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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.
US citizens: call on the EPA to require clean water in all US waterways.
In the US, real guns are made specially for children, and at least one child has been killed with one.
I would not suggest legal restrictions specifically to prevent a danger of such small magnitude, but it is adds to the pile of evidence that having a gun in your home is more likely to kill you than protect you.
Combining prisons in the UK will make them cheaper, but it is a false economy.
False economy tends to result when governments fail to consider social investment as consumption rather than as investment.
Colombian farmers have blocked roads as a protest against the president, and he sent soldiers as well as thugs against them.
Wisconsin's voter-ID law has been ruled unconstitutional. However, this is not a final ruling.
Senator Leahy
will block
funds for the Egyptian military.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: thank former US President Carter
for taking
a clear stand against Keystone XL and the Koch brothers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Spain to proceed with prosecution of US torturers.
The thugs in many cities in Eastern Ukraine are supporting Putin, because Putin pays thugs better. Naturally, a tyrant would do that.
The thugs allowed Putin's supporters to club pro-Ukraine protesters.
Capitalism in North Korea uses military conscripts as coal miners.
The example of China has demonstrated since the 90s that capitalism will not bring freedom to a former Communist country. Now the example of North Korea shows that it does not even necessarily put a limit on the general level of oppression.
Children near some French farms show past exposure to toxic pesticides, some of them banned.
A US court ordered Microsoft to hand over personal data from a server in Ireland.
If the appeal sustains this decision, the next question will be what Ireland or the EU will do to enforce their data protection laws.
I've warned people outside the US not to give any personal data to US companies.
In 2002, the US missed a chance to make peace in Afghanistan.
It missed a previous chance in 2001, when the Taliban offered to kick out al Qa'ida for the sake of peace with the US.
Something about the way almond trees are now cultivated in California has started killing 20% of the bees brought there to pollinate them.
It's not clear what is causing it, but it might be mixes of chemicals uses in pesticides.
The extractivist government of Australia wants to ban environmental groups from calling for boycotts of companies, while calling for a boycott of Ben and Jerry's for trying to raise awareness of the danger.
Governments, following the example of corporations, are becoming shameless liars, hoping to drown out the truth. And it's not just tyrants like Putin that do this.
US citizens: call on the SEC to require publicly traded companies to disclose political campaign spending.
The Senate has backed off from its plan to impose a tiny bit of transparency on Obama's drone assassination campaign.
Israeli teenagers and Palestinian teenagers, when accused of throwing stones, are treated very differently.
The "Science Media Center" is a business-funded PR group, currently working for the GMO industry but pretending to be "independent".
Prosecution of Occupy activists is the last stage in the US clampdown on the right to protest. Many protesters are bullied into pleading guilty to escape a threatened many-year prison term; then they are given long probation terms which ban them from participating in a protest.
The thugs that attack and frame protesters are the scum of the Earth. Only some thugs will attack protesters violently, but nearly all of them will lie to help cover it up. Police lie in court so frequently (they call it "testilying") that they have become accustomed to it; they don't feel nervous, so you might think they are telling the truth. Don't be fooled. If you are ever on a jury, don't believe a thug's testimony about a protester.
The sanctions on Russia are too weak to bother Putin.
The UN must be less cautious about delivering humanitarian aid to besieged Syrians.
UK prisons have banned steel-string guitars, as part of the same massive dose of irrational strictness that banned giving prisoners books.
As a result, 350 steel-string guitars donated to prisons to encourage rehabilitation can no longer do that.
In Greece and in the UK, politicians trumpet a "recovery" that is fictional.
The fiction is even deeper than what the article says. Even per-capita GDP is no measure of how well off the non-rich are in a country. It is skewed by the rising incomes of the rich.
The UK's Food and Environment Research Agency is threatened with privatization, which would mean a chance to corrupt it directly.
I can think of some companies that would like to invest in FERA's research into the effects of pesticides.
Resistance to business power in technical fields has been undermined by cyberlibertarianism, a blind faith that technology will correct injustices.
Big US "fast food" companies have the biggest gap between CEO pay and workers' pay, and they fund the National Restaurant Association to lobby against raising the minimum wage.
Follow the Honey: 7 Ways Pesticide Companies Are Spinning the Bee Crisis.
10 years after the public learned that the US government was committing torture, the government has shifted from denying it to endorsing it and protecting torturers.
The US has a legal obligation and a moral duty to prosecute those responsible for torture, from Dubya on down.
2000 Americans protested against plutocracy at the US Capitol building.
Alas, that is not very many people. If we could get 200,000 to protest, repeatedly, we might have more effect.
Anti-nuclear protesters convinced the government of Taiwan to halt construction of two nuclear power plants.
Iraqi suicide bombers (al-Qa'ida, I presume) attacked polling places to try to disrupt the election.
The gag order on Barrett Brown's lawyer has been dropped, so he has explained the dishonesty of the charges against Brown.
The UK plans to punish the unemployed by making them visit a jobcenter each day, pretending that this is help for them.
China Must Release Ilham Tohti Now.
Inequality Hurts Everyone Apart From the Super-Rich.
It has been clear since the 80s that trickle-down is a sucker's tale: letting the rich get a bigger share may enable them to increase total production, but they keep the increase for themselves; in fact, nothing trickles down. But now it appears that the growing inequality reduces growth too.
An anti-Russian politician in Eastern Ukraine was shot by a sniper and may die of it.
An Egyptian court has convicted 683 members of the Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced them to death after a one-sided trial (no defense possible).
Kerry has started to put verbal pressure on Israel to make peace.
It is not much, but it is a start. Defying the Israeli hawks' lobby is the only way to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine.
China has published 1940s documents that prove the Japanese army forced Korean women to be prostitutes for Japanese soldiers in China.
Many nations have atrocities in their history — Japan is not uniquely bad. (The US has quite a few.) Nations that deny their atrocities get twisted up in a net of lies that prepares them to commit more atrocities.
The drought in California
is forcing
ranchers to move lots of cattle out of that state.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Global heating is expected to cause more and worse droughts there and in the US southwest.
The folly and impudence of the fossil fuel industry knows no bounds. Some are looking for ways to extract and burn undersea methane hydrates.
Methane hydrates under the land or sea are tremendously dangerous, since global heating causes them to leak into the air, where the methane becomes a powerful greenhouse gas. This is one of the positive feedback cycles that could accelerate global heating,
It is pointless to consider using them, since the known fossil fuel reserves are five times what we dare burn. Meanwhile, messing with the deposits in any way could easily make more methane leak out (as fracking already does).
I suspect that fossil fuel industry funding or lobbying is behind these studies.
A campaigner says that the forced closure of brothels in London was the last step in converting London into another Monaco.
Some of the rich absentee owners might spend more time and money in London if the brothels were still there.
How to Disappear a Mentally Ill Grandmother: Throw Her in Solitary.
US citizens: call on Obama
to stop
prosecuting whistleblowers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The workers in London's big subway project are afraid they will be fired if they report injuries at work.
The UK's privatized public schools are deregulated in regard to students' nutrition.
As Mark Molner was driving home, thugs stopped him and one approached him with a drawn pistol, because a license plate reader had misread his car's license plate.
I don't see a scandal in what the thugs did in this case. Once the system said the car was stolen, they had to try to stop it and arrest the putative thief. We can hardly demand that license plate readers have a 0% error rate either.
What does strike me as scandalous is the idea of a "felony car stop" that involves pointing guns at the driver by default (without reason to think he is armed and dangerous). Innocent people have been killed that way.
I don't object to using license plate readers to detect cars that appear to be stolen or in some other way deserving of being stopped. The scandal is when they save data about cars that do not deserve to be stopped.
Economics of Disintegration in Ukraine.
Five Ways American Policies Make Us Lonely, Anxious, and Antisocial.
South Carolina has proposed to extend "stand your ground" to include killing anyone you believe threatens your fetus's health.
This is just what pregnant prisoners need, to justify killing prison guards that deny them prenatal care.
A mass die-off of starfish off the US Pacific Coast threatens chaos for the the marine ecosystem, and it could happen in the Caribbean too.
US thug departments have obtained equipment for tracking cell phones under a nondisclosure agreement in which they conceal from courts that they are using the equipment.
Iraqi planes attacked people in Syria, accused of being Islamist extremists. Some of those are allied with al Qa'ida in Iraq.
A theory of what Putin aims to achieve in Ukraine.
I think the article's points are valid, except at the end where it asserts that this crisis is "primarily a domestic one" in Ukraine. The conquest of the Crimea is not a domestic issue, nor is the presence of Russia-organized militias in other parts of Ukraine, nor Putin's repeated threats to use those provocations as excuses to invade Ukraine again.
Some Afghan officials say the US is running
secret
prisons in Bagram.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A Russian militia leader in Eastern Ukraine gave an interview, saying he is in the Russian Army and the invasion was organized from outside the region.
Decades of right-wing policies have made the "American dream" a pipedream.
People in Western Sahara call for tourists to boycott Morocco.
US citizens: tell the US
government, don't
allow oil drilling in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Once upon a time, the US desegregated public schools, but segregation and racial inequality have been allowed to come back.
Russia is setting up US-style total surveillance of the Internet.
Obama regime trade negotiators keep moving back and forth between government and the copyright industry.
I disagree with the author on one point. I think these officials, like their boss the US Trade Representative and his boss Obama, are constantly aware that their future careers depend on pleasing certain companies. I don't suppose that they feel any qualms of conscience; they probably think that boosting those companies is serving their country; they may identify those companies with their country.
The author helps them, perhaps unknowingly, by repeating their propaganda terms such as "intellectual property" and "protection".
Britons: sign this petition against selling UK tax data.
"Anonymous" data is no protection; it is often possible to deanonymize.
Two towns in California
are trying
out constant aerial video surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Supposedly this is ok because the towns already have cameras giving immediate view of their streets.
Rice in China often comes with high levels of cadmium, arsenic and lead.
Cadmium is a persistent toxin, so even tiny doses can accumulate to kill you.
The Obama regime launched its annual campaign for press freedom, while asking the Supreme Court to imprison US journalist James Risen.
The NRA has launched a massive campaign for traditional American values, the point being apparently that you're un-American if you're not ready to shoot people at any time and place.
How about traditional American values such as "If you're willing to work, you can get by", and "Support the underdog (not-rich person)"?
US citizens: call for stronger measures to protect endangered manatees.
From now on, if the US government gets its way, all national security news will be authorized announcements. Journalism is forbidden, only government PR is allowed.
In One City, Columbus Day Now 'Indigenous Peoples Day'.
In the US, disabled children are "taught" with electric shocks as punishment.
Privatized prisons are purchasing tough new laws to keep people in prison for longer.
Penguins' survival is threatened by human activities such as CO2 emissions and overfishing.
While I loathe the error of using Tux the penguin as a symbol for the GNU operating system (which typically goes with the error of calling the system "Linux"), I don't hold this against real penguins.
Mexico is considering a bill to attack internet freedoms.
US citizens:
call on Obama
to maintain funding for nuclear security initiatives.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the FCC to uphold net neutrality and declare ISPs a telecommunications service.
The "sharing economy" is an attempt to commercialize or marketize yet another part of society.
It's easy to break the security of digital medical equipment in hospitals.
The article uses the word "hack" to mean "break security". To avoid insulting us hackers, please call that "cracking".
The software in these devices is generally nonfree. In addition, some of it can be altered remotely, making it malware.
Why We Need Online Alter Egos Now More Than Ever.
To protect freedom of speech from government repression, such as Putin is now setting up in Russia, we must be able to use pseudonyms without telling the site our official names.
The US investigation of the radiation leak at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, that was supposed to never leak, says there were pervasive management problems as well as physical problems. But it fails to address some important questions.
Scathing Report Finds School Privatization Hurt Poor [US] Kids.
Modern privatization schemes are designed to label the public schools where lots of poor children go as "failing" as an excuse to privatize them.
It is interesting how the "Rocketship" privatized schools are a nonprofit front for a proprietary software company, whose software, in addition to being an injustice, does not even seem to do any good.
Despite Community Pleas, Three Chicago Schools Slated for Privatization.
The Russian-directed Ukrainian separatists captured a team of EU observers.
Simon Ostrovsky says they tortured him, and he saw several other civilian prisoners there.
Russia is systematically imposing control over all internet use.
The National Research Council concludes that the US is not prepared to cope with an oil spill from Arctic Ocean drilling.
Humanity has only one chance to avoid global heating disaster. We can't afford to fail this test. Fortunately there is a straightforward solution if only the fossil fuel lobbyists don't stop us.
Another reason not to support Hillary Clinton for president (or anything): she parrots the Obama/NSA line about Snowden.
As we understand, that's a coded way of taking the spies' side against the public. According to them, the only legitimate response to government crimes is one that won't do any good. Clinton has made it clear that she will continue Obama's War on Whistleblowers.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Holder to intervene against Ohio's voter suppression.
Verizon plans to link its tracking of customers' browsing with those same people's other Internet activities from other computers.
The description of how this will work is garbled; can anyone show me a technically clear explanation?
In any case, I think it is unacceptable for an ISP to track customers' browsing at all.
The article makes a bad surrender when it legitimizes the surveillance of Google and Yahoo on the grounds that they offer "cool [gratis] services". This is tantamount to accepting that we should all sell our privacy.
The Israeli right wing rejects even the word "peace" in regard to Palestine. Its substitute, "political settlement", suggests something more like a permanent? truce.
If you have wondered why I adamantly insist on talking about "free software" and reject the term "open source", it's the same sort of issue. If you want peace, you must say "peace". If you want freedom, you must say "freedom".
There are many abandoned uranium mines in the US, and some of them are
leaking
noticeable levels of fallout into water supplies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine, watch out for western frackers!
US citizens:
tell
Obama, don't let CIA censor the report on CIA torture.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Duke Energy to reveal its contributions to the campaigns of its employee/state governor in North Carolina.
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve the Endangered Species Act.
Microsoft's remote storage disservice, OneDrive, has been caught inserting modifications into code in some of the files users store there.
Although this has not been reported about any other remote storage disservice, any of them could start doing this, which means you would be a fool to trust them with anything other than checksummed files.
All of these disservices spy on their users, and that is plenty of reason to reject them, for anything other than encrypted (and checksummed) files. In order for the encryption to be trustworthy, you need to do it on your own computer with free software.
Services provided by network servers can raise several different ethical issues, including nonfree client-side JavaScript (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html), surveillance (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html), and SaaSS (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html). Whether any of these problems applies depends on the facts.
The purpose of the marketing buzzword "cloud" is to encourage you to disregard the facts and not judge. Don't let them "cloud" your mind: reject the term "cloud".
Indigenous people demanding a cleanup of pollution have occupied an oil field in the Peruvian Amazon.
Kenya will deploy 60 drones to catch poachers of elephants and rhinos.
China has decided to adopt tough measures against pollution. The tough part will be overcoming corruption in order to enforce the requirements.
The UN calls on Qatar to abolish its system that treats foreign workers almost as slaves.
A US-Japan negotiation meeting about the TPP failed to reach agreement, but the damned thing is not dead yet.
Tony B'liar continues to call for intervention in support of Arab tyrants.
ALEC is attacking the environment on many fronts.
For legal reasons ALEC says that it does not track where its proposed bills are introduced, but leaks prove that it really does so.
This article, from 2011, claimed that the US and Saudi Arabia planned years ago to build up Syrian Sunni extremists as a way to overthrow Assad and defeat Hezbollah, and thus weaken Iran. And that they started implementing this plan once Mubarak was overthrown.
I don't know how we could prove this, but subsequent events seem to confirm it. In other words, the US is responsible for building up jihadists that are that now allied to al Qa'ida.
By stirring up a civil war as Syrians were protesting peacefully, the US made itself responsible for all the horrors of the Syrian civil war. Surely the US and Saudi Arabia expected the war to be over quickly and not lead to these horrors. But plans sometimes go wrong, and when you start a war, you're responsible for the consequences, even if it doesn't end the way you expected.
Whistleblower Peter Van Buren had to work as a temp in a "Bullseye" store (Target?) because government retaliation tried to deny him his pension.
Van Buren got out of this, but 30 million other Americans are still trapped in it, and fear being dropped into the even worse fate of unemployment and starvation.
Americans, should we allow companies to treat workers this way?
Putin called the internet a
"CIA
Project".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Silly Putin, don't you know it was done by the US Department of Defense?
DDT is still available for fighting malaria, notwithstanding inaccurate claims by Stuart Brand and James Lovelock that it was banned.
Several years ago Stuart Brand tried to convince me to support nuclear power. His arguments did not seem valid to me.
Journalist Simon Ostrovsky, who had been made prisoner by a Russian irregular militia in Ukraine, has been released.
I guess Putin decided he was pushing a little too hard.
The article describes him as a "hostage", but I don't see that he was one. I have not seen anything suggesting a treat to kill him or hurt him, or any ransom demand. Capturing/kidnaping journalists is nasty enough in itself without exaggeration.
How US plutocracy operates
to give the
rich control over laws.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since local officials in China often try to hush up complaints rather than address them, the central government is embarrassed by citizens bringing complaints that local officials ignored.
The central government is going to solve the problem by refusing to accept any more complaints.
US prison guards put prisoners in solitary and deny them medicine frivolously, even maliciously such as to punish a prisoner for reporting rape.
To deny a pregnant woman prenatal care — would that constitute criminal endangerment of a fetus? Could these thugs be put in prison for it?
Global cooling 20,000 years ago united the Galapagos Islands into a couple of large islands one could almost walk between. This had big effects on the evolution of species living there.
The Marshall Islands are suing the nine countries with nuclear weapons for failing to disarm.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obliges the recognized nuclear powers including the US and Russia to negotiate for nuclear disarmament.
Jonathan Fleming was convicted of a murder in New York, and kept in prison for 25 years, because the prosecutors concealed the receipt that proved he was in Disney World in Florida on that day.
I am glad he has been freed, but that's not enough. We must stop this from happening in the future. I suspect his defense lawyers were incompetent or irresponsible, and that the prosecutor was dishonest.
Amnesty International rebuked Spain for repressing protests with fines and beatings.
I can't criticize Spaniards for responding to this violence with their own violence. Austerity is deadly; how many Spaniards has the right-wing government killed, through eviction or through cuts in medical care?
Vermont passed a law to require labeling of GMOs. Unlike the laws in Connecticut and Maine, this law will take effect regardless of what other states do.
The UK Conservatives intend to eliminate subsidies for windmills on land and give local people the power to ban them. They do not intend to give local people the power to ban fracking or to abolish subsidies for nuclear power.
As US economic growth goes exclusively to the rich, the lower and middle classes in the US are becoming poorer than in other countries.
Australia's energy planning is based on the assumption that they can ramp up combustion of fossil fuel ad infinitum and never encounter any problem that imposes limits or costs.
As humans abandon large regions of Australia, weeds and feral plants destroy the native wildlife.
The Supreme Court made it easy for thugs to use an anonymous 911 call as an all-purpose excuse to arrest people, search them, and charge them.
They can always make the call themselves — who would know?
Instead of trying again to defend network neutrality, the FCC is considering surrendering on a crucial issue: allowing ISPs to charge web sites for high speed access to them.
This contrasts with Brazil's adoption of network neutrality as a legal requirement on ISPs.
Obama talks of offering clemency to prisoners serving long sentences, but clemency is inadequate to remedy the harm done by the war on drugs.
Obama
has shown no
concern for the workers of other countries whose factories may
collapse. Why should anyone trust him to put anything good into a
deregulation treaty such as the TPP?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In some fast food companies, the CEO gets paid 1000 times as much as an ordinary worker.
This "food" is not made for eating, it is made for fasting.
The US is giving Egypt armed helicopters.
The Islamists in the Sinai are violently opposed to human rights, but the violence they have committed is probably less than the Egyptian government's. What's more, the Egyptian government's killing of protesters has done a lot to boost violent Islamism in Egypt. Instead of giving that government the endorsement of military support, it would be more rational to caution the Egyptian government to cut down its provocative repression of dissidents.
Palestinians protested the repeated attacks by Israeli fanatics against Palestinians and their cities. The Israeli government almost never tries to punish the perpetrators of these attacks.
The updated list of what Netanyahu demands from Palestinian President Abbas.
US citizens: condemn the TPP and its secret negotiations.
GMO soy beans that are engineered to resist Roundup contain levels of pesticide that may be dangerous. In addition, the pesticide used in growing them gets into our water supply.
When it comes to killing birds, windmills are insignificant; buildings, power lines and cats kill thousands as times as many birds in the US.
The guards at Australia's asylum seeker prison in Nauru attack the refugees, even children.
The government of Qatar accepts the confiscation of foreign workers' passports (treated as slaves) by their employer/slavemasters.
Runaway slaves who are caught are imprisoned for months, effectively incommunicado.
A Texas family won a 3 million dollar judgment against frackers.
It is crucial to defeat their secrecy about their operations. The reason companies say they want secrecy is to keep secrets from other companies. That argument never justifies putting the public interest at risk.
A prominent Pakistani TV journalist was shot and survived. He and his TV station say the country's intelligence agency tried to assassinate him.
That agency has a history of kidnaping, torturing and killing reporters.
Turkish PM Erdogan has apologized, in a way, for the killing of a million Armenians.
He did not use the term "genocide" but at least recognizes that the killing was wrong. It is a step forward.
This is not a matter of personal blame. I expect that none of the people who decided how Turkey would treat the Armenians is still alive today. The point is that states need to acknowledge their wrongs in order to avoid repeating them.
The heat in Texas prisons is deadly, and that makes it cruel and unusual punishment.
The Russian or pro-Russian forces in Slavyansk, eastern Ukraine, have taken several journalists prisoner. One is an American.
Fatah and Hamas have agreed
to form
a unity government and hold elections in Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Uniting Fatah and Hamas is easier said than done, but it is a prerequisite for democracy in Palestine. It will not be easy to get Hamas to respect democracy, though.
Unification would remove an obstacle to a real peace deal, since it could result in a government with enough support and authority to agree to a deal and implement it. Alas, it is not the only prerequisite. We also need Israel to be ready to make a real peace deal.
Cheap chicken in the US comes at the costs of injuries for workers.
In the US, change in regulation supposedly justified by reducing costs of production are misguided in general (unless it is production of something to reduce greenhouse gas emissions). Our problem is not that goods are too expensive, it is that workers are not paid enough.
The US minimum wage is too low, but many businesses have created excuses to pay even less.
Louis Allstadt, former VP of Mobil, says fracking is not safe and calls for banning it.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to stop profiting off of student borrowers.
Everyone: support the campaign for Seattle to raise the minimum wage to $15.
US citizens: call on Obama and Kerry to meet with the Cowboy Indian Alliance.
US citizens: on May 9, ask your congresscritter to contact the Bureau of Prisons to end the vindictive cruelty to prisoner John Kiriakou.
Everyone: call on Walmart and the Children's Place to give compensation for the dead Rana Plaza workers, and join in preventing a repetition.
