surely are pro-Palestinian, but that does not mean they are against Israel.
The European court of human rights ruled that the UK is liable for the killing and imprisonment without trial of Iraqi civilians, and must address the cases brought by the victims and their relatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Privately run prisons in the US are a nexus for many kinds of corruption, which extends to corrupting judges and legislators to get more people imprisoned.
When they deny prisoners medical care, the results are (predictably) occasionally fatal.
DuPont's bad maintenance killed a worker in a chemical plant.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
There are two separate issues here: DuPont's decision not to use a slightly safer but more expensive process, and its failure to properly maintain the equipment it used.
I concur with the former decision. It is not cost-efficient to spend 2 million dollars (or perhaps more) to prevent a probable 14 deaths over a period of 10,000 years, if that's what it would really do. 2 million dollars could save hundreds of thousands of lives if spent efficiently, for instance food and medicine for poor people.
However, having chosen to continue with the existing plant, DuPont had the responsibility to maintain it properly. The fact that someone died in the plant a mere 23 years after the report projected 14 deaths in 10,000 years suggests that the true danger level of the plant as actually operated by DuPont is a lot higher than that.
Perhaps the safer process would be cheaper than proper maintenance over time for the existing plant.
Portugal celebrates 10 years of decriminalization of drugs.
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I support decriminalization, but some drugs should go further than that. Marijuana, which is not as dangerous as tobacco or alcohol, should be legal like tobacco and alcohol.
Chomsky says that the Guardian article which said he condemned Chavez was a misrepresentation of his views.
The full transcript of the Guardian's interview with Chomsky sustains his claims. Chomsky criticized some Venezuelan government policies, while praising others.
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Here is the article in question.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to increase taxes on the rich.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Drivers crossing the Mexican border run the risk of having drugs planted on them.
I hope this is a big success. My only (small) criticisms are linguistic: they wrote "it's" where they meant "its" (think "his, her, its" — no apostrophe in any of them), and they used the deprecating term "content" to talk about their own film.
The Obama regime is using navy ships as secret prisons for illegal interrogation.
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Houtan Kian, Iranian lawyer, has been tortured in prison for 9 months because he spoke with the foreign press about his client, Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
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Iran is an "Islamic republic" in the same way that the Soviet Union was a "socialist republic": as a guise for tyranny.
Half a year after Congress formally repealed "Don't ask, don't tell", the policy was actually stopped by a court order.
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Human rights organizations have denounced the UK torture inquiry as a whitewash, and boycotted it.
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Scott Walker has replaced union workers with prisoners.
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This fits into a systematic decades-long right-wing assault on the standard of living of most Americans. With more poverty, they will have more crime, put more Americans in prison, and cut wages more, to make more poverty.
Egyptian courts granted bail to police accused of killing protesters.
Meanwhile, activists get imprisoned without trial and without access to lawyers.
One
boat in the Gaza aid fleet managed to escape Greece and is heading
for Gaza.
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I heard this joke.
A school teacher, a Tea Partier, and a CEO are sitting at a table. In the middle of the table is a plate with a dozen cookies on it. The CEO takes 11 cookies, then looks at the Tea Partier and says, "Watch out for that teacher — she wants a piece of your cookie!"
UK police besieged student protesters as young as 11; now some of them will sue.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, vote to cut off
funding for the war in Afghatistan and the occupation of Iraq. Also use
this page to send an email, but a phone call counts more.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Normal temperatures in the US have increased 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the 1970s.
Move to Amend is a movement to eliminate the idea that corporations are persons.
A former CIA interrogator, who now wonders whether he was a torturer,
reports
on a secret CIA prison.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Keeping people in secret prisons is itself a violation of the rights of prisoners, totally aside from the way they are treated.
Cisco
will sell China networking equipment for 500,000 surveillance
cameras in just one city.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Drug companies are telling people that their headaches are a sign of "progressive depression" that will get worse unless they take new, expensive antidepressants.
The oil wells in the North Sea have significant oil spills at the rate of one per week.
And that is just the ones that the oil companies choose to report.
Stupidity has become the norm in Australia, as the majority have been led to short-sightedly reject the carbon tax needed to prevent growing disasters.
I don't think that this happened through a natural phenomenon. I suspect that the businesses that don't want to pay the carbon tax have funded manipulation of public opinion on this issue. We know that prominent global heating deniers have been funded by oil companies.
UK Uncut protesters face charges of "aggravated trespass".
The offense of "aggravated trespass" in the UK is simply an excuse to punish protesters that don't break any other laws.
The Icelandic company DataCell, which collected money to forward to Wikileaks, will sue Visa and Mastercard for cutting off payments to DataCell.
The lawsuit is based on European competition law, applicable because Visa and Mastercard have nearly all the market for such payments.
Oil companies won't admit that global heating is going to continue but they are preparing to cope with its consequences.
Global Patronage: This describes the Global Patronage system of supporting artists on the Internet. Francis Muguet and I were working on it together at the time of his death in September 2009. He sent me a draft for version 1.2.1, and I responded with this modified version which I call 1.3. The principal change was to describe correctly what sort of function would be used to calculate the shares of the non-attributed funds. I did not expect him to have any objections, but he died before responding. (French Translation)
Kettling Wikileaks: the Anonymous protests are the Internet equivalent of protests on the street. (Spanish Translation and Norwegian Translation)
Internet
Sharing License in Brazil.
Internet taxa de
licença para o compartilhamento (Portuguese version).
Spanish translation.
Also see compartilhamentolegal.org.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans have passed 900 laws to obstruct the right to an abortion.
Microsoft Joins with Chinese Search Giant Baidu to Provide Censored Search.
Saudi women were arrested for protesting to demand that their imprisoned relatives be given fair trials.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
It is a shame that the US sets an example of imprisonment without charge, giving comfort to every dictator in the world.
Syrian troops violently reimposed control over the city of Hama.
One of the Gaza aid ships tried to escape Greece but was caught and borded by soldiers, acting on orders from irresistible "economic forces".
We now have confirmation that the Greek government has effectively surrendered and is taking orders from someone. I would guess it is the US.
North Koreans are starving; is there a way to feed them?
Food given to the state will certainly go first to the army, which is somewhat hungry, and only trickle-down will reach the civilians who are starving. This not only supports the evil state, it also fails to do the job of feeding them.
Will the North Korean state agree to let food be delivered in some other way, if that's the only offer?
The People's Budget corresponds to what Americans say they want.
So why don't Americans elect progressive politicians who will support this? Perhaps because they have been distracted by Christian bigotry and fear of terrorists.
US policies to keep unemployment high are precisely what business wants.
Israel says Turkey, Greece and Cyprus are all intentionally blocking the Gaza aid ships.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US needs a declaration of independence — from Israel.
'We the People' or 'I the Person'?
Chomsky did call, as reported, for the release of Judge Afiuni from prison.
Here's what I said about Judge Afiuni some months ago.
Residents of France: tell Sarkozy to withdraw the Internet censorship decree.
Standard & Poor's is bullying the European Union by declaring it would choose to regard the EU's plan to avoid a Greek default as being itself a default.
Europe compelled Greece to adopt an austerity package by offering this bailout. Now that the Greek government has passed the austerity package, the bailout plan will be withdrawn. Will this be a bait-and-switch to make the Greek government heap more austerity on Greeks?
Netanyahu exploited the Greek financial crisis to buy the Greek government's support in blocking the Gaza aid ships.
Greek protesters should add this to their list of reasons to condemn their government.
Several US states have passed Internet censorship bills, which courts keep striking down.
Italians: oppose Italy's new Internet censorship law.
Egypt's transitional military government still puts protesters on trial in military courts.
Global heating is likely to melt polar ice faster than was previously expected.
Some "drug trials" are really just marketing exercises, designed by pharmaceutical companies to encourage doctors to prescribe the drug by recruiting them as "investigators".
Several right-wing Israeli rabbis endorsed a book that encourages killing Arab children.
This is the mirror image of the extremist Islamist view that endorses suicide bombings of civilians.
In Israel, expressing such views is apparently a crime, and the rabbis were (after a long delay) questioned by the police. I think it is wrong to prohibit expression of abstract political views. What Israel needs to do is not the prosecution of the people that express such views, but rather the end of public support now given to the movements that tend to produce them.
Obama has returned to Bush's policy of attacking state-authorized medical marijuana distributors and growers.
A court overturned South Dakota's attempt to make abortion impossible through arbitrary restrictions.
A Kansas law with the same purpose has been temporarily blocked.
The US can't afford to continue without universal health care.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinians accuse Israel of deliberately acting to divert and degrade Gaza's water.
The US Attorney General dropped 100 investigations into torture of prisoners by the CIA.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
BP has bought control over scientific assessment of the effects of the Big Spill, and is using this to prematurely declare areas as clean.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The government of Minnesota will shut down, as Republican legislators insist on cutting aid to poor people while the Democratic governor insists on taxing the rich instead.
The leaders of the SGAE, the Spanish organization that gets money from a special tax on blank disks, faces a criminal investigation into diversion of funds.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The SGAE lobbies for cruel laws against sharing. ¡Abajo la SGAE!
Citizens of New York State call on Governor Cuomo to continue the moratorium on fracking.
The Greek government treacherously banned the Gaza aid ships from leaving port.
I wonder if there is a connection between this and the Greek government's foreign-imposed attack on its own citizens.
Peasants in Kenya have been deprived of their land and water for a biofuel agribusiness, and now must drink water full of poisons.
Biofuel is a self-defeating practice unless it is made from weeds.
Pension funds are fueling the land grab in Africa with lots of ordinary people's pension money.
The people who own the pensions might be able to stop this, but withdrawing one category of investor from buying the grabbed land is not enough to stop the land grab.
Haitian NGO leaders demand that the UN troops do the work to end the cholera epidemic that they caused.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit will have to make its data available to other researchers.
This lawsuit resulted from the leaked emails, which were falsely portrayed by global heating denialists as showing dishonesty.
However, it is true that they kept their raw data secret, and that is not good for science.
The article uses the term "intellectual property", which here (as nearly always) causes gratuitous confusion because it can mean so many different things. I think that here it means "trade secrets", but most of the time it means other things. This term has no place in thoughtful discussion, so please join me in totally avoiding its use.
Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage
The UK government attempt to minimize the Fukushima disaster shows how close the government is to the nuclear industry.
It also shows that one can't trust anything that the UK government says about nuclear power. The same goes for Obama, of course.
US citizens: call on the DOJ to investigate Massey thoroughly, and hold the executives responsible for lying about safety problems and causing a fatal mine disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The World Health Organization suppresses research about the effects of radiation and radioactive fallout, following an agreement made with the IAEA.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Nuclear Power Plant Safety Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Cedrick Perkins, a bystander when Miami police killed Raymond Herisse, will sue the police for recklessly shooting him.
When Herisse was driving wildly, he was an immediate threat to people's lives. I don't know whether this changed when he stopped the car. I can't say it was wrong to shoot him dead — there may have been a valid reason. But shooting him with a crowd of bystanders behind him is hardly a way to protect public safety.
I hope the employers don't respond by imposing the same requirement on male employees.
Wal-Mart's fruits and vegetables come from Martori Farms, which uses prison labor in the most cruel conditions (sometimes deadly).
Another reason to refuse to buy from Wal-Mart.
Use of prison labor by companies should be prohibited.
Global heating is triggering leakage of a tremendous store of methane under the Arctic Ocean, which is so big it would cause catastrophic warming all by itself if a substantial fraction escaped.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Goldman Sachs has billions in profits, thanks to the US taxpayers, but sees no reason not to move its jobs outside the US.
This is not an American company, it is a stateless marauding brigand.
Egyptian police fought with protesters who criticized the interim government.
An international conference has endorsed plans to conscript ISPs as copyright police.
US citizens: sign this petition to reject the Colombia "free trade" treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republican Rep. Issa was buying Goldman Sachs bonds while he defended the bank's interests in Congress.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republican presidential candidates vie for the support of a bloodthirsty bigot who wants to abolish religious freedom in the US and impose Christianity as the states religion.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for an end to production of C-17 transport planes, which outgoing defense secretary Gates says are not needed. Many in congress want to spend money on these planes for the sake of companies in their districts.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support Barbara Lee's amendment to require withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Many organizations have joined Putin's All-Russia People's Front without asking their members.
This should be compared with the policies of AARP, and GLAAD's support for the AT&T/T-mobile merger (which GLAAD retracted).
Millions of Africans are losing their land through "voluntary" sales that in fact they were coerced into.
Rather than slinking off to die separately, they should unite and fight. The worst that will happen is that they die as heroes — and they might discourage further land grabbing, or even win.
Shell companies created by the thousands in the US conceal their owners and can disguise complex webs of fraud.
Belarusians held another wordless protest, defying Lukashenko.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This keeps the hatred for him alive, but I wonder what can enable it to go beyond that.
Bangladesh objects to the idea of being compensated for the damage of global heating with loans which it would later struggle to repay.
5 Outrageous Examples of FBI Intimidation and Entrapment.
In effect, the development of the US into a police state is continuing, but it only attacks a few people, not most Americans.
US medical insurance companies are using bait-and-switch, pressuring customers to move from HMO plans into high-deductible plans, then increasing the deductibles and the premiums astronomically.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If the US law requiring people to buy health insurance survives the Supreme Court, they may still have trouble finding doctors willing to treat them.
A single-payer national health care system is the only solution.
US citizens: tell Obama to stand firm against Republican demands for raising the debt ceiling.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Once in a while, when enough people demand it, Obama does what he ought to do.
Palestinians from Dir Kadis have held several protests against expansion of an Israeli colony on land confiscated from their village in the 1980s.
Genetic testing of wood can detect illegal logging.
Amnesty International doubts the accusations that Gaddafi order troops to use rape massively.
I didn't give any credence to these accusations until I read that the ICC did. They are very clearly the sort of thing that is used to manipulate public opinion. So my views about Libya were never based on them.
Since 2009, 88% of income growth went to corporate profits and just 1% to wages.
This is partly due to the high level of unemployment, partly due to decades of campaigns to weaken unions, and partly due to globalization which was engineered through antidemocratic international institutions such as the WTO.
Jellyfish in the sea caused a UK nuclear plant to shut down.
Even though this did not cause immediate danger, it did make the plant unable to deliver electricity. Since one effect of overfishing and other human abuse of the ocean is an increase in jellyfish, this is going to make nuclear power plants less efficient over the next few decades.
The UK government ordered a PR campaign to convince people that the Fukushima nuclear disaster was not important.
Germany has voted to eliminate nuclear power by 2022.
Global heating has caused big ecological changes at the poles.
In the Antarctic, water-filled salps grow instead of krill, resulting in little food that penguins and seals can eat.
In the Arctic, the time of phytoplankton blooms has shifted almost two months earlier, so whales and birds arrive too late and find little to eat.
It will only get worse.
The EU will consider a directive to restrict highly polluting fossil fuel sources, such as fracking.
US citizens: oppose the US/Colombia free exploitation treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-16 because the old link was broken.]
Support repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which discriminates against gay couples.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Microsoft admits that the US government can collect data about users from any Microsoft subsidiary, anywhere around the world.
The Supreme Court rejected a crucial provision of public funding election laws: giving candidates funds to compensate for the excess spending of a rich opponent.
This seems to be part of the right-wing campaign to block every means of resisting the power of the rich to buy public opinion.
Everyone: demand that Hamas allow verification that Gilad Shalit is being treated humanely.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel is not the only party that has the obligation to respect human rights.
What the NRC's report on nuclear power plant safety won't mention.
Israel has withdrawn the threat to punish journalists on the Gaza aid ships.
Due to global heating, in 100 years there may be no Joshua trees in Joshua tree national park. Or maybe none at all.
As global heating accelerates, plant species will have to move faster and faster to survive, and many of them cannot move very fast.
The Greek parliament voted for the austerity plan, and police launched a massive toxic teargas attack on the protesters outside.
Boeing charges the US $644 for a small helicopter gear that normally sells for $12.51.
This shows what is likely to happen when the government uses private contractors. The cult of the Invisible Hand says that this has to be cheaper, but apparently its credo does not fit reality.
Orlando, Florida, has arrested 21 people for handing out food to homeless people in a park.
Food Not Bombs has faced repression in other parts of the US, from city governments who find homeless people unpleasant and wish they would go off somewhere and die.
The Mexican congress passed a resolution rejecting ACTA.
According to movie studios' creative accounting, the latest Harry Potter movie "lost money" despite being a big success.
Make sure it doesn't get any of your money! Boycott Harry Potter books, and films too!
Internal documents show that the TSA ignored cancer clusters that might be caused by body scanners, refusing to give its staff dosimeters which could determine whether in fact they are exposed to too much radiation.
It also lied and said that NIST had "affirmed the safety" of the scanners, which NIST denies doing.
The Israeli Parliament is considering a law to ban the boycott of products made in the Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
Global heating skeptic Willie Soon has received a million dollars in research grants from oil and coal companies.
The headline says he "received" the money, but the text seems to show this is a matter of research funding rather than personal payments to him. Nonetheless, it is an ethical issue.
I am not surprised Exxon (remember the "xx" is pronounced like "ch" in German "ach") funds "hundreds of organisations". Funding just one wouldn't achieve the purpose of distracting humanity from the disaster it needs urgently to avoid. Exxon, yexx!
How Corporations Award Themselves Legal Immunity.
Refuting absurd claims that wind power generators would cause a climate disaster.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Haitian farmers protested for more support from their government, which has allowed subsidized US farm products to crush local agriculture, and is now accepting poisonous US gifts of seed treated with toxic chemicals.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Major Australian ISPs have agreed to censor Internet connections "voluntarily" — but it's not voluntary for the users.
The excuse is "child pornography", one of the standard excuses for crushing civil liberties on the Internet. Once filtering is set up, they can extend it to whatever else they wish.
The MPAA is trying to impose Internet filtering on the UK through a lawsuit.
A rebuttal of the claim that thorium reactors make dangerous waste products which was the point of a previous political note ("Making nuclear reactors use thorium instead of uranium does not make their waste safe").
However, there is one error in this article: it claims that existing nuclear reactors did not need a public subsidy.
The "child pornography" witch-hunt has made a possession of this high-school yearbook a crime — because of what two students in the background of a photo are doing.
Imagine if the photo had been published in a newspaper. That could turn thousands of people into criminals.
Doing foreplay in a dance is a little daring — it must have been fun. It suggests those two students are normal teenagers with a normal interest in sex. If there was anything harmful, wrong, or shameful about this photo, it wasn't them. Yet (according to an article on a site not suitable to link to) they might face prosecution, with the danger of being listed as "sex offenders", effectively "perverts", for being normal and hurting nobody.
These laws are the perverted intersection of two irrational hot buttons: "sex is dirty" and "we must protect the children". Remember this when Internet filtering is imposed in order to block "child pornography".
The charges against Emily Good were dropped, and the Mayor of Rochester condemned her arrest and the police harassment of her supporters.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The TSA says it didn't require an old woman dying of cancer to remove her diaper. The woman's daughter, who was with her, insists it did.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
People suspect the TSA is playing a dishonest word game to evade responsibility for its actions. Whatever the TSA demands, they pretend it is "not required" because you have the option of missing your flight. These lies won't fool anyone who pays attention, but they hope to fool many people who listen to a soundbite.
Fracking may be limited in many regions by lack of water.
This issue is a pertinent one for technologies that consume water. However, this presentation tries to generalize the idea too far. It is ridiculous to talk about the amount of water needed for hydroelectric generation, because people build dams where water already flows downhill — and the water that flows through the generator is not used up in the process. It remains available for other uses.
As for growing crops for biofuels, that is a wasteful practice in every respect, and should not be treated as a serious option.
A Syrian soldier defected when he was ordered to shoot protesters and told, "The men with guns are ours."
Canada is blocking a treaty to ban export of asbestos, which causes lung disease.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US has tried to smear the activists on the Gaza aid fleet by mentioning that "aiding Hamas" is illegal.
Of course, the US government knows that that is irrelevant, since bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza is not aiding Hamas. It is engaged in evident dishonesty comparable to what Bush used to do to defend his lies about Iraq.
A new USGS report shows how much we don't know about the dangers of undersea oil drilling in the Arctic.
Israel is trying to prevent press coverage of the Gaza aid fleet by threatening to deny journalists entry to Israel and Palestine for 10 years.
A letter from a naive peace activist (on the Gaza aid ships) to an Israeli naval officer.
Ray McGovern is on the ship too, and explains an inconvenient truth that the US tries to suppress: US support for the occupation of Palestine and siege of Gaza are crucial motivating factors for terrorists that attack the US.
Craig Murray, a former naval attache who knows the relevant law thoroughly, explains why an Israeli attack on these ships would be illegal, as is the siege.
However, far from acting to protect US citizens on the high seas, Obama would be glad to see them killed in an illegal Israeli attack against a US ship.
We already know that Obama thinks it is ok to kill Americans abroad if he does not approve of their views.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to sign Rep. Chris Murphy's letter calling for a hearing for HR 862, which would deal with the unethical activities of Clarence Thomas. Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: send messages to your senators and representatives in favor of the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
This bill would limit use of antibiotics on farm animals.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for investigation of Clarence Thomas' unethical political dealings.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Sign Rob Zerban's petition telling Paul Ryan to stop attacking Medicare.
Republicans want to destroy the Clean Water Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US has the weakest protections for workers of any developed country, but companies such as Boeing and Target are trying to crush those, with help from Republicans.
Turkey is now allowing journalists to talk with Syrian refugees and the people aiding them. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government is helping Syria by arresting Syrian dissidents and even refugees.
I disagree with Turkey's government on many issues, such as censorship, but I admire its willingness to set aside superficial political interests for human decency. If only the US were so moral.
The US has set up massive programs to spy on millions of Arabs
and manipulate public opinion in the Arab world, known only from the
leaked HBGary emails.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The government says it won't use this capability on Americans, but it already has.
Emily Wood was arrested for making a video of police as they were doing a traffic stop.
She was accused of "obstructing" their activities, but how could making a video possibly do that? Perhaps if they were planning to do something illegal, or lie about their actions. Such lies on the part of cops are not unusual.
Police then proceeded to harass people attending a neighborhood meeting to support her.
These thugs and bullies think that laws are their tools for hurting anyone who opposes them. That is the reason cops often lie.
Pakistan is carrying out a long term campaign of repression against
Balochis, the people of a region that Pakistan conquered in 1947.
Over 14,000 Balochis have been disappeared in the past decade.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Wikileaks cables show how the US government pushed business exploitation in Haiti.
20 years ago, Croatia used national ID cards for ethnic cleansing.
Now they are used for illegal foreclosure without trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Belarus arrested 450 people who made an unusual protest:
not merely nonviolent, but silent too.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Republicans are now attacking food stamps, using false accusations of fraud.
In the UK: tell your MP you oppose the dishonest scheme for "voluntary" filtering of the Internet — unless it's voluntary for you.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Venture capitalists have signed a letter opposing some of the provisions of the "PROTECT IP" act.
The term "IP" in the name of that bill is propaganda — don't repeat it in your own discourse.
We all understand that the wishes of businesses and investors carry more weight with the US Congress than the wishes of citizens. That means democracy is sick. I am glad to see investors oppose this fundamentally unjust bill, since they may be able to kill it. The same sickness of democracy gave Hollywood and the record companies the power which they are using to try to pass it.
While we can be glad that some of these non-citizens are using their power on our side, we must not let that lead us to tolerate corporatocracy.
A blogger in Taiwan was jailed for criticizing the food she ate in a restaurant.
It is very hard to speak with the precision that this court punished her for failing to use. I try to do so, but I don't always succeed. However, even if she carelessly stretched her statement, that does not justify imprisonment.
It appears that online reviews create psychological pressure to exaggerate.
If we would like to discourage exaggeration, harsh punishments against a few of those who succumb to this pressure will not do the job (in addition to being unjust). Changing the structure of the system might perhaps work.
FAIR documents bias in the US mainstream media, which often is expressed through presuppositions. Here's an example: the Washington Post presumes that withdrawal from Afghanistan should be slowed down, not sped up.
Another example: how the New York Times pushes to cut public workers' pensions, condemning unions in the process.
I see a flaw in the Times' argument that FAIR didn't point out. The article cites a police chief and a deputy fire chief as examples — but those are managers. Normally they would not even be members of the union, and their salary and pension have nothing to do with those of ordinary policemen or firemen.
The University of Michigan library is taking a small step towards making the "orphan works" in its collection available digitally.
Since their availability is very limited, this is just a first step.
If Palestine declares statehood unilaterally in September, it will be following the same path as Israel in 1948.
Foreign maids working in Saudi Arabia are effectively slaves, since they are forbidden to return home without the consent of their employer. If that employer is cruel, doesn't pay the salary, or rapes them, they have no way to escape.
Meaningful accomplishments give more satisfaction than material career goals.
So instead of trying to make money from proprietary software, it is wiser to become a free software activist.
In Egypt, the youth wing of the Muslim Brotherhood has broken away to form a new party which is more secular.
In the US: tell AT&T and Comcast you object to the three-strikes punishment plan they intend to impose on their customers.
Al Gore, blaming the US for the failure of the Copenhagen climate talks, has recognized that US democracy has been corrupted and that Obama is weak.
Republican laws in 8 states are designed to cause more abortions — by obstacles to contraception, and cuts in prenatal care and education.
Even more nasty, they are prosecuting women who had miscarriages.
This is the War on Women.
Making nuclear reactors use thorium instead of uranium does not make their waste safe.
Thousands of village women in India have been trained as solar engineers to set up solar power systems in their villages.
If this small operation has saved over a million liters of fossil fuel a year, imagine what could be achieved by a full national effort in India. All that is missing is the political will.
The House of Representatives refused to authorize the intervention in Libya.
Syria's protests have spread to Damascus, where protesters were shot dead.
Ai Weiwei's associates remain disappeared even though he himself has been released.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
No matter what crimes a person may be guilty of, disappearing him is never justified — and the fact that these people have been disappeared, and that Ai Weiwei has been gagged as a condition of parole, is grounds to believe the worst accusations against the Chinese Government.
The TSA is selling the "dangerous" snow-globes that it takes away from surprised passengers.
It cost a lot of money for the US to occupy and destroy Iraq, so some politicians want Iraq to pay for the service.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Nine blackwhiting words that define the US idea of war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
California is considering a bill to require disclosure of chemicals used in fracking.
Political prisoners in Iran say the prison guards are encouraging prisoners to rape them. I would guess that Islam considers homosexual rape a grave crime, but no hypocrisy is too much for the Islamic Republic.
There is a bill in the House of Representatives to end marijuana prohibition (leaving it to states to decide).
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Police in Denmark want to ban anonymous access to the Internet.
France already has such a law, which makes it effectively impossible for me to use public internet sites in France (since I refuse to identify myself). Will anyone in Denmark campaign against this?
Cutting the US deficit makes no rational sense in terms of the US economy.
I suspect it makes rational sense for whoever paid US politicians to push for deficit reduction.
Toronto police have promised never again to besiege protesters.
The biggest ISPs in the US are planning to punish their customers extrajudicially for sharing.
This is possible because in large parts of the US there are few choices of ISP for broadband.
It is Obama's fault. Obama is practicing divide-and-rule on behalf of the corporations he serves.
This article uses the propaganda term "piracy" (for sharing) and uses the propaganda term "intellectual property" in a twisted way to refer to works of authorship. Don't make the mistake of repeating their propaganda.
UK representatives of the copyright industry proposed a rapid-response web filtering system that China would envy.
There is a high level of birth defects in states where mountaintop mining is practiced.
To establish whether mountaintop mining is responsible would require further experiments. It is important to carry out those experiments.
Renewable energy offers the chance to decentralize and democratize electricity production.
Obama raised the official US troop strength in Afghanistan from 34,000 to 100,000, and this is not counting the 100,000 contractors or mercenaries. Thus, withdrawing 33,000 would still leave more forces than Bush had there.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
3,000 nurses protested on Wall Street for a tax on financial transactions to fund health care.
Everyone: sign this petition to Brazil's president Rousseff to protect the Amazon forest, and reject the bill that would weaken forest protections.
Ai Weiwei has been freed on bail in exchange for agreeing not to talk about how he was treated.
If Ai Weiwei is really guilty of tax evasion, that would justify arresting him — but not holding him incommunicado. And I think they would not have done so. Thus, the Chinese officials are lying.
Likewise, requiring a released prisoner to promise not to talk about prison conditions is evident and inexcusable tyranny.
HBGary and other countries apparently set up a system for the US to secretly manipulate "public opinion" on the Internet.
It is the automated equivalent of the astroturf campaigns and media bias that corporations use to twist US politics.
Dissidents and human rights defenders in Bahrain were sentenced to life imprisonment in a military court, based on false confessions extracted by torture.
Sounds like Guantanamo. Bahrain must respect human rights, but it is far more important to make the US respect them.
Iranian women's rights campaigner Maryam Majd has been arrested and disappeared.
Tyranny in Iran has reached the point where anyone that wants a change is considered an enemy, even if the change would not alter who holds the power.
A man is on trial in France for making anti-semitic insults to strangers in a restaurant.
Insults are not nice, and racism is disgusting, but prosecuting people for speaking insults is even more disgusting. It sounds like this man was (and maybe still is) a prize jerk, but that should not be a crime.
Russia has banned an opposition party.
This resembles the previous election, where would-be opposition candidate Kasparov was blocked from forming a party to run.
Facebook's identify-your-friends feature is facing a challenge in Connecticut.
Oil
companies are funding an astroturf campaign to demand cheap
gasoline.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Such a campaign could not achieve its supposed goal except by reducing the taxes that help discourage gasoline use. But it might have other benefits for the oil companies.
Obama is trying to disregard the War Powers Act with a wacky claim that the intervention in Libya is not "hostilities".
By Obama's logic, firing ICBMs would not be hostilities either.
Morocco's king has announced substantial democratic reforms, but they don't go all the way to the constitutional monarchy that protesters called for.
International climate talks remained stalled: another meeting has gone by with only minor progress.
Countries are fighting for bigger pieces of mansion rather than put out the fire that is destroying it.
Wildlife populations in some African wild areas are crashing.
Naturally, human intrusion plays a substantial role in this.
Greenpeace protesters have been arrested after protesting on an oil rig.
Note the ridiculous argument that drilling near Greenland is safe because wells have been drilled in Norway's Arctic. Were they safe, or just lucky? If a well in the Barents Sea had blown up, could Norway have shut it off and cleaned up the spill?
It appears Obama supports Argentina's demand to conquer the Falkland Islands.
Many specialist doctors in the US refuse to make appointments for children with public health insurance.
Wyden and Chaffetz' bill to require warrants for police to get geolocation data seems to be better than Franken's bill, which applies only to commercial use of the data.
30 Saudi women held their drive-in, but the police responded by not taking notice.
Everyone: call on India to free environmental activists imprisoned on absurd charges.
How the empire of the corporations is using Arab revolutions as an opportunity to impose cruel austerity programs.
US citizens: the campaign to email senators against the "PROTECT IP" act is having an effect. Have you sent email yet? If not, please do it now.
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to resign for what would,
in any other US court,
be ethics violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the US to
apologize to Maher Arar for having
him tortured by proxy in Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US-backed civil war in Guatemala has officially ended,
but
persistent violence against women is its result.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The TSA is searching trains and buses, using the imaginary danger of terrorists as an excuse to check people's persons and papers everywhere.
Obama, by renewing the PAT RIOT Act, extended Bush's war on the Bill of Rights.
UK's biggest ISPs have lost an appeal against the DEA (Denial of E-citizenship Act).
Of 6 million hectares of land stolen during Colombia's civil war, the restitution law will only restore 2 million to the previous owners. The government does not intend to return the land which was taken by companies or by the state itself.
A call to break up the US communications duopoly of AT&T and Verizon, just as AT&T's monopoly was broken up in the past.
When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission finds that an old reactor does not meet a safety standard, it changes the standard to fit the reactor.
A major Egyptian diplomat calls for negotiating a ceasefire in Libya.
In the US, the way to get medical treatment is to rob a bank.
The conference of US mayors approved a resolution for speeding up withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has gone
very easy on US nuclear
reactor operators.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The campaign to protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining was successful.
However, even to have considered allowing uranium mining there shows how soft on pollution the Obama regime is.
US citizens: oppose the ban on
DC funding for abortions for poor
women.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell world leader:
cut nuclear weapons, not things people
need.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Scientists measuring the march towards extinction of ocean life were shocked by how fast it is proceeding.
Republicans have cut off funding for Planned Parenthood birth control services in several states.
Opposition to birth control has become part of the unofficial Republican platform, as part of their perverted War on Pleasure (they want people to suffer for having sex).
The US has long oppressed other countries, especially poor weak ones. This continues today in Haiti, Honduras, and Colombia, as well as (obviously) Iraq.
Now the oppression is spreading within the US. Future Americans will ask how the US was turned into a fear-state of poverty.
The Supreme Court ruled that Wal-Mart is too big for its female employees to sue together for discrimination.
A semi-independent report on the lessons of Fukushima shows that nuclear plants with proper safety precautions have to be even more absurdly expensive than they are now.
US state laws requiring disclosure of fracking chemicals are weak because they have catered to companies' wish for trade secrecy.
The public has no obligation to take any risk for the sake of that wish. Let's tell those companies, "Publish or perish."
A US company saves everyone's Internet postings for 7 years to show to their possible future employers.
I can't say that this company is doing something unjust. If the outcome is harmful, I would blame it on the competitivity of the job market in the US, which is caused by practices such as outsourcing, budget-cutting, and banksterism.
The head of GLAAD resigned after a scandal because he had given the group's support to AT&T's merger with T-mobile.
100,000 protested in Spain against plans to give business more power over workers all across the EU.
Sarkozy has proposed total censorship for the Internet in France.
Bad news for Wall Street companies could be good news for the rest of the US.
A reporter who wrote about his arrest and torture in Pakistan was attacked and beaten again by police.
The Bank of Kabul is almost bankrupt, and with it the Afghan state.
The bank collapsed due to corruption.
It seems that the corruption of Karzai's regime has finally got so bad that the US will no longer pour billions down that drain.
As Southern Sudan becomes independent, the Nuba people, whose territory falls in the north, are being crushed.
Michele Bachmann wants to abolish the EPA, effectively letting business pollute at will.
Libyan rebels in Misrata say they have captured documents where Gaddafi ordered his troops there to commit war crimes.
Ex-Spy alleges Bush White House
sought to discredit war critic
(Juan Cole)
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
UK police say their censorship efforts have "safeguarded or protected" 414 children in the past year, but fail to say what this means, or how the danger to those children related to the pornography. Were these children being used to make pornography? Stopping that would indeed be protecting them, but the police had achieved this, they could have stated it in a clear and concrete way. The vagueness of the statement suggests that they are stretching things. My researcher was unable to find any details.
The UK government is not greatly concerned with children's welfare in general, as shown by its other actions. For instance, closing homes for orphans. In 2010 there were around 6900 children in state-managed homes in the UK. I'm not sure how many of them would be forced onto the street by this closure.
The UK government also plans to cut benefits for 100,000 disabled children.
So did the state really protect these 414 children, and did that really relate to pornography? Or is it only trying to make censorship look necessary?
Colombia's land restitution law
has a serious problem: victims
are
required to prove their land was taken by an armed group and that it
was
connected with the civil war.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
sign this petition to include no-cost birth control
as part of the US health care system.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone the White House at (202) 456-1111 and say that Obama should firmly defend Medicare, like the Senate leadership, and block any Republican attempts to cut it.
US citizens: Tell Congress to protect whistleblowers as the founding fathers did in 1777.
The founding fathers did not subordinate the state to megacorporations.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the Shareholder
Protection Act, which would require shareholders to approve political
campaign spending by corporations.
This page
gives more info and
other suggestions for action.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Canadians: participate in the
fundamental
freedoms festival
in Toronto on the anniversary of mass arrests and tyranny.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose world-wide authorization
for presidents to go to war anywhere. Also communicate with them
through
this
page.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
A UK student faces extradition to the US for maintaining a site with links to possibly illegal filesharing sites.
This is another illustration of the fundamental injustice of the UK-US extradition treaty.
As far as I know, posting such links isn't a crime in the US anyway. However, more importantly, it isn't wrong. File sharing isn't wrong. The wrong is in the laws that try to stop people from sharing.
Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Battery farms, where animals don't have space to move, endanger human
lives because only with antibiotics can the animals avoid sickness.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, banning the distribution of antibiotics to farm animals would benefit humans in several ways. First, they would preserve the function of antibiotics for when we need them. Second, they would make meat more expensive in the developed countries where these battery farms are, so most people in these countries would eat less meat (which is good for health). Third, it would make farming more efficient, which would help provide enough food for everyone in poor countries. Fourth, it would reduce global warming.
A study found that trying psilocybin mushrooms at a moderate dose gifted most people with long-term improvements in their family and work relationships and increased their happiness.
It may have one negative side effect: a tendency to "increased spiritual practice". However, that is very general, and whether it is truly bad depends on details not stated here.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose S.978 which would punish unauthorized streaming with imprisonment. Also send them email through this page.
As the article explains, people who post lipsynching or karaoke videos could be imprisoned under this bill. But even if it were corrected to avoid that, it would still be an injustice.
I used the following message text:
As your constituent, I urge you to reject S. 978. Copyright law is already too restrictive for the public, and S.978 would make it worse. That's going in the wrong direction. Please represent the people, not Hollywood special interests.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Governor Walker promised to have no votes after midnight, but he's in a hurry to do as much damage as possible before the Republicans get recalled that he set this promise aside.
Obama has increased the billions being spent on Afghan "development programs", most if which can't deliver any benefit.
If the idea is simply to pour money into Afghanistan and buy support, I won't say that is necessarily bad. But why spend it on building useless things? Just give everyone in Afghanistan $100 a year.
US citizens:
support the ACLU in calling on the FBI to tighten the rules
for investigating dissidents not suspected of crimes, not loosen them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your senators to support S.J. Res 18 to prohibit ground troops in Libya and reassert Congress's control over war.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy.
I ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.
Many human rights organizations called on the US to end deportations to Haiti.
Colombian human rights defenders continue receiving death threats from paramilitaries.
Honduran ex-president Zelaya says the coup-installed government is cheating on the deal that allowed him to return.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
However, this is less significant than the state's violence against dissidents.
How much money did each US senator get from the oil industry?
Amnesty International says that China is obliged to arrest Sudan's president for trial in the Hague.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Why do the NAACP and GLAAD support AT&T's merger with T-mobile? Why do they even care about such an issue? For the money, it appears.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Former undercover cop Kennedy offers to expose apparent selective prosecution of protesters.
Geoengineering solutions are being considered to compensate for the humanity's CO2 and methane emissions.
CO2 emissions cause two problems: global heating, and acidification of the ocean. The latter will kill off most shellfish and coral in a few decades, causing the extinction of most of the life in the ocean.
Thus, solutions that only deal with heating are inadequate.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the NAFTA-like treaty with Korea. One NAFTA is already too many!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Kucinich and nine other congressional representatives have sued the President for violating the War Powers Act by intervening in Libya without Congressional authorization.
I support the intervention in Libya, but the president should do it lawfully.
Colombia has adopted a law to compensate 4 million victims of its civil war — including, apparently, the victims of aggression by the police, the army, and the paramilitaries.
It looks like Santos is better than Alvaro Horrible.
The Greek government is unable to pass the austerity program demanded of it. The prime minister has offered to resign as protesters demanding default on the debt battle police outside.
Greeks, take your country back from the banks!
A general strike in Greece demands an end to austerity.
The iCloud "just works" ... but in whose favor?
For the first time, a US domain name "seizure" is being challenged in court.
Civil forfeiture was invented to evade the constitutional protection against punishing you without convicting you of a crime. The government takes your property on the grounds it was used in a crime, without trying to prove you committed a crime, and says that is OK because it isn't punishment.
This is unfair when applied to domain names, and equally so when applied to physical property. To restore human rights, the US must end civil forfeiture.
The article uses the term "intellectual property", apparently to refer to copyright law and trademark law. That is a confusing practice because others use the same term to refer to other unrelated laws. They should have said "copyright law and trademark law" and avoided the term that always spreads confusion.
The US repeatedly transfers accused illegal immigrants to different prisons, cutting them off from lawyers and evidence they need to make the case they are allowed to live in the US.
Part of the motivation seems to be to move them to places where the courts are hostile and they can't find a lawyer.
I read long ago that some convicted federal prisoners are moved repeatedly from prison to prison as a way of cutting them off from their families and friends.
An oil company threatens to use CAFTA to force Costa Rica to allow oil drilling.