Deer in the Czech Republic still avoid the places where the electrified border fences used to be, 25 years ago, almost twice the lifespan of a deer.
That means the cultural memory has been passed on for at least two generations.
More than half the groundwater monitoring sites in China report polluted water.
A Chinese labor organizer appears to have been
arrested
and disappeared.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US is working quietly to undermine an international agreement on internet freedom.
This article uses the weak word "open" to describe what this agreement is supposed to do. I think using that word is a mistake, since "open" leads one's thinking down paths that don't even try to defend freedom. Thus, especially when others use that word, we should not join them in that mistake.
Massive greenhouse gas emission coincides with harmful political and social developments that weaken democracy, such as corporatocratic "free trade" politics and the idea of living to consume.
Disasters typically happen when several errors occur together. Here we have quite a few big errors.
The founder of Russian social network VKontakte says that Putin's men have kicked him out and taken over.
The Greek austerity government is handing out money to the poor, because an election is coming.
The government says it can afford this, based on arguments that are peculiar because if they are valid today they were valid all along. Indeed, they were valid all along — but the plutocratic parties did not like them before.
What's the conclusion? The government is right to help the poor, but you if you want a government to continue the policy after the election, you should vote for the leftist party.
Companies that make toys seem to intentionally teach gender stereotypes to children.
US cities are trying to stop train transport of oil, which causes sickening spills and deadly explosions.
The FBI put Naveed Shinwari on the no-fly list to bully him into becoming an informer on nobody in particular.
The no-fly list is punishment without trial, and must be abolished.
A pro-Kiev Ukrainian politician was captured by a pro-Russia mob, then tortured and killed.
Three Reasons Why You Should Keep Gmail far Away from Your Credit Card Information.
It is regrettable that the article uses "hackers" to mean "security breakers".
The UK's National Health Service has been ordered to use subcontractors, and naturally it causes things to go wrong.
The privatization ideology says that having a private company do something will automatically make it better than if the state does it. It's only true in special cases.
The inter-ethnic conflict in South Sudan is extending into genocidal killings.
Iranian political prisoner Emad Bahavar says that he was forced to run past lines of thugs that hit him with sticks, organized torture rather than spontaneous venting of sadism.
California is considering a bill to increase taxes on CEOs whose pay far exceeds that of the lowest paid workers in the company.
It is a step in the right direction, but I have a feeling that a 5% increase in taxes won't create much pressure for CEOs to reduce their incomes drastically. As for raising revenue, CEOs should pay higher taxes, but the other rich people should too.
Republicans have blocked federal funding for research into patterns of gun violence, but Professor Wintemute continues it with private funding. Some of his conclusions are surprising.
Republicans are frothing at the mouth at the idea that we might learn which forms of gun control are effective for reducing murders.
Protests against the TPP are following Obama through Asia.
The US Border patrol is converting whole regions miles away from US borders into total surveillance and oppression zones. All the roads out of the Tohono O'odham reservations have permanent checkpoints.
Florida Is 'Ground Zero' for Sea Level Rise. And there's no use putting dikes around Miami, since the rock underneath the city is porous.
White House Approves Coal Dust Rules Aimed At Dropping Rates Of Black Lung Disease.
The families of 1/5 of the children in the US had trouble getting food in 2012.
Obama told Elizabeth Warren she shouldn't head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because she made banksters "very nervous".
In other words, they feared she would lead the agency to do a vigorous job of protecting the public from them, and Obama was uncomfortable with that.
After wasting most of our helium on party balloons, we don't have enough for scientific experiments.
US citizens:
support
universal single-payer health care in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In the US: tell Safeway to label GMOs in their products.
The US is attacking Yemeni Islamists very intensely.
Killing members of a guerrilla group, even fairly many of them, does not defeat it if they can recruit more.
In Eastern Ukraine, a chaotic scramble of militias that don't really aim to be more than an excuse for a Russian takeover.
The UK's right-wing government excuses cruelty to disabled people by claiming they are faking disability.
Plutocratist governments know better than to claim "all" poor people are to blame for their own poverty or that "all" disabled people are fakes. Such a simplistic claim would be recognized as false. So they arrange complex systems of rules, artificial hurdles for disabled people to jump, so that anyone who fails can be convicted of "faking" and punished.
The system is stacked against the disabled, which ensures that most of them will fail: this provides an excuse for cruelty, and if a few manage to jump the hurdles, most are still screwed.
The details of these systems are not important; what is important is their overall purpose and effect: dooH niboR. Poverty is spreading because the rich have arranged to take a bigger share of society's production, leaving too little for everyone else. To remedy that, governments must tax the rich more and support the non-rich enough.
Arguments against Seymour Hersh's claim that Syrian rebels launched a chemical weapons attack with Turkish backing.
I linked to that article previously.
No one can reliably estimate the costs of global heating, but it is likely to be a lot more expensive than preventing global heating.
400 environmental activists have been killed in Brazil, presumably by people involved in illegal deforestation.
Inaudible audio recordings were presented as evidence against the al-Jazeera journalists on trial in Egypt.
To value natural systems in monetary figures adopts a framing designed to justify getting rid of them. It also opens the door for governments to use dishonest figures to justify getting rid of them.
Although life in North Korea is very hard, some defectors in South Korea want to return there.
This one was apparently in a privileged position in North Korea. He has experienced poverty in South Korea despite the country's overall wealth, but he may not have a clear picture of the poverty of most North Koreans.
A large strike has hit Chinese factories; workers are concerned their wages will be stolen.
The Afghan government has a 20% budget gap and will have trouble paying salaries if it doesn't get aid.
The amount at stake is tiny compared with what the US spent on the war. This seems to be penny wise and pound foolish.
Everyone: tell Pepsico to stop buying palm oil made from deforestation.
Australia's immigration minister seems to have lied completely about a riot in the immigration prison on Manus island, to put the blame on the imprisoned boat people.
A company meant to collect data on students in the US has shut down because states banned schools from sending student data to it.
This demonstrates that we can stop corporate surveillance on the Internet if we are willing to go to the necessary lengths.
10 years after Mordechai Vanunu's release from prison, Israel still forbids him from emigrating to join his family.
The only crime for which US national security officials get prosecuted is leaking. Torture, assassination and perjury are considered ok.
Cracking down even more, the perjurer Clapper has just banned all spy agency staff from talking to the press without advance permission.
Wildlife in the uninhabited area around Chernobyl shows serious harm from radiation.
Ominously, some animals show more damage than their parents had; the effect seems to be cumulative.
A US appeals court ordered Obama to release the supposed legal justifications for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki.
Jerry Hartfield has spent 33 years in prison for a conviction that was overturned on appeal.
Austerity in Greece caused 500 extra suicides in 2009/10.
Poverty has got deeper since then; I would expect that another 500 or 1000 have committed suicide since then.
The Meritocracy Myth: How the Super-Rich Really Make Their Money.
The Cowboy Indian Alliance opposes the Keystone XL pipeline on the ground.
The FBI's new database of face photos is not just a new way to keep track of photos of criminals. It is a plan to collect photos of millions of people, some who were arrested and not tried, and some who were not accused of anything. And to share them with state thugs, and try recognizing people against these photos.
The convenience and cheapness of streaming services and corporate remote storage may be impossible to resist, if you are spineless and don't mind being antisocial.
The spineless author made himself susceptible to bad judgment by adopting shallow economic values that show up in the concept of "consuming services".
Landlord companies that bought housing in New York City are going to vicious lengths, even sabotage, to make tenants move out so they can raise rents.
Other tenants are shafted because the landlords are being foreclosed on.
The NSA is not the only threat to privacy in the US. Local thug departments are installing technology that can track all cars around the city.
Charging UK patients for crutches is the wedge being used to abolish gratis medical care in the UK.
The UK government has been striving for years to destroy the National Health service by underfunding it, denying all the while that that is its goal. The result would be a lousy US-style medical system in which the poor can't afford medical care.
Meanwhile, if they want to save money on crutches, they could do various things to encourage patients to return them for reuse.
I tried to hand a wrist brace back to MIT medical after I no longer needed it, and MIT medical refused to take it, or even tell me where to find anyone that would take it. Apparently in the US all medical organizations are scared they will be sued if a medical appliance transfers some sort of pest from one patient to another. Someone there suggested I give it to Good Will, but Good Will doesn't accept wrist braces.
This makes no sense, except in terms of absurd litigation. A crutch or wrist brace is no more likely to transfer any sort of infection than a dress or shirt that Good Will would handle.
It would be easy enough to adopt a regulation saying that clinics will not be liable for infections supposedly transferred by crutches and wrist braces provided they follow certain specified sterilization procedures. But no one in the US cares about this.
The UK government said its cuts won't starve the poor because "emergency funds" are available, but they are filtered through a system that makes it hard for poor people to get those funds, if they even think of asking.
They seem to be part of the UK right-wing government's policy of shafting the poor, pretending not to be shafting the poor, but demonizing the poor.
A bureaucrat's slip reveals that the UK's internet censorship agenda respects no limits.
The article distinguishes between censorship of illegal material and censorship of material that is not illegal, but that is a mere legal technicality. Mere laws cannot justify censorship; if they try, laws that try to do this only invalidate themselves.
Armenia faces chilling censorship through a ban on online anonymity.
Malaysia's government has driven the main opposition leader into exile through politically-motivated charges of homosexuality.
Supporters of Russia in Eastern Ukraine have reported a firefight with possibly imaginary Ukrainian right-wing fanatics. They stopped reporters from visiting the location of the supposed fight.
It appears to be as phony as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
US citizens: call on the US government to collect what Cliven Bundy owes.
Everyone:
call
on the UK to suspend deportation of homosexuals so as to avoid
sending people back to countries which threaten to imprison or execute
them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Enric Duran cheated Spanish banks to fund anticapitalist activities.
In the past I would have said that cheating a bank was wrong. Then I learned how much banks cheat everyone else.
A worker in the UK was fired for stating religious disapproval of homosexuality.
I think people should be free to state their disapproval of anything at all, and other people should be free to ignore those views.
The callous rich of Palo Alto want to ban homeless people from sleeping in cars.
Is there anyone reading this from Palo Alto who would like to launch a street campaign to shame those rich people? If there is a business that supports this law, it would be interesting to make signs condemning them and invite homeless people to picket that business during the day.
Malta may hold a referendum to end the licensed hunting of birds migrating north to breed.
When a bird species is being wiped out, typically many causes are at work. As in the case of global heating, if we want to preserve what is threatened, we must reject arguments of the form, "Let us keep endangering it — tackle some other threat instead."
The US and UK, by distorting the picture of their surveillance and claiming it is compatible with democracy and human rights, provide a precedent for governments even less democratic to make similar false claims.
General el-Sisi is running for president of Egypt, but TV stations are taking his critics off the air.
The UK dumped a million cubic meters of low-level nuclear waste in a site near the shore which is going to be washed away due to global heating.
Palestinian Christians find that Israel blocks them from Jerusalem.
Everyone: pressure AT&T to stop lobbying to ban community-owned network access points.
Everyone: call on Bayer and Syngenta to drop their lawsuits against the coming ban on neonicotinoid pesticides in Europe.
How patents stifled American aviation for a decade or more.
There is no good reason to have a patent system; it exists due to pressure from the businesses that hold patents.
Big sports events nowadays leave a permanent legacy of surveillance. Boston has installed cameras across the city that are monitored constantly by an AI system, set up to report anything "unusual" to human thugs.
We can have fun with this. How many unusual things can you do on the street each day? Why not back up to the entrance of 10 parking lots just for fun?
But that won't get rid of the surveillance.
It might be more useful to walk around in Boston with a sign saying, "Surveillance of all threatens all", and hand out printed copies of that page.
Live internet camera feeds pointing at public places, if they are good enough to identify people, should be banned to preserve privacy. Security cameras should be required to store their recordings locally, so that access to the recordings requires physically visiting the site.
The myth that rapists are monsters that could hardly pass for normal men paradoxically helps perpetuate the social toleration of various levels of harassment of women by men that don't appear subhuman.
Over 30 years, each decade has seen an increase in wildfires and drought in the US west.
The extreme drought this past winter was made possible by human greenhouse gas emissions; it could not have happened in the climate of 50 years ago.
The New York Times avoided coverage of a Palestinian journalist's arrest, complying with an Israeli gag order.
Kerry's peace negotiations went "poof" all of a sudden when it was revealed that they were a balloon full of hot air all along.
After the Big Spill, it was clear that the US needs stricter regulation of undersea oil drilling. Oil company lobbying blocked the necessary changes in laws.
As a result, we must expect it to happen again.
Advice: people in the advanced countries could reduce global heating substantially and be happier by working less.
In terms of sheer production, we would still have plenty of the things we want if the decrease in production is taken out of the income of the rich.
However, most people can't simply decide to work less. They may be working two or three jobs just to get by, or they may be professionals who won't be hired at all unless they agree to work 60 hours a week. If we want to reduce working hours, we will have to organize politically and take from the rich.
On Russian methods for surveillance of communications.
The captain of the Korean ferry that sank faces several criminal charges.
I don't know enough about ferry operations to judge how serious his alleged wrongs were. But it would be unjust to punish him more for these actions than they would punish another captain who did the same things without causing any loss of life.
Disasters happen when several errors and failures combine. Each of the individual errors happens often but usually does not cause a disaster. The error is equally culpable whether it leads to a disaster or not.
If we want crews to change practices and thus reduce the errors that could contribute to future disasters, we should take measures that are effective.
The small chance of a very heavy punishment does less to change people's behavior than a large chance of a small punishment. To convict this captain of many crimes and sentence him to years in prison will not do much to change other captain's practices, because each will figure that a disaster is unlikely to happen to him. (Some will reflect on their practices and change them out of a desire to be safe, but the disaster alone is enough to cause that.)
It would be more effective to pick some of these errors and punish all the captains or owners that commit them — even when no harm results, as is usually the case.
Armed right-wing tax rebels in Nevada stood off US forces to preserve the right to graze cattle in a wildlife preserve and not pay fees.
Their readiness to resist the state power would be admirable if they were doing it in a good cause, but they are doing it for the sake of their own exploitation.
Assad's forces have besieged 18,000 in a part of Damascus, and they are running out of food.
If the US wants to do something in Syria, how about air-dropping food to them?
Meanwhile, Assad's planes are bombing Aleppo into rubble.
High pay for company executives has become a status symbol.
I don't want to abolish business as such, but I believe we must put an end to business as we know it (the plutocratic system). We must not be scared to say this.
The Venetian region has its own separatist movement.
It is the usual sad story: when a country hits an economic crisis, people in wealthier regions of the country start demanding independence so that they won't have to help the poorer regions. What foolish selfishness, for the not-quite-so-poor to fight against the poor, rather than joining forces against the rich.
Childhood stress seems to affect growth of the hippocampus and to make people more prone to depression when older.
Obama's economic advisors had previously advised and pressured Bill Clinton to deregulate banks.
Look at the idiotic reasons that were given.
Each "argument" can appear to be an argument for further deregulation if you close your eyes to the way it is an argument for further regulation.
Iran has offered to redesign its nuclear reactor in Arak so that it can't produce much plutonium.
Perhaps they will redesign it to make arak with heavy alcohol.
Organizing collectively in wealthy countries to demand better working conditions for the people that make our clothing.
I support these efforts, but they are aiming at treating persistent symptoms of a known underlying problem: the "free trade" treaties. They destroyed unionization and labor rights around the world by enabling companies to shift their production anywhere. This exposes labor to many abuses (including low pay, insecurity, dangerous working conditions and theft of wages).
We must reject the idea of "free trade", whose supposed benefit is no more than increased total economic activity, while implanting a plutocratic system that ensures that increase goes to the rich.
Thomas Piketty's research demonstrates that the natural tendency in
capitalism is
to make the
rich richer and increase inequality; the period from 1940 to 1975
was an unusual exception.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thus, we need laws and taxes to spread the wealth around.
I don't think we should argue about whether this should be done through higher taxes for the rich or through regulations to stop exploitative practices. Either can help, and both are desirable. Plutocracy is a complex system, and very strong, so we need to weaken it at many points.
A Spanish judge defies the right-wing government's attempts to shut down his investigation into Guantanamo torture.
A broad grass-roots campaign calls for keeping BP suspended from new US government contracts.
Tennessee is considering a bill to punish women that use some illegal drugs while pregnant.
This law is not just nasty, it is also likely to lead pregnant addicts to avoid prenatal care, which will backfire against the babies. The law is therefore likely to harm rather than help those babies.
It is wrong to take drugs while pregnant that result in producing a damaged baby. However, when someone addicted to one of those drugs gets pregnant, what's a useful response? I think the right solution is an abortion. A useful response is to encourage and help that person to get an abortion.
Obama will scramble for excuses to keep prisoners in Guantanamo once the US ceases to be at war in Afghanistan.
The massive capture of migrating birds in Egypt has reached a level where it endangers some species.
It's not just the NSA that's doing massive surveillance; the FBI does it too.
The NSA circumvents and neutralizes rules against spying on US citizens and people in the US, but the FBI has no such restrictions.
Pakistan: Draft computer crimes law violates human rights.
Haiti's US-imposed government has made a vague threat to punish radio stations that make statements that the government does not like.
The president was "elected" in a process which was rigged by the US and excluded the only party that has real popular support (Aristide's party).
Officials begging for more ships to capture drug smugglers cite a list of reasons that demonstrate that legalization would do a better job.
A leaked recording purports to be a conversation between ministers in Turkey planning a false-flag attack as an excuse to attack Syria.
I would not put this past the Turkish government, but at the same time I think that if it wanted to intervene in Syria it would just do so, with no need for the false-flag attack.
Here's an example of Pielke's misrepresentation of science.
Irish thugs appear to have made a habit of recording prisoners' conversations in jail with their lawyers.
Orange, a mobile phone network in France, gives all its customers' call data to France's NSA.
US citizens: demand transparency in the decision about the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
Putin is planning to require registration and strict censorship on bloggers and discussion sites.
Anonymity will be forbidden, naturally.
Turkish Official Says Twitter Will Help Remove "Malicious Content".
This means recordings purporting to reveal corruption of officials.
Twitter is moving aggressively to extract personal information from its users, for profiling purposes.
It may be necessary to develop rules for safe use of Twitter. I am no expert, but I suggest these rules.
I hope that people who know more will suggest additional rules.
A new medicine that reportedly cures hepatitis C costs $84,000, which means most of the people who need it can't afford it.
If you can hold out 20 years or so, till the patent expires, the price may come down.
In remote US national parks, fish have high levels of mercury. That's because it spreads through the air.
I wonder if some of the mercury in Alaskan parks came from Chinese coal-fired electric plants.
Chris Christie is making a second try to drive a natural gas pipeline through a protected wildlife reserve.
The US government focuses on the threat of terrorism by Islamist fanatics, while mostly disregarding right-wing terrorists who in fact do more harm.
I am not saying that the US should treat right-wing extremists as it has treated Muslims, denying them freedom of expression and association on strained pretexts and fishing for crimes to accuse them of, or as it has treated animal rights activists, imprisoning them for running a web site and claiming that is "terrorism". That's unjust no matter who the target is. However, there is surely a middle ground between excess and nothing.
The US and UK overthrew the elected government of Azerbaijan in 1993 and installed a dictator, in order to help BP get a good deal over exporting oil from Azerbaijan.
This enabled BP to drill oil wells in the Caspian sea, and one of them exploded.
BP's men lied to Congress, saying said their operations were safe and had had no serious problems. So BP was allowed to drill in the Gulf of Mexico and promptly had another explosion.
An honest government, not corrupted by oil companies. would never trust BP in any way ever again.
The UK is considering selling taxpayers' tax return data, "anonymized" (though that may not do much good).
Obama has put off the decision on the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline until after the elections in November.
I think Obama intends to approve the pipeline and has intended this all along. He knows what harm it will do, and if he cared greatly about those problems, he would have cancelled it long ago. I think he is maneuvering to reduce the condemnation he will receive for approving it.
But this does not mean campaigning against the pipeline is useless. If we can make the approval painful enough, and require evident enough lies, he may feel compelled to cancel it.
A British MP who was tried and acquitted now
believes
he was wrong to vote to cut the reimbursement of the legal fees of
those who are tried and acquitted.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Discussing the effects of marijuana can rot your brain, if you're not careful.
A crowdfunded genetic engineering project aims to produce a glow-in-the-dark variety of arabidopsis, just for hack value.
I don't see any danger in glowing arabidopsis. What scares me is the possibility of making viruses this way. However, that can't be prevented by the sort of regulation that people are thinking of; a totally secret project could ignore the regulations.
A study finds that every stage of fracking spreads toxic substances.
Hillary Clinton would be another Obama, giving lip service to the progressive causes that most Americans support, but only until she gets their vote.
Over 4 million US
children go
to school within a mile of a dangerous chemical facility.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Thugs rampaged through Evin prison, where some of Iran's political prisoners are held, breaking prisoners' bones.
The media has an "anything but carbon" prejudice: any scientific paper claiming that global heating is caused by something other than carbon emissions gets tremendous media attention.
Caroline Lucas: The fight against fracking continues — and I'm proud to rejoin it.
Russia has started extracting oil from the Arctic and shipping it to Europe. Greenpeace's efforts did not succeed in blocking this.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance finds that fossil fuel subsidies are ten times the subsidies for renewable energy.
It is unconscionable to subsidize an industry as profitable as fossil fuels, even if it were not causing world-wide disaster.
Comparing the bombing in Boston and the bombings in Baghdad.
Dubya is responsible, though indirectly, for all of these bombings even though the ones he directly ordered were back in 2003.
Antitrust in the New Gilded Age.
The US plans to spend billions on new nuclear bombs.
The US
systematically violates human rights to imprison Muslims thought
to be leaning towards terrorism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
We're not talking, here, about people who have committed real acts of violence. These people have not done that, and most of them have not even planned to do that.
Iraq veterans in the US commit a substantial number of killings, most of the time not noticed by the press.
This is the most extreme aspect of broader psychological damage caused by sending people to fight a war that only lies can justify.
Botswana has banned Bushmen from living in the desert and hunting, supposedly for the sake of wildlife protection, but perhaps really to enhance the income of the president's family.
Recruiting them as a society to fight poaching seems likely to be more effective.
1/5 of the farmland in China is polluted with toxic metals.
Snowden's question to Putin about massive surveillance in Russia was designed to give him a chance to make claims that could subsequently be studied and challenged.
Given Snowden's precarious position, I think it took courage to do this and courage to talk about it after.
Tea Party, Taxes and Why the Original Patriots Would've Revolted Against the Surveillance State.
Programmers: help the EFF develop free software to send emails to Congress.
Illegal logging is rife in the Peruvian Amazon. Many logging concessions are being canceled.
It may be quite difficult to design AIs with desires such that we can be sure they won't take horrible revenge on humans.
However, the problem may not arise if we stick to AIs that don't have desires.