Costa Rica should leave CAFTA.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
6 lies about health care from the Republican presidential debate.
Most US schools today are miniature police states, educating a generation of Americans to fear and obey —or react with violence.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Krugman: both parties are dominated by the Pain Caucus, which is prepared to ruin everyone else to serve the interests of creditors.
The AFL-CIO will go all out to block the US-Colombia free exploitation treaty.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
New FBI rules will facilitate spying on political dissidents in the absence of any valid suspicion.
Israel will build a Museum of Tolerance on top of a Muslim cemetery.
Corpses are not important in themselves, except to the extent that studying them is useful for science. But giving offense that is easily avoided is not a model of tolerance.
A WikiLeaks document shows how US and international donors pushed ahead with the Burmese-style presidential election and imposed a choice between two right-wing candidates.
Pakistan's spy agency (which originally helped launch al Qa'ida) has arrested people who gave the US information about Osama bin Laden.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US is "negotiating" with Karzai to keep troops in Afghanistan permanently.
I doubt that the Taliban would agree to this, so the plan implies permanent war. Karzai's corrupt government will never inspire loyalty so the US and/or NATO would have to wage that war permanently.
Syrian soldier Servet Arafat had the courage to escape rather than shoot unarmed protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
He also reports seeing torture of protesters, even children age 10.
Thousands of Syrian refugees remain in Syria near the Turkish border because Turkey limits the rate that they can cross.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Some US states have made abortion nearly illegal for some women.
Wisconsin Republicans considered running Democratic candidates as spoilers to delay the recall elections.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Sri Lankan soldiers took "trophy videos" of the murder of prisoners.
This reminds me of the Abu Ghraib torture photos. It seems that soldiers who get involved in war crimes have an irresistible yearning to boast about them. If they were clever, they would avoid preserving (or even making) such evidence. Maybe these soldiers, like violent street criminals, tend to be stupid.
Belarus has arrested organizers of an Internet-based call for protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli "settlers" attacked a Palestinian mosque.
Wachovia bank laundered billions of dollars of Mexican drug money, and tried to block its own investigator from finding out about this. (It's the typical response of the arrogant and powerful to exposure of crimes.)
I believe that cocaine addicts should be able to get their drug from doctors, but I am not necessarily in favor of legalizing commercial sale of cocaine. However, maybe it needs to be legalized if only to prevent the damage that the War on Drugs does to society. Nothing is going to stop drug traffickers from finding ways to legitimize their money; they have so much to pay to whoever helps that they can corrupt people in almost any social role. The only thing that can stop them is to undercut their captive market of addicts.
Congress is considering a bill requiring police to get a warrant to get any geolocation information.
Palestinian villagers accompanied by Israelis, peacefully protesting an illegal quarry on the village land, were shot with bullets and tear gas.
Tennessee has imposed stiff censorship on the Internet, by banning the posting of images that are likely to "cause emotional distress" to someone.
Will antiabortionists be prosecuted for posting images of fetuses? (They certainly should know that these images can cause emotional distress.) Probably not — because the ban will be selectively enforced by right-wing Christians.
Interviews with Syrian refugees who were shot by the regime and tortured.
One describes tanks destroying whole villages indiscriminately. Another says that armed men who were not from his region shot at soldiers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
UK prosecutors who convicted anti-coal protesters were concealing evidence for the defense.
Syria is destroying the town of Jisr al-Shughour, burning the farms around it, and arresting all the adult men.
How is the US stretching the PAT RIOT Act? Perhaps by collecting cell phone location data without a warrant.
Terry Pratchett's film about assisted suicide in Switzerland must be effective, because the torture-till-the-end brigade is really annoyed.
Six friends of mine died in the past two years. I miss them, and I wish they were still alive and well. But I wouldn't force them to stay alive if they were suffering and death were their only way out.
General Petraeus boasted of capturing thousands of Taliban fighters, but 90% of them turned out to be noncombatants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Miami police pointed their guns at a man who was making a video of them as they shot at a suspect in a car, handcuffed him, and smashed his phone.
Maybe that car's driver was an armed robber — I don't know. But that could not justify threatening bystanders, or trying to stop them from recording what the police were doing. The police are doing a public job, in public, so they are not entitled to privacy. If they are doing nothing wrong, why don't they want to be filmed?
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Palm oil cultivation in Brazil could replace cattle ranching and help the environment in the process.
This seems almost too good to be true, and I worry that there is a hole in this argument. If the low profits from cattle ranching are enough to drive deforestation in the Amazon, won't higher profits from palm oil drive more deforestation?
Several fallacious arguments used to justify unnecessary security measures at the expense of our rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many US schools use web filters that block access to queer web sites. The ACLU is campaigning to unblock those sites.
I agree with the ACLU in condemning this blockage, but I hesitate to support this campaign because arguing about what sites should or should not be blocked seems to legitimize web filtering.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A man in Thailand faces 22 years in prison for a web reference to a banned book that criticizes the king.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Due to the siege of Gaza, hospitals in Gaza are forced to cancel operations for lack of medical supplies.
Turkey has arrested people accused of participating in Anonymous protests.
The Turkish government ought to be arrested, if anyone.
Peru's stock market fell only 12% after Ollanta Humala's victory.
This is because he has agreed not to attack the base of the megacorporations' unjust power: the free exploitation treaties.
The United Fresh Produce Association boasted it had "helped block over 100 legislative proposals on food safety in Congress" in the past two years. Some of this was done using taxpayers' money.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
India and Pakistan are among the five worst countries for women.
Israelis and Palestinians work together to rebuild homes demolished by the Israeli military occupation.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
The patriotic millionaires tell the US, "Please raise our taxes to help the country."
The US treasury has lost 2.5 trillion dollars due to the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Here are some things the US could have bought with that money.
Jack Christie, a Toronto student, was suspended from his high school which demanded he remove his videos from YouTube.
The president of the "student government" was threatened with suspension for collecting signatures on a petition for him. The school was apparently imitating what passes for "democracy" today.
How personalized filtering driven by tremendous data bases is closing people off from knowledge and each other.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article makes a mistake when it presents this as a change in the Internet itself. The Internet is no different, except where tyrannical states such as France, Spain, China and the US impose censorship. What has changed is that many (maybe most) people use the Internet in new ways that do tremendous surveillance.
It is possible to refuse — I do. I don't use most of the web sites that do surveillance. I fetch pages with wget so that sites know only that someone fetched the page. I don't have a spyPhone so it can't tell anyone anything about where I am.
Google and Facebook have very little data about me; I never identify myself to Google, and I use it from various computers that others use too. And if I want to visit a page that appears in a Google search, I don't click on the link (since that is set up to inform Google you clicked there). Instead I copy the address and go to it. If Google tracks me, it must think I am not very interested in most things I search for.
If you don't want to be herded, you need to do likewise.
Many US companies check the credit ratings of potential employees; the result is that anyone who becomes unemployed and falls behind on bills does not get hired again.
While this is a crowning unfairness, fixing this would at best mean that some people rotate more often in and out of unemployment. The US must do more to help the long-term unemployed and underemployed.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
North Dakota's example shows that a public state bank can protect a state's economy from big bank robbery.
NATO is restraining the Libyan rebels from advancing, urging them to stay where NATO knows they are so they won't get bombed.
Peru has elected the ex-Leftist Ollanta Humala.
He probably won't make things worse, but his acceptance of the free exploitation treaties means he can't make things much better either.
In a town in Syria, some of the suppression forces apparently refused to shoot the people, and the other suppression forces fought them and the people came out to defend them. Now the population has either fled or remains in hiding.
Jellyfish are rapidly increasing in the oceans, and this makes more CO2 emissions.
Increased CO2 levels may be partly responsible for the increase, but so is overfishing by humans. We killed the fish that used to keep the jellyfish numbers down.
Jellyfish waste does not serve as food for the rest of normal marine fauna.
If jellyfish numbers increase enough, fish may never be able to come back.
Global heating is contributing to destabilizing the world's food system.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Florida homeowner foreclosed an office of Bank of America.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Florida has passed a law privatizing Medicaid, which will profit the company owned by Governor Scott.
Thousands marched in Tel Aviv in favor of recognizing a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 borders.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
On the contradictions of the campaigns that fight for the right of gay people to be tough and be in the US armed forces, but don't fight not for their right to have some other option.
I supported and still support ending the US military's discrimination against homosexuals, but there were many campaign actions I would not sign and did not post here, because they described this as "serving their country" and we know that in Iraq they were serving the oil companies.
The Fukushima reactor meltdowns appear to have melted the inner containment vessels.
Shouldn't every reactor be equipped with sensors so that there would be no uncertainty about this?
They hope to filter radioactive isotopes out of the cooling water. Shouldn't every reactor be required to have such apparatus standing by in case it is needed?
The leakage of radioactive materials was twice the earlier estimates, and the meltdown happened much faster than previously believed.
Egypt's military government is resisting calls to investigate the use of military tribunals against protesters.
Iraq has pre-emptively arrested a dozen protest organizers and several remain in jail.
Greenpeace is campaigning to make Mattel stop buying paper made by destroying Indonesian rainforests.
To really solve this problem requires new laws; however, the WTO stands in the way. Someday we can blame the WTO for the extinction of thousands of species (and perhaps the deaths of tens of millions of people as a result).
Maliki has crushed the protest movement in Iraq with a slow campaign of beatings and arrests.
Arundhati Roy says she will not condemn rebellion against the Indian government.
Her reasoning seems valid to me.
A video message in Spanish supporting the protests in Spain in 2011. Also in webm format.
The last decade was worse, for American workers' wages, than the 1930s.
New York City police have arrested and framed minority group members a million times in recent years.
Fleeing Syrians say 'Soldiers killed all the young men in the village'.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government warned that some universities are recruiting zones for Islamic extremism. However, that's not the only form of extremist cruelty that recruits in universities, as this response points out.
Pakistani paramilitaries murdered a teenager as he was begging for mercy.
Uri Avnery accuses Israeli forces of gratuitously shooting Palestinian protesters at the border — even shooting people who tried to help wounded.
Israel is entitled to use force if necessary to stop people from crossing the border, but that can't justify shooting people to make a point.
The WTO has banned the US dolphin-safe tuna labeling program.
In other words, we can either wipe out dolphins or wipe out the WTO.
The WTO operates to reduce wages by making countries compete to bow down to business. We can either have good paying jobs or the WTO.
The purpose of the WTO is to make governments serve business. We can either have democracy or the WTO.
Destroy the WTO!
The University of Nottingham had two students arrested for downloading a web publication — then did surveillance of students who protested on their behalf, and fired a lecturer who criticized the university's conduct.
Robin Hood, you're needed!
Big Oil spends more money on stock buybacks and dividends than on producing oil.
Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that oil is Obama's motive for intervening in Libya.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The intervention in Libya is necessary for other reasons. If Gaddafi had put down the insurrection, he would have used his oil to make Europe suck up to him again. However, I would not expect Obama to take action for reasons like that.
Obama is campaigning in the Supreme Court to allow states to gut Medicaid and avoid being sued for it.
US universities and hedge funds are forcing millions of Africans off their land.
The excuse is the same old trickle-down ideology that is known to fail. I suspect the real reason that African governments permit these deals is corruption.
Sooner or later the farmers will retake those lands, with guns.
Sarah Palin begged BP to build a pipeline from Alaska to the rest of the US, just a year after BP caused the biggest oil spill on land in Alaska.
A anti-gay psychologist's de-effeminization therapy was based on cruel beatings, and his prize success later committed suicide.
Australian climate scientists have received death threats for reporting the danger of global warming.
Over half the murders of trade unionists in 2010 were in Colombia.
However, the government pretends the country is now safe for union organizing in order to sign the free exploitation treaty with the US, which is designed to harm democracy in both countries.
Keeping species alive in small refuges can work as long as nothing goes wrong. But when there's a fire, it can be the end.
A US court ruled that a bank was not liable when a customer account was robbed by collecting the customer's password.
My understanding is that customers were (and still are) not liable when banks paid forged checks. The bank must absorb those losses. If so, this represents another way in which the move to the Internet has provided companies an opportunity to increase their rights at the expense of individuals' rights.
The old policy was chosen for society's good. For the client, fraud against his bank account is an unpredictable disaster; for the bank, it is a steady loss which the bank can cope with (by adjusting interest rates and feeds) and can also take measures to reduce. Thus, it is better to put this liability on the bank.
Nowadays, governments are too much under the control of business to employ such reasoning to choose good policies.
California's lower house has voted to ban trade in shark fins.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The significance of the Anthony Weiner story is only to demonstrate society's hypocrisy about sex.
US citizens: tell your congressional representatives to support the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would block companies from making people sign away their rights to make class-action lawsuits.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
oppose
the free
exploitation agreements that Obama wants to sign with Korea, Colombia
and other countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Indians:
oppose
the plan
to destroy large forests for coal mining,
and support renewable energy in India.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Dadaab refugee camp, with half a million Somali refugees, has no room for the additional refugees who keep arriving.
A slightly radical suggestion: occupy a small nearby area of Somalia for the refugees to live in. Somalia is a failed state and the local militia would not fight over otherwise unimportant territory.
Samir Feriani, a policeman in Tunisia, accused officials of crimes from destroying archives ton murder, and has been imprisoned for it.
Former European ambassadors argue that Iran is not trying to make nuclear weapons, and that sanctions are not justified or needed.
I am skeptical, because I can't see why else Iran would bother putting so much effort into uranium enrichment against so much resistance.
Ayat al-Gormezi poet was 'beaten across the face with electric cable' in Bahrain for reciting a poem that criticized the government.
That tyrannical regime says criticism is a crime.
Protests in Wisconsin against Walker's tyranny have continued for a hundred days. Activists and union organizers have taken energy from the need to fight back.
Police in Puerto Rico have attacked peaceful protesters and journalists many times in recent years.
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake has accepted a plea bargain where he pleads guilty to a misdemeanor and won't go to prison.
With this deal, the government effectively admits it had no grounds to accuse him of espionage. But the deal is an injustice because it fails to give Drake the medal and reward he deserves for helping to inform us of government abuses.
The Canadian province of Manitoba has formally decided not to buy small bottles of water.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I too avoid buying bottled water almost completely when in countries where tap water is safe to drink. One method I use is to refill water bottles with tap water. Where tap water is not safe, I often refill a water bottle from some other supply of drinking water, such as a large bottle or purified water.
US Republicans should repeat one of the few good things Ronald Reagan did: by increasing taxes on corporations.
Some senators want to ban bitcoin, a form of digital cash, because some are using it to pay for illegal drugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Next they will ban cash because that too is used to pay for illegal drugs.
Israel is trying to get the US to start a war with Iran.
Just as the former Mossad head warned.
Cut Wall Street Down to Size With a Financial Speculation Tax.
Around 100,000 protested in Athens in favor of defaulting on the national debt.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Norway, where abortion is completely integrated into the national health system, is also the best country to be a mother in. The US, in which Christian fanatics create obstacles for abortion, is the worst of the developed countries to be a mother in.
This is not a coincidence. The Christian fanatics' hatred is expressed in cruelty to poor children.
The ACLU has asked the US government to declassify the Wikileaks cables and stop pretending they are secret.
Egyptians who protested say the police continue to punish them.
A host of nasty companies have supported AT&T's merger with T-mobile, including Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, and Research in Motion.
Egypt has imposed new limits on the Rafah crossing so that the border is not much more open than before.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Russia's War on Drugs is causing lots of suffering and spreading disease, so the government proposes to escalate it.
The US has spent billions on nation-building projects in Afghanistan, but most of it is not sustainable.
In 2002 and 2003, it made sense to provide foreign aid to Afghanistan for these purposes. The country was mostly peaceful then, and such projects could have helped if properly designed and managed.
Facebook has turned on automatic face recognition on photos.
Facebook says that it only suggests identifications for faces in photos for people who are the user's friends. However, it might run the algorithm over every photo posted and not publicly announce the results.
I ask people not to post photos of me on Facebook.
Walmart will allow its workers to unionize in South Africa, and does in several other countries. If only they would do this in the US.
Walmart also illegally fired a US employee for using medical marijuana to treat pain from an inoperable brain tumor.
Wind turbines kill substantial numbers of raptors and bats, including protected golden eagles.
Fortunately there are ways to reduce the damage, but more work needs to be done. Could ultrasound generators keep bats away? Could painting the turbines or illuminating them help eagles avoid them?
The US spends billions to try to stop production and shipment of illegal drugs, but this appears to have little effect.
The drug traffickers have lots of money for bribes.
US doctors injected 1500 Guatemalans with syphilis in 1946. Some have gone untreated ever since.
German and Japanese doctors were convicted of war crimes for gruesome medical experiments. It is a shame those responsible for this outrage were not similarly prosecuted.
I am puzzled that the victims were not diagnosed and treated in the meanwhile, and likewise the children that inherited the disease. Why not?
It does not surprise me that this study yielded no useful information. That should have been obvious in advance. Plenty of people contract syphilis without medical intervention, and testing penicillin on them would be just as good an experiment.
Apple applies censorhip to iBad apps when others pressure it.
Wikileaks cables show the US, EU and UN were aware that the Haitian presidential election was totally unfair while they supported it.
And since the second round was illegal, Martelly cannot even claim to be president.
An Algerian man was denied French citizenship because he won't let his wife leave the house.
They could offer to change their decision if his wife visits a government office every day for a month — without him — to plead his case. By then he might get used to respecting her rights.
Many UK schools make students use fingerprint recognition to get lunch.
And there is a plan to give teachers the power to search students' computers at will, and delete files from them at will.
Butterflies in the UK appeared weeks earlier than normal.
This is a sign of global heating. It may be good for the butterflies, but other plants and insects may face extinction due to similar changes.
Why whistleblowers should regard the Wall Street Journal and Al Jazeera leak sites as legal traps.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the "free trade" agreement with Colombia.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Secretary of State Clinton to firmly condemn repression in Bahrain.
Everyone: tell YouTube
to restore FreedomMessenger's YouTube channel,
which was closed down due to false accusations of copyright infringement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
If you watch videos in YouTube, don't use Flash. Use the new Webm format. Adding &html5=True to the URL should get you this, without need to identify yourself.
US citizens: please send email to your senators to oppose the PROTECT "IP" Act.
In this case, sending an email is the best action to take, but it can't hurt to phone as well.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign this petition telling Obama to stand firm against Republican attacks against Medicare.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Koch brothers' business was crucial in a decades-long campaign to deregulate oil speculation, which is now a large part of that business.
I don't sympathize much with Americans who complain about "pain at the pump." Americans need to reduce their use of gasoline. However, to make that happen calls for a gradual and predictable price increase such as we could get with a carbon tax, not speculative price spikes.
Banning lead in gasoline and paint may be partly responsible for the big decrease in violent crime in the US in the 90s.
I wonder if it might also be responsible for the big increase in violent crime in the 60s. I think that far more Americans drove cars starting around 1950 than before. This would have meant a lot more lead in the air, especially in cities.
Nabi Saleh protest organizer Bassem Tamimi's statement to the Israeli military court.
Everyone:
Tell the directors of Caterpillar to stop selling bulldozers for
Israel to demolish Palestinian houses.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating is contributing to
destabilizing the world's food
system.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Belarus has arrested organizers of an Internet-based call for protests.
How is the US stretching the PAT RIOT Act? Perhaps by collecting cell phone location data without a warrant.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the TRADE act, an alternative to free exploitation treaties.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Florida has passed a law privatizing Medicaid, which will profit the company owned by Governor Scott.
Arundhati Roy says she will not condemn rebellion against the Indian government.
Her reasoning seems valid to me.
Peru has elected the ex-Leftist Ollanta Humala.
He probably won't make things worse, but his acceptance of the free exploitation treaties means he can't make things much better either.
Palestinian "protesters" in Syria attacked the Israeli border again.
Throwing molotov cocktails is not a nonviolent protest, and throwing them at an army across a cease-fire line is more or less a military operation.
The IMF, amazingly, praised a budget in Egypt that provides an increase in social spending.
I wish I could believe that the IMF has reversed its decades-long policy of pushing austerity that leads to recession, but a priori it seems more likely this is some sort of aberration. I would be glad to see an analysis from someone who understands.
Indian police violently dispersed the peaceful protest of guru Ramdev.
India censored The Economist for publishing a map showing the disputed boundaries of Kashmir.
The new face of US war: counterinsurgency means assassinating people the government doesn't like.
An Indian yoga guru has started a hunger strike
demanding that the
Indian
goverment take certain steps to curtail corruption.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Indian government is very corrupt; the Congress party, once that of Gandhi and nehru, has totally sold out to business. The right-wing parties that support this guru are religious bigots. Not a great choice.
A UN report on freedom of expression condemns laws that punish people with disconnection from the Internet.
The density of forests is increasing in most of the world, compensating for a fraction of the effects of global heating.
We can't count on this to save us, because it is not world-wide. Large parts of North America now have dead pine forests, killed by global heating, and their carbon will get into the air.
And if people chop down most of these forests, it won't matter how thick they might have got.
There are large protests in Senegal because most people can't afford enough food to eat.
In addition to biofuel production (pushed by the US and EU), and large harvest failures loosely related to global heating (Russia, for instance), speculation is also part of the cause. So in many countries are free exploitation treaties that mean local farmers can't compete with subsidized US farm production — but I don't know whether that applies to Senegal.
Over the long term, global heating will make the problem worse, and increasing population will push humanity against the limit. The world must make firm efforts to stabilize population, as well as stopping global heating.
Going to the airport? Print out 20 copies of scanners.odt, cut each sheet into three parts, and hand them out while you wait for the TSA insecurity check. You could give some to the person in front of you and say, "Please take one and pass the rest."
US citizens:
urge
New York Governor Cuomo to push for gay marriage in
that state.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call your senators to support the FRAC Act, which would
let the EPA regulate fracking. Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
for the US media to cover real news,
not Sarah Palin.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Hillary Clinton to demand that Israel not interfere with the US boat in the Gaza aid fleet.
US citizens: sign this petition to state legislators against laws that would prohibit sharing passwords.
These laws are part of the negative utopia, The Right to Read.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to vote against the
Republican plan to cut Medicare. Also
sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign
this petition calling on the FCC commissioners
to pledge not to work for AT&T or T-mobile later.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The point is that such employment would effectively be a bribe to approve their proposed merger.
Transit police falsely cited Patriot Act to illegally a detain man for taking pictures at a train station.
The underlying cause of Europe's deadly E. coli outbreak is the use of antibiotics in farm animals.
Greenpeace activists have shut down oil drilling off Greenland.
Syrian protesters are now condemning Hezbollah and Iran for their support for Assad's regime.
Blinded by the light: the Internet enemy within.
The House of Representatives voted to preserve funds for child nutrition, and instead undo a WTO-ordered deal to subsidize cotton farmers in Brazil.
The US agreed to subsidize the Brazilian farmers temporarily while reconsidering the subsidy for US cotton farmers, as demanded by the WTO.
The WTO decision against US cotton subsidies is a rare occasion where I agree with the WTO. However, this decision isn't enough to make the WTO a good thing for humanity. What we really need is a government not subservient to business; it would end cotton subsidies to agribusiness for the sake of the rest of the country. One obstacle to this is the WTO, which generally makes governments more subservient to business.
Anti-abortion group uses Google Ads to misdirect women seeking abortions.
Police accused of brutalizing Babar Ahmad were acquitted after a secret recording provided evidence his accusations were untrue.
I mention this because I posted about these accusations before.
100,000 people protested in Hama, Syria, and the insecurity forces killed over 30 of them.
A reward of $5000 is offered to anyone that provides evidence to destroy a nasty software patent.
There's no harm in trying this method. If it succeeds, that will be one software patent down, and hundreds of thousands to go. To make software development safe, we need to get rid of all of them.
Zelaya returns to Honduras, but justice is still not done.
Dr. Kevorkian, who helped 130 people escape from unending and useless pain, has died.
The impetus to prohibit assisted suicide in the US comes from Christianity, and this issue reveals the twisted nature of Christian morality. I agree with those Christians that murdering you would be wrong, but their reasons and mine are different. I think it's wrong for your sake, supposing you want to live. They think it's wrong because it goes against the orders of their deity.
So what happens if you are in horrible, unending pain and death is your only way out? Regardless of whether the pain is caused by illness or state-inflicted torture, I hope you succeed in escaping, but they go on following the orders of their deity, which say you are supposed to suffer and suffer and suffer. What you want is of no importance to them in either case.
It is entirely consistent that many of them think it is wrong to kill a fetus that isn't a person yet, but don't mind executing adults, and support policies of torture.
Assisting suicide must be legalized, but until it is, I salute the heroes that enable incapacitated suffering people to escape.
The right-wing former head of Israel's spy agency says the Israeli government is recklessly inclined to military aggression.
He also criticized its unwillingness to make concessions for peace with the Palestinians.
Ayat al-Gormezi, in Bahrain, has been imprisoned and tortured for reading a poem condemning the king.
US-funded "reconstruction" projects in Afghanistan and Iraq will fall apart or be useless unless millions more are spent to maintain and run them.
In other words, the plan implicitly depended on future spending.
The House of Representatives voted to criticize Obama for fighting in Libya without seeking approval.
I think this is the right decision, since I support the Libyan intervention (although I think a different kind would be better) but presidents should not be able to intervene without approval from Congress.
The ACLU is challenging a Florida law that requires all welfare recipients to take drug tests.
When private companies demand drug tests of their employees, it may not be unconstitutional, but it is unjust, and it ought to be illegal.
Even for safety-critical jobs, drug tests are not justified because there is a much better solution which is also less intrusive on people's rights: testing competence at the beginning of the workday. This is better than drug testing because it detects inability to carry out the job regardless of the cause (lack of sleep, emotional upset, sickness, or drugs).
Peruvians: celebrate Dependence Day, June 5, by voting for Humala for president.
June 5 is Dependence Day in Peru because it's the date on which President Garcia's submission to the US, and to multinational corporations, led to the killing of indigenous protesters.
It's too bad that Humala agreed not to make Peru independent again, but he is still better than Fujimori.
US citizens: tell your senators to reject the resolution
to
stop the FCC from defending network neutrality.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign
this petition calling on Obama to speed
removal
of US troops from Afghanistan.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: sign
this petition in support of the people's
budget
of the house progressive caucus.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
It's not just Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The
IMF itself should be on
trial.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Obama's three strikes of global heating means we'll be burned out.
Tempting new payment and banking technologies put users at risk of theft, and enable banks to circumvent consumer protection laws.
Campaigning for Congress to limit searches of laptops at the US border.
The same should be done for police when they stop drivers.
The article falls into a common kind of error when it says that "possession of child pornography is a heinous offense". It is the error of rhetorically legitimizing the previous attack against our rights in arguing against the next one.
This "child pornography" might be a photo of yourself or your lover that the two of you shared. It might be an image of a sexually mature teenager that any normal adult would find attractive. What's heinous about having such a photo?
But even when it is uncontroversial to call the subject depicted a "child", that is no excuse for censorship. Having a photo or drawing does not hurt anyone, so and if you or I think it is disgusting, that is no excuse for censorship.
The government will invent an unlimited number of opportunities to censor us and search us if we grant the legitimacy of its all-purpose excuses for doing so.
A Haitian denounces the US for
using threat of revoking US visas for
various Haitian politicians to control them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
According to Erzili Danto, "The US canceled visas to get the election result they wished. They canceled to force the CEP to put Martelly on the ballot and then later to force the CEP to revise the members of the Parliament who were elected."
Vermont has legislated single-payer health care, through the efforts of small businesses that are fed up with the gouging insurance companies.
Syrian police tortured 13-year-old child; the parents got a video out and it was posted.
Here's the video in freedom-respecting Webm format.
Pictures of torture might appear disgusting — which demonstrates why that's no grounds for censorship.
The US holds 1700 people prisoner in Bagram in Afghanistan, without trial, and the majority are probably innocent.
The US wants Fujimori, the right-wing extremist, to win as president of Peru.
I remain disappointed that Humala said he would respect the free exploitation treaties, because every country's future depends on eliminating those. Nonetheless, he is clearly nowhere near as bad as Fujimori.
Election day in Peru, June 5, is also Dependence Day in Peru: the day that President Garcia's obedience to US domination led to the murder of indigenous protesters.
After Lynn Szymoniak blew the whistle on Deutsche Bank's foreclosure fraud, the bank launched a spurious lawsuit against her son for foreclosure of her home.
Monterrey Bay Aquarium provided a platform to Kellogg Garden Products' toxic sewage sludge, in exchange apparently for money.
Wikileaks reveals that the US tried to block Haiti from accepting an offer from Venezuela to sell oil to Haiti at a big discount.
Internet Censorship Secret Planning Meeting.
Iranian women's rights activist Haleh Sahabi was killed by police at her father's funeral.
Republican budget cuts caused the US economic downturn; now Republican candidate Romney blames Obama for it.
An international panel including several former presidents has called for an end to the War on Drugs
When the right wing machine creates sex scandals about male Democrats, they are based on nasty insult campaigns against women they know.
This article doesn't go deep enough. The most basic flaw in these insult campaigns is that they criticize women for allegedly having sex. What's wrong with that?
Maybe they did have sex with those candidates, and maybe they didn't. I hope that they did, and enjoyed it. But either way, it's nothing to criticize.
A UN climate official called on the world to hold global heating to 1.5 degrees C, saying that even 2 degrees will cause mass disaster.
Yet it is almost too late to keep heating to 2 degrees.
Obama plans to try five Guantanamo prisoners in a military tribunal (kangaroo court).
I don't know whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed committed terrorism. If he was tortured, he may not know anymore either.
Large plantations are being developed in Africa to grow biofuel for Europe, driving up food prices.
Important former police officials have supported a campaign to decriminalize possession of drugs in the UK.
Bahrain's government says martial law is over, but this may not make much difference to tortured prisoners.
Iraq's "democratic" government, President Obusha's vision of freedom, has imprisoned protesters and is holding them incommunicado.
Karzai ordered the US and NATO to stop air strikes on homes in Afghanistan.
He has also ordered the US and NATO to stop the tactics that Petraeus has adopted. But NATO does not seem to listen to him.
Sudan's army brushed aside UN peacekeepers to conquer the town of Abyei, whose future was supposed to be decided by a referendum.
Kucinich's resolution to end the intervention in Libya has been delayed.
It is vital for democracy in the US that Congress be asked to approve the Libyan intervention, but I don't want to end it.
The Public Patent Foundation is defending farmers against genetic contamination of their crops with patented Monsanto genes.
Geithner made a secret $30 billion loan to Goldman Sachs in 2008,
almost
interest-free.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
They should change the name to Goldmoney Sacks.
German police training for Saudi suppression forces is supposed to be about border control, but people involved say it is teaching them how to crush protests too.
The UK is also training Saudi troops.
Meanwhile, the US School of the Americas (or whatever they call it now) has trained torturers in Latin America for decades.
The Argentine government has accused the largest grain trading companies of tax fraud for shifting their profits to other countries where taxes are lower. This is illegal in Argentina.
It should be illegal in the US as well.
The US economy is moving back into recession.
I suspect Republican budget cuts are partly responsible.
The corporate media have
embraced Rep. Ryan's sabotage budget
while
scorning, or just ignoring, the progressive People's Budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Those who called Ryan's budget "courageous" have confused courage with chutzpah.
Fracking in England appears to have caused small earthquakes.
Senator Sanders has proposed a bill to replace patents on medicine with government prizes. This would allow the medicines to be sold cheaply.
Sharlotte Hydorn has sold hundreds of people simple equipment for painless suicide. The religious torture brigade is looking for some excuse to put her in jail.
Anyone who criticizes this, on the grounds that some people might use it who could benefit from treatment, should be challenged to campaign for a better system for providing these devices. In the mean time, they should leave this one alone.
Belgian protesters, including local farmers, destroyed a genetically modified potato trial by digging up the potatoes.
I don't believe that genetically modified crops are necessarily evil. But if they contain patented genes, that is evil in itself. Also, they need to be tested much more thoroughly than the company which develops them will want to permit. The testing has to include the risk of contaminating other farms in the region.
One way to avoid contamination would be to engineer a change in when the plant flowers. If the modified version flowers two weeks before or after other strains, neither wind nor insects are likely to cross-breed them.
Ecuador is making progress in its plan to obtain payment for not extracting a large field of oil, thus preserving a large rain forest and the people who live there.
If oil were the only fossil fuel, initiatives like this could suffice to avoid climate disaster. But if ordinary oil deposits are replaced with coal, fracked natural gas, and tar sand oil, it won't achieve that goal.
The UK is blocking the EU from banning importation of oil from tar sands.
The low price of fracked natural gas is pushing the world towards that and away from renewable energy. But this will exacerbate global heating, since fracked natural gas releases as much CO2 as burning coal. (Both coal and fracked natural gas are worse than oil.)
A Pakistani journalist was kidnapped and murdered, apparently by the ISI which had already threatened him.
Thanks to US attacks over decades, farm workers in Guatemala can't buy food to eat.
What Guatemala needs first is to break out of CAFTA.
Right-wingers want to blame the US deficit on Medicare and Social Security, but it's the wars that have created the problem.
That together with too little taxation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Civil society groups jointly condemned Sarkozy's EG8 plan for censorship and surveillance of the Internet.
Ralph Nader condemns non-negotiable contracts that say "take it or leave it" and attack consumers' rights.
I don't do business with most of the organizations that use these. I avoid shrink-wrap software licenses by rejecting all nonfree software on principle. But I can't avoid all these organizations, so the issue is just as important for me as it is for you.
NATO acknowledged having target-spotters on the ground in Misrata working with the rebels that defend the town.
That is a relief, because not having them would create a scandalous risk of killing rebels or civilians.
Germany's government has bowed to public pressure by deciding to shut all its nuclear reactors by 2022.
Greenpeace protesters have boarded a drilling rig operating off Greenland, hoping to prevent drilling.
We don't need to know where Cairn Energy keeps its emergency equipment. We do have a right to demand that it answer satisfactorily the claims that an oil spill in those regions cannot be cleaned up.
It is fine that Cairn Energy tows away icebergs. I don't know whether it is possible to tow away even the biggest icebergs under all conditions. I do know that the Big Spill in the Gulf of Mexico happened without icebergs.
The Egyptian army admitted applying "virginity tests" to arrested female protesters.
The EU's data protection authority condemned the EU data retention directive.
I am not sure whether this has the ability to lead to a real change.
Oxfam says food prices will double in 20 years.
Meanwhile, Republican idiots are trying to stop women from using contraception to avoid making things worse.
Obama's war policy is Bush Plus.
The US is now prosecuting executives as well as companies when they commit health insurance fraud.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is a good thing to hold these executives responsible if they encouraged the fraud. And if they had the authority and responsibility to prevent the fraud, maybe they are guilty. However, if underlings lied to them, maybe they had no chance to prevent it. It is hard to tell whether the top executives were duped, or whether they preferred not to know.
Everyone: sign this petition to end the War on Drugs world-wide.
When a war is on drugs, it endangers everyone.
The geography of hate groups in the US: they correlate with religion, poverty, low education, and voting Republican.
Japan has reverted its increase in permitted radiation levels for children.
Washington wants to slash funding for making walking and biking easier.
Did the oil companies pay for this, I wonder?
There were large protests in Casablanca, and police attacked protesters and journalists.
Carbon emissions jumped to a record level, effectively dooming Earth to climate disaster unless strong action is taken soon.
Would it be justified self-defense for people that are likely to be killed by global heating or ocean acidification later to destroy fossil fuel power plants and cars now?
Thousands of poor Haitians live in tent camps. The new president of
Haiti
wants to change that, so he is
sending troops with machetes to destroy
their tents and chase them away.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
This president was "elected" by a tiny fraction of Haitian voters in an election which excluded the main political party.
Canada's government refused to send troops to help deal with flooding
in Quebec because that
"would place the Canadian Forces in competition
with the private sector".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
This displays plainly the callousness that today's business-adoring states practice most of the time but usually manage to disguise.
Moil, which will boost global heating and probably send Quebec more floods.
Uri Avnery: nobody in the US senate
dared not to applaud
Netanyahu, but the US won't be able to block peace.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
NATO apologized for the latest killing civilians in Afghanistan.
If the people of Afghanistan were firm supporters of the war, they would forgive accidents such as this. But they don't see much to support in Karzai's government.
Syria sent the army, with tanks, to
attack towns that have had
protests.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The President of Turkey defended filtering of the Internet by saying
that nobody will have to use it, even though
its use is mandatory
(!).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Former president Zelaya has returned to Honduras, and his supporters are celebrating.
They are closer to the situation than I am. Maybe they see a reason to believe that the oppression of dissidents will now end. I hope so.
The opposition's accusation that Zelaya was trying to arrange to remain as president was bogus, since the proposed constitutional assembly would, if approved, have been held after he had left office.
Obama's criticism of the coup was weak, just talk, while in practical terms he gave the coup government support.
US citizens: Defend Elizabeth Warren from
right-wing smears.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: File a public comment against the
tar sands petroleum
pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Bradley Manning was so mentally fragile he should never have been sent to Iraq, according to various confidential reports.
If Manning did indeed leak the Collateral Murder video and other documents, it shows that heroism can be found in people who seem unlikely.
The Saudi army is using UK training to crush the population of Bahrain.
Poor Indian girls work 12 hours a day, at less than the Indian minimum wage, making cotton clothing for us.
The demand for a dowry is partly responsible for this, but also to blame is the corruption of the Indian government. Don't forget the world-wide "free trade" system: the jobs that were lost in the US were replaced by these.
Sarkozy's plan to "civilize" the Internet was recognized as a plan for tyranny.
The limited life near Vulcano Island shows the void all oceans will become in a century due to acidification from the CO2 we are feeding into the atmosphere.
Acidification makes it hard for many species to make their shells. This is already destroying fisheries and coral reefs.
Gaddafi's soldiers have systematically raped Libyan women as a way of spitting at their families.
If a raped woman's relatives think of her rape as a loss to them, rather than taking her side, they don't deserve to be her family. These women need a chance to start over without the families that have betrayed them.
Corporations have set up a US-wide organization called ALEC which lobbies all states for laws to give those companies an advantage over their workers, their customers, and the public.
US citizens: call on Obama to ban political spending by companies
that
get most of their income from government contracts.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
NATO is bringing Apache helicopters to attack Gaddafi's troops in Libya.
Protesters dressed in doctors' coats with fake blood shut down many bank branches, accusing the banks of creating the deficits which are being used as an excuse to undermine the National Health Service.
A campaign by small stores in the UK, which said a ban on displaying tobacco would hurt them, was funded by a large tobacco company.
The Wisconsin law that triggered mass protests was overturned by a judge on the grounds it was passed in a illegal rushed manner.
Over 2600 protesters have been arrested in the US since Obama was inaugurated, and the rate of arrests is increasing.
Republicans say the US
can't afford to help tornado rebuilding
and has
to cut something else from the budget. The underlying problem is that
the US has reduced taxes too much.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US congress has
re-approved the U SAP AT RIOT act.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Senator Wyden says it is worse than we know, because the government twists the law and stretches its powers.
PBS is considering having commercials four times an hour. This would continue its drift towards being little different from television that admits it is "commercial".
However, the commercial connection viewers don't see is more harmful than the one they see. For decades, PBS programs have received substantial corporate funds, which they depend on. This gives corporations influence over their agenda.
Meanwhile, NPR is worried about how money from Soros foundation might influence the news but sees no need to worry about money from corporations.
How Wall Street is
based on many kinds of lawful fraud, and what
could be done about it.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Court decisions have increased Americans' vulnerability to warrantless searches and being murdered by police in their homes.
Chomsky writes about the killing of Osama bin Laden, including evidence that killing him was intended, and puts it in context.
US senators were scared not to applaud whatever Netanyahu said to them, no matter how outrageous it was.
Deforestation is on the rise in Brazil, and its government is planning to make things worse by relaxing the laws against illegal deforestation.
Egypt has opened the Rafah border crossing for people, but not for goods.
This will help Palestinians who want to leave Gaza for medical treatment; Israel will no longer be able to kill them by blocking their exit. It will also help those who wish to study or move abroad, or go to conferences, assuming Egypt does not give them trouble about visas.
But it won't end the siege.
Doctors that demand patients assign copyright to reviews of their treatment are using lies to justify the policy. Maybe they were lied to in convincing them to use it.
Even if these contracts would not stand up in court, that doesn't excuse them.
One additional problem in this copyright agreement is that by using the term "intellectual property" it claims to apply to a dozen or so other laws besides copyright. This makes the doctor's demand even broader.