Technology and data mining enable companies to indirectly bypass nondiscrimination laws.
Who Are the Koch Brothers and What Do They Want?
Their money has spread acceptance of their pro-exploitation ideas, which used to be considered shockingly extremist in the US.
Companies that amass personal data, such as Facebook, wield power that compares with states.
Since they are not democratically controlled by the people whose data they control, their power is illegitimate.
8 million Americans have signed up under Obama's health care program.
It is good, as far as it goes; it just doesn't go far enough.
In the UK, in a private test, 40% of prepared "lamb" dishes tested proved to have other kinds of meat. To address this problem, the UK will cut the budget for testing food.
ALEC is pushing state laws to pressure the US government to give states control of federal land, the idea being that the states will be pushovers for mining companies.
They refer to this with the romantic-sounding name of "sagebrush rebellion" to make it look like something other than exploitation.
The Australian government is giving states control over environmental planning precisely to make it easier for mining companies to despoil and pollute.
Everyone: sign this petition
asking the governor of Tennessee to cancel contracts with
privatized prison company CCA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ecuadorians have collected enough signatures for a referendum on whether to extract oil from Yasuní.
Big business in Seattle, trying to undermine implementation of a living wage law, have made a plan to disguise their lobbying as coming from mom-and-pop stores.
More information about the fighting in Mariupol.
UK anti-fracking protesters including a Green member of Parliament were cleared of criminal charges over an anti-fracking protest.
Now who is going to make the thugs stop arresting anti-fracking protesters.
Illinois is trying to get the microplastics out of its refuse, and thus out of its waterways, but it's going slow about it.
Egypt's government is imprisoning lots of gay men.
South Africa plans to farm rhinos to sell their horns.
I don't see anything wrong in principle with farming rhinos for their horns. If the farmed horn is cheap enough, no one will bother poaching. However, this article claims it will be expensive and the gangs will not slow down their poaching.
The fact that the horns are sold as phony cures suggests that educating people that the cure is a lie might help. Could phony rhino horn be made from cow hooves or human fingernails?
A genetically modified plant is being tested which produces oils that fish normally get from marine algae.
Since they are not used with a special pesticide regime, and would either be fed to fish or used as a dietary additive, I don't think these plants are likely to harm health of humans or wildlife. However, is there a danger that patented genes will contaminate farms trying to grow ordinary camelina?
Would it be possible to cultivate the algae instead?
US
citizens: call
for a ban on fracking in US national parks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Congress, don't prohibit states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
US citizens: call on the US government to pursue the thug that followed an unarmed Black teenager home then killed him there.
Everyone: call on the Governor of Tennessee
to cancel
contracts with privatized prisons.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress not to renew two loopholes that enable many companies to get out of paying taxes.
Please sign this one too.
$1,259: What Corporate Tax Dodgers Cost the Average Taxpayer.
(Eliminating these two loopholes would not necessarily save all of that.)
Placebos proved effective in treating irritable bowel syndrome even with patients who knew they were getting a placebo.
Strange, these humans.
High-pressure education in the UK can keep children in school up to 10 hours a day, denying them any time for personal life.
A leader in the Greek Golden Dawn party praised Hitler. Now there is no doubt that it is a neo-Nazi party.
One of the "great" things that Hitler did was conquer Greece. I wonder how Greeks feel about that.
In War, Truth Is the First Casualty
How US millionaires pay lower income tax rates than middle-class Americans.
The French labor rule, against sending employees work emails after 6pm, says something about other countries where people let the boss impose their life priorities.
Environmental activists are being killed in greater numbers because the land-grab and resource-grab are speeding up.
(In the US) CEO Pay Soars As Worker Pay Stagnates.
Canada's tar sands oil extraction threatens to be imitated in many other parts of the world including the US. The result would be global disaster for certain.
The "climate bomb" might turn out to be one submunition of a cluster climate bomb.
People involved in running the Rana Plaza factory face murder charges in Bangladesh.
I think this charge is unjust. Running a factory in a badly built building created a risk of a deadly collapse, but the chance was still small. It ought to be a crime, but not murder.
Contrast this with the fossil fuel industry's lobbying and disinformation campaign about global heating, which is sure to kill millions of people (perhaps even billions) unless some stroke of luck saves them. That is a real murder plot.
If the goal is to put an end to using substandard buildings as factories, it is more effective to impose heavy fines on a large fraction of the operators whose factories are not protected against collapse, than to imprison or even execute the few whose factories actually collapse.
A study finds poor people and minority group members in the US face 40% more exposure to toxic chemicals than wealthy Whites.
I think, however, that rather than calling for a more equal distribution of toxins, we should give priority to reducing toxic pollution for everyone — something that companies resist.
Obama has proposed to put the CIA in charge of deciding which parts of the Senate report on CIA torture should be published.
In effect, he has taken the CIA's side against the Senate, the American people, and human decency.
The IPCC has laid out clearly what the world needs to do to avoid global heating disaster. Since most of the emissions come from ten countries (including China and the US), these countries above all must reduce emissions.
The Tax Breaks (for oil) That Are Killing the Planet
Bombshell: Study Ties Epic California Drought, Frigid East To Manmade Climate Change.
Pennsylvania Teen Convicted Of A Crime For Recording Bullies At School.
I think that schools should have a policy of authorizing students who are being bullied to make recordings of the bullies, so as to show the school what the bullies are doing, but these should not be distributed outside the school. (In particular, they should not be placed on servers outside the school.)
Fracking wells' methane emissions are up to 1000 times higher than claimed, and that's even before the fracking starts.
This means it is stupid and self-defeating to try to reduce global heating by switching from coal to fracked gas.
In any case, calling it "switching" is misleading because just as much coal continues to be extracted and burned. Fracking is in addition to coal.
The Koch brothers lobbied for a Tennessee law to ban construction of structures to make for more efficient bus transit.
Americans, your taxes may be supporting a private prison that profits by keeping imprisonment rates high.
The people of Arivaca, Arizona, feel the heel of the US Border Patrol as an occupying army, which also represses those who photograph their activities.
The Border Patrol is planning to extend its permanent checkpoints to New England, repressing all Americans in the name of deportation.
US citizens:
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow the CIA to facilitate delivery of portable anti-aircraft missiles to Syrian rebels.
The rebel groups sell arms between them, and also capture arms from each other. No matter what care the US might take, jihadis would get some of them.
Everyone: tell Nestle to stop trying to patent the use of fennel flowers as a medicine.
US citizens: call for a
ban on fracking
in US national parks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Congress, don't prohibit states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
US citizens: call on the US government to pursue the thug that followed an unarmed Black teenager home then killed him there.
Everyone:
call on the Governor of Tennessee
to cancel contracts with
privatized prisons.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress not to renew two loopholes that enable many companies to get out of paying taxes.
Please sign this one too.
$1,259: What Corporate Tax Dodgers Cost the Average Taxpayer.
(Eliminating these two loopholes would not necessarily save all of that.)
US citizens: oppose "fast track" for the TPP.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal the U SAP AT RIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act, which authorized the government's collection of much of the dossiers that companies accumulate.
US citizens: tell Democratic holdouts to endorse increasing Social Security.
The intended terminus of an alternate tar sands oil export pipeline from Alberta, running to the West Coast through Canada, has blocked the pipeline with a referendum.
The US obtusely fires teachers based on students' standardized tests, disregarding the fact that nearly all the difference in test outcomes results from other factors such as class size and students' background.
10,000 people protested in Russia condemning Putin's lies about Ukraine.
Iran's theocratic ruler has called for banning vasectomies, abortions and contraception, in an effort to force people to have more children.
With human population growth continuing to endanger civilization, such policies are very dangerous.
Boko Haram Islamist fanatics kidnaped 100 schoolgirls as they were taking an exam.
Arguing that a real technological singularity, as Vernor Vinge envisioned it, is not likely to occur, especially not any time soon.
Please do not buy his books (or any books, or anything else) from Amazon!
A UN investigator was barred from the UK's privatized prison for people to be deported.
Ukraine's government has started military action to recover control of some eastern cities.
The armed groups that have taken control of buildings and streets are either rebels or invaders, or a mix of the two. Referring to them as "terrorists" is a smear, however: they have shown no inclination towards violence against anyone but soldiers. This verges on war, but it is not terrorism.
That point might seem like quibbling, but it is very important. If we want "free" countries such as the US and the UK to stop making opportunistic accusations of "terrorism" against protesters and journalists' lovers, we should object whenever the term is stretched.
A bill to make US intelligence agencies publish their budgets might provide leverage to reduce those budgets.
US taxes have pushed 7 million low-paid adults down into or further down below the poverty line.
The adults who are vulnerable to this are those who do not have custody of any children.
If anyone asks, "How could we pay for these tax cuts", it's simple:
tax
the rich more, and tax companies more.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
America's war machine, far bigger than any other country, should be reduced so as to spend the money on things we really need.
Of course, we should increases taxes on rich people and companies too.
A detective in Utah examined prescription records of hundreds of employees of the Salt Lake City area looking for something suspicious, to try to find who stole some morphine.
I hope that the Fourth Amendment blocks this warranties search, but I don't think that is enough. Putting everyone's prescription records in a central database is asking for trouble.
A church in North Carolina has illustrated the contradiction between Christianity and persecuting the homeless, with a bronze statue of Jesus as a homeless person sleeping on a bench.
I reject Christianity as a whole, but there are a few aspects of it that are admirable, and this is one of them.
Here's an example of the sort of persecution that a sincere Christian can't do.
The US government illegally confiscated Nader El-Dajani's passport without a hearing, and refuses to say why, or that it has any accusations against him.
A court ruled that Israel can't keep Shuafat totally deprived of water. So now Israel provides water between 03:00 and 08:00, the time which is most harassing for the inhabitants.
Amazon's book recommendations are not an honest attempt to figure out what a customer might like. Publishers pay to have books promoted in this way.
Obama officials have proposed "moving" the drone assassination program in Pakistan from the CIA to the military so that it would have to follow clear military rules. That proposal was pure pretense, since in fact the US military has been running these drone assassinations all along. The "CIA" label is just an excuse ignoring those rules.
The IPCC says that our carbon emissions will take us to the brink of disaster and that we must start vigorously cutting them now if we are to avoid the big disaster. However, we can still afford to do this; the cost will be bearable.
Australia's government's response is to insist on burning fossil fuels, saying that carbon capture will someday reduce their emissions.
Carbon capture for power plant emissions is purely theoretical, but even if it turns out to be possible, that will be too late to prevent the disaster.
Meanwhile, an Australian court ruled that coal mines are not responsible for the emissions, on the grounds that if one mine doesn't provide the desired coal, another will.
That ruling is based on the premise that the point is to decide who to blame, not to prevent disaster. Preventing the disaster entails making sure that no mine produces that coal, and that means first of all not this mine.
How the Koch brothers stack up against Jefferson's political views.
Spanish banksters say it will take 10 years for Spanish workers' incomes to return to the level from before the financial crisis that was caused by the rules of the euro-zone, which impose policies that make any recession worse.
The "solutions" recommended are part of shock capitalism; they will do nothing to change the euro-zone rules, or to help workers against the rich.
Drug traffickers in Central America are causing substantial deforestation by building roads and runways through jungles.
This adds to all the other forms of harm caused by drug prohibition. The traffickers are directly responsible for the deforestation, and I do not mean to let them off the hook, but in practice the only way we can prevent the deforestation (and the other forms of harm) is by ending prohibition.
Right-wing Christians are shutting down abortion clinics in many states by imposing pointless "safety requirements" that are impossible to satisfy.
There are now bitcoin ATMs, but since they require users to identify themselves, I don't see what good they are.
Looking at the IPCC's call: what must humanity do, to avoid global heating disaster.
India now offers people the option of "other" as a gender.
I applaud this move, but raises a difficult question: what symbol will indicate the toilets for the "other" gender?
Chinese human rights lawyers were kept in a secret prison and tortured. They have fractures to prove it.
Air pollution in China can make storms stronger in the western US.
The killing of environmentalists and land rights defenders has more than doubled in a decade.
Thomas Piketty's economics explain ow unrestrained capitalism entrenches wealth and knocks down the poor.
De Toqueville, in Democracy in America, explained what the solution was 200 years ago: large fortunes were split up among several heirs at each generation. To avoid an oligarchic state, we must always have some solution.
An ex-minister in Australia has exposed how thoroughly the right-wing Israeli lobby dominates politicians there.
The western world's rate of meat-eating is unsustainable; to avoid various kinds of disaster, including global heating, we must move to eating much less meat and dairy products.
The idea that one should think of oneself as a "personal brand" directs people's thinking away from the collective action they really need.
I see two problems in that idea:
Workers in the past realized that they were interchangeable for their employers. Rather than trying, each one, to stand out from the rest of the workforce, they built unions to require employers to respect the rights of all their workers.
If you try to confront the work situation alone, treating other workers as your competition, you're aiming for a kind of success that at best a small fraction of workers can achieve.
But I never did anything with that as a goal. I didn't choose any of these traits to be different from others. Each of my unusual traits, I have either because I found it fun, or because I found it useful, or because I resented and resisted a demand to change it, or because changing it would have involved an insupportable indignity, or because I have tried to change it but have not entirely succeeded (yet).
Be true to yourself, and be true to society as a whole.
Government-led reductions in salt levels in foods, in the UK, appears responsible for a 40% drop in deaths from strokes and likewise from heart attacks.
A leaked copy of part of the Senate's report on CIA torture says that
the CIA tortured lots of people and
went beyond what it had got
approval for.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
That the CIA lied to the rest of the US government about its torture practices does not seem implausible to me. However, we must not let this exonerate Bush, who has already admitted approving some kinds of torture.
The CIA also seems to have lied about how many prisoners it held.
When the CIA says it released a prisoner, I wonder what that means. Was that person freed? Released to some other prison? Released to a cemetery? Without a thorough investigation of the facts, we must not suppose that words used the CIA mean what we would normally expect.
Here's the text that was leaked.
Greenpeace: tell the fossil fuel industry its time is up.
Fossil fuel interests corrupt our governments (including Canada, Australia, the UK and the US), and our media, to push the world into continued dependence on fossil fuels. This is a conspiracy to commit mass murder, and all those involved should be put behind bars.
US citizens:
ask
your congresscritter to cosponsor the Sunshine in Litigation Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Kellogg's to treat its employees and farm workers decently.
US citizens: call on Obama to withdraw the nomination of a bankster as an official of the Commerce Department. The bankster just got a 9-million-dollar bonus for moving to a position where he will be in a position to help his former employer.
The US
asks the
public to report anything "suspicious", and nearly anything
someone feels strange about can be "suspicious", which makes for a big
data base with lots of info about lots of people.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Another privacy threat: cell phones with always-on retina trackers.
The cute "3D" feature they are used to implement is of no real importance, but I wonder what other information the proprietary software in those phones can extract using those sensors and give to companies.
The IPCC has presented targets for renewable energy development to avoid the worst kind of global heating disaster.
Since we don't know how precisely how much greenhouse gas emissions it will take to cause disaster, we should try to exceed these targets by as much as possible.
The head officers of UK thug departments UK have imposed a system of lying about crime statistics, ordering other thugs to help lie.
Crime statistics are not all that UK thugs lie about.
Being a black male in a US city is like being an American in East Berlin in 1980: continual harassment by thugs, due to who you are rather than what you do, creates a sense of constant oppression.
The US government is considering new rules about racial profiling, that would not change much.
British journalist Sarah Harrison explains why she must not return to the UK: her lawyers warn she could be interrogated about her sources, and imprisoned if she does not answer.
The only excuse they need is for some thug to say he had a "hunch" she might be a "terrorist." And if the thug does not really have such a hunch, would he refuse to lie when ordered to do so?
A public school teacher calls on other teachers to fight against the billionaires' plan to privatize public schools and turn education into a standardized test.
They plan a protest at the Gates Foundation on June 26.
Chattel slavery in the US was officially abolished after the Civil War, but current US prison practices are quite similar to modern slavery.
The US government tells the public its military plans in Africa are small, but it tells construction companies something rather different.
ALEC is about to publish another "Rich States, Poor States" report which grades states on how friendly they are to the rich.
It turns out this was funded by the Kochs.
The FBI turned a member of a Guantanamo prisoner's defense team into an informant.
The FBI did this trying to figure out how a prisoner's writings reached the press. The US government is keeping the prisoners incommunicado so that they can't tell us about how they were tortured. In effect, the whole system of "military tribunals" (which are corrupt by design) has been corrupted a second time by the US's torture coverup.
Human rights observers were barred from the "open" trial of Gaddafi's sons and supporters, and not all the defendants were present.
The FDIC is suing big banks over a tricky form of derivative, interest rate swaps, which were rigged through the LIBOR lies.
Aside from the falsification of LIBOR, banks should not be allowed to invent complex financial derivatives because that's a recipe for suckering people. If the bank can make up a game with complicated rules, it is almost certain to win the game even if the game is not actually rigged.
Banks are regulated and licensed businesses; they cannot cite "Buyer beware, especially if you're buying form us" as an all-purpose excuse for inventing gambling games that endanger the public.
Four main phone companies in Sweden have ceased retaining customers' call records, based on the court ruling against the EU data retention directive.
UK thugs made three tries to gag the whistleblower who exposed falsification of crime statistics.
The UK is arresting anti-fascist protesters en masse and forbidding them from protesting any further.
CO2 makes many small fish behave dangerously, which endangers the entire marine ecosystem.
This is not to mention how it can wipe out molluscs and coral.
A preliminary study of a small number of US mothers found high levels of glyphosate in the breast milk of several of them.
A larger study is called for, but what's clear already is that US safety standards have been corrupted by powerful businesses.
US banksters just about always bounce back from any disgrace, since they bounce on their piles of money.
Poor Americans convicted of comparatively minor crimes are locked out from many careers and educational opportunities. Practically speaking, all they are allowed to be is criminals. The banksters' crimes are far worse; the harshest consequences should be reserved for them.
Egyptian dissidents, imprisoned without trial, say that thugs raped them in prison.
The UK national health service pays a data broker to hand out forms — and ask new mothers (still recuperating in hospital) for personal data while they're at it.
These are the sorts of things that teach children that "everyone and everything is for sale, all the time, and there's nothing that shouldn't be for sale".
I think it was a terrible mistake for US cities to sell the names of stadiums as a form of advertising, because that was a very loud statement that "everything is for sale". Any time you're thinking of letting companies buy something that is public, it means you're not taxing them enough.
It appears that Russian army units, pretending not to be such, are capturing cities in eastern Ukraine.
They seem to have some support from the local civilians, but there is no way of telling how many civilians do not support them; those people are facing powerful intimidation now.
UK school principals are denying raises to teachers unless they "volunteer" for unpaid extra work.
The Australian government has ordered government employees to report their colleagues for posting anything on the internet that criticizes the government.
You'd expect as much from the mining industry's government of occupation.
San Jose State University (and probably other universities too)
requires some students
to run
nonfree test-supervising software used to impose a regime that must
drive people nuts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I'd fail a test in algebra, if I had to spend an hour answering questions while never looking away from the camera. And if I were not allowed to look down at the keyboard, I would make typos too. A program that imposes requirements like this must be considered malware.
But even if it were not known to be malware, it would be unacceptable if it is non-free, which is surely the case.
Financial analyst Eric Garland says that Bain Capital (and similar leveraged-buyout companies) are converting the US economy into a system of financial parasitism, in which business decisions are no longer supposed to make sense for the company, and imposed company debt is put into complex schemes so it can be resold to a "bigger fool".
The "bigger fools" in this case are rich and greedy, so I offer no condolences to whichever one gets stuck with the hot potato. But the bursting of this bubble could hurt nearly everyone (except the parasites that did the leveraged buyouts).
US mainstream media ignored Israel's breach of the interim deal with Palestine, and blamed Palestine's response as the cause of the breakdown of the "peace negotiations".
Since Israel's government does not want peace, these "peace negotiations" were never more than a sham, a way for Israel's government to pretend it wants peace.
LA thugs have sabotaged their full-time recording devices by "losing" the antennas.
I guess they want to be free to beat people up unmonitored.
People in general should not be "followed all the time" by the state or by companies, but thugs are a special case because they have special power, and because the state gives them near total immunity for their violence.
A science teacher in LA was fired for supervising the construction of devices that could conceivably launch projectiles. Someone else thought they "looked like weapons".
One might be tempted to say that the school administrators are rash idiots, but it's not that simple. The problem is that they think that their job is to act like rash idiots. That's what "zero tolerance" means.
A million workers participated in
a general
strike in Argentina.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A subtle campaign of global heating sabotage uses distorted facts to criticize climate scientists for not promoting certain dangerous or ineffective "solutions".
I wonder where this group gets its funds.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support the bill to require labeling of GMOs.
The UK has been caught helping the CIA run a secret prison on Diego Garcia.
US citizens: call on Congress to try
to restore
what the Supreme Court weakened in the 5th Amendment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Albuquerque protested the street executions carried out by thugs, to demand that corrective action be taken in a way that the thugs can't undermine.
Snowden, speaking to the European Parliament, summarized the broad reach of NSA massive surveillance.
Everyone:
support
efforts in Colorado to pass a law protecting access to
reproductive health care.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose the dishonest bill designed to block states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
The EFF is campaigning against commercial misuse of people's medical records.
I support this campaign but I think it does not go far enough. Both companies and governments can misuse our medical records, so a real solution must make it hard for either of them to get our records, hard enough that they will only get them in individual cases, never in bulk.
The fossil fuel industry is continuing its policy of shock capitalism to exploit every crisis, including Crimea.
Some teenagers in the US no longer understand the concept of "selling out", because they know no other approach to life.
The article relates that to the 30-year-long campaign to attack public education, which may be related to it. However, antisocial networks such as Facebook may be more responsible for it. Alone Together, by Sherry Turkle, says that Facebook encourages people to present phony, calculated images of themselves.
Parents can't stop their children from being used by Facebook. I wonder if they can teach their children to reject Facebook. Perhaps teaching them to distrust what anyone says in Facebook, and that friendships among people heavily influenced by Facebook tend to be superficial and empty. Would that be effective? I don't know.
In any case, this is an additional reason not to have children. Why go through so much effort to make yet another Facebook used who won't be able to envision any way of living except self-marketing.
War on Terror's Trickle Down Effect: The FBI's Military Evolution Exposed.
The FBI did not bother to question Tamerlan Tsarnaev, but now says his example shows it needs more snooping authority.
The Boston Marathon bombers killed four people, not as many as a recent bus accident, but it has been sensationalized so much that people perceive it as signifying a far bigger danger. That makes it an ideal excuse for efforts to undermine our freedom.
The SEC is blocking reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by demanding additional surveillance powers.
Note that even if this reform goes through, you will still have less rights over your email when it is in a company than if it is in your home.
The ACLU is suing to get information about FBI and Massachusetts involvement in investigations relating to the Boston marathon bombing, and whether massive increases in surveillance that threaten our freedom really provided any security at all.
Japan has apologized for some atrocities in World War II. When will the US do likewise?
Andrew Auernheimer's conviction was overturned on appeal on the grounds he was prosecuted in the wrong state.
This is not the trivial issue it appears at first sight. The US prosecuted him in New Jersey, although his case had nothing to do with New Jersey, because that court tends to stretch the law to give convictions. Blocking that approach will protect other people.
Nonetheless, it means that the twisted logic behind the claim that Auernheimer's actions were a crime will not be reconsidered.
The US has deported thousands of "Mexicans" who came to the US as children and don't know what it is like to live in Mexico. Many stay in Tijuana, trying to feel close to their families in the US.
Campaigning to reduce the toxic pesticides used to make McDonalds' french fries.
If this succeeds, they will only be bad for the people that eat them ;-).
The Albuquerque thug department has been condemned for frequently using "deadly force" with no justification.
Desmond Tutu calls for a boycott on investing in fossil fuel companies.
I agree, on this, and on the point that it is unconscionable that our governments continue to offer cooperation (such as the Keystone XL pipeline) and financial support to fossil fuels.
In the US: tell Comcast what you think of its claim that there are no rational objections to its proposed merger with another large ISP.
Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras visited the US, and were not harassed by government agents on arrival.
Poitras used to be harassed regularly each time she returned to the US.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call for ending a big tax loophole for businesses.
Growth for Growth's Sake Will Kill Us All.
In addition to being unsustainable, growth has also become nearly useless for the non-rich, in countries under plutocratic rule. The benefits of growth are seized by the plutocrats so little benefit trickles down to the rest.
You can't expect a rising tide to lift your boat if the plutocrats have taken planks from the hull and demand you lease them back.
Thus, taking wealth from the rich is a more appropriate policy nowadays than growth.
US Lacks
Accurate Drone Civilian Casualty Data, says Military Analyst.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Being more careful, with better data, would be a useful step. But really the US should cease using military force outside of war zones.
The company making the GMO salmon claims that the FDA has already decided not to require labeling of this salmon.
This is not officially true, but the FDA is doing nothing to rebut the claim.
My guess is that the FDA has in fact made that decision, just not officially.
PBS is firmly and persistently supporting the billionaires' movement for privatization of US public schools.
PBS's shows have been largely controlled by business since the 1990s, if not before. Often you can tell which companies exert the control over a show because their commercials appear in it.
Compare this with the campaign to pry loose the control of the fossil fuel industry over PBS.
A few scientists publish papers criticism some aspects of the accepted understanding of global heating. Their theories sometimes endure in the mainstream media long after they have been refuted by further data.
Burmese
newspapers printed
black front pages to protest the imprisonment of a journalist.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A scientist says, let's celebrate Homeopathy Awareness Week by making the public aware of how absurd and ineffective homeopathy is.
US citizen Sharif Mobley is accused of murder in Yemen, much like Obama. Unlike Obama, Mobley was supposed to be prosecuted there; but now that it is time for a hearing, the government now refuses to say where he is.
The US Supreme Court has narrowed the right to remain silent and not
have that used against you in court, by saying
the right
applies only if you have explicitly cited it.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US government is seizing money from people today to cancel "overpayments" in disability benefits allegedly made to their parents.
I don't think the US should seize money without a hearing about it. And it should not be able to seize money from children because of overpayments to their parents. Debts are not inherited.
The US Army is leaving behind, in Afghanistan, lots of dangerous things such as unexploded munitions.
Climate Change Is Not a Debate: It Is a Struggle That Pits Survivors Against Fossil Fuel Profiteers.
US citizens:
sign
up in support of Harvard faculty calling for divestment from
fossil fuel companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Two commonly used kinds of nanoparticles, zinc oxide and silver, can damage DNA if they get into human cells.
This highlights the danger that a material which is safe when used in larger units may be dangerous in the form of small particles.
Guinea has cancelled mining licenses obtained, it seems, through corruption.
Illinois will continue passing along coal industry (Koch brothers?) "education" in public schools.
Clarisa Christiansen describes how US border patrol agents threatened to attack her as she was driving her children to school, refusing to say why, and eventually slashed her tire just to be nasty.
These thugs should be required to make video and audio recordings of their interactions with the public.
Airplane wifi systems spy on users even more than US law requires, as a "favor" to the US government.
Comcast called Time Warner Cable a competitor until they wanted to merge, at which point it started claiming that the two companies do not compete.
We should not permit large companies in the same field of business to merge under any circumstances.
The US Trade Representative claims that the European Union can't set its own data centers to protect privacy and block surveillance because that would violate a trade treaty.
Singapore rejected a "three strikes" law — and enacted SOPA instead.
3 new puns in French
The US is in a "gilded age" again because concentration of income to a wealthy few has gone back up to what it was a century ago.
US citizens: phone the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to extend unemployment benefits.
SEC lawyer James Kidney, in his retirement speech, rebuked the agency for timidity against the executives of the companies it is supposed to regulate.
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter, and say to co-sponsor S.J.Res.18 & H.J.Res.21, for constitutional amendments to cancel the Corporations United (*) decision.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
* To call it what it really is.
Everyone:
tell
Mozambique, don't let rapists push their victims into marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In issues of human rights, not solely in the software field, the concept of "open" is not strong enough.
Around 1000 food additives are used in the US
without need
for regulatory approval (or proper investigation).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Seymour Hersh writes that Obama decided not to attack Assad in Syria because he found out that the gas attack was committed by the Islamists of al-Nusra. Before that, he was planning a massive attack.
Hersh's sources say that Turkey supported al-Nusra in making sarin. They also say that the CIA was sending US weapons to jihadists in Syria through Turkey, but in 2013 Obama decided to stop it, and that Erdogan ordered the attack so as to bring the US into the war against Assad.
I still think it is important to find out who started the rebellion in Syria. Was that set up by Turkey and Saudi Arabia and the US?
Wisconsin is one of the best US states in running elections, but the Republicans now in power are doing their best to change that.
Egypt is prosecuting yet another al-Jazeera journalist.
The Heatland* Institute can't make up its mind whether to claim there is no global heating or claim global heating is beneficial.
What they say doesn't need to do any more than keep people too confused to interfere with what the Koch Brothers want.
* Officially "Heartland", but the name "Heatland" fits its activities better.
The Big Spill is still poisoning dolphins, turtles, oysters and fish in parts of the Gulf of Mexico.
The UK is following the US in making college expensive; students will take 30 years to repay their loans.
Without unions, workers won't be paid what their work is worth.
The Pharma company Roche swindled governments out of billions by suggesting that Tamiflu was effective against flu symptoms while concealing that experiments had shown the contrary.
We should not allow these companies to have anything to do with such experiments. The government should tax them and spend the money on the experiments.
Working people should not be condemned to being "hard-working" in service of the rich. Especially not when there is no work available.
Sri Lanka has imprisoned several women accused simply of having some sort of relationship with a suspected Tamil nationalist leader.
The Bush forces did similar things in Iraq.
France has prohibited employers in the digital sector from making employees respond to work emails after 6pm.
This means hackers in France now have more time to work on free software (logiciel libre).
A senior Miami thug faces charges of working for drug gangs.
The war on drugs corrupts many officials; that's one of the reasons we need to put an end to it.
Distinguishing the street protests of the middle classes wanting privilege from those of the poor demanding a decent life.
Greek workers held a
general
strike against austerity as a protest also against Merkel's
imperial visit.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Distinguishing the street protests of the middle classes wanting privilege from those of the poor demanding a decent life.
Slavishly subservient mining regulators in North Carolina have
appealed
a court victory that affirmed their power to regulate toxic coal ash.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The mayor of Chicago is pushing to replace public schools with charter schools, claiming that the charter schools are superior. A study confirms previous results that charter schools are no better, in educational terms at least.
They must be better for someone. I wonder who, and how much that someone contributes to election campaigns.
Some brave New York City teachers have declared they will refuse to help administer the Common Core tests.
A statistical study confirms that the views of non-rich people have negligible effects on US government policies. The rich, and special interest lobbying, have nearly total control.
And that was before the Supreme Court gave companies and rich people even more power to control elections.
Plutocracy has squeezed democracy almost completely out of the US political system. It follows that the US government is not a legitimate government; it is a government of occupation for a colonial system.
Jeremy Leggett, oil geologist, claims that the world's rate of oil extraction will fall short of demand, sometime before 2020, perhaps as soon as 2015. He also says that a transition to renewable energy is within our grasp.
Unfortunately, the Koch Brothers and their pet politicians are working so hard to prevent the transition. A carbon tax is the way to speed it up, so we can migrate as fast as possible, rather than as slow as possible.
Brandeis University cancelled its plan to give Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree because of her criticism of Islam's cruelty to women.
Anyone that this shoe fits deserves to feel unwelcome everywhere in the world.
A campaign against sexism appears to condemn all explicit sexual advances as "harassment".
Australia's policy towards Israel and Palestine under the previous (Labor) government was determined directly by campaign donors.
Stephanie Greene was convicted of manslaughter because she breastfed her daughter while taking morphine, which was prescribed for her horribly painful and disabling injuries.
This article argues that there was a medical error in the prosecution's reasoning as well: that normally only a tiny amount of morphine would get into the milk, not enough to have an effect on the baby.
But even if that were not so, you can't blame someone for taking a prescribed painkiller because of harmful effects she was not warned of.
The latest harmless prank in San Francisco is to turn a Smart car on its side or its front.
This operation is basically harmless. It has some chance of causing scrapes or breaking a lamp, but minor property damage should not be a felony. Evidently California has made its laws too harsh.
Everyone: Tell McDonalds to stop stealing workers' pay.
Shaker Aamer suffers several forms of mental illness caused by the inhumane way he is treated in Guantanamo. The state covers this up with doublespeak.
He is even punished by denying him a blanket when his arthritis hurts.
Released from UK Jail, 79-year-old Peace Activist Vows to Keep Protesting.
Hungary's ruling party got a 2/3 majority in parliament with 44% of the vote.
I'd say that electoral system is unfair, even granted that no single opposition party got more votes.
The Australian government expresses its contempt for the environment by cutting the operations of the environment department.
Causing global heating is a form of violence.
US citizens: Tell Congress to support the Government by the People Act.
Here's more info about it.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to file a comment against building the Keystone XL
planet-roaster pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens if Massachusetts: tell Governor Patrick not to allow tar sands oil into Massachusetts.
US citizens: oppose permitting oil exports from the US.
This would create an incentive to extract ever more oil using ever more dangerous and expensive methods.
20 Stabbed, Nine Hospitalized, No Dead in School Stabbing Spree.
If would-be killers can't get guns, and have to resort to using knives, they do a lot less harm.
The US is cutting corners on stewardship of many potentially dangerous facilities, including bridges, chemical plants, and nuclear plants and weapons.
How the World Bank's idea of "development" systematically promotes inequality and poverty.
Looking at all the studies, there is no evidence that butter is less healthful than margarine. But it is also not clear that butter isn't worse.
The US ought to welcome Palestine's
application
to join UN treaties concerned with human rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Elizabeth Warren attacked Paul Ryan's cruel lies head on, teaching
what it means
to be a Democrat instead of a Republican in Democrat's clothing.
If she runs for president, I will support her.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I will not support Ms Clinton, who is a phony Democrat like her husband (and Obama). I voted Green in the last two presidential elections, and when people warned me that this might lead to a Republican victory, I told them Obama was not that different, overall, from a Republican. There are some exceptions, to be sure; mainly his medical care law, which is a big step forward even after the medical insurance companies half-ruined it. Nonetheless, he's more right-wing than Nixon in terms of human rights, war, and the economy.
The TSA (Theater of Security Agency) fined John Brennan for taking off his clothes to show he had no bomb, after a non-trial which is not allowed to consider whether the regulations in use are unconstitutional.
Brennan will be able to appeal the decision, but at no point will he be entitled to a proper trial.
The pro-Russians that captured a government building in Luhansk are armed and trained soldiers, and apparently continue to hold some hostages.
These is not a protest, this is a rebellion — or perhaps an invasion. The occupiers may well be Russian soldiers.
Proctor and Gamble has agreed to impose policies to reject palm oil made by deforestation, but they will take 6 years to become effective.
Large companies including BT and Shell have recognized that a lot of fossil fuel must not be extracted.
Without more figures, I don't know how "a trillion tons of carbon" relates to the 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves that need to be left in the ground. If you can work that out, or come across an article that does, please tell me.
Margaret Thatcher was so open about trying to crush the non-rich that she inspired resistance.
Her successors today pretend that they are doing everything but trying to crush the non-rich, which is why it is useful to keep pointing out that that's what they stand for.
US citizens: call on the SEC
to make
public companies disclose their political spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for refinancing student loans.
US citizens: tell your state legislators
to stand
up to ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell Obama, don't pretend to aid Ukraine by increasing extraction of natural gas (which usually means fracking).
US citizens: phone your congresscritter
to support
the Better Off Budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Harvard University has adopted investment principles based on human rights and greenhouse gas reduction.
Divest Harvard has this response:
We're glad that Harvard has recognized the need to align its investments with its values. However, there are still inconsistencies in Harvard's investments. Harvard's decision to invest in climate solutions is an important step forward, but the truth is that we still have $32.6 million directly invested - and millions more indirectly invested - in the fossil fuel industry's climate destruction, science denialism, and political obstruction. We need to divest from the problem as we invest in new solutions.
A review of available experimental data for 60 diseases found that there is no evidence homeopathy has any more effect than a placebo, and in many cases clear evidence that it does not.
"Treating the whole person" is one of medical quackery's favorite claims.
Shaker Aamer's lawyers argue the US is obliged to release him from Guantanamo due to serious physical and mental illnesses, some of them probably caused by torture and cruelty.
China is imprisoning anti-corruption protesters.
A Russian destabilization campaign is under way in eastern Ukraine, threatening a military invasion as in the Crimea.
Russia claims that a similar US-led destabilization campaign helped kick out President Yanukovich. That might well be true.
There is a gray area between a destabilization campaign and aiding a real popular uprising: the subtler the campaign, the more it shades into rallying the public, and the more it is the public that really has control, which means the campaign is not so bad. The "protests" in Eastern Ukraine smell very fishy to me.
The occupiers of a building in Kharkiv were removed by Ukrainian thugs. I won't criticize that if it was not done in a brutal way. However, calling them "terrorists" is an example of a very dangerous practice. Occupying a building is not terrorism.
Protesters in the US have been accused of "terrorism" too. And don't forget the Greenpeace protesters accused of "piracy" in Russia.
On the other hand, taking hostages, as pro-Russian protesters did in one city, may qualify as terrorism.
The court ruling against the EU data retention directive also cited the further violation of privacy from allowing the data to be stored outside the reach of EU personal data protection law.
In the US: tell Safeway to label GMOs in its store brands.
A new DA in Brooklyn is helping to exonerate prisoners that were wrongly convicted in the teeth of the evidence.
This case illustrates prosecutors' power to threaten and bribe witnesses who are themselves facing charges.
Pakistan has carried the school-to-prison pipeline down to the preschool level, charging a baby with attempted murder.
UN special rapporteur Richard Falk has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing.
Everyone: tell Walmart's CEO, if the Gap can raise wages, so can Walmart.
Debt collection companies in the US engage in illegal harassment, lie to debtors, and frequently demand payment of debts that were never owed.
The US "Common Core" is a dangerous educational experiment on US schools, an excuse for firing lots of teachers and privatizing schools.
A blogger in the US has been subjected to prior censorship by a court, which jailed him until he agreed to take down blog posts accusing an official of having an affair.
I don't think it matters who officials have sex with, but this seems dangerous.
The European Court of Justice ruled that EU-imposed data retention (by ISPs and phone companies) is contrary to human rights and invalid.
There is specific evidence that the Obama administration
specifically
aimed to bury intelligence that cast doubt on Assad's
responsibility for the chemical attack.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
It seems there was a high-level push for war, then Obama decided to abort the war. Was there anyone else but Obama who could have been behind the high-level push? That seems unlikely. If the high-level push originated from Obama, did he really change his mind? That too seems unlikely.
The US increasingly keeps mentally ill people in jail rather than treating them in hospital.
I suppose this results from politicians' trying to look tough.
Snowden told the Council of Europe that the NSA intentionally spied on leaders of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The European Union has given meat companies more power to divert infected animals back into the food chain.
With Putin, Russia has fallen victim to the "resource curse".
Unfortunately, the US is also subject to the resource curse. (Look at those who think it is a good thing that US extraction of fossil fuels has risen.) "Autocratic government, systemic corruption and developmental stagnation affecting the general population, combined with extravagant wealth on the part of controlling elites" describes US politics today.
And it's even more so in Canada and Australia.
You could say that the world as a whole has fallen victim to the "resource curse".
Everyone:
tell
CNN to stop broadcasting global heating denialism.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to require regular reports on US drone attacks.
EU citizens: the coming elections for MEPs are very important for freedom on the internet.
Under the cover of automobile races that distract public attention, Bahrain's ruler is increasing the level of oppression.
How Right-Wing Loons and Pro-Gun Nuts Blame Everything But Guns for Mass Shootings.
(I think the word "mass" is a too strong for shooting 10 or even 20 people. "Mass murder" means a lot more victims than that.)
The IMF's "rescue" of Ukraine will impose crushing poverty.
Ukrainians may eventually choose to make a deal with Putin instead. A deal with Russia does not necessary mean a corrupt autocratic ruler in Ukraine.
Rahinah Ibrahim won her case to get off the US no-fly list, where her name was entered by mistake; but then her student visa was cancelled because being on the no-fly list had put her on another list.
The US has spent millions on organizations that aim at destabilization of governments the US does not like.
Bolivia has a free press, and even in Venezuela newspapers continue to criticize the government regularly; they don't need a Twitter imitation to state their views, since those countries don't interfere with doing so on Twitter.
Dragnet Nation: Do Google, Facebook Know More Private Info Than NSA and Soviet-Era Secret Police?
The interview demonstrates that the answer is yes. To protect democracy, we need to dismantle the surveillance system.
Israel is harassing tours that go to observe the Israeli colony in the middle of the Palestinian city of Hebron.
The head of the World Bank talks about the need to help renewable energy.
However, when he talks of a "price for carbon" that presumes emissions trading, which is not a reliable system as a carbon tax would be.
Meanwhile, the World Bank is funding giant fossil fuel projects. The first thing it should do is stop that.
A union in Australia has been fined a million dollars for blockading construction sites for days.
Meanwhile, companies that break laws get away with slaps on the wrist, or get the law changed to please them. When officials say, "We must enforce the law" to punish the workers, they pretend they are being even-handed.
When the law degrades into a scheme to help the rich crush the non-rich, that justifies the non-rich to break the law to fight back.
Global heating caused by methane generated by a runaway organism might have caused the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period.
Now another runaway organism is producing greenhouse gases and is on the way to causing another mass extinction.
The "peace talks" between Israel and Palestine "failed" because the US was unwilling to do anything that displeased the most anti-peace camp in Israel: the fanatical "settlers".
Peace can be made whenever the world puts enough pressure on Israel to convince the Israeli government to accept a fair deal.
Perhaps Palestine has been encouraged to defy the US pressure to go along with useless negotiations because of support from Russia.
A public-private partnership building a hospital in Lesotho, with the backing of the World Bank, is sucking up more than half that country's health care budget, starving rural clinics for funds.
When you hear "public-private partnership", think "public expense, private profits".
Eight Headlines the Mainstream Media Doesn't Have the Courage to Print.
I'd say it's honesty that they lack, not merely courage.
US citizens: Tell your congresscritter and
senators, support
effective regulation of toxic chemicals, not the phony alternative
bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In Lebanon, political censorship is carried out through libel suits.
Using a driver's license as proof of age gives dishonest bars and bartenders an opportunity to extract personal information they should not get.
A woman in Mississippi no longer faces murder charges for using cocaine while pregnant — only 20 years in prison for manslaughter.
When a fetus does not develop into a human being, no existent human being has been hurt, except perhaps the parents who may be disappointed. It is absurd to punish this woman for possibly disappointing herself.
When, however, the fetus does become a human being, anything that was done to the fetus that results in a damaged human being is a real wrong to a real person. Pregnant women should not take drugs that might have this effect. (I don't know whether that woman's cocaine use was really likely to cause any harm — it might depend on when in pregnancy she used it.)
However, imprisoning women for this, even if it is for less than 20 years, is not a good way to discourage such practices.
The case for prosecuting Donald Rumsfeld.
USAID subversion
has targeted
Venezuela and Bolivia, as well as Cuba.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Shell and Rio Tinto asked the UK government to help them defeat accusations of human rights violations.
Inequality pervades the US "justice" system — compare the rich man who avoided prison for molesting his children with the homeless woman who was jailed for leaving her kids in a car during a job interview.
Venezuelan opposition leader Lopez has been formally charged with inciting violence.
"Inciting violence" must be interpreted in a narrow and strict sense or else human rights are in danger.
The opposition gets its strength from the shortages of certain goods. The US can't be responsible for that. Buying goods from subsidized stores and reselling them could cause the state to lose money, but would not cause a general shortage of those goods in the country. It is Maduro's economic policies that cause the shortages.
US citizens: tell the Gates Foundation to stop investing in private prisons.
US citizens: tell your senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
US citizens: call for a
reduction
in student loan interest rates so the US stops making money from
struggling graduates.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on the legislature to ban new pipelines for fracked gas in Massachusetts.
A US court threw out the lawsuit by relatives of US citizens killed by
Obama's drone attacks, saying that
officials
are immune from prosecution for whatever they do in war.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Since the US is not officially at war in Yemen, this appears to give the president the legal authority to kill anyone, anywhere outside the US.
Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, who helped the movement that
brought down Mubarak, gives an interview while out on bail. He is
being
prosecuted
for organizing a protest; also, absurdly, for armed robbery.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
He expects to be imprisoned, along with many other human rights defenders in Egypt. His trial is likely to be a sick joke.
It was sad how many Egyptians that wanted freedom supported the coup and got themselves Mubarak Heavy.
The US-backed Twitter imitation for Cuba will undermine all other efforts aimed at offering uncensored internet access to Cubans.
Just as the US's use of a vaccination program as cover for finding Osama bin Laden has undermined the eradication of polio.
The election in Afghanistan had troubles with unexpectedly high voter turnout. But it is too soon to tell whether it was honest.
Rich people are trying to buy profit from global heating by buying up the resources that will become scarce.
Those who do this will have a vested interest in pushing global heating to ensure those resources do become scarce, just as fossil fuel companies do.
For Israel's ruling Likud party, the danger of peace has receded.
Thugs in the UAE keep on torturing people and pushing them into false confessions.
US citizens: Desoto County School Board,
end
oppressive zero-tolerance and un-punish the child who held up
three fingers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: Tell the Federal Reserve to make banks get out of the commodity business.