A requisite for clear thinking about any of these laws is to avoid lumping them together. So we should never use the term "intellectual property". Whichever law you want to talk about, best to call it by its specific name and not confuse it with others.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.
Egyptians protested again in Tahrir Square, calling for a new constitution before elections. and criticizing the military's hasty and careless justice.
Republican officials are declaring official events "private" and ejecting Democrats and anyone that appears to disagree with them.
Yemen is sliding into civil war between the president and an important tribe.
I have no basis to believe that the other side would be any better than the president in respect for democracy or human rights.
Police attacked protesters in Barcelona, brutally, but then relented.
A US judge stretched the Citizens United decision by allowing unlimited direct campaign contributions by corporations.
Women in Sa'udi Arabia are planning a drive-in protest.
Ratko Mladic, general of the genocidal war against Bosnian Muslims, has been arrested.
An architect of the Rwandan massacres has also been arrested.
Serbia has cleansed the blot on its reputation, but the US has not, When will Bush, who ordered the invasion of Iraq based on lies, be tried for his crimes?
Some US officials are planning step-by-step establishment of China-style control of the Internet.
Republicans and coal companies don't want you to ask why there are so many big tornadoes, fires, droughts and floods in the last few years.
Hamas is no excuse of Israel to violate the human rights of people in Gaza.
Nasma Abu Lasheen died on October 16, 2010; Anas Saleh died on January 1, 2011, both killed by denying them the right to leave Gaza for medical care.
Three Fukushima reactors experienced partial meltdowns. It appears TEPCO kept this secret in order to manage public opinion.
A thousand teachers protested in San Francisco against crushing budget cuts.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Walmart Supplier Supports Torture, False Imprisonment of Labor Activists.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Most Israelis support the return to 1967 borders with some agreed-on swaps of land, if it is part of a package that amounts to real peace.
Why Wait for Congress? Enforce Net Neutrality through Local Law.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Countries that have defaulted on debts have generally gained from it. Greece should consider the option.
CBS Outdoor censored a billboard ad calling for end to Haiti deportations due to cholera.
Amnesty International accused both sides in Ivory Coast of war crimes, and Ouattara's supporters continue to commit them.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
An African splinter group of al Qa'ida has shut down a long-term research project studying water availability and climate in Africa.
India's Internet censorship makes sites remove anything anyone complains about, and its monitoring of Internet cafes is worse than China.
The Indian government is using a small danger (terrorist attacks as in Mumbai) to increase its control and weaken dissent. That exposes Indians to a much greater danger. The Mumbai attacks killed a few hundred of Indians. Corrupt government farm policies have driven tens of thousands to suicide, and destroyed thousands of tribals from their land.
Web sites in India should call the government evil because of this policy — and should move out of India to a country where they will not be censored.
People in India should resist government monitoring by leaving their wireless networks without passwords.
The SEC adopted a new system to reward whistleblowers that report corporate crime, and rejected lobbying to require them to report it first to the company's management.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Criticism from the US Chamber of Commerce suggests they are doing something right.
The Republican attack on Medicare was defeated in the US senate.
State legislators are organizing a campaign against TSA abuses.
A threat from the TSA made Texas drop its anti-groping bill.
States can't be allowed to nullify federal laws, but the federal government should start listening to people on this one.
The Rapescan naked body scanners were never properly tested for safety. The supposed test didn't use the real product. The test can't be repeated because crucial data is missing — as are the names of the people who did it. The software was not checked for safety at all.
This article explains a point that makes these machines potentially very dangerous if they break. They have a high intensity X-ray beam that scans across the body at high speed.
If the scanning mechanism breaks, the beam could remain fixed on one spot in the body, causing a radiation burn.
Don't take the risk. Tell them to feel you up!
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, who fought against illegal logging in Brazil, has been murdered.
Meanwhile, Brazil's legislature is working on a plan to weaken the regulations that protect the Amazon forest.
It may not matter if we go on burning fossil fuels unchecked, because the rain will dry up and much of the forest will die anyway.
Obama is putting Thomas Drake on trial for reporting mismanagement at the NSA. If he succeeds in stretching the definition of "espionage", reporters will be threatened with prosecution too.
Given the extent of the US government's wrongs in spying on Americans, it does not have clean hands to make accusations against anyone who tries to tell us anything about those wrongs.
Electronics businesses join the opposition for the new push to clamp down on the Internet.
Greenpeace is in a standoff with the Danish army and navy near Greenland.
The army is protecting a UK company's plans to cause oil spills which, as the UK government secretly admitted, would be impossible to clean up.
US citizens: phone your federal officials and tell them to vote against the Internet blacklist bill.
I suggest telling them that copyright is unimportant and can't excuse this nasty treatment of the public.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
When Netanyahu spoke at AIPAC, the Israeli hawks' lobby in the US, protesters criticized Israeli policies towards Palestinians.
I saw a mainstream news article which called them "anti-Israel" protesters, which is clearly not true, but it is what AIPAC would like us to believe.
One of the policies criticized was that
of demolishing Palestinian homes.
Israel
continues doing this.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Gershon Baskin went to Nabi Saleh to film the weekly protest.
What
he saw was cruel, gratuitous, and unprovoked violence by the army,
including the use of gas that causes terrible pain, against people
who were not threatening anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
France attempts to "civilize" the Internet; Internet fights back.
This article argues that plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in one country (the UK in this case) are useless, since they do not count the emissions made in making goods imported from other countries.
The argument is partly correct: these plans are insufficient. But that does not make them useless.
To avoid climate disaster requires reducing global emissions, but the government of one country cannot do much to directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in another country. That requires a world-wide agreement, and the obstacles to that agreement are the US and China. Plans like these are the most a country can do on its own.
Moving energy generation in one country to renewables is a step forward independent of what happens elsewhere. And it can also serve as an example for pressure on the US and China to accept the global agreement that civilization needs to stop global heating.
Why
privacy should matter to you even if you
"have nothing to hide".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Note that the US government does "want to hurt" lots of people who did nothing to deserve it. For instance, most of the people who have been prisoners in Guantanamo.
The policeman who killed Ian Tomlinson will face prosecution.
Hosni Mubarak has been
charged with murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Byron Sonne faces
devastating retaliation from Canada for probing
the
edges of security plans for the G20 meeting.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thanks to Obama, now Democrats as well as Republicans push for increased government surveillance power.
Kentucky gave $43 million to a creationist theme park while cutting funds for education.
Both are consistent with a policy of encouraging ignorance.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the amendments to the National "Defense" Authorization Act to end the war in Afghanistan.
More info at http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/blog/ndaa2012-updates
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Honduras has obtained reintegration into the OAS by allowing exiled former president Zelaya to return.
It was not required to end its repression.
I hope this turns out well, but I have a bad feeling about it.
Former Gaddafi secret police are being killed in Benghazi by people unknown.
I think it is entirely reasonable to treat former secret police as prisoners of war for the duration, if it seems they might still be working for Gaddafi now. In war, that is justified. When the war is over, they can be released, or tried if there is evidence they committed crimes under Gaddafi's regime.
However, there is no excuse for torturing or murdering them.
The Palestinian Authority is willing to have peace negotiations with
Israel
if they start from the legitimate basis that Obama recently
reaffirmed.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
In other words, what the PA rejects is only Netanyahu's rejection of that basis.
Texas state agencies systematically
falsified water tests to
avoid
a federal requirement to inform the residents of the areas.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Falungong members have sued Cisco for building censorship and surveillance equipment for China.
US conservatives are now effectively required to oppose contraception, whether or not they can offer a sensible reason.
After a Tibetan monk set himself on fire as a protest in March,
China's suppression forces
violently imprisoned 300 monks.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article says this occurred in a Tibetan-inhabited part of Sichuan, put I strongly suspect it is actually part of Tibet which China annexed in the 1950s.
The US has indicted a Pakistani intelligence officer believed to have arranged the Mumbai terror attacks.
I am not sure how the US has jurisdiction over murders in India organized in Pakistan.
Environmentalists say that Indonesia's new forest protection policy is so weak that it won't change much.
If Strauss-Kahn tried to rape the chambermaid, it would be a follow-on to what he did to Africa.
Australian reporter Ben Grubb describes being arrested for a story reporting on a speech at a conference.
An 'army of hidden scribes' fabricates the scientific literature about the safety and efficacy of medicines.
Drug companies should not be allowed to fund drug trials directly; they should pay taxes to the government and the government should fund them. The experimenters should not be allowed to collaborate in this research, or its publication, with anyone that has a financial relationship with the company.
Right-wing millionaires are trying to privatize US education.
Some governments are pushing to reject right-wing French minister Lagarde as the new head of the IMF, and instead appoint a South African financial official, Trevor Manuel.
While all indications are that Lagarde would make the IMF as nasty as possible, I am not sure whether Manuel would be better. His support comes from countries that are economically strong, not countries that might be subject to IMF "rescues", and this in itself does not show us how he would treat those latter.
US banks are presenting ridiculous arguments to remain available as
tax evasion opportunities.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Mississippi flood precautions are insufficient because, in recent years, the amount flooding has increased over historic levels.
The increase is so much that, since 2008. every year there has been a flood so big that it was expected to occur just once every ten years.
This is apparently due to global heating, so it will get even worse.
A courageous Saudi woman posted a video showing herself
driving a
car.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Businesses are trying to pressure India to drop its new privacy protection rules for companies.
The privacy rules are good, and if businesses don't like them, that's because they want to mistreat people. What is really bad in this law is the part that inflicts censorship.
Web sites concerned with controversial topics must regard India as an unsafe place.
The Palestinian Authority said that Netanyahu's unwillingness to consider the 1967 borders makes peace talks a waste of time.
Women have taken the lead in protests in Syria, and are now experiencing powerful repression.
Massive protests by young people continue in Spain.
One of the demands of the Spanish protesters is to abolish the Ley Sinde which allows the state to shut down web sites without a trial, and to impose filtering on access to foreign sites.
Indian farmers now address their suicide notes to
the president and
the prime minister.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US mines systematically follow unsafe practices to cut costs,
and
blacklist anyone who reports violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
It would be easy to legislate solutions to this, but our legislators don't care about working people.
Unions are
starting to take note of this.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: rebuke the senators that
protected subsidies for oil
companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell the FCC to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to filibuster the attempt to extend the PAT RIOT act. The vote will be Monday May 23.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: tell various Federal agencies to change the incentives
of bankers' bonuses so as
not to harm society.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Google has condemned the "Protect IP" Internet censorship bill.
Pension funds investing in food commodities are driving up the price of food, world-wide.
Someone claims he threw eggs and shoes at the man who established the Great Firewall of China.
Some environmental organizations are opposing the return of the Chagossians in the name of conservation.
In heavily populated areas, human population growth is an obstacle to protection of the wild.
However, as the first article explains, that need not be a problem in the Chagos Islands.
Walmart's supplier in Bangladesh has framed union organizers for attempted murder.
The police and business owners are morally responsible for these actions, but root cause of the problem is the system of business-dominated globalization that Bill Clinton and his friends set up.
Some Republican congresscritters are banning recordings at their meetings with constituents.
20,000 people protested in Chile against construction of large dams in Patagonia.
I am not sure where I stand on this project. I don't know how much environmental damage it will do, or how much environmental damage it will avoid. However, Pinera is a right-wing pro-business candidate, and can't be trusted to protect anything but corporate profits.
Texas passed a law requiring women to get a sonogram and wait 24 hours before having an abortion.
This is part of a general Republican policy of harassment of women who want abortions.
Paradoxically, the part of the US government most concerned about the danger of global heating is the Pentagon.
The Israeli Knesset is considering a bill that would imprison anyone that publishes "a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State".
In effect, saying that Israel is not really democratic would be a crime.
This 2009 article by Uri Avnery discusses that bill and other
tyrannical legal proposals.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Both Obama and Congress are mostly disregarding the War Powers Act and
the question of whether Obama was
authorized to intervene in
Libya.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Far from insisting on its powers to be asked to authorize this intervention, Congress is proposing to authorize all future presidents to intervene military anywhere without consulting Congress.
I support the intervention in Libya, which I think will succeed because tactical stalemate implies strategic defeat for Gaddafi.
However, there is no telling what mischief Obama or some future president might do — perhaps conquering, occupying and ruining a country as Bush did to Iraq.
Obama should seek authorization for the Libyan intervention.
Some Apple addicts truly worship that company, suggest brain scans.
That must be why they allow it to abuse them so much and don't care.
German police confiscated the servers of the German Pirate Party, two days before an important election.
Finally Obama has criticized Bahrain's
oppression of the
opposition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The TSA's secret "tests" of the X-ray body scanners were phony. They did not test a real scanner, and they kept important details of the test secret.
I never go through those machines; I always ask them to feel me up instead.
The UK requires some passengers to go through scanners, so I do not board flights in the UK. I leave the UK by train.
Obama took a small step to disconnect US policy from Israeli government control by reaffirming that peace needs to be based on the 1967 borders.
Netanyahu's sharp reaction was, in effect, a demand for a return to the unconditional support that Israel had previously achieved.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn was praised for making the IMF less evil, but the extent of the changes have been exaggerated.
The IMF still puts the burden on the poor, pushing countries into depressions that can improverish them for years.
US citizens: call on the State Department to condemn Israel's
imprisonment
of Palestinian
nonviolent protest leaders.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The charges against them are based on evidence procured by torturing a 14-year-old boy.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Seven Bahrainis were sentenced to years in prison for protesting.
Several showed how they were tortured, and the court pointedly ignored this.
Several big banks that inflated the real estate bubble are now being investigated by New York State.
US justice is so soft on corporations that now they don't even get charged with a crime. They just agree to pay something instead of being accused.
A coal company made a
legal threat against the
coalcares.org
hoax site.
[References updated on 2018-02-15 because the old links were broken.]
25,000 people who live in homes in flood plains near the Mississippi will have to evacuate as waters flood the area.
I hope we learn the lesson and don't allow anything but throwaway structures to be built there again.
Israeli troops
fired at a hundreds of unarmed Palestinians who were
trying to swarm the border from Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is a different issue entirely from trying to bring aid to Gaza. The boats that sail to Gaza do not enter Israel unless the Israeli military forces them to do so. It is also unlike the protests in Tunisia and Egypt, since those protested in their own country.
These protests seem basically wrong to me because the protesters are trying to enter Israel, not the West Bank or Gaza. In other words, entering the territory which, under any reasonable peace settlement, would not be part of Palestine. In effect, the message of these protests is to end oppose the existence of Israel, not to end the occupation.
Israel has the right to control who enters its territory from Syria. Also, terrorists (they still exist) might infiltrate among the unarmed protesters. Thus, if nothing else works, the Israeli border guards must shoot. However, Israel has a duty to try to control entry without shooting. A stronger wall on the border with Syria might do the job, but would take time to construct.
If Palestinians would like peace with a state alongside Israel, they should design their protests to conspicuously support this goal. Only thus can they refute the Israeli argument that "They still want to destroy us."
Gaddafi's officials ask, why prosecute Gaddafi & co in the International Criminal Court and not the rulers of Syria, Bahrain and Yemen.
He's right: they all deserve this treatment. That doesn't mean that the ICC warrants against Gaddafi should be cancelled.
The US Congress held a hearing about repression in Bahrain, and the State Department boycotted it.
Haiti's parliament, which was elected in fraud, has written constitutional amendments that concentrate power in the president — and which most Haitians can't read.
One of the leaders of the Rwandan genocide has been sentenced to prison.
This is worth celebrating, but meanwhile Rwanda now faces a new threat from its dictatorial President Kagame.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose authorizing presidents to launch military attacks all around the world.
Also sign this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The IPCC shows how 80% of energy could be renewable in 40 years.
It is a matter of adopting public policies that favor renewable energy, not oil, gas, coal or nuclear.
When the UK evicted the inhabitants of the Chagos Islands, it promised to maintain their buildings and plantations.
It ignored that promise, reflecting its intention to stop them from ever returning home. A Wikileaks cable shows that the UK intended its marine conservation zone as an additional obstacle to their return.
A great new option for your spyPhone: pay for purchases with it.
If the phone company and the store exchange data, both of them know what you bought, when, and where.
The UN is investigating reports that Iran tampered with reactor inspectors' portable computers.
If these computers have proprietary software in them, others could easily have tampered with them too.
As B'liar tried to distort Iraq intelligence to justify war, intelligence experts tried to resist this. Newly released papers show their efforts.
China is starting to admit that the Three Gorges Dam has caused major problems for the Yangtze River.
Republicans are lying about their plan to attack Medicare.
Many workplaces use computers to monitor employees' every action.
Police sprayed mace at old people who were protesting at a bank's shareholder meeting.
A UK man previously acquitted of murder will face a second trial using new evidence.
Maybe he is guilty; maybe this trial will right a previous wrong. I cannot assert it won't. But double jeopardy is very frightening.
A bill that would punish Israelis for voicing support for a boycott of Israeli institutions, or even a boycott of products of Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank.
This bill would abolish freedom of speech in Israel.
The claim that it is "in the United States it is considered illegal to
boycott Israel" is the half-truth that is worse than a lie. What is
penalized, though not exactly illegal, is for US entities to
promise in their contracts that they will
refuse to do
business with Israel (or whatever country) in response to foreign
pressure.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
There is no law against boycotting any country, business, activity, etc., because such a law would be unconstitutional.
Senator Sanders has introduced a single-payer health care bill.
Arizona's sheriff Arpaio,
who used hostility towards immigrants as
the
basis for his campaign, is accused of corruption amounting to
100
million dollars, as well as hostility towards Mexicans.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The record companies want warrantless searches to check for copying.
There is nothing they wouldn't gladly destroy in their crusade to maintain their parasitic stranglehold on music. These companies, which gave us the DMCA and lawsuits against teenagers, don't deserve any kind of "rights", because what they deserve is to be obliterated.
In the future, even fetuses will be sued often.
Republican bills in many states would hamper college students, minorities, old people and disabled people from voting.
Tobacco companies added appetite suppressant drugs to cigarettes.
Christopher Whitman, at a peaceful protest in Nabi Saleh, reports that an Israeli border policeman shot him in the head with a tear gas canister, after beating up and gassing the protesters.
This hit was certainly intentional; police are good shots, and they know how tear gas is supposed to be used. They also know that an "accidental" hit on a person's head can maim or kill.
Last time I was in Israel, I was told that the border police are especially sadistic. In the same protest, another person's arm was broken by a tear gas canister. Apparently shooting to maim or kill is accepted practice.
The Israeli deputy police commander of Galilee was so offended when a Palestinian lawyer asked why his men were arresting protesters that he slapped her in the face.
How dare anyone ask whether Israel respects human rights?
Warning: that page has a Facebook Like-button. Be sure to disable Javascript, and cookies from other sites, before you go to it.
Israel is destroying the main road into the Palestinian town of Al Aqaba. Next it may destroy the town.
Syrians now use
donkeynet to communicate with the rest of the
world.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The case against Goldman Sachs: a million or so frauds plus lying to Congress.
Panera restaurants give clients a suggested bill and ask them to pay that much, or more, or less.
There are massive protests in Spain against policies that have produced massive protests.
The uselessness of the two major parties, the Partido Corporatista and the Partido Pendular, is illustrated by the fact that they both voted to censor the Internet on behalf of the copyright industry.
The Taliban are reportedly making children act as suicide bombers by threatening them and lying to them.
This is such a vicious tactic I have to wonder whether the claim is a lie. I won't say the Taliban couldn't possibly do this; but just because they deserve to be fought does not mean they are totally without principle. NATO is not above lying.
I also wonder why Noor Mohammad, age 14, is on trial, since he never attacked anyone. Shouldn't he be in a foster home?
New Hampshire Republicans are trying to discourage voters by requiring photo IDs to vote.
The US Senate declined to abolish subsidies for oil companies.
Obama has
sync'ed US policy totally behind the Israeli Hawks'
lobby.
MJ Rosenberg believes he is challenging those who want to end the
occupation to speak louder and compete with AIPAC.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Of course, we should try to make our views heard, but does Obama care? It would be nice to think so, but I don't believe it. Obama has shown no sign of championing peace, no will to resist or even criticize the Israeli policy of slow ethnic cleansing. Our voices can hardly compete in the mainstream media with the influence that AIPAC's donors purchase. I think Obama set MJ Rosenberg an impossible challenge to give himself an excuse to obey AIPAC.
Israel permanently exiled 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank because they travailed abroad.