UN Must
Reject Mass Surveillance to Protect Global Privacy Rights.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The Senate
plans
to release only parts of its report on the CIA. We need the rest
to be leaked.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The imitation Twitter for Cuba is just a tiny bit of governments' propaganda efforts.
Two reporters for the Toledo Blade were arrested for taking photos from public places of the outside of a tank factory.
A lawsuit by the ACLU got the US government to let some hunger striking immigration prisoners out of solitary confinement.
Desmond Tutu
condemns
US laws that aim to punish support for boycotts, divestment and
sanctions against Israel or its occupation of Palestine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The thug that is prosecuting Cecily McMillan for supposedly elbowing him (as he groped her breast from behind) is also being sued for attacking another protester.
We should have a "stand your ground" law saying that if someone starts groping you from behind, you have a right to respond with hands, feet and elbows before you know who it is.
Uncertainty about how far we are from the edge of the climate cliff tends to mean more risk that things are worse than we expect.
Ebola virus is spreading around West Africa.
If fruit-eating bats are responsible, it may not spread beyond that region, but it could be disastrous there.
Arguing we have better chances of reforming the financial-political
complex
all
at once than piece by piece.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
London thugs are pressured into thuggishness by quotas of arrests imposed on them by higher-up thugs.
Eight Headlines the Mainstream Media Doesn't Have the Courage to Print.
I'd say it's honesty that they lack, not merely courage.
US citizens: Tell your congresscritter and senators,
support effective regulation
of toxic chemicals, not the phony alternative bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Using a driver's license as proof of age gives dishonest bars and bartenders an opportunity to extract personal information they should not get.
A woman in Mississippi no longer faces murder charges for using cocaine while pregnant — only 20 years in prison for manslaughter.
When a fetus does not develop into a human being, no existent human being has been hurt, except perhaps the parents who may be disappointed. It is absurd to punish this woman for possibly disappointing herself.
When, however, the fetus does become a human being, anything that was done to the fetus that results in a damaged human being is a real wrong to a real person. Pregnant women should not take drugs that might have this effect. (I don't know whether that woman's cocaine use was really likely to cause any harm — it might depend on when in pregnancy she used it.)
However, imprisoning women for this, even if it is for less than 20 years, is not a good way to discourage such practices.
The case for prosecuting Donald Rumsfeld.
USAID subversion
has targeted Venezuela and Bolivia, as well as Cuba.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Shell and Rio Tinto asked the UK government to help them defeat accusations of human rights violations.
My friend Hong Feng is looking for people who can give advice about the market conditions for solar energy in various countries around the world. If you want to help him, please send email to hf at hongfeng dot c and then h.
US citizens: support the movement against US government hypocrisy.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to cosponsor bills to relax the Federal interference with state-legalized marijuana.
'Stand Up, Fight Back!': Newark Students Protest Charter Schools.
How third-party cookies combine for substantial tracking, even if each one contains only a meaningless number.
The European Parliament voted for network neutrality.
Ukraine's leaders call the coming IMF-imposed austerity "the price of independence".
They have it backwards: the price of independence will be whatever it costs Ukraine to throw off the IMF's yoke.
One of the IMF's requirements is truly necessary: making fossil fuels more expensive. That must be done in every country so that less of them will be used.
Protesters Against Austerity Fill the Streets of
Montreal.
The thugs attacked them, of course.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
There were mass protests against austerity in Brussels also.
Kerry's sham "peace process" has visibly fallen apart.
The idea of a "fatal blow" to the "peace process" presumes it was serious and intended to succeed. However, Israel never had any intention of making nontrivial concessions, so the process was nothing but an attempt to pressure Palestine to legitimize what Israel has taken.
Its "demise" creates a small opening for peace, but only if more pressure is placed on Israel.
Most of the American public rejects the idea of a war on drugs.
Why did the missing airplane get so much media coverage?
The US indirectly set up a pseudo-Twitter to give Cuban users a way to communicate with each other…intended secretly to start riots for a destabilization campaign.
Offering Cubans a way to communicate and evade state censorship is good. Using this for destabilization is not. Fortunately, that part of the plan failed.
The new CEO of reorganized General Motors informed the public that the company chose to pay off relatives of people killed by faults rather than fix them.
More information on the faults.
The idea that corporations must serve primarily their shareholders' interests above those of workers, customers and the public is a recent development. It started after 1980. Since that was a change for the worse, let's not legitimize it or give up on fighting it.
US citizens:
call
for amending the Constitution to reverse the Corporations United
and McCutcheon decisions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Turkey's constitutional court has
lifted
the ban on Twitter.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
More about the protests in China that seem to have blocked construction of a chemical plant.
Christian fanatics from the US are
spreading
bigotry in many African countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The IMF is
making the
conditions on its "assistance" tougher in terms of crushing the
poor in the countries that are "assisted".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Kerry
condemned
Palestine for the temerity of proposing to adhere to international
human rights conventions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I suppose this is because joining them means acting like a state. The US wants Palestine to accept an Israeli veto on being a state, along with Israeli colonization, land grabbing, and water grabbing, etc.
Palestine's human rights record is not very good but if it signs some human rights treaties, they might provide a lever to demand improvement.
We Are Now in the Terminal Stage of Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction, manifesting itself as delusional thinking.
In the high-CO2 scenario, by 2100 the temperature will interfere in some places with outdoor work such as farming.
Heating will continue after 2100.
Hamburgled: Nine Out Of Ten Fast Food Workers Have Experienced Wage Theft.
The Koch brothers are lobbying to ban some mass transit projects.
Apparently they want to maximize the amount of fossil fuel that the world burns, no matter how outrageous the methods.
The House Republicans passed a bill requiring NOAA not to study global heating.
The Senate won't pass it, but it shows the mentality of the Republican party in the US.
Exxon tells stockholders not to worry that its CO2 generation will ever be capped.
However, if it isn't capped, the system in which it is possible to own stock and later sell it could fall apart around 2070 or so.
The NSA lawyers are trying every sleazy trick to destroy evidence needed for the EFF's lawsuit against massive surveillance.
Adding subtitles to Neelie Kroes' letter that pretends to support network neutrality.
15% of Americans are being harassed by debt collectors, which often try to cheat or swindle people, not infrequently for debts they never owed in the first place.
This system needs to be tightened up, but as for the Americans who really do have debts they can't pay, the main cause is the bank-state axis that has loaded Americans with debts and impoverished them.
Dredging a harbor in Australia mobilized metals into the water, which appear to have poisoned many sea turtles in the area.
I suspect that only a fraction of the turtles that were killed have been counted.
Everyone: boycott the Koch brothers' companies.
Canadians: join the campaign against the TPP, which threatens to impose longer copyright term in Canada (as well as many other injustices).
Everyone: call on Rio Tinto to pull out of the Pebble Mine project.
If we hope poor people will eat a healthy diet, we had better give them money.
Chopping down old forests and planting new forests will not save the koalas (and other animals) that live in the old ones.
Coral gives evidence of warming oceans, and warming oceans are
damaging
the coral.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
In a few decades, the anthropogenic CO2 that is warming the oceans will kill the coral directly.
Australia will move some imprisoned asylum-seekers to a remote prison with so few phone lines that it will be hard for their lawyers to reach them.
We can't expect the unaided market to curb global heating, because if it were going to, it already would have.
Part of the problem is plutocracy: the fossil fuel companies have lobbied for and gained big subsidies, including support from the World Bank as well as national governments.
When the state becomes so cruel that a lot of people need to beg for help, it provides an opening for racist "charities" that offer aid only to certain racial groups.
Thus one cruel right-wing policy feeds into the next.
The Supreme Court struck down a limit on total donations from a person to various political campaigns.
This will increase the US tendency to become a plutocracy, with only forms of democracy.
Our only hope is if people learn to vote for whoever the attack ads attack.
The Australian government is planning to ban environmental organizations from organizing boycotts.
This is a direct assault on freedom of speech for the non-rich.
A Mississippi bill, already approved by the legislature, would allow pharmacists to deny medication to people on religious grounds.
It would authorize discrimination by other businesses, too.
"Reform" of the NSA, by the NSA, for the NSA.
In Phoenix, talking to people you meet on the street is interpreted as an "intention" to commit prostitution.
This is unjust for several reasons: because talking to people is not really evidence of that, because it is an invitation to racial and gender profiling, and also because prostitution should not be a crime.
Since 2001 the US government has launched an
Orwellian
attack on the English language to justify both torture and total
surveillance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A way to bring home the danger of global heating is by focusing on its impact on food production.
Candidates in the Afghan elections predict massive fraud.
Clapper admits that the NSA uses a backdoor search loophole to search for Americans' communications data within its massive collections.
Arizona has restricted the use of RU-486, using an obsolete high dose as an excuse.
Venezuela is introducing purchase-tracking cards for subsidized supermarkets.
I don't see anything wrong with rationing subsidized goods. (US food stamps are not provided in unlimited quantities.)
However, this is no substitute for correcting the cause of the shortages, which I believe is price control.
The biometric and tracking aspects seem very dangerous.
The Irish national thug unit recorded phone conversations in jail. Here's an analysis of what happened, and perhaps why.
US citizens:
sign up
for the protest on April 15 against taxation without representation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The idea is that our congresscritters represent plutocrats, not us.
US citizens:
call
on Boehner to pass the bill to renew unemployment benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: add your name to the protest against the "justices" that ruled for unlimited political spending for the rich.
US citizens: tell Rep. Pompeo he will look like a fool if he sponsors Big Food's law to stop states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
One school in New Zealand has thrown away the narrow "safety" rules that restrict children's play, and parents support the decision.
A rich man in the US was convicted of raping his young children. The judge sentenced him to probation, saying prison would be very bad for him.
That is a valid point — from what I've heard, prison is very bad for a lot of convicts. But does this apply only for the rich?
Traces of coral growth, near Western Australia, give ocean temperature records starting from 1795. They show that the ocean temperature since 1980 has been .5C higher than in the previous period since 1795.
Illegal immigrants in Greece are imprisoned in horrible conditions.
I don't think Greece, or the EU, has an obligation to admit everyone that wants to go there. But if people are to be imprisoned, they should be imprisoned in humane conditions.
Tax-dodging US companies have nearly a trillion dollars stored outside the US.
Americans: reject the nationwide standardized tests for your children.
Plutocratist American politicians are now competing for the votes of a few billionaire oligarchs, who hope their money can buy US elections.
Right-wing billionaires applauded when Cheney talked about attacking Iran. (Cheney is a war criminal already.)
Bernie Sanders on the danger of oligarchy in the US.
Why you must choose "no deal" rather than a grossly unfair deal that gives you a little more than zero.
Public protests may have halted a chemical plant project in China.
The US seems to be considering the concession of releasing Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. In exchange, Israel will do something it already agreed to do.
I would describe this as increasing US submission to Israel.
The Girl Scouts have a "merit badge" for submission to copyright tyranny, called (naturally) "intellectual property".
Obama has agreed to let Saudi Arabia send portable anti-aircraft missiles to Syrian rebels.
The danger is that the Islamist fanatics among these rebels will use them for terrorist purposes, perhaps in another country.
The World Bank supports agribusiness land-grabs.
Thugs that arrested a Black art student in Pittsburgh based on nothing but his appearance lost a lawsuit for false arrest.
However, they have been left in impunity for the injuries they caused by beating him up. And they have not been sent to prison.
Russia is starting to withdraw troops from the region bordering on Ukraine.
This reinforces the idea that Putin made a bluff to take more than Crimea so as to get a "compromise" of keeping Crimea.
Governments proceed with promoting fossil fuels despite the need to stop. Either they don't know about the devastation they are causing, or they don't care.
An Australian elected official says that the thugs are intimidating her meetings with the public.
Look at the amazing gall of the thug's response: the thugs are good guys by definition, regardless of what they do. This is the impunity that enables thugs to get away with so much violence.
Greenpeace has shown that the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is more greenwashing than real environmental protection.
Pretending to compensate the rainforest destruction with theoretical carbon emission reductions elsewhere is a typical swindle. This is why we need an emissions tax rather than "carbon trading".
Bill Ryan, 92 years old, explains why he got himself arrested blocking the construction of a large coal mine that will help destroy civilization.
Considering how many people that mine will kill, even violent activities to prevent it from operating are justified by the necessity doctrine: to prevent a greater crime.
The world's reaction to global heating parallels Ibsen's play, An Enemy of the People: if addressing the problem is bad for business, ignore it instead.
Maybe the Senate's report on CIA torture says that torture didn't even help intelligence goals and the CIA lied about it.
Congress should legislate that it is entitled to publish the report, override any veto, and publish it.
The NSA claims that nothing about its activities must ever be revealed, because public knowledge of them would be dangerous, but it leaks such information itself for political purposes.
Citizens of Albuquerque protested against cop-killers. That is, against the cops that kill innocent people.
The Republican Plan To Invalidate Scientific Research.
A social movement in Chile blocked the enactment of plant variety monopolies.
Erdogan's Islamist party, the party of censorship and repression, has won an apparently democratic election.
The result endangers Turkey's human rights, without which there can't be real democracy either.
The IPCC's reports have warned of the same disaster for 25 years. What has changed is that the disaster becomes more certain, and escape gets harder and harder as we dawdle.
Damage is already visible in natural system, and in human activities.
Many species are shifting their ranges toward the poles or higher altitude, but some can't move, and some will reach geographical barriers such as ocean. Meanwhile, if the species in an ecosystem don't move equally, the ecosystems will be scrambled and some species will go extinct, which could cause the extinction of other species in a domino effect.
The harm will affect all regions, but poor people will suffer most.
Food will become scarce and expensive. The effect is already occurring.
The fossil fuel magnates are trying to stop us from escaping, by telling us the problem does not exist and there's no use trying to avoid it.
They must figure their money will enable them and their descendants to avoid the consequences that they will have brought on everyone else. If those consequences get rid of most of the people they no longer need to employ, they will consider that a bonus, and the right-wing practice of demonizing the poor will be their excuse.
Apple is the world's principal patent aggressor against free software.
"Patent trolls" are a secondary issue: when people try to focus criticism primarily on trolls, we should bring up Apple.
With global heating, the world's large tropical and semitropical cities face a shortage of fresh water and inundation with sea water.
I might prefer inundation in sea water, even if it is fatal, to staying alive in the horrible heat.
Egypt's persecution of al-Jazeera journalists follows the path of the United States, which tortured al-Jazeera journalists and accused them of "terrorism".
In the US: join rallies on April 4 for the Tobin Tax (aka Robin Hood Tax) on financial transactions.
US citizens: call on Obama to reject the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline because of the carbon emissions it will cause.
US citizens: join nurses in calling on Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline because of the health problems it will cause.
This is not the worst problem the pipeline will cause, but we don't have to mention only the worst problem.
What we have learned from Snowden has removed the "cloud" from the eyes of many businesses and even some governments.
Tech companies are bickering with the surveillance state, but behind the scenes they mostly continue to cooperate with it.
5 minutes of playing with a Barbie doll affect young girls (under 7) so that they think they have only a narrow range of career possibilities.
Obama asked the Supreme Court not to consider the case of citizens suing to invalidate the law that authorize the US military to imprison Americans without trial.
The appeals court ruled in favor of that provision; unless the Supreme Court overturns it, no one in the US really has any human rights, since the state can take them all away at any time.
The US government refuses to say whether it has already imprisoned people in this way.
The International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's "scientific" whaling is commerce, not research, and ordered Japan to stop.
Republicans are imposing
new kinds of
voter suppression laws in swing states, designed to hamper poor,
minority and old people from voting.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine's
Inconvenient Neo-Nazis.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Israel told Fadi Al-Qutshan, in Gaza, that to get the medical care he needed he would have to spy for Israel. He refused, and died instead.
This conduct is not a rare exception; it's common practice.
Iceland has developed a new cryptocurrency to improve its economic situation.
There is one point in the article I must criticize: comparing a currency's value with gold is a form of spin; it says that inflation is bad, but a certain amount of inflation is useful. The US dollar has inflated by more than a factor of 10 since 1960, and if the Icelandic krone had done the same, that wouldn't be bad for Iceland.
The Texas law that eliminated abortion providers in large regions of the state was upheld by a US appeals court. Women are already being forced to have children they don't want.
'No to Education Cuts!' Madrid Rocked by New Wave of Student Protests.
Another reason why limiting when the NSA can access phone call records is not good enough: the NSA already has a large collection of phone call data which it can keep and use almost without limit.
Albuquerque thugs attacked a homeless man with a fright grenade, and when that scared him and he ran away, they took that as an excuse to shoot him dead.
If anyone deserves to be in a mind-deadening US prison, it is those thugs.
If antibiotics cease to be useful, many forms of surgery will become too dangerous, as will kidney dialysis and childbirth.
The article is misguided where it says that we would also lose the benefits of keeping animals in cramped conditions in factory farms. That practice is a principal cause of antibiotic resistance; if we want antibiotics to keep working for other uses, we have to put an end to it now.
Many Republicans oppose federal agency plans to find out about conflicts of interest in scientific research that agency decisions might rely on.
This opposition makes sense. Republicans, in general, stand for helping companies corrupt the government. Therefore, they don't want agencies to resist using scientific studies corrupted by those same companies.
Bad news: the movie industry's income increased again, proving that there is no danger forbidden sharing will wipe out the movie companies any time soon.
That's unfortunate. These companies spend their money on propaganda campaigns saying that sharing is "piracy", and lobbying for unjust laws such as SOPA and ACTA. Much of Europe has effectively adopted the parts of SOPA.
I regard the movie companies as enemies of our freedom. I practice a not-quite-boycott of Hollywood: I never to pay to see a movie unless I have reason to think it is good. In principal, this is quite different from a total boycott of Hollywood. In practice, there is little difference. If you catch yourself and stop yourself when you are about to agree to "go see a movie" without knowing which one, you will join my not-quite-boycott.
After seven years, one person (Rahinah Ibrahim) has been removed from the US no-fly list by a court. But nothing has changed in the system, and the next victim could find it just as difficult as it was for her.
The no-fly list is punishment without trial and should be considered unconstitutional.
Readers Digest does printing in China, so when printers in China demanded censorship of a book in English, Readers Digest gave in rather than spend $30,000 more to print the book.
This is one of the many forms of harm done by globalization of business, driven by unjust treaties such as the WTO.
Privatised Enforcement: A Threat to Our Civil Liberties Online.
If you learn that Paypal made an agreement to "protect intellectual property", those propaganda words should be a clue that this agreement is bad. (In fact it entails cutting service to its own clients.) I believe it should be illegal for an important internet service to cut off a client without going to court.
A lawsuit against Baidu, for imposing pro-China censorship for users in the US, has been rejected on First Amendment grounds.
This was a no-brainer. Baidu has no legal obligation to mention criticism of China, any more than stallman.org has an obligation to mention right-wing propaganda.
What's wrong with the internet in China is that netizens can't find criticism of China somewhere else.
Canonical is talking about removing its Amazon spying search from Ubuntu.
I'd appreciate being informed if and when the main Ubuntu release ceases to do this spying.
Detroit, bankrupt, will spend hundreds of millions on a new sports arena as a handout for the owners of a sports team.
The teams claim that the cities should pay towards these projects because the cities' economy will grow, but it turns out that the growth goes mainly to the rich. Detroit can't afford to be swindled this way.
There are worse ways to spend money — they could be buying surveillance gear or SWAT teams. On the other hand, they are probably doing that also.
A UK animal rights activist was convicted of "conspiracy" for acts of harassment, though no evidence was presented in her trial to connect her with them.
This is indeed chilling for democratic activity. Even though I firmly support use of animals in medical experiments to advance science, I still defend human rights including protests against those experiments.
Big Pharma's money affects human lives, and journalism too.
A writer in the Washington Post complains that states that restore food stamps are using a "loophole" and that the intended spending cuts, covering .02% of the Federal budget, might be wiped out.
Iwao Hakamada has been granted a new trial after 48 years in prison for murder and 30 on death row, because DNA evidence showed he was not the killer.
The many convicted murderers who have been proved innocent ought to make us think about how reliable trials are. Meanwhile, most Americans accused of crimes don't dare insist on a trial; they plead guilty to a lesser charge. Perhaps many of them really are guilty, but not all.
Trials in Egypt are a sick joke, but trials in the US are often not very good. When Americans do have a trial, it is a form of theater, and the judge's bias (for instance, in favor of the thug that attacked a protester, against the protester) often determines the outcome.
US prisons have become harsh — the goal of rehabilitation has been dropped — and some prisoners suffer painful isolation for years.
Most of the people convicted of "terrorism" in the US didn't really do any. Some said they wanted to, but they were incompetent to really do anything without help from infiltrators. Some, like Aref, didn't even do that much.
The government's manipulation to prevent the prisoners' lawsuit from being heard are in themselves despicable.
India still needs Ambedkar's message for eliminating castes. Just equalizing them in some degrees is not enough.
The UK's two main parties support the domination of society by business, with slightly different emphasis.
UK cuts in legal aid have caused many trials to become unfair.
A US school system had to pay damages for demanding a student's password for a social network.
The EU Parliament must protect network neutrality, but it is likely to go astray.
Wikipedia resists pressure from advocates of "alternative medicine", refusing to legitimize their claims when not supported by scientific studies.
Some forms of "alternative medicine" are so widespread that it is useful to tell readers what they are, but that does not entail asserting that they work.
If the proponents of alternative medicine want to present their arguments in a discussion, they can do so in the discussion page.
Florida Governor Scott has killed Charlene Dill by denying her medical care.
5 million other Americans are targeted by the same policies, which are simply a political game.
A mudslide that has killed between 25 and 50 people was forecast by a geologist (though he couldn't guess when), but this wasn't reported to people who lived in the area or those who moved in later.
Please sign this petition is against the practice of requiring people to buy a Windows license along with a machine.
It was really BP that was responsible for the oil disaster of the Exxon Valdez. The Exxon ship spilled the oil, but it was BP that had promised to prepare cleanup facilities, then didn't prepare them.
Domino's Pizza outlets in New York have admitted stealing wages from their workers.
BP has spilled tar sands oil into Chicago's water supply, and nobody knows how much.
A homeless unemployed mother in Arizona was arrested for leaving her kids in the car to go to a job interview — but what else should she have done?
Would the state rather she stay unemployed? Bring them to the job interview? Magically put them in another dimension while going to it? The charges are ridiculous anyway; there's nothing dangerous about being in a car for 45 minutes with a window open.
People in this situation should throw it back in the state's teeth by telling the judge, "I am being prosecuted for doing the best thing I could have done at the time. That I am prosecuted for this demonstrates the cruelty and viciousness of the state. I will not cooperate with these unjust proceedings. Put me in prison and you will be shamed by your actions for as long as I live. I will never apologize or ask forgiveness for what was not wrong, and I will never pay a cent of ransom to get out."
She should not allow anyone to pay bail for her, but rather say, "I refuse bail — drop the charges!"
The NSA and its partners infiltrated several German companies' computers just to increase its capabilities to spy on a hypothetical future target.
The effects of global heating are being felt around the world, and further heating will be caused inevitably by the greenhouse gases already emitted.
The forecast damage to coffee production won't bother me, and might do no more than frustrate you, but millions of people who make a living from producing coffee may become destitute.
The UK police force behave as thugs because they have come to regard the public as an enemy.
In effect, the thugs are the army of occupation for the rich that the state serves.
There Are Lots of Legit Reasons to Look at Pornography: New Restrictions on NIH Grants Are Unscientific And Possibly Illegal.
US government reports on the FBI's killing of Todashev, a suspect under interrogation, look like a whitewash.
Obama's Proposal To End NSA Bulk Data Collection Won't Protect Privacy.
Phone companies should not be allowed to keep your phone call data for longer than it takes to deliver it to you, in the absence of a specific court order.
More Proof Corporate Tax Cuts Have Done More Harm Than Good.
Ukraine's IMF Deal Means Greece-Like Depression. I suspected as much.
The adjustment of exchange rates, and the end of subsidies for petroleum products, are inevitable; they would happen, sooner or later, even without IMF intervention. The other demands of the IMF are not inevitable.
Four Years After Gulf Oil Spill, BP Is Recovering Faster Than Environment.
The AFL-CIO firmly condemns free exploitation treaties along the lines of NAFTA and says the US must stop proposing such treaties.
When will they start calling for cancelling the existing antidemocratic treaties?
Obama uses distortions to present the US conquest and occupation of Iraq as an example of good conduct.
The economic crisis in many European countries is getting worse, as poverty and unemployment continue to increase.
Those who claim things are getting better are talking about economic totals, which include the wealth of the rich. Any time someone says "The economy is getting better — the GDP is rising," that's a snow job.
The natural sciences can't tell you the meaning of life, but they can tell you what life consists of, and that's a good start for the search for meaning in it.
Giant US companies such as Walmart have offered meager compensation to the families of the workers who died in a factory fire while making clothing for them to sell.
US citizens: tell the FDA we want mandatory GMO labeling, not a "voluntary" scheme designed to pre-empt states.
US citizens: call on Congress to renew the Production Tax Credit for wind-based electricity.
World writers call on Turkey to respect freedom of expression.
The Australian government plans to streamline the approval process for trashing things, including dumping waste on the Great Barrier Reef.
There is a sick rationality to this. The same government is going all out to promote CO2 emissions, which will destroy the Great Barrier Reef entirely in a few decades. No wonder it doesn't care if some parts are destroyed a little sooner.
The UK cut benefits for half a million poor families that live in apartments with an extra room. Only 6% of them have moved to a smaller apartment.
This is because there are hardly any smaller apartments available in the UK — few were built.
The rest of those half million families are simply suffering under pressure to do the impossible. This serves the government's cruel purpose, which is to paint them as lazy spongers while pushing them into worse poverty.
A Cuban who worked for the CIA (but was a double agent, really working for his own country) says that the CIA specifically promoted right-wing student movements in Venezuela.
He believes that this process started before Chavez was elected; that the goal was to shift Latin American universities from left-wing influences to right-wing influences.
Peter Buffet describes the "charitable-industrial complex" as a system of conscience laundering for rich people that create suffering with one hand, while alleviating part of it with the other hand.
The US government wants any federal judge to be allowed to authorize searching any computer.
This means the FBI could go forum-shopping, bringing all such requests in whichever district has the judges most likely to say yes and least concerned with upholding the fourth amendment.
The tobacco industry is using various countries as proxies to attack Australia's requirement for plain packaging of cigarettes.
The article speculates that they are trying to drag the cases out because they expect to lose in the end, but meanwhile the WTO enables them to intimidate other countries.
It will be good if they do lose, but the WTO will have done substantial harm in this case even so. Just one of the ways the WTO harms most people (while it helps businesses). The WTO should be abolished.
A journalist says Google identified (and then fired) one of his sources by looking at his email in gmail.
It is not a good idea to use an email account run by a big company.
Ukraine will be hit by an
IMF
"bailout".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The article says nothing about how Ukraine will be required to change its laws, but in the past IMF "aid" has been devastating for other countries.
A philosopher who argued that global heating denialists are doing something immoral received piles of hate mail.
Of course, funding global heating denialists is immoral. It may be illegal, too. Since global heating is likely to kill a large fraction of the human population, an activity that aims at making sure global heating continues is attempted murder. Since it is likely to wipe out many species, some of which are already endangered and legally protected, denialist activities may be a criminal conspiracy too.
We should not let the perpetrators get away with it. If we can't stop them in time to prevent their crime, which will dwarf all the genocides in history put together, we should make sure it is punished.
Turkey has banned access to YouTube.
How State Secrecy Protects Government Agencies from Embarrassment, Then And Now.
Another form of massive surveillance of portable phone users: cell tower dumps indicate all phone users in a region at a certain time.
The EU has in effect adopted a key part of SOPA: governments order ISPs to block access to file-sharing sites.
Following
the Money: How States Are Funding Surveillance Technologies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Barack Obama:
The Least Transparent President in History.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: Call on the UN to impose sanctions against John Brennan, head of the CIA.
The US and UK condemn oppositionists for supporting dictators, while being even bigger supporters of dictators.
It's wrong for the US and UK to support dictators. It's also wrong for others to support dictators, even dictators that the US and UK oppose. That much is straightforward.
Where it becomes complicated is when some country's politics is a rivalry between one evil and another. For example, Morsi in Egypt was in the process of trampling the rights of women, but the coup introduced an even more cruel regime. Saddam Hussein was a murderous dictator but respected Iraqis' rights better, on the whole, than happens now.
Ethiopia has constructed a total surveillance state based on ready-made products obtained from advanced countries, and uses it to impose total repression.
Verizon is trying to force customers to move to fiber-based phone lines, although they won't work when there is a power failure.
Billionaires are taking control of politics in the US.
I disagree with the first points in the article. "Obeying the rules" is no excuse for driving civilization towards the disaster of global heating. It is no excuse for kicking the poor when they are down.
Meanwhile, there is a simple rule for American voters to resist the billionaires. On TV, you can see who the billionaires support: the major candidates that the attack ads don't attack. Vote for whoever the attack ads are attacking.
The House's NSA
Bill Could Allow More Spying Than Ever.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The LA thug department says all cars in LA are under investigation.
It is common for thugs to make outrageous claims, thinking that they will get away with part of the claims and have nothing to lose. For the sake of our rights, we should make sure they have something to lose.
A surprising conjecture: working-class people accept austerity without rebelling because they are habituated to caring about the comfort of rich people that they work for.
Obama has proposed to shift mass surveillance of phone call records from the NSA to the phone companies. The EFF has responded with superficial criticism which makes the basic mistake of treating this window dressing as a solution.
Where these data are kept is an insignificant detail. Hosting them differently won't protect whistleblowers like Stephen Kim from being identified through them.
Our democracy depends on these whistleblowers. To make whistleblowers and democracy safe, we must make sure that these records are not saved except about suspects specified by court orders.
The USA Freedom Act is not enough either; we should support it, but refuse to consider it as more than a small step.
Anger, Disbelief as Obama Defends US Invasion of Iraq.
An 83-year-old adjunct professor, who got no retirement funds from her
25-year career, died after the university suddenly fired her and made
her homeless. Her death has inspired a
campaign for
unionization.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine is definitely being used as an
excuse for
long-term expansion of US export of natural gas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The gas will be obtained by fracking. Thus, this means that companies will invest a lot of money in the assumption that there will be more fracking in the US and more CO2 emissions abroad. They will then fight against any attempt to slow down emissions, driving the US and the world to frack and fruin.
Environmentalists are trying to stop the
construction
of the Cove Point export terminal in Maryland.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Fossil fuel companies are using the Ukraine crisis as an excuse to expand exports from the US.
Global heating is more dangerous than Putin, and this policy is likely to speed it up.
The worst of the extreme weather would have been virtually impossible without the aid of global heating, says the World Meteorological Organization.
By 2040, normal summer in Europe will resemble the deadly European heatwave of 2003.
The UK ban on sending books to prisoners does not mean they are not allowed books to read, but does mean that access to books will be more difficult and the range of books they can read will be limited.
The NSA and CIA
can blackmail
the president by threatening to expose when he said yes to illegal
spying etc.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Taiwan's government is rushing to sign a free exploitation treaty with China, which will surely do harm to Taiwanese workers just as the US's free exploitation treaties do.
The UK government's cuts in legal aid will deny justice in kinds of cases where it would require a lot of work.
All three branches of government approved the NSA's phone call record surveillance, not because it was valid, but because it had them all hornswoggled.
That would leave massive surveillance of Americans' phone calls. Phone companies keep these records, in some cases for years, and will hand them over retroactively when Big Brother asks for them in order to find a whistleblower.
Democracy requires a way for people to communicate without being identified to Big Brother.
Underground cultivation of marijuana causes great environmental damage.
This problem is caused by prohibition; legalization would reduce the environmental damage from marijuana cultivation to be comparable to any other crop. That would still cause environmental problems but it would cease to artificially multiply them.
US citizens: tell the EPA to stop letting companies replace one toxic chemical with other toxic chemicals.
US citizens: call on the BLM to include the public in planning about oil and gas extraction in Colorado.
Studying poor Americans' way of life by living next to them.
Poor women don't get married because they have high standards for marriage and can't find men that meet those standards. They have children anyway, because they want children. The fathers try to help support the babies, but can't offer much. All of them don't get legally recognized jobs because they can't afford the cost of child care together with the benefit cuts.
If we provided better support to poor people, some of these patterns would change.
Part of the goal must be convincing those who can't afford to raise children not to have children.
American children make an especially heavy addition to humanity's footprint because Americans live so wastefully. We need to change that, but in the mean time we need to reduce the births in the US.
When the
Government Outsources to Private Companies, Inequality Gets Worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Virginia passed a law allowing genetic counselors to withhold information from patients so they won't know they really ought to get an abortion.
Superstitious Islamists in Pakistan kidnaped a polio vaccinator from her home, tortured her, then killed her.
New Report Finds American Renters Still Cannot Afford Rent Nationwide.
One obstacle to making enough housing for people to live in is zoning law.
The "Internet of Things" means that all "things" will help profile you for someone else.
A Russian anti-Putin protester was framed for attacking a thug, although the thug refuses to say it was him, and sentenced to a mental hospital.
The Soviet Union put dissidents in mental hospitals too, and Putin as a part of the repression apparatus was well aware of this.
Even if the people of the Crimea feel Russian, they might not want to be ruled by Putin if they get a chance to think about it.
More about the ridiculous trial in which 529 Egyptians were sentenced to death.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to protect monarch butterflies from Roundup.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on Unilever to stop supporting a "study" being organized by deforesters to gain permission for further deforestation.
Refuting 10 myths about poverty in the US.
California's poor are losing millions a year to the big banks which charge them fees to access their benefits.
A large oil spill in Texas has polluted areas where many migrating birds stop off.
The Monsanto Protection Act was enacted through a Republican dirty trick, but Republicans say that now that it's a law, it should be forever.
Irish thugs "forgot" traffic violations of officials including the national head of thugs. A journalist broke this scandal, and has been fired as a reward.
A WHO study estimates that air pollution kills 7 million people each year.
The US has broken several commitments to Russia that it made to avoid provoking feelings of insecurity.
Fossil Fuel Industry 25 Years After the Exxon Valdez: Still Reckless After All These Years.
Allowing US employers to make decisions about health care for their employees is a relic of the historical development of medical coverage in the US. It could be changed.
The article proposes a change in the way this funding is nominally structured, and nothing more; but there's another bad side effect of making each company pay for the health care of its own employees: it's an incentive to buy robots and fire employees.
I think should tax businesses based on their income, and use the money for (among other things) health care for all, whether employed or not.
Democratizing the Global Food Crisis.
Why Charity Can't Replace the Safety Net.
Almost 1/5 of United States citizens have trouble getting money for food.
Providing homeless people with homes saves the public money.
After the deadly mudslide in Washington, remember that global heating is to make such mudslides more frequent.
That's because it will tend to increase the occurrence of make both droughts and heavy rain/floods.
Chevron has started a "news site" in Richmond CA as a propaganda scheme for its own operations in that city.
The BSA used a photo without permission in its latest campaign asking people to report unauthorized copies of nonfree software.
Please resist the temptation to apply the BSA's propaganda terms ("pirate", "theft", "stolen") to what the BSA did. Sure it is fun to point out their hypocrisy, but if you do it that way, you endorse what the BSA stands for.
Boycott and divestment against the Israeli occupation of Palestine are
spreading,
and the UN report recommends some sanctions too.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
There are two different movements. Gush Shalom launched boycott of companies involved in the occupation or profiting from it. Palestinians called for aiming BSD at all Israeli institutions and companies except those that oppose the occupation.
I personally advocate boycott, divestment and sanctions against organizations that directly support or profit from the occupation (this includes all Israeli universities, and various companies).
Everyone:
Call
on Japanese government to stop underpaying homeless people working
at Fukushima, and to monitor workers' radiation exposure.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Force-feeding (of hunger strikers) is pretty similar to water-boarding.
Even with no mistake, it still verges on torture.
The FDA cited a
spoiled
experiment as proof that Bisphenol A is safe.
Does New
Look at Documents Reveal Nixon's Hand in My Lai Cover-Up?
Now we know whose Lai it was.
North Dakota oil drilling involves
burning
lots of natural gas, pouring CO2 into the air for no
use at all.
A whistleblower in the London thug department, who exposed official
misrepresentations in crime statistics, has been
driven
out by management mistreatment as well as bogus accusations.
The UK used
surveillance
power to catch a whistleblower who exposed a scandalous tax deal
with Goldman Sachs.
We must stop accepting the small danger of "terrorists" as an excuse
for allowing government powers (such as surveillance) that present far
bigger dangers.
Jimmy Carter says he believes that Snowden has probably
benefited
the United States in the long term. And he is worried about
monitoring of his own email.
The Huawei irony is even greater than I realized: buying Huawei
communications equipment puts you at risk of espionage, not by China,
but
by
the US.
Is Huawei a front for Chinese military espionage? Are Microsoft,
Apple, Google and Facebook fronts for US military espionage? These
questions raise philosophical issues as well as factual issues.
In Argentina, thugs
regularly
jail young poor people for wearing a hood or cap.
This denies them job opportunities and turns them into a permanent
underclass.
Thawing
of Arctic permafrost exacerbates climate change.
"There is 100 times more carbon stored belowground than aboveground in
the arctic, so observed changes in plant productivity are only a very
small component of the story."
Global heating is turning a part of Brazil into a
desert.
An investment fund's stockholder action pressured Exxon-Mobil to
promise to recognize that
its
claimed assets' value might be lost by global heating.
This is because they are part of the
carbon
bubble.
Another necessary part of redirecting capital to low-carbon energy is
abolishing the myriad forms of direct and indirect subsidy still given
to fossil fuels. Consider how the UK has made it easier for local
inhabitants to block wind power (which might annoy them with its
sounds) but far harder for them to block fracking (which might poison
their water, as well as ultimately cause global disaster).
Putin's persecution of journalists in Russia has been
extended
to the Crimea.
Tatars and dissidents and people with connections with the Ukrainian
state are also being driven out.
UK prisons have
banned
sending books to prisoners. Prisons are supposed to buy books,
but only as a "privilege".
Some Muslim religious organizations are
saying
that it is a religious duty to protect the environment.
Protect
Elephants and Gorillas to Sustain Our Forests.
India's agriculture minister
asked
people to vote twice.
Egypt has
sentenced
over 500 Morsi supporters to death, after a trial that makes
Dubya's "military tribunals" look like the perfection of justice.
Libya's government is showing
disrespect
for human rights, even as the country disintegrates.
I agree that in principle we have a duty to help fix these problems.
But what could we do?
13 of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred
in
this century.
A Chinese man has been sentenced to prison for
filing
an application to hold a protest about the Tiananmen Square
massacre.
You could draw the conclusion that "In China, don't ask, just do it."
On the other hand, by asking he proved an additional point about
Chinese repression.
The guards at Guantanamo prison are already
planning for
operating into 2017.
To clear the name of the United States of America, we must put an end
to imprisonment without trial. Each prisoner is entitled to a
fair trial or
release. If that means a risk that a few of them will engage in
terrorism, that does not change what justice means. But Americans
need not worry about this, because it will not amount to much. It
will be much less than the terrorism that the Guantanamo prison
inspires in the millions of Muslims that the US has not yet
imprisoned.
Promises
Broken by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, 25 Years Later.
The NSA
focused
specially on cracking Huawei systems, including Huawei's own
systems.
Ironically, this is the same thing that the US government has
criticized Huawei for doing to the US. (That criticism might be valid
for all I know.)
A reviewer
refuses
to review books aimed specifically at girls or specifically at
boys.
Adrionna Harris took a razor blade away from another student and put
it in the trash,
so
he would not hurt himself. For this she was suspended from school
by the "humans" in charge of the school, who have taught themselves to
imitate rigidly programmed robots.
Calling this an "over-reaction" is an injustice because it grants
"zero tolerance" undeserved legitimacy.
Rigid overprotection is not limited to the US. A supermarket in the
UK refused to sell spoons to a 16-year-old; he was
"too
young". What should three-year-olds eat with, their hands?
The timidity of the parent's complaint is shocking: is it reasonable
to refuse a 16-year-old a fork? Or even a table knife? Are
16-year-olds not supposed to be allowed access to cutlery?
An experiment with volunteers that allowed the investigators to
collect their phone call records proves just
how
much it is possible to tell about people that way.
Poor Americans fall prey to payday loans that charge
350%
interest per year.
About
the study that found 47% of Americans are in jobs that could be
automated in the next couple of decades.
The conquest of the Crimea has spiked plans for possibly
reducing
nuclear weapons stocks.
Snowden handed all his files to a few journalists and
did not keep
them. Now it is Editors, not Snowden, that decide which leaks to
publish.
Senators who have criticized the CIA are fighting only for advantage
within the system that
maintains
the power for both sides.
It is up to Americans to take this opportunity to rip apart the CIA's
power, and carry out the US's duty to end torture … and punish
the torturers.
The spying-industrial complex is a
part
of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower
warned Americans about.
Greek judges are prosecuting Golden Dawn in Greece as a
criminal
conspiracy to commit violence.
With
International Law in the News, Could We Make the U.S. Comply?
2/3 of US doctors now advocate
"medicare for
all" to reduce the administrative load and focus on helping
patients.
Wage levels in many industries in the UK are
expected
to suffer from austerity until 2025.
But wages won't recover in 2025. By then, the effects of global
heating will be cutting into general standards of living, and millions
of jobs will have been lost to robots.
The Turkish state's first attempt to block access to Twitter was easy
to bypass, but it is
learning
to do better.
As examples such as China show, it is possible for a state to censor
the Internet in ways that most people can't bypass. There must be a
few Twitter users in China, but they can't reach many Chinese people
that way. No technical limits stand between Turkey and tyranny.
The Japanese government is considering
legislation
to prevent death from overwork.
US hawks make a
misleading
comparison between Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Judged against what was at stake in the Cold War — people today
often forget what a tyranny the Soviet Union was, and how it kept
other countries under a harsh empire — Brzezinski's clever plan
was not obviously foolish. We can't blame people in 1979 for not
envisioning that Islamic tyranny could return on a 12th-century model,
or that Afghanistan would devolve into a state of permanent civil war
lasting long after the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Fox News plans to offer corporations a
chance
to present their point of view on TV, as if they weren't doing
that all the time already.
A FISA court judge says, in effect, that the government lawyers misled
him in court to get
permission
to delete data sought for activists' lawsuits.
As
Surveillance Costs Fall, Could the NSA Gain Ability to Record &
Replay Every Call, Everywhere?
It states the general principle that we were protected in the past
from a high level of surveillance because it was so difficult, but
advances in surveillance technology took away our protection.
This article also explains how use of Google services (or any other
remote server services) by people in an organization enables the NSA
to identify the individuals in the organization.
CIA
and NSA Wrongdoing Requires Independent Investigation, Says Former
Church Committee Staff.
President Mojica of Uruguay has
offered to
receive some prisoners from Guantanamo in Uruguay. This may help
make it possible to empty the camp, but to get all the way there
depends on recognition by the US that it can't keep people prisoner
without trial.
US citizens:
support
Senator Warren's plan for reducing student loan interest rates by
taxing millionaires more.
Instead of living from paycheck to paycheck, now people live
from work hour
to work hour, insecure about whether they will get enough work
hours to pay the bills, and on call all the time.
I suggest passing a law that stores must tell hourly wage workers
their schedule for each week by the previous Friday. Work outside the
previously stated schedule should be paid time and a half.
NSA says it
does
snoop on privileged attorney-client communications, but
usually doesn't really look at them.
Thugs' patterns of behavior regularly lead them to
label
a deaf person as "aggressive", whereupon they beat that person to
within an inch of his life.
If you personally are not deaf, that doesn't mean you're safe. Thugs
that treat sign language as "aggression" will treat lots of innocent
activities as "aggression". If their response to this is to beat
people unconscious, they will beat up (and occasionally kill) lots of
people. Which, of course, they do.
In location tracking, the past isn't dead; it's
not
even past.
I am reminded of the science fiction story (by Asimov?) about a device
that could be used to look at the distant past, whose inventor wanted
to use it to study history, but other people would have used it to
look at more recent past such as 1 day or 1 minute ago.
Republicans
Reveal They Don't Just Hate the Poor and Jobless — They Hate
Hard-working Americans!
If you're not a plutocrat, Republicans will find some excuse to
mistreat you.
In Georgia they are
working
hard to make sure poor Americans get sick and die. That way they
won't be able to vote.
Northern India is
rapidly
using up its ground water, and global heating is expected to
eliminate the Himalayan spring snow melt. The result is disaster.
500 million IUDs, plus social changes to encourage their use, are
urgently needed.
A journalist imprisoned in Egypt has been
denied
medical care and his arm no longer works.
One US judge has
refused an
overbroad digital search warrant. Will others follow his example?
The funniest
rejection
of trickle-down can't-tax-the-rich that I can recall ever seeing.
Facebook is
doing
research to advance the accuracy of face recognition.
Soon we will need to wear things on our faces that interfere with face
recognition. People may enjoy reading
The Moon Moth, by Jack Vance.
Taiwanese students protested a
free
trade treaty between Taiwan and China.
I don't know the details of this treaty, but in general one must
expect those treaties to do harm.
'Stingray':
Increased and Secretive Cell Phone Surveillance by Local Police Raises
Alarms.
Russia has agreed to a
European
monitoring mission.
I think that Putin is giving an appearance of planning to invade other
parts of Ukraine as a threat so that the question will be not "Can
Putin keep Crimea" but rather "How to stop Putin from taking more."
Then the West and Ukraine will "meet him half way" by letting him keep
the Crimea.
If so, this agreement suggests that Putin has decided he has pushed
the act far enough, and it is time to make the deal.