Israeli private security guards
killed a protesting Palestinian
in East Jerusalem, and troops shot protesters directly at close range
with tear gas canisters.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel blocked the ship Spirit of Rachel Corrie from delivering sewage
pipe to Gaza by
attacking with artillery.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel uses soldiers disguised as civilians, even for assassination.
If we consider these operations as war, they are war crimes. Otherwise, they are extrajudicial killings of suspected criminals who should have been given a chance to surrender and be arrested.
(If we consider them as war, it doesn't matter whether the Palestinian fighters we on duty or not. Do the laws of war prohibit attacking soldiers just because they are not currently fighting? I don't think so.)
Israel also lets dogs run loose to maim Palestinians who are sneaking into Israel to work.
Israel's justification, that this is a method of protecting the wall, is invalid because the wall through the West Bank is a plan for annexation.
UK plans to build nuclear reactors underestimate the availability of tidal power generators and overestimate its future costs.
One of the Fukushima reactors was badly damaged by the quake itself, before the tsunami.
Tiger farms threaten the survival of wild tigers.
In simple theory, the existence of tiger farms means that wild tigers can be protected from poaching more easily. It would be enough to make poaching a tiger more expensive than raising one. With a stable population of wild tigers, a few could be captured each year for stud without damaging the wild population. But there may be practical obstacles that make the reality not fit that theory.
The head of the IMF is in jail in the US, accused of attempted rape, and it's not the first such accusation against him.
I have no idea whether he is guilty or not, but it is right to treat the rich and powerful just like anyone else. However, I think that the IMF which he heads has done harm far bigger than anything he could do personally.
Prostitutes in Korea protested against a police crackdown.
Prohibiting prostitution is simply unjust. It also interferes with the work that the police really ought to do: making sure that the prostitutes are not being abused or coerced by pimps.
Ohio citizens: sign the petition for a referendum on the law SB 5
which
attacked unions in Ohio.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: join the protests against Sarkozy's attempt to destroy Internet freedom in Europe.
In London: protest Colombia's ex-president Alvaro Horrible, who is linked with the murderous paramilitaries.
4pm-7pm, Saturday 21 May
27 Sussex Place, Regent's Park, NW1
Nearest tube: Baker Street
5pm-8pm, Monday 23 May
LSE Campus, Houghton Street, WC2
Nearest tubes: Covent Garden, Holborn, Temple
US citizens:
sign
this petition
against S.719, which would enable US
intelligence agencies to punish employees (and ex-employees) without
trial by cutting off their pensions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Also phone your senators.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Swiss voters
preserved
the right of foreigners to come to commit suicide.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
This is a good thing. Sad we may be when someone's life is so painful that he only wants to end it, but it is crazy to express that concern by forcing him to go on suffering.
The UK government has adopted a plan for a major reduction in carbon emissions by 2027.
However, it includes hidden subsidies for nuclear power plants.
Thousands
protested in Turkey
against plans to filter the Internet.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Women and children made up most of the casualties of US air raids and shelling in Iraq.
David House and the ACLU have sued the US government for searching his laptop as he passed through customs.
Dropbox used to claim it couldn't decrypt users' files, but that wasn't true.
The subtle changes Dropbox has since made in its web site sustain the accusation.
The US "secure communities" program causes legal immigrants to be
deported if they are accused of a crime —
even
if the charges are dropped.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I am glad someone had the sense to block this cruelty in the specific case at hand, but the system needs to be fixed.
Michael Moore: the SEALs are so precise — they avoided killing any
of the children that were in bin Laden's compound —
that
they must
have been ordered to kill bin Laden himself.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
I suspect something a little more subtle: that they were told to capture bin Laden "if possible", and given fine print which defined "possible" as "if pigs fly."
Natural gas drilling in the US is
destroying
archaeological sites
as well as water supplies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The "PROTECT IP" bill amounts to criminalization of knowledge.
Anything law named "intellectual property" can be expected to be based on bad concepts.
Bahrain is torturing doctors and nurses because they witnessed the injuries of protesters who were brought to the hospital.
Banning slightly dangerous "legal highs" can endanger public health, because they can attract people away from more dangerous drugs.
It occurs to me that legal highs could also be made safer by spreading information about how to use them safely.
Thousands of handicapped people marched, and wheeled themselves, in London to protests cuts in aid that they need to live independent lives.
Drug companies are aggressively pushing doctors to prescribe demented old people drugs that are not known to do any good for their problem.
A report that Gaddafi was gaining support for an international bank for Africa that would have made Libyan currency an alternative to the dollar and the euro.
This report reminds us that a state can challenge the power of the corporate empire (good) while at the same being an vicious tyranny (bad). Good in one parameter can go with bad on another.
If the report is true, it might explain US participation in the intervention. But Obama was not eager to intervene — so I think this theory is more wrong than right.
Zaidi, who famously threw a shoe at Bush, preaches nonviolence and has set up a foundation to investigate the corruption of the US occupation of Iraq.
He says that Iraqi government torturers broke his bones and gave him electric shocks. Did they learn this from Saddam Hussein or from the Bush forces?
Police have software to correlate information about a person from a wide variety of sources, establishing a total surveillance system which they can turn on anyone.
India has imposed vague censorship on Internet sites.
The excuse that this is "based on India's criminal law and deal with blasphemous, obscene and defamatory material" is not only inaccurate, it would be no excuse anyway, since it is unjust to make any of those things a crime.
India has also followed the injustice of the USA PAT RIOT Act by allowing the state to collect information about people from companies without search warrants.
In an age where states have contempt for all human rights, every technological transition offers an opportunity to crush some.
President Saleh's troops shot at protesters in Yemen; then troops of an opposition division moved in and shot back at them.
That division's general opposes Saleh, but I have no idea whether he endorses democracy or human rights, or whether he just wants more power for himself. The situation is full of dangers, one of which is war between the factions of the army.
Facebook paid a PR agency to publish false stories against Google.
It is well established that people have been paid to spread false information saying that tobacco was safe, and that carbon emissions aren't causing global heating.
Death squads threaten community radio journalists in El Salvador.
Ugandan protest leader Kizza Besigye was arbitrarily blocked from flying back to Uganda.
He had fled to Kenya for medical treatment after Ugandan troops attacked and injured him during a protest.
That shows the danger of a no-fly list.
Police in Tunisia attacked protesters and journalists.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The interim government apologized for the attacks; perhaps the police acted in defiance of the state.
Bahrain's cruel monarch is sentencing protesters to long prison terms.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Doctors and nurses are to be put on trial for treating wounded protesters.
Shame on the US for continuing close relations with that evil regime.
New Jersey proposes to ban photography of minors.
An officer involved in making the UK's "dodgy dossier", which twisted intelligence data to support invading Iraq, said that they were explicitly tasked with squeezing an excuse for war out of that intelligence.
Is this grounds to charge B'liar with the crime of aggressive war?
James Hall refused to sign Wikileaks' internal anti-leaks contract. because he was afraid of being sued for millions of dollars over interviews already given.
Wikileaks has done a crucial job for the public. Can that job be done without ugly internal practices such as this contract? Assange seems to believe it can't be. I don't know that he is wrong, but I am not ready to conclude he is right.
Amnesty International says Colombia has made some progress in respecting human rights under President Santos, compared with former President Horrible, but not much.
As NATO increases the size of Afghan's "security" forces, they commit more crimes against civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Comparing the oil company tax breaks with their profits.
Republicans want to move oil drilling lawsuits to a court full of judges with close ties to oil companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ten Turkish writers and journalists have been arrested, apparently for their political writings.
France is on the way to ban fracking.
Ugandan insecurity forces attacked journalists as well as protesters who greeted Kizza Besigye's return to Uganda.
Microsoft Structured Acquisition Of Skype To Avoid U.S. Taxes.
Bill S.719 would give the US government the power to strip officials of their pensions just by accusing them of leaking classified information.
Some Democrats defended principles of justice when Bush showed contempt for them. Now that Obama has adopted Bush's opposition to human rights, Americans who defend them are being marginalized and smeared.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israeli shelling in Gaza caused 80 casualties, mostly civilians.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Two medics were killed by shelling their ambulances.
A UN agency has analyzed the computer files, reportedly seized from the FARC, which described collaboration between Venezuela and the FARC.
The FARC are terrorists and kidnappers. Whether it is justified to support them so as to oppose Colombia's worst terrorists and kidnappers, which are the US-supported government and the paramilitares, is a difficult question. (Latest reports say these terrorists are becoming more active and dangerous.)
Ziyad Clot explains why he leaked the Palestine Papers.
These papers blew the lid off the phony "peace process" which Israel used as a cover for a land grab.
Belarus has sentenced opposition candidate Andrei Sannikov to 5 years in prison in a political show trial.
Dalits in Indian higher education face prejudice and hatred which drives some to suicide.
Others disguise themselves as non-Dalits and live a double life.
I wonder if India's national ID card will make it impossible for them to do that.
The US worked with drug companies and treacherous officials in Ecuador to try to interfere with Ecuador's policy of compulsory licenses for patented medicines.
The US government represents the corporations, not Americans.
The Conservative Party of Canada violated election laws in the recent election. Its leader, Harper, did so personally.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Although bin Laden is dead, he still serves for fear-mongering.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
submit a comment
opposing Obama's plans
to weaken US forest protection.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on Congress
to investigate the conflict of interest
of the FCC commissioner who voted to approve the Comcast-NBC merger,
then quit to become a lobbyist for the merged company.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign this petition against the "PROTECT IP" bill, which would impose censorship duties on US ISPs and search engines.
The use of the propaganda term "intellectual property" shows that this law is based on mistaken goals and confused thinking.
More information about what's bad in this bill.
Israel has adopted racist laws that further penalize Palestinians as well as human rights organizations.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-13 because the old link was broken.]
Gazans injured by Israeli bombing were arbitrarily denied the chance to go to court. A deadline of two years was established, and then Israel did not let them leave Gaza to plead for two years.
The Israeli government gives secret support to an organization reminiscent of the KKK.
You don't have to do anything wrong to get on the US sex offender list.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The two cases appeared at first to be hypothetical, but reading further comments shows that they belong to one real family.
The US says it will fund development of software to fight the Internet censorship of China and Iran.
Meanwhile, the US is planning its own Internet censorship, aimed at search engines, domain registries, and other parts of the net.
You can tell this law is evil in spirit because it uses the propaganda term "intellectual property", which spreads both an authoritarian attitude and factual confusion whenever it is used.
Don't be their tool — join me in avoiding the term.
NATO bombs in Afghanistan often hit civilians. In one case, US intelligence targeted a civilian, a parliamentary candidate's agent living in Kabul, confusing him with a Taliban commander through gross negligence.
90,000 Bedouin in Israel live in "illegal" towns, sometimes where they were told to live by the Army decades ago, but they now face expulsion as part of a plan to squeeze them into a small fraction of the Negev.
Other Arabs are being expelled from Jerusalem.
An NRA-sponsored Florida bill, already approved by the legislature, will ban pediatricians from asking questions about gun safety at the patient's home.
The National Rifle Association should change its name to the National Irresponsible Gun-Owners Association, given its new mission to resist efforts to teach gun owners to be responsible.
The Koch brothers corrupted Florida State University, by endowing professorships and giving themselves veto power over whoever is appointed to them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
These professors are supposed to teach that everything should be for sale.
Thousands marched in New York to protest budget cuts including the firing of 4,000 teachers.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Night-mayor Bloomberg believes these cuts are necessary because of the budget surplus.
If only the day-mayor of New York were someone other than Bloomberg.
Instead of taxing the rich, Haiti's not-really-elected president Martelly plans to tax remittances from foreign countries, which support their poor Haitian relatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Congress proposes to preauthorize presidents to launch wars anywhere in the world. Phone your congresscritter to oppose it; also sign the following petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
telling Senate leadership to
block the Republicans' War on Women.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Here's how far Afghanistan is from being able to set up a functioning state, police, or army.
I have doubts that the army unit declared as capable of standing on its own can really do so, that the provinces that will be "self-governing" (whatever that means) will be capable. And I am very skeptical of the claim that Afghanistan will be able to do much more with an army of 350,000 than with one of 300,000.
The officer interviewed presents all this as a reason to continue the war for many years. I think it rather demonstrates that there are better things to try to do.
A new Gaza aid fleet will set out in June, including once again the Mavi Marmara on which activists were killed last time by Israeli troops.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
An analysis of NATO hypocrisy and self-contradiction about Libya.
Whether US and European leaders are being honest is one question; whether they have any ethical concern about the issue is another. What these countries ought to do in regard to Libya is a third question, separate from those two.
The West should not throw up its hands and let Gaddafi reconquer Benghazi or Misrata, but its intervention is at once too violent and insufficient. Attacking Gaddafi's family should be off limits regardless of whether Gaddafi is with them.
Meanwhile, the failure to coordinate closely with the Libyan rebels is deadly stupidity. If NATO is determined to launch weapons only from the air, that is no reason not to have forward air controllers and radar on the ground, and even small units to protect them. Gaddafi's success in destroying Mistrara's gasoline supply with bombs from light planes, and the closure of Misrata's port, were possible because of the lack of such coordination.
What the rebels really need is the support of a trained Arab ground army.
The EU's tax-scam prevention body is made up of tax-avoidance experts.
I am sure they know the subject well, but do they want to succeed?
A year after the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Republicans are trying to hasten a repeat performance.
They got 4 million dollars from oil companies to promote global heating.
A thousand teachers protested California's budget cuts and refusal to raise taxes on the rich.
"Development aid" supports the spread of palm oil cultivation in Africa, which destroys ecosystems and communities and spreads oppressive working conditions.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It probably contributes to global heating, too.
Rule of thumb: the opposite of what the US Chamber of Commerce says is good for the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The City University of New York decided to give Tony Kushner the honorary degree, rebuking the influence of a supporter of Israeli right-wing positions.
Mr. Wiesenfeld should listen to what Uri Avnery has to say about these issues.
Japan's prime minister has decided to cancel construction of planned new nuclear reactors.
Osama bin Laden's sons call for the UN to investigate why their father was killed and not arrested.
Former Pakistani dictator Musharraf made a deal that the US could attack top al Qa'ida leaders in Pakistan.
I am not sure whether the US can validly stand on a deal made 10 years ago by a dictator since removed from power. What does seem clear is that the dictator was dishonest to the Pakistani people in making the deal.
Refugees from Syria fled to Lebanon, but Lebanon handed them over to the Syrian government.
Repression in Bahrain extends to systematic destruction of Shi'ite mosques, even historic ones.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
It is interesting to contrast this with the uproar that resulted when Hindu fanatics destroyed a mosque 400 years old in India with the much weaker reaction when Muslim thugs destroy a mosque.
Journalist Khaled Sid Mohand was not tortured much in Syria, but he heard other prisoners' screams every day.
The US government knows all about this, which is why it handed over people to be tortured in Syria.
Morderchai Vanunu called on the Israeli government to apply a new law, meant to be punitive, and revoke his Israeli citizenship.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Holding Internet services legally responsible for what users post could be a disaster for the Internet, and for freedom of speech.
Peak floods on the Mississippi are a human-made disaster.
Foolish humans built houses in floodplains, and foolish humans poured greenhouse gases into the air which increases the chance of unusual heavy rain.
A scientific study finds that fracking frequently causes methane contamination of nearby water supplies at a dangerous level.
Sometimes you can set fire to the fast coming out of the faucet.
Human Rights Watch calls on the US to stop supporting Bangladesh's torture and assassination battalion.
Senator Schumer says Amtrak should check passengers against a no-ride list.
The movie The Longest Day demonstrates that people know how to bomb a train without riding on it. They only need access to the track. The reported tentative al Qa'ida plot involved damaging the track to derail a train. Senator Schumer's Orwellian measure would be useless against that.
I put myself on Amtrak's "no-ride" list when Amtrak started making passengers identify themselves; I'd rather take a bus anonymously. You should, too.
When corporations make threats so as to get lower taxes, the US could resist if the government chose.
But this would first require a officials who want to resist.
Turkey has proposed filtering of the Internet, and there are mass protests against it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ai Weiwei has been held incommunicado for a month; there is a rumor he has been tortured into confessing various crimes.
Torture is very effective for extracting confessions if it does not matter whether they are true. That is why it is just as despicable when done by China as when done by the US.
Everyone: sign this petition calling on Uganda not to adopt its bill to punish gays.
US citizens: call your senators and say, defend Medicare, and oppose the disguised plans to ruin Medicare with spending limits in a few years.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Thousands demonstrated in Marrakesh for a constitutional monarchy, and against terrorism.
Obama continues to support "free trade" with Colombia despite Colombia's increasing assassinations of union organizers.
Uri Avnery compares the apparent execution of Osama bin Laden to other executions of accused terrorists.
Muslim extremists in Egypt are picking a fight with Coptic Christians.
The details of the fight almost don't matter, since the issue is more of an excuse than anything else. But I do wonder what really happened to the woman who supposedly converted to Islam. Did she really exist? If so, is she still alive? Murdered?
Pakistan has imposed censorship on foreign journalism, and especially in Abbottabad, to impede investigation of how Osama bin Laden managed to hide there.
Babar Ahmed tells how the UK police that arrested him in 2003 beat him, then squeezed him in a headlock so he could not breathe. Medical tests support his accusations.
Babar Ahmad has been fighting the US extradition request in various courts since his second arrest in 2004.
Australia will send refugees to Malaysia, which has a record of abusing refugees.
UK policemen told their commanders they saw Tomlinson hit shoved to the ground, and the commanders concealed this information from the investigation.
Several cities in Syria are now patrolled by tanks and soldiers
who shoot at anyone.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
A French naval ship let migrants in a disabled boat drift and die rather than rescue them.
US war is very expensive in monetary terms. The point is that it has been made cheap in US lives; the blood shed is in foreign civilian casualties that the US government denies and pretends not to count.
Ashcroft, Bush's Attorney General who hated our freedoms, is now working for Blackwater.
The world is drowning in corporate fraud, and the executives responsible often go on to public office.
A man has been convicted of "aiding suicide" simply for talking with people that wanted to kill themselves.
This seems outrageous. I hope there will be an appeal.
This man pretended, in chat rooms, to be a female nurse. Pretending to be what you aren't is not nice, but that has nothing to do with the central issue: just talking with people about suicide is not participating in the event, no matter who you say you are.
As a separate matter, people who want to die should be allowed to get assistance (and not just advice) if they need it. They should be able to get it from people or institutions they can trust, and should not need to have recourse to a chat room. They should also have access to therapy, so that they might reconcile themselves to going on with their lives.
How the system of testing new drugs, to approve their sale, is fundamentally broken.
Chomsky comments on the apparent assassination of bin Laden — and the lack of proof he was involved in the 2001 attacks.
The New Bottom Line campaign protested in and outside the stockholders meeting of Wells Fargo Bank.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
One other thing people can do is to move their money out of large banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and into local banks.
13 reasons why the New Zealand "3 strikes" law is an injustice.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
A 14th reason, not mentioned in the article: the law's very goal is wrong.
Sharing is good — to attack sharing is the evil. Thus, any law designed to punish or block file sharing is evil at the root. What New Zealand ought to do is to recognize everyone's right to do noncommercial sharing of exact copies of any published work.
The reason that the government did the opposite, I suggest, is that the government is working for external powers — foreign states and multinational corporations — rather than for the citizens of New Zealand.
In the UK, women buy much more clothing than 20 years ago, and wear most of it very little, treating it as disposable. This is based on, and supports, the use of sweatshop labor to make the clothing.
I would suppose this all applies to the US as well as the UK, but I don't have any way of checking that.
The wasteful production of so much little-used clothing puts a tremendous burden on the Earth.
"Free trade" treaties surely play a role in making these sweatshops possible. In 1990, textile workers in poor countries could organize unions and get better wages; now each poor country has to compete against the rest, driving wages and working conditions down.
I don't see what can be done to stop this stupid game of competition, other than to eliminate the "free trade" treaties that are its basis.
The Wall Street Journal tried to set up a Wikileaks-style leak reception site, but did a lousy job that whistleblowers should not trust.
The WSJ later said it would fix the technical flaws, but did not offer to correct the legal shortcomings.
Many US states are planning to privatize prisons, to fund private schools instead of public schools, and to crush public sector unions.
Everyone: rebuke the CUNY board
for blocking the honorary degree
that was supposed to be offered to Tony Kushner,
because of his political views
that oppose right-wing Israeli policies.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Past recipients of honorary degrees from CUNY are returning them in condemnation of the board's action.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to resist Republican plans to use debt ceiling expansion to ban health insurance that covers abortion. Also sign this petition.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
This shows that Republicans are too dishonest to keep a budget deal for even a couple of months.