US citizens:
ask
your congresscritter to sign Rep Moran's letter to make sure Iran
sanctions don't block medicines.
US citizens:
tell
Democrats to stand behind Vivek Murthy for Surgeon General.
US citizens:
tell
Michelle Obama that if she's interested in food labels, she should
call for labeling GMOs.
In New York City, or able to help remotely: help
save the New York Public Library
from a "renovation" that would convert it to
ebooks.
$4.5
Million Settlement for Anti-War Veteran, Occupy Activist Injured by
Oakland Police.
The Australian government has taken
14,000
aboriginal children away from their parents, in many cases without
giving any reason, and is planning to legislate an excuse to make the
removals permanent.
This makes me think of the children that were taken away from
dissidents in Argentina who were
murdered
by the US-supported military rulers. Grandparents continue to try
to find them.
The UK's plan to "help" people find work has placed
just
48,000 people in three years. However, it might appear more
effective if judged by the 300,000 poor unemployed people it provided
an excuse to punish, providing opportunities to claim that they are
unemployed because they are lazy, which is justification for the
government's cruel austerity program.
The government hopes this will distract voters from the real cause of
those people's unemployment: the government's cruel austerity program
eliminated their jobs.
Yahoo, Google and Apple claim the right to look at users' emails
"if
necessary".
I don't think that this criterion of "protecting the property" of the
company can be justified. However, there may be times when looking at
users' files is necessary for the maintenance of the mail service
itself.
In that sort of situation, I think the service operator must be
allowed to do it. To prevent abuses, the sysadmins who do this should
never be allowed to talk about what they have seen.
If the criteria are broader than that, we should oppose them.
The biggest stockholders in the Canadian tar oil sands are the
Koch
brothers.
A step forward in understanding the causes of Alzheimer's disease highlights
the
need
to send more research funds efforts in that direction, rather than
for war or weapons.
Republicans oppose research into preventing senility because it might
enable a bunch of embittered old people to stop being
Republican.
Uri Avnery comments on Ukraine, and
compares
the situation with the one that started World War I.
New
FDA Food Label Rules Ignore the GMO Elephant in the Room.
UK thugs use
both
the carrot (money) and the stick (threats and intimidation) to get
protesters to inform on their movements.
We also know that once the thugs have informers in political groups,
they don't limit themselves to using the information to stop the
occasional real criminal that might show up. Thugs work in cahoots
with companies
against
protesters that criticize the companies' abusive or dangerous
practices and even help companies
blacklist
people that might be "inconvenient".
Advice on how
to respond if the thugs ask you to be an informer.
Loopholes and cuts in inspection allow large pig farms in Iowa to
dispose of tons of hog manure into fields, from which it
poisons
the water.
US plutocrats can profit by
"giving" to
charter schools.
Even as the Green Revolution increased food yields, it
promoted
centralization of agribusiness. Increased efficiency meant fewer
workers, and more people who couldn't get food to eat.
Oil and gas extraction use lots of fresh water, just as
humanity
is starting not to have enough of it.
Rare earth mining in China is
deadly
to people who live or work in the vicinity.
Through the World Trade Organization, the US has
agreed
to do nothing about the problem.
US citizens:
tell
the FERC, stop approving oil and gas infrastructure.
Rwanda has deported a journalist who
linked
Twitter bullying to the president's office.
Rwanda's President Kagame seems to have done a good job of
managing
the economy, but he
tramples
human and political rights.
Documents approved by Cheney in 2001 show that the main motive for
invading Iraq was the
fear
Saddam Hussein might manipulate oil markets by temporarily
interrupting oil sales.
Surely this goal could have been achieved with some sort of a deal.
The article also cites proof that the US planned, before the invasion,
to rule Iraq as a colony with oil extraction as the priority.
Every country needs to aim for independence from oil supply, by
developing renewable energy supply as an urgent national priority.
When fossil fuel companies and their pet politicians block this,
they are effectively working against their own country.
Imprisoned asylum-seekers in Manus Island say that their fellow
refugee, Reza Barati, was
kicked
down the stairs by the guards and beaten to death.
The head of a big coal company
says
we should stop worrying about burning coal, because carbon capture
and storage will make it safe. Meanwhile, his company has stopped
contributing to research on carbon capture and storage.
This company is not really interested in implementing carbon capture
and storage, just using the idea as an excuse to avoid real solution
to the problem of global heating.
He says we can't get rid of fossil fuels because that he knows that we
could (over time), and he wants to stop us from trying.
Getty Images is
well-known
as a copyright troll.
Microsoft
searched
a blogger's email account — hosted by Microsoft — to see
where he got some Microsoft secrets that he revealed.
Calling for a
public
register of owners of companies, so that shell companies cannot
disguise who is really doing something.
McDonalds has made a
settlement
with workers who were made to work and incur expenses without
paying them.
It looks like these workers are getting an average of $300 each, which
might help them a lot, but I suspect it is not as much as they really
ought to get.
US citizens:
call on Attorney
General Holder to give high priority to prosecuting mortgage fraud
(by banks).
US citizens:
call
on Dropbox to stop making customers agree to mandatory
arbitration.
Turks are finding
ways
to access Twitter despite Erdogan's ban.
The right-wingers in the Ukraine's government include overt
enemies
of women's rights.
The NSA
cracks
into accounts of sysadmins in order to attack the systems they
administer.
If the NSA did this to the sysadmins working for hostile governments,
I would not criticize it. I don't see anything wrong in spying on
hostile governments. But the NSA does this to a tremendous extent.
Crimea and
Punishment: Imperial Blowback from Iraq to Ukraine.
Erdogan has
banned
Twitter in Turkey. It offered too much freedom of speech,
apparently.
It may be a mistake to focus our blame on sociopaths,
because the ways they find to exploit people are
shaped
by the social systems they are in.
Harvard's president resorts to absurd arguments against divestment
from fossil fuel companies, including denying that their lobbying has
any effect. This
open letter
from a student rips them to shreds.
In such situations, the person in authority usually has some very
simple, powerful and embarrassing reason, and the absurd arguments are
a smokescreen for it.
Perhaps the simple reason is that some rich donors whose money comes
from fossil fuel companies said they would stop donating to Harvard if
it divests. If that is the reason, she should come out with it and
give the community a chance to choose to be heroes instead letting her
impose cowardice.
Sarah Shourd developed PTSD as a result of a little over a year of
solitary confinement in Iran. Now she
campaigns
for prisoners in the US who are subjected to the same
brainwashing, some for many years.
Opposition mayors are being
imprisoned
in Venezuela for supporting protests.
Protests in Caracas are
limited
to a few wealthy areas. Outside of them, life simply goes on.
The violence seems to be sporadic on both sides, not organized. There
may be a plot to overthrow the government, but it is not valid to
assume that most of the protesters — or specific leaders —
are part of it without some specific proof.
Despite new evidence that the Kent State massacre
was intentionally ordered by officers, the US
still
rejects justice for the students who were killed.
Using peat in gardens
creates CO2 emissions, and it's not a renewable
resource when considered on a human time scale.
US oil companies
want to legalize oil export from the US.
This would tend to boost the rate of oil extraction and use,
exactly the opposite of what the world needs.
Everyone:
tell Walmart to give workers a raise.
Republicans in several states are
trying
to obstruct claims by people dying from asbestos.
The companies responsible for this disease should compensate the
victims asbestos they can.
Naming the
most
wasteful US fisheries. Some of them discard more fish than they
bring in.
GMOs, with all their bad side effects,
have
not increased food yields.
US a
No-Show for UN Talks on Covert Drone Wars.
Comparing
how Putin and
Obama threaten Americans.
'US Foreign Policy Blowback':
How US
Disregard for Intl Law Set Stage for Crimean Crisis.
To be fair to Obama, I should point out that Putin has done
some of the same bad things.
Google is being sued for scanning
students'
emails and school data.
School systems should be required to manage their own student data,
not entrust it to a company. No matter which company.
A teenager whose baby died at birth
faces
life in prison for having used cocaine while pregnant.
Even if it were probable that the cocaine had caused the baby's death,
that would not make this prosecution just or sensible.
This is not the way to get pregnant teenagers to stop taking cocaine.
Extreme punishment against a minute fraction of the people who do a
certain thing is never an effective way to teach people in general not
to do it. They rationally think that such a minute probability is not
worth thinking about.
The rational way to reduce the number of pregnant teenagers that use
cocaine is to provide all teenage females with IUDs. The cruel
right-wing "Christians" that enacted this law don't want to do that,
because they don't care about babies that die or have birth defects.
What they want is an excuse to be cruel to a scapegoat.
The US is using economic threats to push El Salvador into
massive
privatization.
The UK government is
quietly
planning to eliminate incentives for businesses to use less fossil
fuels.
I am convinced that the UK government has made a long-term secret
commitment to boost the fossil fuel companies' business as much as
possible — the exact opposite of what Britain and the world
need.
Arbitrary restrictions on which days each car may be used
tend
to increase air pollution in the long term.
UK private contractors whose callousness killed a man being deported
will
face charges.
Iraq is considering a
law
to attack women's rights.
The NRA is not satisfied with opposing gun regulation; it is
blocking the
nominee for Surgeon General because he agrees with most Americans
on gun control.
The Surgeon General plays no role in writing or enforcing gun
regulations. I speculate that the NRA has taken the opportunity to
pressure Democratic senators as a way to teach them obedience.
The Great
American 'Toxic Chemical' Experiment.
An NSA lawyer said that
Internet
companies targeted by Prism knew about that, just not under the
name "Prism".
This is a minor detail, and so is the question of whether a
jury-rigged scheme of laws "authorizes" these surveillance schemes.
All that really matters is that it's
too
much surveillance for democracy to coexist with.
Kansas is adopting a law to
impede
and punish complaints about crimes by thugs.
The article assumes that the two parts of the law would operate
together; that making a complaint which is not allowed to be
investigated would be a felony. It doesn't look that way to me.
However, this law is dangerous even without exaggeration.
The US showed
a little
firmness against Toyota by making a fine a real fine.
The law should be changed so that settlements made to resolve criminal
claims are never tax-deductible.
US citizens:
tell
the EPA that BP is not fit for rehabilitation.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to ban US contractors from discriminating on the basis of
sexual orientation.
US citizens:
call on Senator
Leahy to stop letting right-wing senators block judicial
appointments.
The UK's new energy policy means
more
pain later instead of some pain now.
China is
rushing
the development of thorium-based nuclear power plants.
Thorium avoids some of the dangers of using uranium as nuclear fuel,
but molten (very hot) fluoride salts leaking out of a reactor are
going to be very hard to contain or clean up. I worry what will
happen if this is developed in a hurry.
When businesses ask government to get rid of
"pointless
red tape", they are getting rid of the protections for the natural
world, or your health.
Australia's plutocratist government is abolishing thousands of these
regulations at once. This will allow businesses many new ways to mess
up people's lives.
Five thugs in Papua New Guinea
surrounded
an unarmed man and set dogs on him.
Motorcycle club members in Australia, charged with the crime of
associating with each other,
can't
speak to the press together lest that be called a crime.
Arbitrary banning of organizations — or banning their members
from meeting — is tyranny. Next they might do it to philosophy
discussion groups and hacklabs — it's easy to claim those are
subversive.
European Parliament committee
votes against free and
open internet.
Net Neutrality:
Dangerous
Loopholes Remain After Key Vote by Lead EU Parliament Committee.
Congress, It s
Time To Clean Up Your Iraq War Mess.
Relatives of flight 370 passengers
insanely
demand to be told right away more about what happened to that
plane.
Someone should tell them that you can't get blood out of a stone.
It is difficult to use a GMO designed to repel a pest without
causing
the pest to develop resistance. The commercial incentives of
agribusiness, and the weakness of government regulation cowed by
plutocrats, guarantees failure.
For once, Abbott is
about
to do something right. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a
day.)
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend.
It includes the freedom to say things that you or I despise.
Censorship is very dangerous.
By the
US
government's secrecy logic, the Fourth Amendment ought to be
retroactively made secret.
The danger of retroactive secrecy implies that we need to store any
documents describing US government activities outside the US, in
places that the US government cannot reach.
The state of Louisiana is suing MoveOn over a billboard that
criticizes
the governor using a state publicity slogan.
This lawsuit is based on trademark law. The article unwisely calls it
"IP law", which is confusing since it drags in other unrelated laws
(copyright, patent, trade secret, publicity rights and more) that have
nothing to do with the issue.
See
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
for more explanation.
Avoiding this confusion is as easy as pie: just remember not to use
the term "IP" (except when you mean "internet protocol"). In fact,
you have to go out of your way to cause the confusion. Too bad so
many writers go out of their way.
During the Putinesque "election" in the Crimea, Russian troops
patrolled the streets and
attacked
anti-Russian demonstrators.
The people of the Crimea should have the right to integrate with
Russia, but they deserve to choose freely.
Reporters without Borders has
listed the
US and the UK as enemies of internet freedom.
I hope this will help our cause.
55 Years Is
Enough: Lift the Cuba Embargo.
The embargo against Cuba remains in force to satisfy the Cuban exiles
in Florida, who use their political influence to demand it.
Microsoft
Enlisting Clueless States Attorneys General To Shake Down Foreign
Companies For 'Piracy'.
It's not even spring yet, but wildfires in California are running at
three
times the normal rate.
In 40 years, a normal year will be like this, and a bad year will mean
they will have to pump sea water to put the fires out.
Russian irregular forces have started
seizing
Ukraine military bases in the Crimea.
Putin is completely right when he says that Western leaders are
hypocrites, and that countries such as the US have acted in ways
similar to what they are now criticizing.
But if that is meant to justify his actions, that's where his logic is
invalid. It is wrong to stir up militias to seize territory, to
censor the media, to run unfair (effectively rigged) elections. Those
are wrong when done by others, and wrong when done by Putin.
Repression of protests
has
become the norm for universities in the UK.
Private militias have mostly cleared Michoacán of drug
traffickers, but the Mexican government has no idea
what
to do with the militias.
A prediction about the amount of global heating, made in 1972 based on
very simple physics,
corresponds
to today's observations.
Nonetheless, the effect of adding further CO2 to the
atmosphere is not so easy to predict. The further we go, the more
possible positive feedback effects there are that might trigger
further releases of CO2, or methane from warming tundra or sea bed.
A Venezuelan opposition MP is
threatened
with investigation for treason for leading protests.
I can well believe that Machado cannot relate to the poor in
Venezuela, and I presume they did not vote for her. She was probably
elected from a fairly wealthy district, but those people are voters
too.
Chavistas will say that Machado is conspiring with the US to overthrow
the government, but protests are not rebellion. If it were not for
the country's real problems — shortages and crime — the
wealthy elite would not get mass support for protests. The government
should focus on correcting those problems. The shortages are caused
by price and currency controls.
Haiti's money is being spent to develop
facilities
for foreign tourists.
The scheme is designed such that most of the benefits will go
to the wealthy elite. Special tax cuts will ensure that the
people get essentially nothing.
The article does not mention that the development in Ile a Vache is
based on
evicting
the inhabitants.
As the UK enters a "recovery" for the rich, austerity aimed at the poor
continues
to increase.
UK "oversight" for intelligence agencies was
designed
to see nothing.
There is some country (not the US) where the NSA records
all phone
calls.
As US college students are so poor that they need food handouts, they
face poverty
after graduation from their student loans.
HP
directly
supports the ID system on which Israeli apartheid is based.
What
the US founding fathers said about religious freedom.
FDR's
Economic Bill of Rights is what the US needs today.
And every other country, too!
Life has got harder for the US working poor
over
the past few years.
An Israeli fanatic
tried
to climb on to Shadi Sidr's roof to take down Sidr's Palestinian
flag. The fanatic couldn't get past the barbed wire. Israeli
soldiers considered Sidr to blame, and ordered him to take the flag
down.
Forcing people to stop doing something on the grounds that bullies
object to it is the opposite of justice.
If you want to look at the video on YouTube, don't access the site
in the normal way! That requires nonfree software, which
tramples
your freedom.
Instead, you can download it with the youtube-dl script.
Israeli troops,
harassing
Palestinians trying to enter Israel to go to work, order them to
walk over a mile and bar them arbitrarily from riding buses.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to fix the Medicare SGR formula but not by charging
people more for their Medicare.
Everyone:
Tell
MSNBC to correct Abby Huntsman's anti-Social-Security rant.
Everyone:
tell McDonalds, stop
stealing from your underpaid workers.
Palestinian neighborhoods that Israel claims to have annexed have been
denied
water supply for two weeks.
It is strange that Israel calls these neighborhoods part of Jerusalem
and then puts them on the other side of the annexation wall.
Many
prominent Israelis call for a peace agreement with Palestine based
on the recognized pre-1967 border.
A company that makes monitoring software
requires
all its employees to be monitored all the time by their computers.
We had better make such requirements illegal or lots of companies
will impose them.
A
thousand
people tried to cross the Spanish border fence at Melilla
By 2030, there may be 50,000 each night, fleeing from starvation in
Africa. By 2100, spreading aridity may cause starvation in Spain too.
When Ben & Jerry's ice cream was compelled into merger with a
conglomerate, the founders developed a structure that
protects
some of the company's ethical goals.
This structure might be useful in other situations.
Meanwhile, I think it would be good for someone to investigate why
it was impossible for the company to continue succeeding on its own.
What had changed — and what would be needed to change it back?
A survey of
over
100 samples of meat in the UK found that over half of them
contained DNA from the wrong animals.
Failure to clean processing equipment could easily lead to trace
amounts of the wrong meat; but I don't see how that could introduce
contamination amounting to 5% of the product.
The prevalence of fraud suggests that testing should be carried out
frequently, with high fines.
An Egyptian thug has been
sentenced
to 10 years in prison for killing 10 prisoners.
That's a long sentence when compared with the usual immunity of thugs,
but not long compared with other murderers.
The UK government is not satisfied with censorship by banning some
topics and viewpoints. Now it wants to
pressure
web sites to delete other sorts of material.
Censorship is evil.
Proposing a
new
model of free enterprise not mainly owned by a few plutocrats.
To achieve it, we will need to defeat the plutocrats.
Egypt's military is taking
economic
as well as political control of the country.
If you were thinking of tourism in Egypt, I recommend applying
personal economic sanctions by going elsewhere.
The (inadequate) Dodd-Frank financial reform law tried to limit the
Federal Reserve's power to bail out banks. The Federal Reserve seeks
to implement it in
regulations
so weak that they won't change much.
It seems to me that emergency loans to banks should carry a variable
interest rate computed so as to assure it is high enough that banks
won't be eager to borrow this way.
Billionaires, having put the squeeze on US-funded science as well as
everything else the state needs to do, are
using
their money to direct scientific research.
We have to take away from those billionaires the ill-gotten gains they
achieved through corrupting our laws and regulatory agencies. Most of
it should go to the Americans they have impoverished, but some should
go to the public treasury to
fund
all the things that states ought to do.
Above all we should not let these billionaires buy legitimacy for
their overlarge share of our national income by giving away a fraction
of it, even if the causes they give it to are good ones.
Preserving the thousands of local Indian varieties of rice has become
vital
for coping with the increasing aridity that global heating is
likely to cause.
The ACLU and others will
challenge
Idaho's ag-gag law, which attempts to rename the state to Idunno,
Youdunno.
Obama pledged to make is administration the "most open and transparent
in history". Instead he set a record in the
opposite
direction.
Putin's propaganda is very effective in
influencing
Western media.
I see parallels between this and
fossil
fuel companies' propaganda (denying global heating).
The mainstream US media don't cover the progressive Better Off Budget,
but here's
some
discussion of it.
Wisconsin Republicans are
pushing
a law to legalize their illegal campaign activities before they
get prosecuted for them.
Superfund
pollution cleanups have serious technical and supervisory
problems.
Photos of people who posed with the fish they caught, since the 1950s,
show how fish have got smaller. In the 1950s, people
were
proud to catch a 6-foot fish. Nowadays they are proud to catch a
1-foot fish.
Joseph Stiglitz
trashes
the TPP.
It is
not
just bad luck that McDonalds workers in many stores have their
meager wages stolen.
Student groups that criticize Israel's occupation of Palestine, or
support economic pressure on Israel or the occupation, face a
campaign
of repression in many US universities. Even professors are
targeted.
UAE:
Repression,
torture and Twitter.
Private surveillance companies
increasingly
buy information about system bugs so as to crack their target's
computers.
The US has a
formal
policy of privatization of services into the hands of monopolies.
It's a recipe for corruption and waste, as well as for union-busting
and low wages.
Man Reports Something to
the Police, Gets Put on a Watch List.
Some watch lists are necessary. We need to make sure those who are
put on them can find out, and can have a hearing for removal from the
list.
Even in the northern part of Greenland, the ice sheet has become
unstable.
If you own land in Florida, better sell it soon.
US citizens:
Sign
NARAL's banner that companies should not be allowed to deny
employees birth control coverage in their insurance.
US citizens:
call on the
EPA to make regulations to prevent chemical disasters.
US citizens:
call on Obama to
remove marijuana from the list of restricted drugs.
US citizens:
call
on the FDA to require labeling of GMOs.
UK thugs systematically try to
recruit
progressive activists as informers. They threaten to prosecute
the activists if they report how they are being pressured.
The thugs focus on environmental groups and anti-fascists. Why not on
banksters and conservatives? Those are the ones that really threaten
the British people.
The economic policies of the US and the UK are
designed
to benefit mainly the rich. The UK is fortunate in that a major
political party criticizes this.
Reports of the
Death of a National License-Plate Tracking Database Have Been Greatly
Exaggerated.
Getty Images now allows web sites to embed images with no fee in
money. The price is the
privacy
of the visitors to the web site.
I reach a stronger conclusion than the EFF does. I believe that you
must not under any circumstances accept that offer. The FSF has a
policy of never embedding anything from another site. Please join us.
Please also join us in rejecting the use of the word "monetize" to
mean "use in order to extract money from someone".
A student running for an office in the Oxford University Conservative
Association
called
Mandela a "terrorist".
Even worse, the UK government says the same thing. Under current UK
law,
armed
resistance to an oppressive regime such as apartheid is called
"terrorism". Shame on the UK!
The same right-wing extremist then
used
the DMCA to suppress reporting about what he said.
Russia has
blocked
access to some web sites that criticize the government.
It can point to the UK as an
example
of political censorship.
The UK is funding military studies of how to
influence
the public's views.
This is the subtle equivalent of what Putin just did in the Crimea.
Privatization in Greece has reached historic public buildings,
triggering
protests.
Some country should nationalize its privatized assets with no
compensation to make it hard for other countries to privatize.
Refuting
bizarre rumors that wind-powered generators cause health problems.
If you're worried about health problems from electricity, the two big
ones are coal and nuclear. Emissions from burning coal cause ill
health day in and day out. Nuclear is quite safe, except when
something goes catastrophically wrong.