The nastiest part of their plan is to require women who were raped to convince the IRS of that. But it's not enough to block the nastiest part. They should not get even the tiniest bit.
Democrats in the Senate should make their own demands to reverse bad changes agreed to in March. Then there can be a "compromise" to stay with the deal of March.
Global heating has already harmed world food production and has increased some food prices, perhaps almost 20%.
The more global heating we create, the more we push agricultural systems towards collapse.
US proposals for "do not track" could backfire by requiring increased identification of users.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Donald Trump's record of racism.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Mass protests continue in Syria despite the killing of many protesters.
Foolish Australians oppose the planned carbon emissions tax because it could "make electricity cost more".
Of course it will. That is the point — to encourage efficiency.
Global heating increases flooding in parts of Australia. How much do these short-sighted people think bigger floods will cost their country?
The US reports that Osama bin Laden was directly involved in planning possible terrorist operations.
If this is truthful, it would imply that al Qa'ida, or some large part of it, has an overall organization. That does not mean that bin Laden's death is a blow to al Qa'ida. As long as such an organization can recruit, it always has new leaders who can take over from the old.
Ahmadinejad is trying to choose his own cabinet in defiance of Shah Khamenei, resulting in a power struggle within the Iranian regime's secular and clerical parts.
The UN projects a world population of 9.3 billion in 2050.
Given the damage done by global heating to agriculture we will not find it easy to feed so many.
The recent report of decreased population growth in China could mean it will be somewhat less. I hope so, because every increase makes it harder to cope.
Mozilla rejected a request to remove an add-on that helps users access domains that the US attempts to shut down.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
"Seizing" domains without first convicting their operators of a crime is tyranny. Bravo, Mozilla, for helping the US to resist tyranny.
Some of these sites enable members of the public to share files non-commercially. It's not clear whether those sites have committed a crime in the US, and the US does not prosecute them. What is clear is that, if there is a law that such a site violates, the injustice is in the law, not in the site. The right to share must be respected.
Sharing is good; to forbid sharing is to attack society.
The UN has effectively acknowledged that the UN troops brought cholera to Haiti.
It has killed over 5,000 people.
Several associates of Berlusconi will go on trial for finding prostitutes for him.
Whether or not Nicole Minetti was involved in finding prostitutes for Berlusconi, he showed disrespect for Italy by giving her a political post after meeting her in a situation that had nothing to do with political ability.
Alec Loorz has sued the US government demanding it act to prevent global heating disaster.
Being 16 now, his life expectancy would take him till 2070, by which time he would experience the real dimensions of the disaster we are creating.
The Internet has given voice to Singapore's opposition, but people fear their votes will not be secret.
Former US military interrogators reject the claim that torture "worked" for obtaining intelligence about bin Laden (or anything else).
The US says that bin Laden did not shoot at US troops, and did not have an gun when he was shot.
Why then was he shot rather than captured? Supposedly the troops were ordered to take prisoners "when possible". Is their idea of "possible" so cautious that in practice they couldn't possibly have taken any prisoners? Were they really ordered to kill?
A group working for Arab-Israeli peace has been censored twice in Seattle.
The idea that both sides deserve a good life is considered too controversial.
A US official proposed taxing cars by miles driven.
To replace the gas tax (which encourages use of more efficient cars) with a milage tax is in effect a plan to encourage wasting gasoline. I suspect the oil companies are behind it somehow.
It is also an advance in government surveillance, and thus attacks all citizens.
Honduras' coup-installed and US-supported government has declared war on school teachers.
Protests against the War on Drugs are planned for all across Mexico, sparked by a poet whose son was murdered.
If the US punishes Mexico for refusing to continue this foolish war, Mexico should retaliate by pulling out of NAFTA. (It needs to do that anyway, and this is a good excuse.)
When Obama decided not to use a drone missile against Osama bin Laden, he made an exception to a general practice of bombing in Pakistan that has killed far more bystanders than targets.
The article is mistaken when it says that "no sane person would wish any harm on American soldiers". If a Pakistani feels that way, perhaps in response to the civilians killed by US attacks, that does not make him insane. Fighting a guerrilla war against the US does not make the Taliban insane. I condemned the Taliban's repressive policies when they were in power, I condemn the Taliban's policy of murdering civilians now, and I expect to continue to condemn the Taliban when the US is no longer fighting them, but it is absurd to call enemies "insane" for being enemies.
Most terrorism in the US is done by right-wing extremists, but you'd never guess that from the mass media.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Even imaginary bombs that involve Muslim fanatics get much more news coverage than real bombs set by right-wing fanatics.
Anonymous responds to Sony's accusation that Anonymous was involved in credit card theft.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The "evidence" for this accusation is the sort of false trail you find in page 20 of a mystery novel. As proof, it's nothing, but it might satisfy the desire of some politicians for an excuse to launch a crusade against Anonymous.
Biomass energy projects currently planned are renewable energy sources, but only on the assumption that the forests they chop down will grow back. That is too long a time scale; in the shorter term, these projects can drive massive deforestation.
If the forests do not regrow as supposed, perhaps due to a global heating disaster, these projects will turn out not to have been renewable energy.
Dictator Franco had 120,000 prisoners killed in the course of seizing Spain from the Republican government. The present government has published a map of 2000 mass graves of these victims.
LA is suing Deutsche Bank for fraudulent foreclosures and illegal evictions.
Many other banks have made a practice of fraudulent foreclosures. I hope they will be sued too.
Major western media condemned Gaddafi's use of cluster bombs in Misrata. but didn't condemn the US for using them in Iraq and elsewhere.
This doesn't excuse Gaddafi's use of cluster bombs; rather, it means that Bush deserves the same condemnation. Bush should be tried for war crimes and for the crime of aggressive war, just as is now planned for Gaddafi.
A former Taliban minister says the Taliban
offered in October 2001 to
hand over Osama bin Laden for trial to an organization of Islamic
states.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bush ostentatiously did not care and rejected negotiation. Based on Bush's supposed reason for the war, the war was gratuitous.
I supported the invasion of Afghanistan for another reason: to end the Taliban's oppression of Afghan women and men.
The UK's severe budget cuts have knocked it into a longer recession.
Peak oil has already occurred, but the world didn't notice, because it is switching to cheap natural gas and coal. The only problem with this "solution" is that they release even more greenhouse gas, Thus, instead of heading into an economic wall in the near term, we are heading for climate disaster in a few decades.
Many Ugandan lawyers asked the country's supreme court to restrain the president from attacking protesters.
The EU may pay fishermen to collect plastic at sea.
In 2007, BP was fined $20 million for a big leak in Alaska and ordered to maintain its pipelines properly. Now it has been fined $25 million more for not doing so.
The EFF reports on the FBI spyware that it sneaks into people's computers.
The EFF concludes that this obviates any reason for the proposal to require surveillance systems in VOIP and other communications systems.
Aaron's Furniture rents
computers equipped with spyware that transmits
photos of the user.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
I would guess that these computers also contained Windows, which also spies on the user.
Dispersed oil still threatens the safety of Gulf of Mexico seafood.
US government testing of the catch has several weaknesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Haiti's president Martelly, elected by 1/6 the voters, has friends connected with the US-arranged coup that overthrew President Aristide, and friends connected with the Duvaliers.
US media are
straining to encourage belief that waterboarding "worked"
for finding Osama bin Laden.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Finding him was a slow process that probably involved combining lots of information. For absolutely none of this to have been obtained from the suspects who were tortured would have been unlikely, a priori. So if some of the information did come from them, that doesn't prove torture "works".
Even if torture had "worked" in getting a clue that eventually led to bin Laden, this benefit for the US (for whatever it's worth) would be nothing compared to the harm the US did to itself by torturing ibn as-Sheikh al-Libi. He told the lies that Bush wanted to hear, and Bush used them as excuses to invade Iraq.
Torture can't "work" in general for getting information from prisoners, because what it does is make them say what the interrogators want to hear.
But even if torture did generally "work", that would not justify it. As Obama said, torture destroys the moral fiber of a nation. The US's moral fiber seems to be on the edge of tearing right open.
Bradley Manning is now held in fairly normal prison conditions, However, the US is still responsible for the way it treated him for most of a year, and Rep. Kucinich aims to the US government to account.
To punish injustice is not the only valid reason not to let this drop. Another is that many other prisoners in the US face similar conditions. Neither accused suspects nor convicted criminals deserve to be tortured.
Efforts to cut carbon emissions in some developed countries have been negated by a rise in emissions caused by exports to them from other countries.
Indian police arrested hundreds of people who were going to march to protest plans to build a nuclear power plant.
An inquest ruled that Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed by the policeman who knocked him down, for no reason, as he passed by a protest in London. Now the policeman may be prosecuted.
There are countless instances of unjustified police violence against protesters and bystanders in the UK — and elsewhere also.
North Korea's prison empire is full of people who
don't even know why they were arrested.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US has sued Deutsche Bank for systematic mortgage fraud in the US.
A
series of false copyright claims are being used to censor an Iranian
opposition group on YouTube.
Syrian repression forces crushed
a protest in Banias.
The discussion of arming Alawite militias suggests that Assad is also
trying to stimulate sectarian hostility.
The Israeli army sealed
off the village of Nabi Saleh and appears to plan to demolish
Palestinian homes there.
Nabi Saleh is the long-time hub of nonviolent protest.
Israel
is trying to build a railroad from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem —
through Palestinian territory.
Israeli "settlers" invaded a Palestinian village and burned a
prayer hall.
A Hamas leader says Hamas
is willing to make peace with Israel.
People
in the UK were arrested as "terrorists" for doing photography
"near" the Sellafield nuclear fuel processing plant.
The UK has a history of treating people as suspects for photography.
Protecting biodiversity is expensive, but the consequences of failing
to protect biodiversity are much
more painful.
Daniel Barenboim went to Gaza to conduct
a concert of Mozart there.
He said, "I am a Palestinian, and I am an Israeli." I hope Israel
won't arrest him for entering Gaza.
Many in the US are citing the killing of Osama bin Laden as a
reason for pulling out of Afghanistan.
The war in Afghanistan was never about bin Laden, so his death is not
a reason for the US to stop fighting there. However, removing the US
military from Afghanistan is the right thing to do, for other reasons.
If the US pulls out for a non-reason, at least that's
better than not pulling out.
Bahrain's tyrannical regime arrested
an opposition MP after he criticized the regime in an interview on
al Jazeera.
Colombian professor Miguel
Angel Beltrán was charged with "rebellion" because of his
published criticisms of the state.
If President Santos wants to show he is less horrible than former president
Alvaro Horrible, he should drop the charges against Beltrán.
In the Kyrgyz/Uzbek violence on Osh, part of Kyrgyzstan, the
Kyrgyzstan military was involved in attacking Uzbeks.
Syrian protesters and dissidents are being tortured
in prison.
The US under the Bush regime used Syria as a proxy for torture.
When Obama decided not to use a drone missile against Osama bin Laden,
he made an exception to a general practice of bombing in Pakistan that
has killed far more bystanders than targets.
The article is mistaken when it says that "no sane person would wish
any harm on American soldiers". If a Pakistani feels that way,
perhaps in response to the civilians killed by US attacks, that does
not make him insane. Fighting a guerrilla war against the US does not
make the Taliban insane. I condemned the Taliban's repressive
policies when they were in power, I condemn the Taliban's policy of
murdering civilians now, and I expect to continue to condemn the
Taliban when the US is no longer fighting them, but it is absurd to
call enemies "insane" for being enemies.
Mozilla rejected a request to remove an add-on that helps users access domains that the US attempts to shut down.
"Seizing" domains without first convicting their operators of a crime
is tyranny. Bravo, Mozilla, for helping the US to resist tyranny.
Some of these sites enable members of the public to share files
non-commercially. It's not clear whether those sites have committed a
crime in the US, and the US does not prosecute them. What is clear is
that, if there is a law that such a site violates, the injustice is in
the law, not in the site. The right to share must be respected.
Sharing is good; to forbid sharing is to attack society.
The Internet has given voice to Singapore's opposition, but people fear their votes will not be secret.
Ahmadinejad is trying to choose his own cabinet in defiance of Shah Khamenei, resulting in a power struggle within the Iranian regime's
secular and clerical parts.
Several associates of Berlusconi will go on trial for finding
prostitutes for him.
Whether or not Nicole Minetti was involved in finding prostitutes for
Berlusconi, he showed disrespect for Italy by giving her a political
post after meeting her in a situation that had nothing to do with
political ability.
Mass protests continue in Syria despite the killing of many protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tennessee is considering a law to ban middle schools from giving out any "material" that mentions the existence of homosexuality.
It does not seem to me that the law would punish students for talking about homosexuality, but it might censor their writing in class if other students are to read it.
Tornadoes cut the transmission lines from a nuclear power complex in Alabama, forcing it to shut down.
In this instance, the backup generators were undamaged, so we did not get another Fukushima disaster. I wonder what would have happened if the tornadoes had it the plant itself.
I also wonder whether the designers dismissed that danger as so unlikely that it was not worth taking precautions against.
When schools near the Fukushima reactors began to have radioactivity levels above the legal limit, Japan increased the limit.
I don't know whether the new limit is significantly dangerous. That may depend on how long this level of radioactivity is likely to last (which depends on how fast those isotopes decay or get transported elsewhere). However, dangerous or not, the decision making reflects a cavalier attitude.
Journalists and media in Sri Lanka face official censorship and
intimidation.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Finally, the Open Wireless Movement is being launched.
If you put a key on your wireless network, you become an enforcer in Big Brother's attempt to control and monitor all use of the Internet.
The US government has taken its attack on Wikileaks to a grand jury.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
If you know anyone in the Boston area computing community I suggest showing that person this article.
In Syria the suppression forces are arresting thousands of dissidents.
Uganda's protest leader speaks from the hospital in Kenya, where his eyes are being treated after the Ugandan police attacked him.
Gaddafi's forces are bombarding the port of Misrata to starve the city.
I don't understand why NATO does not establish better liaison with the rebels in Misrata. A few soldiers for liaison would not violate the UN resolution.
Stationing one firefinder radar system with crew in Misrata would make it easy to destroy Gaddafi's missile launchers and artillery.
If "America can do whatever we set our mind to", how about setting our mind to what the world really needs?
John Catt, inveterate UK protest participant, will sue the police for classifying him as a "domestic extremist" and systematically surveying him.
Here's more information about him and the police surveillance.
Child labor in Colombia has increased by 35% in just a few years.
The full cause may not be known, but right wing government is clearly part of it.
The US asked to write New Zealand's copyright law.
This good article would be clearer if the term "IP" were replaced everywhere by "copyright".
The term "intellectual property" spreads confusion because it lumps together a dozen unrelated laws, of which copyright is just one.
El Baradei called for a war crimes probe of Bush and his officials.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
A new mobile phone uses fingerprints for security.
If police or customs agents copy the data from that phone, they get the user's fingerprints automatically.
US citizens:
sign
this petition
for a big withdrawal of troops from
Afghanistan this summer.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the EPA
you support limitation of toxic mercury
emissions from coal power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: Tell India's prime minister to listen to protesters (instead of arresting them) and reconsider the planned new nuclear plant.
US citizens:
tell Hollywood
to stop greenwashing LA's sewage sludge.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
UK citizens: vote yes on AV.
US citizens: defend
the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The banksters are conspiring with Republicans to eliminate it
or make it to weak to do its job.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose HR 1229, HR 1230 and HR 1231, bills designed to clear away environmental protection and allow drilling regardless of danger.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also
sign
this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US government has proposed an excuse to arbitrarily deny any citizen a passport: an impossible questionnaire that hardly anyone could answer.
Oil companies are threatening to shut old wells in the UK to avoid an increase in tax.Shutting down some old wells that are almost exhausted won't make a large difference in the long term. The UK should not make long term concessions to this short-term threat.
10,000 people protested in London against unnecessary budget cuts.
Egypt will open the Rafah border crossing with Gaza.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
This appears to end the siege of Gaza, launched mainly by Israel but implemented with Egypt's help.
Guantanamo prisoners' lawyers are forbidden to read the leaked reports showing there is no evidence against there clients.This is to preserve the dishonesty of the legal process.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
When Obama declared Bradley Manning guilty, he denied Manning the possibility of a fair trial (supposing any military trial can be fair). Manning's judges will be soldiers under Obama's command, and they have now been explicitly told what verdict to issue.
Weeks ago, Uganda banned media coverage of protests which have since been attacked by police.
The US has finally killed Osama bin Laden. I don't consider his death any loss, but I don't expect this will do much harm to al Qa'ida. The only way this might have any important effect is psychologically: for instance, if al Qa'ida can use him as a martyr, or if Obama seizes this excuse to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. Greg Palast's book, Armed Madhouse, has the following joke.
So Osama walks into this bar, see, and George Bush says, "Whad'l'ya have, pardner?" and Osama says, "Well, George, what are you serving today?" and Bush says, "Fear," and Osama says, "Fear for everybody!" and George pours it on for the crowd. Then the presidential bartender says, "Hey, who's buying?" Osama points a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. "They are," he says — and the two of them share a quiet laugh.
Obama supports imprisonment without trial, pretending that the
prisoners in Guantanamo are dangerous terrorists. He could hardly not
have known that the supposed evidence against them is not even
credible.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Some Iraqi and US officials want U.S. troops to stay past
scheduled withdrawal date, but al Sadr is vetoing it.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Protests in Uganda have grown each time the police attacked peaceful protesters.
Police shot children and beat up journalists.
The government cannot make oil cheap — not sustain-ably — but it can respect people's human rights.
NATO's attempt to kill Gaddafi has provoked an international outcry. It can't be denied that Gaddafi is the head of one of the contending governments in Libya, and that this was an assassination attempt.
The current rules of war, as established by treaties, forbid assassination as a method. Some argue for changing this; some argue for assassination as a less violent substitute for war of armies against armies. I am not convinced, partly because I think assassination would be done in addition to war, not instead.
If we do change the rules of war, the change would apply to all the sides of a conflict. Should the rules of war allow the US try to kill Gaddafi? Should they allow Gaddafi's army try to kill Obama? It has to be both yes, or both no.
Green schemes are 'wide open to major corruption'.
Gaddafi's men are shelling randomly in Misrata, and tried to plant mines in the harbor.
Saudi Arabia has intensified media censorship rules.
I wonder what it means for events, being reported rather than carried out, to contradict Islamic law. Just what is prohibited by this rule? If a trial in the US gives a female witness equal importance to a male witness, is that news illegal to report in Saudi Arabia?
New Zealand's new anti-sharing law presumes people are guilty unless they can prove they are innocent.
Trashing basic principles of justice is standard practice for governments that serve the movie companies above their citizens. These companies' goal is to divide people; the means are evil, and the goal is evil too.
The latest proposal of US lunatic Christians is to require all
immigrants to convert to Christianity.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Others claim that teaching evolution encourages homosexuality (as if that were somehow bad).
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Hundreds of Syrian Baath party supporters have resigned in protest against Assad's killing of protesters.
Karzai's accounting is so bad that there is no way of telling
how many policemen there are in the Afghan National Police.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Austria is caving to the EU and implementing a directive to record information about people's phone calls and Internet contacts.
A UK company offered Mubarak's regime proprietary software to attack dissident's computers and accounts, and tap their communications using other proprietary software.
Guantanamo prison wardens accuse Shaker Aamer of practicing "counter-interrogation", and leading other prisoners in resistance such as hunger strikes and suicide attempts.
Whatever he may have done in Afghanistan, his response to imprisonment sounds admirable. His influence over other prisoners, if it really exists outside the guards' imagination, can't be due to gang violence as it might be in an ordinary prison. It could only come from moral leadership.
"Counter-Interrogation" must refer to something like the way The Prisoner dealt with Number 2.
China's population growth has become less than expected, leading to lower predictions of energy use and carbon emissions.
The reductions are not enough to make Earth safe, but they show that efforts to reduce population growth, worldwide, can be of great help in saving Earth from global heating.
Low birth rates might cause a decrease in human population over the 21st century, which would be a good thing for sustain-ability and ending poverty. By the end of the century we should be able to greatly extend human life span, so the population will start rising again; but we will have more advanced technology to cope with the consequences of that rise.
Facebook has mysteriously closed several pages of anti-budget-cut activists in the UK.
Some brave British Muslim women publicly oppose the usual misogynist variety of Islam.
A Wikileaks cable confirms that public opposition blocked Canada's nasty copyright bill in 2008.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the term "intellectual property issues", since that term lumps copyright law together with a dozen unrelated disparate laws.
Perhaps he was quoting from the cable, but he didn't write it as a direct quotation so he did not have to use these words. And if it had been a direct quotation, the term's misguided view calls for rebuttal as I'm doing here.
Every aspect of the New Orleans "justice system" is designed for systematic injustice towards the innocent.
The US and NATO hand over prisoners for Afghanistan to torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The major carbon-emitting states are nowhere near making an agreement to cut carbon emissions.
They intend to continue fiddling as Earth burns.
US corporations can now tell their employees who to vote for.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
They cannot (yet) verify that the employees obeyed.
UK police once again attacked peaceful protesters in Bristol.
The police say some protesters started it by throwing stones, but even if that is true. it doesn't excuse the police for attacking people indiscriminately.
Israel's Labor head called on the UN to insist a Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and accept past agreements with Israel.
That might be a legitimate demand, if suitable demands are applied to Israel as well, such as to start removing its colonies in Palestinian territory.
Martelly-Clinton Seal Deal for Next Wave of Disaster Capitalism in Haiti.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The San Francisco Chronicle faces US retribution for posting a video of a protest in an Obama fund-raiser.
US states encounter difficulty in obtaining drugs to use for executions
because foreign manufacturers refuse to supply them.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel used force against nonviolent protests in the West Bank.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Just before the royal wedding, UK police raided several squats and preemptively arrested people who might have wanted to protest.
The police deny this was related to the wedding, and give various other excuses. Likewise, China said Ai Weiwei was arrested for "economic crimes" and not for political activity.
However, given that the police announced they would make preemptive arrests, we must conclude that that's what these are.
They also arrested people who were making a "zombie wedding" video (and were nowhere near the wedding).
A Palestinian unity government will create an opportunity for a peace
agreement.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Bahraini Shi'ites have been sentenced to death for killing policemen, after a bogus trial with no defense lawyers.
Even supposing they did it — they may not even have been protesters, let alone attackers — I can't blame protesters for killing police while police were killing protesters.
US citizens: Tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, don't rubber-stamp reactor licenses!
Uri Avnery: Palestinian unity offers Israel the chance to make peace with all Palestinians, if it will start by carrying out the agreements it has already signed.
Author Paulo Coelho condemns the War on Sharing.
The US Supreme Court
gave
businesses power
to impose arbitration
contracts on customers, effectively denying them justice.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Gaddafi's son and some grandsons were killed
by a NATO bomb
apparently aimed at Gaddafi himself.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Gaddafi is not trustworthy in general, but I don't think this is a lie. I don't see any plausible scenario where this lie would fit and stand up. Nor is it plausible he would carry out a false flag attack against his own progeny. So I believe this report. It seems NATO is trying to assassinate him.
Foxconn says: if workers making Apple products work long hours, that's their choice because their regular pay is so low.
The United Arab Emirates have arrested human rights activists for posting political messages on the Internet.
The accusations against these people convict the government of tyranny.
Irina Khalip, journalist and wife of arrested presidential candidate Sannikov, is being held incommunicado in her home, and is threatened with imprisonment.
A resident of Deraa, in Syria, says that soldiers shoot anyone that goes outdoors, and they are running out of food.
US citizens: sign this petition to cut subsidies to oil companies.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, end subsidies and tax credits for oil companies.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Also
sign
this petition.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Facebook not to support Chinese censorship.
US citizens: sign this petition
supporting a requirement for corporations
that have government contracts to disclose all political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: sign the ACLU's petition to major Internet companies to protect users' privacy and legal rights.
Israel says it will not continue piece talks with a Palestinian unity government.
The piece talks have been mere theater — giving Israel cover as it grabs more pieces of the West Bank. But the Palestinian Authority refused last year to continue the theater any longer. It appears Israel has switched to a different kind of theater, "rejecting" talks that were not in the cards anyway. I think this means Israel expects international pressure to make peace and is planning in advance to reject it.
Westerners should
avoid assuming that all dissidents in Iran
share one goal or one political view.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The new Tea Party congresscritters have been bought by the banksters lickety split.
Both
Republicans and Democrats endanger health care by blaming high
medical costs on Medicare and Medicaid.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
The real culprit is the cost of supporting private insurance companies.
Vermont is close to legislating universal single-payer health care.
A man accused of releasing The Black Swan on the net has been raided by the police, and could face years in prison for sharing.
Possession of a cheap Casio watch was interpreted in Guantanamo as evidence that someone was a terrorist.
In the US today, chemistry sets come without any chemicals.
Microsoft collects location data from Windows phones, too.
Tibetans held a vigil at a monestary, and
Chinese police broke their
arms and legs; two of them died. This is "to protect religious freedom".
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thomas Tamm, who told the public in 2004, about illegal US government wiretapping (since legalized by legislators who hate our freedoms), will not be prosecuted.
Republicans in the US actively campaign against efforts to end the
bullying of gay students in school.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The UK has accused several protesters of exaggerated crimes in an attempt to intimidate dissidents.
Nauru, a state of low-lying islands that could be inundated due to global heating, hopes to use the Alliance of Small Island States to confront the larger nations that are busy destroying it.
Iran's President Ahmadinejad and Shah Khamanei seem to be in a power struggle.
Although I am not an expert, it seems to be that Khamanei has the real power. I think Ahmadinejad is trying to see how long his chain is, and now he has the answer.
A method of genetic engineering now being tested could make mosquitos stop biting humans.
To completely eliminate mosquitos, as is also proposed, would be an insane ecological risk. Many amimals eat mosquitos and could be wiped out too. The kind of experiments they are talking about would not be sufficient to measure the danger of this.
Egypt brokered a tentative peace between Fatah and Hamas which could lead to another Palestinian election.
I condemn Hamas's Islamist ideology, but Palestinians cannot have democracy by excluding a party that many Palestinians support.
There is no reason for Fatah to care what the Israeli government or the US government says or thinks about this. As Uri Avnery has explained, Netanyahu's "peace negotiations" are an intentional dead end, meant as a cover for a continuing land grab. Netanyahu's terms for peace are that if Palestinians concede everything, then Israel will give them nothing. Thus, the real choice for Fatah is peace with Hamas or nothing.
Hamas's election victory came after Fatah (which is secular) had been weakened by many years of uselessly begging Israel for peace. It has ceased to do that, so Hamas may lose some of its appeal. The success of secular resistance to dictatorship in several Arab countries, and the strength it has demonstrated in others, might show Palestinians that Islamism is not the only path that could possibly win them justice.
Massive protests convinced the French government to reconsider its decision to allow fracking.
An opposition presidential candidate is on trial in Belarus, threatened with 15 years in prison if the state says he is guilty.
If Sannikov had really received only 2.5 percent of the vote, why bother putting him on trial? It would be more effective to ignore him.
Egypt's ex-interior minister is on trial for ordering the shooting of protesters.
Women in Bangladesh are challenging the power of Islamists by supporting full implementation of a general law giving women equal rights. If that law is implemented, Bangladesh will do the US one better.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A newspaper in Belarus defies the dictator's orders to shut it down.
Why the US and NATO Fed Detainees to Afghan Torture System.
BP continues getting big government contracts even no-bid noncompetitive contracts.
Israel arrested Palestinian writer Ahmad Qatamesh after taking several family members hostage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The plan appears to be to hold him without trial as a political prisoner.
Right-wing fanatics in Israel are trying to crush academic freedom. They especially target events about "democracy" and "human rights".
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Famous brands say they require factories to treat labor decently, but it's all a lie: sweatshop labor conditions are getting worse.
The mothers of Colombian youths murdered by the army still demand justice and receive death threats instead.
A homeless Connecticut woman is threatened with 20 years in prison for registering her son in a public school in a neighboring city.
Government doctors in Guantanamo hid evidence of torture.
Wikileaks cables say that drug gangs have taken over large parts of Central America and are removing US-supplied heavy weapons from military arsenals.
Gaddafi has found ways to bypass the porous and incomplete sanctions.
In Bureaucratic Brazil, orders to demolish slums were executed even though the inhabitants were still there.
This is all for the sake of the Olympic Games, which are like an artificial disaster for whatever city they occur in.
In occupied Palestine, similar things are done from malice.
Suggestion: the outside world can support the labor movement in Iran.
Uganda may relax a death sentence for homosexual activity to mere life imprisonment.
Sai Baba invalidated his prophesy by dying before he said he would.
But his wrongs went far beyond that.
All the evidence against 255 Guantanamo prison came from just 8 prisoners, whose testimony is thought to be untrustworthy (in some cases because they were tortured).
Accusations of fraud in the Haitian elections are being investigated.
Fraud would not surprise me, though I wonder if the investigation can be trusted. But what was really wrong in the Haitian elections was the exclusion of Fanmi Lavalas and President Aristide.
Syria is now using tanks against the protesters, and has arrested and killed hundreds.
Sri Lanka will be allowed to veto a UN investigation into its war crimes.
BP had a blowout in 2008 that almost resembled the 2009 Big Spill. Because this was in Azerbaijan, BP kept it secret and was able to continue the same risky methods.
The Guantanamo prison command considered Pakistan's intelligence agency as a terrorist group. If a suspect had ties with ISI, that was considered equivalent to ties with al Qa'ida.
I can't criticize that policy. ISI has long been known to have ties with al Qa'ida, and it would be foolish to disregard this.
The injustice of Guantanamo lies in of imprisoning people without trial. Having suspicions is not an injustice.
The Libyan rebels are planting antivehicle mines and failing to keep track of them for future demining.
I don't think antivehicle mines are inherently an outrage.
The labor movement worldwide calls
for an end to repression in Bahrain.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thousands of Pakistanis blocked NATO's main supply route as a protest against drone attacks in Pakistan.
Obama's attempt to distinguish Bradley Manning from Daniel Ellsberg got
the facts completely backwards.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Many religious schools in the UK fail to challenge bigotry and bullying.
It amazes me that bullying so often goes as far as death threats. Things seem to have changed a lot since I was young; bullies bothered me but never threatened to kill me. Saying "sticks and stones will break my bones" is not enough, apparently, to deal with this.
What we have learned from the leaked Guantanamo files.
The US government tries to justify torture and injustice in the name of protecting Americans. Don't you dare torture in my name!
The US government argues for keeping innocent people in prison because if freed they might seek revenge for their imprisonment. How would you feel if a callous government kept you in prison because it had done you an injustice? That is the behavior of a monstrous juggernaut that needs to be stopped.
If you have done someone a great wrong, and you don't want him to seek revenge, you ought to give him a very humble apology, together with a convincing demonstration that you won't do such things any more. Show you have learned your lesson. That is what the US must do.
Dalit students complain that their teachers force them to clean toilets and won't mark their work.
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say to oppose the War on Women (rights of abortion and birth control). Also sign this petition.
US citizens: tell Congress, raise
taxes on corporations rather than cutting social spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
A scientific paper reporting apparent evidence of precognition was published and then drew widespread media coverage. A repetition of the study, which found no sign of precognition, was refused publication.
Misrata is defended by thousands of citizens who took up arms to resist Gaddafi's attack.
Rebels in Benghazi talk about how the protests turned into a rebellion after Gaddafi's men shot protesters.
The situation in Libya has not yet reached a clear stalemate. Gaddafi's troops continue attacking because they still think they can win (whether or not they really can). If they become certain they cannot win, that they can never again dominate Libya and profit from its oil, that's when many of them will look for a way to get out.
Feathers from the endangered black-footed albatross demonstrate
mercury pollution from human activity, and this could be one of the
factors driving that bird towards extinction.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Dropbox says it will decrypt users' files for the government, which means they must have been lying when they said they couldn't decrypt users' files.
The article's first paragraph states misguided judgments and irrelevancies. It makes no difference how "passionate" their team is; what matters is how they treat their users. This service is not a product. No product or service can be "great" if it implements surveillance.
However, that doesn't invalidate the main points of the article. If you're going to use Dropbox, you should encrypt the files first on your own machine.
The UK needs to charge for water use, as high temperatures make water scarce. But the system needs to be designed not to crush the poor.
If the Conservative Party wins in Canada, and imposes Internet
censorship, the Pirate Party of Canada will offer VPN service for
Canadians to evade censorship.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Mukhtar Mai was gang-raped as a punishment for her brother. She became a women's rights campaigner and prosecuted her attackers. Most of them were freed on appeal, and now she is afraid they will kill her.
There have been mass protests in Casablanca for more democracy.
Two Syrian members of parliament resigned because of Assad's repeated massacres of protesters.
His forces shot 100 people at the funerals of others they had shot.
Given how much popular support Assad still reportedly has, despite repression, he could allow dissidents to freely express their views and still remain in power.
Five crucial questions for evaluating nuclear power.
If an oil well in the Arctic explodes, it might be impossible to cap the well and impossible to contain the oil.
Wikileaks files from Guantanamo show people were held prisoner with no evidence of guilt — in some cases, without even a suspicion!
An al-Jazeera journalist was held for interrogation about al-Jazeera.
"If you could only know what we can know, you would understand that what we are doing is right," they said, but now we know for certain it was thoroughly wrong.
Correction: The Guardian subsequently said that these files did not come from Wikileaks.
Peter Wilmshurst, MD., has apparently been saved from a bankrupting UK libel suit because the company whose medical devices he criticized has gone out of business.
I hope it is true that he is now safe, and not just a surmise. Can the creditors take up the libel suit as an "asset" of the failed company?
Robert Frost's heirs damaged his legacy by refusing to let composer Eric Whitacre publish his setting of a Frost poem.
Eric commissioned another poet to write words for the piece. In resentment, he says he will never publish it with Frost's words.
Michigan has effectively abolished the local government of a city. And all the public school teachers in Detroit have been fired.
The concrete structure over the ruins of the exploded Chernobyl reactor is just an interim step — the cleanup is just beginning.
UK police raided a squat in Bristol, triggering a protest. During the protest they ran amok, attacking protesters and passers-by at random.
Meanwhile the protest developed into a riot. I can't tell from the information in this article whether the police brutality was a reaction to the riot or its cause.
I don't see anything very bad about another Tesco convenience store. It would be better if it were independent, not part of a large chain, to increase competition and reduce concentration of wealth. But I would not feel like protesting such a store. It's the police that deserve to be protested.
The police accused the squatters of making "petrol bombs". The squatters deny those charges, and say they were not even part of the opposition to the Tesco store.
Is there any physical difference between petrol bombs "assembled" for use at a later time, and a collection of beverage bottles to be recycled? Anyway, the accusation seems implausible. Given how easy it is to break store windows, why would anyone plan to commit arson instead? Police are not known for scrupulous adherence to the truth.
Based on prior patterns, I predict that people who smashed the Tesco store windows will be sentenced to prison, while police that attacked and injured bystanders will not be prosecuted.
Japan limits public information about the Fukushima disaster. Most press conferences include only the major Japanese corporate media, which repeat what they are told and ask no probing questions. Moreover, there are new threats of censorship of others that publish "illegal information".
Various groups of armed supporters of President Ouattara began fighting in Ivory Coast.
This suggests those forces are simply a coalition of militias belonging to warlords, like the one that constituted the "government" of Afghanistan after the US kicked out the Taliban.
Yemenite Protesters rejected Saleh's plan to step down and for his deputy to preside over elections and the writing of a new constitution.
I would guess they don't trust that deputy. Also, they say they want to prosecute President Saleh; but Saleh could make that impossible by fleeing if he so desires.
Trolls are fooling jittery Chinese censors and police to arrest innocent people, block nonpolitical web sites, and so on.
This raises a nice ethical question: is it ethical to say there will be a protest at XYZ Square and cause some people strolling there to get arrested?
It has the effect of hurting innocent people, but the harm is done by the agents of tyranny, and nothing except their tyrannical goals requires them to do it. My conclusion is that if the people are only arrested, not maimed or killed, it is ethical.
European music publishers shut down the IMSLP public domain music score library with a bogus copyright claim.
That their claim was bogus made no difference because there was no trial.
Go-Daddy has participated in a number of denial of service attacks, and it seems that people should refuse to do business with it. But that will not deal with the underlying problem: that use of the Internet is precarious and anyone can be kicked off by intimidation.
Obama justifies prosecuting Bradley Manning based on an erroneous comparison with Daniel Ellsberg.
Facebook deleted a photo of two men kissing, which was used to support a kiss-in in a pub that had shown bias against gays.
The person who posted it thinks that Facebook is not anti-gay, but rather than it is quick to censor whatever someone complains about.
While it might seem that the former would be worse, I think the latter makes facebook really dangerous. Don't use Facebook as a substitute for your own web site!
Human numbers and global warming are endangering well-known migratory birds.
60 prominent Israeli intellectuals and artists have signed a call
to recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US continues to hamper democracy in many Arab countries,
but Saudi Arabia is at the heart of the repression.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Arab world faces catastrophic food shortages, with the population growing and aquifers being emptied.
This is a glimpse of what the whole world is heading for, a few decades from now, if we don't cut the birth rate further.
Remember that global warming will turn some inhabited areas into deserts.
Watch out for the medical insurance companies' new front group.
A Wisconsin railroad company is accused of making illegal veiled campaign contributions to Governor Walker, and it appears his campaign knew about it.
In Syria, President Assad lifted the emergency law and recognized a theoretical right to protest. But dozens of real protesters were shot.
Two Peruvian reporters say they were fired from a TV channel for refusing to slant the news in favor of the right-wing candidate.
Police looked aside as right-wingers drowned out rally in Tel Aviv for ending the occupation of Palestine.
Bahrain is now persecuting Shi'ites in many professions. A thousand people have been arrested.
It seems to me that the US has a responsibility to move its fleet on its own initiative.
US citizens: tell Senator Durbin not to consider cuts in Social Security.
[Reference updated on 2018-05-15 because the old link was broken.]
Congress is considering
a law to remove the dangerous loopholes in regulation of oil and
gas drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
How Tobacco companies use philanthropy as strategic PR to continue harmful practices.
The Gates foundation can be understood in the same light, as Microsoft PR, especially when it "donates" computers that run Windows.
American exceptionalism: how the US was exceptionally lucky, and is now exceptionally stupid. Now the US is #1 in many social problems.
"To aspire to the western model in Asia is a deadly lie."
The article's point is that rather than directing growth into an expanding middle class, with the false promise that everyone will get to join it later, Asian countries must direct some of the increase in wealth to reducing the poverty of the poor.
They must also work hard to reduce births.
Android also saves past location data, though if you're moving around the history buffer may get reused soon.
I wonder whether the code that does this is visible in the free source code of Android, and whether users have posted a patch to fix it.
The US will use drones in Libya.
This does not violate the UN resolution, but unless it is controlled in close coordination with the rebels, it creates a risk of hitting them, or civilians.
The Antarctic ozone hole could be changing the climate in parts of the Southern hemisphere — including parts of Australia which have seen disastrous floods in the past year.
The IMF "bailout" for Portugal is marginally less draconian than what
the EU offered, but it is still a disaster for
everyone that isn't rich.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Prenatal exposure to certain pesticides has
been linked to brain damage.
[Reference updated on 2018-02-15 because the old link was broken.]
Tortured Iranian protesters who sought asylum in the UK are on hunger strike because the UK plans to send them back to Iran.
The murder of Juliano Mer-Khamis, founder of the Freedom Theater in Jenin, may have been motivated by the hatred of religious prudes.
The defenders of Misrata are citizens who took up arms against an army. They are barely holding out.
With 1000 people killed by Gaddafi's shelling, and snipers who shoot at anyone they can see, it is clear that attacking Gaddafi's army is authorized by the UN resolution that called for protecting civilians.
The iPhone file that records all its movements permanently gets even more sinister when combined with the practice of police to search portable phones without warrants.
The telephone network tracks phones regardless of whether they record locations, and for me that is enough reason not to carry one. But it takes a warrant (I think) to collect that information.
Colombia's "paramilitaries", really right-wing gangs of extortionists, are still operating in 1/3 of the country, despite having been formally "demobilized".
Former president Alvaro Horrible claimed to have demobilized them, but some of his close associates were connected with them. It was also Horrible who negotiated the proposed Free Exploitation Treaty than Obama now wants to ratify.
A company is trying to use the US-Peru Free Exploitation Treaty to evade pollution laws.
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