As for oil and natural gas, they are perfectly safe except for the
toxic spills, the train explosions, and the extreme weather and food
shortages caused by the CO2.
New York Mayor de Blasio has boycotted the Saint Patrick's Day parade
in
protest
at its rejection of gay Irish groups.
Boston's new mayor has done likewise.
Australians advocate the greatest possible harshness towards people
fleeing from torture; towards fossil fuel companies,
not
so much.
The
Price of Haggling for Your Personal Data: It's not just about
money.
This is why the proposal that people should "own" their personal data
is simply inadequate.
A new research campaign aims to develop robots that
can
eliminate jobs even in small companies.
Global heating
will
reduce crop yields as soon as 2030, even if we limit emissions so
as to result ultimately in only 2C of heating.
Wyoming's legislature rejected new science education standards because
the material on global heating is
embarrassing
for the state's fossil fuel policies.
Commanders blocked a British military investigator from
investigating
accusations that UK troops in the Bush forces were killing and
torturing prisoners.
The Bush forces were the troops that Dubya got from the US military
and other armies and turned into his army of conquest for his private
unjust war.
Niger is adopting a scheme to
store
more food from good years to cope with periods of food shortage.
States have done this for thousands of years, and Niger should do it
too. But it needs a companion policy to reduce the birth rate.
Without that, the effect will be to turn food insufficiency into a
full-time problem.
"Food deserts" in Atlanta and Chicago leave many
without
access to nutritious food. Typically these deserts cover places
inhabited by the poor people and nonwhites that also can't afford
easily to reach stores further away.
Greenpeace protesters have sued Russia for
seizing
their protest ship.
Venezuelan thugs
kicked
protesters out of a square with tear gas.
The shortages that the protesters resent are confirmed by a friend of
mine. Chavistas say that they are caused by US economic warfare, but
I am skeptical of that. There are plenty of Latin American countries
friendly to Venezuela that would be happy to export food to Venezuela
and do not particularly respect the US. The shortages must be due to
price controls or some other state economic policy.
Despite that, it is the wealthier people that are complaining. The
poor are still mostly content with Chavismo because its aid has
reduced their poverty. They were
much
worse off when the wealthier people, those now protesting, controlled
the state.
The punishment of over 20 thugs for brutality is exemplary. Plenty of
countries have thugs that commit brutality against protesters, and
protect those thugs. For instance, in
New
York City.
Inequality in the UK:
5
families own more than the poorest 20%.
The US Navy
seized
the tanker carrying oil from Libyan rebels and handed it to the
Libyan government.
I was wondering if this would happen. It thwarts that particular
ploy. However, the underlying mess is still a mess.
In much of the US, if you can't pay a fine, you get jailed and then
fined for being in jail. It turns into a
life of jail,
or "work release" slavery.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to thoroughly investigate the intelligence agencies.
Global heating effects are interfering with agriculture in Uganda, and
people cannot sleep with the
increased
nighttime heat.
The temperature normally falls during a clear night.
Greenhouse gases block this, so that night becomes painfully hot.
Why
the election in Crimea is bogus, and some other good thoughts
about it.
Two human rights campaigners have been arrested in Sri Lanka and
accused
of "inciting hatred".
Aside from the question of whether they really did this — people
quoted in the article say they did the opposite — making that a
crime is an infringement of
freedom
of speech.
The
Caribbean People Have a Legitimate Claim for Slavery Reparations.
Refuting the
banksters'
arguments against a financial transaction tax.
The Canadian government is targeting environmental
NGOs that
report on the government's policies of environmental destruction.
This comes after crippling the government's own labs that used to
study the environmental destruction.
In 'Fair
Food' Fight, Florida Farmworkers Take On Industry.
The plebiscite in the Crimea, choosing between a partial or complete
break with Ukraine, was
won
by the Russians. Non-Russians were scared to vote or saw no point
in choosing between those two politically chosen alternatives.
This vote was manipulated and invalid, but the inhabitants of the
Crimea are
entitled
to make this choice in a proper and thoughtful way. They should
make the choice after a time for cooling down, with due awareness of
the increasingly tyrannical nature of the Russian state that they
would be joining.
Intel
plans
to build tyrant processors that will be locked to particular
operating systems or particular versions.
The planned eviction of Ile a Vache is turning into a
bloody
occupation.
Fukushima cleanup workers protested at the TEPCO office, claiming they
are
working
in dangerous conditions and paid little.
Once again, they're trying to cut the price of cleanup, even though
that means extra risk.
Living in a multicultural area makes people
more
tolerant.
A supporter of Morsi reports that Egypt is descending into a disaster
of
privatization,
strikes, shortages and confiscation, with 23,000 political
prisoners.
The unconstrained privatization might be why the US supported the
coup. Privatization is the plutocrats' opportunity to swindle the
public and rob the treasury.
The writer doesn't mention that Morsi
also
attacked human rights, though in lesser ways.
Snowden comments on Senator Feinstein's epiphany that
snooping
is bad when she and her staff are the targets.
The UK thugs intend to continue
inviting
infiltrators to form sexual relationships with dissidents.
The progressive Better Off Budget is
full
of what America needs, including some tax increases on the rich
and on speculators.
The proponents say it will cut the deficit too, but I hope it won't
do that in the short term. What we need now is increased deficit
spending; later, having spent our way out of the problem, we should
run a surplus to pay back that borrowing.
US citizens:
Reject
Rep. Ryan's dooH niboR budget.
US citizens:
call
on your governor to make up for the cuts in food stamps.
Five
states have done it already.
Everyone:
call
on the World Health Organization to cure plague in Madagascar
before it spreads.
The missing Malaysian airplane, flight MH370, sent its last radio
message implying everything was ok,
after
some of the communication equipment was turned off.
It is not plausible that whoever did this, either the pilot or some
other person with special training, went to this much effort only to
fly over the ocean until the plane crashed from lack of fuel. A
hijacker would not have done that either. I think the plane landed
somewhere.
Partition
of Libya Looms As Fight for Oil Sparks Vicious New Divide.
The big US telcos have
received
hundreds of billions of dollars so they could "afford" to wire the
US for broadband, but nobody made them promise to actually do the job,
so they want to skip it.
A similar thing happened in the Tokyo train system: the train
companies were allowed to increase ticket prices so they could
"afford" to replace two-track lines with four-track lines, but a
decade later most of them had not even started.
The error here was to presume that businesses would act in good faith.
Obama is doing a good thing: trying to
limit
loans to for-profit colleges.
Over 20% of their graduates default because they can't get jobs after
graduating from the programs they attend because the colleges assure
them they will get jobs.
I think the US would be better off if it did not allow for-profit
colleges.
It is
self-defeating
for a pension fund, whose purpose is to provide for workers decades
from now, not to divest from fossil fuel companies.
The article compares the slowly roasting biosphere with the quickly
burning World Trade Center, but we need to keep a sense of proportion
when comparing occurrences of such different scale. The September
2001 attacks in New York City were small when measured against the
size of the United States; their main damage was secondary, via the
evil it provided the excuse to unleash. Global heating will kill
some of your neighbors if not you.
If the prediction of 100 million deaths from global heating by 2030 is
realized, that will be the equivalent of around 33333 World Trade
Centers. If we spread this over the 202 months from now through the
end of 2030, that comes out to around 165 WTCs per month.
However, in reality this damage won't be spread evenly in time. It
will be concentrated near the end. Global heating may be killing only
a few WTCs a month in most months today, but by 2030 it may be killing
a thousand WTCs a month.
The political bias of the US mainstream media is measured by the
amount of coverage it gives to budget proposals:
lots
to the right-wing, and almost none to the left-wing.
To criticize Putin, the US media are
misrepresenting
the war between Russia and Georgia, which in fact was started by
Georgia.
What
if NYT Factchecked Netanyahu's Claims?
It is plausible that Iran is smuggling weapons to Gaza (even if it
denies doing so), but since they generally do far less damage than the
weapons that the US openly provides to Israel, I don't see them as a
matter of great concern. Anyway, this says nothing about Iran's
nuclear program.
British journalist Sarah Harrison says her lawyers have advised her
not to return to the UK, lest she be
interrogated
under the pretext of suspicions of "terrorism".
I looked at the text of the UK law which defines
"terrorism",
which the article quotes, and I think the article gives the wrong
impression of what the law says. You can compare the two. I don't
see how Wikileaks, which publishes things on its own site, would
qualify as "designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to
disrupt an electronic system".
On the other hand, for the law to put her in danger, it is not
necessary that her activities really be terrorism, only that
the border thugs find an excuse to pretend they are terrorism.
The definition is blatantly unjust: it defines "terrorism" to include
any armed rebellion against any state, and any riot that develops out
of a political protest. By this definition, the protests in Kiev were
"terrorism". So were the Boston Tea Party and the American
Revolution. Were the rebels "terrorists"?
New image in humor section.
Australia has invited Syrian refugees to go back to Syria to avoid the
oppressive
conditions of their imprisonment in Manus Island.
One of them thought that being shot to death in Syria might be
preferable.
Hillary Clinton held hearings on health care proposals in 1993 for the
stated purpose of
giving
the impression of listening to people's views.
On the other hand, the goal she was working for — single-payer
health care — was better than what Obama managed to enact.
The USTR is
publishing
factual falsehoods and distortions to present the free
exploitation treaty with Korea as beneficial to US economic activity.
However, the worst part of this free exploitation treaty is that it
gives companies more power over governments and thus over citizens.
This does not show up in export/import balance sheets because it harms
the people of both countries. In the long term, it encourages
concentration of wealth and increased inequality within each country,
which is why these treaties must be torn up.
The UK government has had a company prepare a historical impact report
for the planned high-speed train line, and it
resembles
the report a company prepared for the State Department about Keystone
XL.
Historical preservation of landscapes and buildings of only moderate
significance is not as important as protecting our biosphere from
global heating, and high-speed trains can help do that job.
Nonetheless, there is no excuse for making these reports disguise what
they are supposed to reveal.
A study estimates the total economic costs of extreme inequality in
the UK at around
60
billion dollars a year.
What A
Destructive Wall Street Owes Young Americans.
A sex worker says:
enough
debating about sex workers without listening to them.
Sex workers in Norway face increased danger now that their
customers
are criminalized.
Russian troops are probing Ukraine
outside
of the Crimea. Meanwhile, both Russians and fascists are trying
to start violence in Kharkiv.
Everyone:
call on China to
free imprisoned Tibetan singers.
In the US:
tell
CBS, NBC, ABC that the TPP and opposition to it should be news.
Everyone:
tell
UPS, don't fire protesting workers.
Everyone:
call on the
governor of Florida to suspend the prosecutor who keeps trying to
imprison the woman who fired a warning shot at her violent husband.
Why Marissa Alexander would face 60 years in prison if convicted is
another bizarre issue. I don't know why, but I can guess. In the US,
it is normal to label a single crime as many different crimes,
potentially leading to decades or centuries in prison.
Restaurants and other physical stores are tracking customers through
cell phones and tablets, sometimes even getting
information
about where else those people go before and after.
Neither online stores or physical stores can track me, because I don't
turn on my laptop's wifi except for the short periods when I connect
it to the internet, and I won't use the online stores at all.
When The
Government Compounds Crimes Rather Than Fights Them: Mortgage
Fraud.
BP
Green-Lighted to Drill in Gulf Waters 'Still Suffering From Its
Damage'.
Time
to Punish DMCA Takedown Abusers, WordPress Owners Say.
CCA's latest profit scheme: a
special
prison for old people that are not well enough to live independently.
Supposing that these people committed real and bad crimes, and were
imprisoned for good reason, do we need to keep them in prison once
they are infirm? Very few of them will ever commit a crime again.
The ACLU is suing to
eliminate
the no-fly list as punishment without trial.
Here are the
injustices
of this system.
U.S. Government Watchlisting: Unfair Process and Devastating Consequences
Craig Venter envisions
using home
fabricators to print vaccines.
This would bring problems similar to what we find in computers:
malware in viruses that might infect humans as well as printers, and
malware such as DRM and spyware in the software that runs the
printers.
Killing dingoes (wild dogs) in Australia
put
small mammals in danger.
The fire at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant was
preventable.
Most nuclear accidents and chemical plant accidents are preventable.
If the owner fixed every irregularity immediately, and kept the plant
shut down whenever its equipment was not entirely working normally,
that would prevent most accidents.
They don't do that because that would be expensive; therefore, the
owner
cuts
corners. Nearly always, no accident results. But some accidents
are so bad that even once in a rare while is too much. To avoid those
accidents, one must not cut corners.
Neocons are once again
exercising
great influence on US government policies.
It appears that Ms Clinton has given them vital support. This is one
more reason why if she is the Democratic nominee I will vote for the
Green Party.
North Carolina collaborated secretly with Duke Energy by
pre-empting
serious environmental lawsuits against that company.
Do people
have a moral obligation to use drugs that improve their
intelligence and self control?
Islamist militants
attacked
a military checkpoint in Egypt; the government accused the Muslim
Brotherhood (i.e., the "usual suspects").
It probably isn't the Muslim Brotherhood as such. These militants
may include some who formerly supported the Muslim Brotherhood's
nonviolent approach, and are reacting to the government's bloody
suppression of that party.
I oppose Islamists regardless of their methods, because Islamic law is
inimical to human rights. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that denying
people of any persuasion access to democracy is likely to push some of
them into armed guerrilla opposition.
To call these guerrillas "terrorists" is stretching the latter term.
They are not attacking civilians.
The US has
rolled
back increases in flood insurance rates for houses in places where
flooding is likely.
If this roll-back lasts a long time, it will do harm: encouraging
people to get cut-rate flood insurance on houses that are begging to
be flooded. However, if the effect of the roll-back is temporary, it
makes little long-term difference.
Pertinent questions: if flood insurance rates increase at 18%
per year, what fraction of these houses will incur the true cost of
their flood insurance with five years? Within 10 years?
Within 20 years?
A relaxation in sentencing practices has led the number of people in
US federal prisons to
start
declining.
This is a small step in the right direction. The US should pardon
everyone who was imprisoned for possession of drugs.
One of the leaders of the Rwandan genocide has been
sentenced
to prison.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to pressure Iceland to stop killing whales.
The US does not hunt whales, but it
endangers
them; however, that is no reason not to support this campaign.
US citizens:
call
on the IRS to close the loophole for gifts from one political
group to another.
Hungary has adopted a law that effectively
bans
photos and videos of thugs at work. As a byproduct, it makes most
outdoor photojournalism unfeasible.
A theoretical model suggests that our complex society could collapse,
and that it is doing exactly the
things
that might tend to lead to collapse.
After
three years, a UK thug has been reprimanded for unjustifiably
spraying gas on protesters.
Now will he be prosecuted?
Ile a Vache community organizer and radio operator Jean Lamy Matulnes was
imprisoned
without charges after a protest.
The US-imposed regime in Haiti is evicting all the inhabitants to make
a tourist resort.
The UN Human Rights Council gave the US a
stern
lecture.
If enough of us repeat it, maybe we can make the US government stop
committing so many crimes.
The US
claims
that human rights don't apply to what it does to people outside US
borders.
The Australian government
wants
to require arts activities to accept sponsorship from any business
whatsoever, effectively banning rejection of sponsorship for
ethical reasons.
This is in line with the plutocratist program of crushing all
effective avenues for criticism of the crimes of businesses.
I wonder what will happen if a festival accepts sponsorship from a
toxic mining company but says it will print on its brochures, "We are
very sorry that the government requires us to accept sponsorship from
Killer Coal Corporation." Presumably Killer Coal Corporation will
withdraw the sponsorship. So will the government order the festival
not to criticize the company, as well as ordering it to accept the
money?
Studies find that maternal exposure to pesticides
correlates
with brain damage and reduced intelligence for children.
The US system of pesticide regulation allows agribusiness to run rings
around the EPA in using toxic pesticides. If it changes practices
every decade, it can always say, "The evidence is only about old our
practices."
Most Latin American governments have applied
policies
to reduce inequality, and extreme poverty across the region has
been cut in half.
Right-wing politicians claim that the state anti-poverty programs
can't work — because they know these methods
can
work, and aim to convince us not to employ them.
As Obama said he would not take sides in the dispute between the CIA
and the Senate, he actually
took
the CIA's side in a very subtle way.
Chinese human rights activist Cao
Shunli died
in prison after being denied needed medical care.
The shameful thing, for Americans, is that US prisons also frequently
deny prisoners needed medical care.
Torture of Tibetan prisoners is
frequent; one
Tibetan stabbed himself to death to avoid being imprisoned.
I wish
the US
did not torture prisoners.
Biogas made from anaerobic digestion of plant wastes is a great idea,
but lack of proper regulation means
that non-waste
food is being diverted into biogas.
Iraq is about to pass a
law making
women second-class citizens.
Americans may feel somewhat chastened to see this result of Dubya's
invasion of Iraq.
BP has made a deal to
be allowed
to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
For EPA monitoring to make BP act safely, it will have to be very
strict. I am not confident the US government will be strict with a
Big Polluter.
Palm oil plantations in Sumatra
have set
massive fires that are making people sick.
Making school focus on standardized tests, together with long hours
for teachers,
is making
most teachers in the UK think of quitting.
This system is designed as an excuse for privatization.
The UK government commissioned advisors connected with the GMO
industry
to make
a report claiming that GMOs are needed to keep up the food supply.
This not only ignores the risks of GMOs, but presumes
the dubious
assumption that GMOs increase yields.
Many GMOs contain patented genes; when they spread to other farms,
that causes patent pollution which is not a threat in the case of
non-GMO crops.
Organic farmers report that contamination from GMOs
is causing
them substantial losses.
The widely used GMOs are designed to work with pesticides; they
increase pesticide use, and this is dangerous to farm workers and to
wildlife.
I do agree that each GMO raises different issues regarding safety, for
those who eat it, for those who grow it, for wildlife, and for
contamination of other farms.
Everyone: call on Credit Suisse
to release
the names of the US tax dodgers that have accounts there.
Too Much Voting and Not
Enough Cash, Say (Republican) Wisconsin Legislators.
Massachusetts citizens: call for extension of the program that allows
electricity customers
to generate
electricity from solar power and sell that to the grid.
The Australian government
has lied
about pristine Tasmanian forests that it wants to cut down.
US citizens: call on the Senate
to declassify
its torture report.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
is doing
a lot to protect Americans who borrow.
Of course, to give all Americans a decent life requires changes
outside of that area.
The Ukraine
protesters covered
a broad spectrum of views.
The fascist party is dangerous, but the revolution overall is not
fascist. It is worth paying attention to preventing it from becoming
so.
A study found it is possible
to learn
a substantial amount about real people from their phone call records
(metadata).
If Feinstein And the CIA Kiss And Make
Up, Will
America Up And Forget Torture?
The Obama
regime covers up
policy documents about assassination as well as torture.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on the legislature
to close
a tax loophole that permits companies to offshore their profits to tax
havens.
One
more Guantanamo
prisoner has been released, but to what? The article does not say
whether he will be freed in Algeria, or tried there, or imprisoned
there without trial.
It appears the US and Algeria have been negotiating for a long time
about this question. The Algerian government is not known as a
champion of human rights.
US
citizens: call
on Obama to ban fracking on US public lands.
The former head of the US Nuclear Regulatory
Commission calls
for the elimination of nuclear power.
McDonald's Accused
of Stealing
Wages From Already Underpaid Workers.
I don't think the workers would make these things up.
You shouldn't eat fast food anyway
— it's made for fasting,
not for eating.
Major
Loopholes Remain in European Parliament's Data Protection
Regulation.
The Japanese nuclear industry
has sued
a journalist for saying that inviting people to live in slightly
irradiated areas is a "human experiment".
Regardless of the level of danger of those experiments, it can't be
denied that they are experiments.
RSF: Enemies of the Internet
2014: Entities
at the Heart of Censorship And Surveillance.
European
Parliament Fails to React Strongly to US and EU Surveillance
Programmes.
Ukraine's
Neo-Fascist Threat from Within.
Obama is
denying the
Senate Intelligence Committee access to documents about CIA
torture.
Rutgers students and faculty have
voted
against inviting Condoleezza Rice to be honored.
In Nigeria, gays are being
attacked
by mobs.
China
Arrests Citizen Journalists for Reporting Tiananmen
'Self-Immolation'.
Business schools are a motor for
business
practices that damage the world.
The UK has launched a study that will consider whether it is possible
to allow Chagosians to
return
to the homes they were forcibly expelled from.
Whatever is done in the coming few years, I expect that Britain and
the US, along with China and other industrialized countries, will have
the last laugh — CO2 emissions will kill the coral in
a few decades, making most of the fish disappear, and later inundate
the islands.
Whoever
Wins Turkey's Power Struggle, Democracy Is Already a Casualty.
European spy agencies have kept their political leaders in the dark
about collusion with the NSA in
spying
on their own countries' citizens.
Right-wing politicians want to condemn poor Americans for having
children and for eating badly, as an
excuse
to cut the programs meant to help them avoid those problems.
Senator Feinstein's investigation of the CIA may have received a
secret
CIA torture confession with the help of a CIA whistleblower.
I hope this will teach Feinstein something about the ethics of
whistleblowing.
It should also teach us that the Intelligence Committee has allowed
itself to be cut off from the facts that it needs to investigate. If
we want that committee to have a ghost of a chance of stopping the CIA
from committing crimes against humanity, it must be given unrestrained
access to any facts it considers pertinent, and must be empowered to
jail officials for contempt of Congress if they obstruct the
investigation.
The European Parliament voted for tighter limits on mining
conventional oil and gas, but excepted fracking on
perverse
grounds.
ALEC is
organizing
its domesticated state legislators to boost the Keystone XL
pipeline.
Prisoner Glen Ford
was exonerated
and freed after 30 years on death row.
The big scandal is the unfair trial that put him there, and the judges
that subsequently chose to uphold the authority of the system even
though they realized it it had not provided grounds for conviction.
The population of New York City's homeless shelters
has hit
a record of 53,000, including some 20,000 children.
Between 15% and 20% of the homeless adults have jobs but can't afford
a place to live. This is the result of dooH niboR policies such as
raising
banksters' bonuses while letting the minimum wage decline with
inflation,
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[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Deceptive ads attacking Obama's medical coverage plan present a woman with close Republican political ties who pretends that it costs her money, when in fact it saves her money.
Putin is taking tight control of the Russian press at the corporate level.
Workers protested after a McDonald's manager told a sick employee to "put a bullet through her head".
Workers should not have to ask for permission to leave when they get sick.
Proposing a compromise for boat people that have tried to flee to Australia.
They are coming from Indonesia, but they are not Indonesians. One possibility is to convince Indonesia to offer them asylum.
Heidegger's diaries display strong antisemitism.
I don't think this needs to affect anyone's evaluation of Heidegger's other unrelated positions, which I don't know and have no opinion about.
The UK's Universities and Colleges Admissions Service sells students' personal information to companies.
Since those companies evidently have money to spare, they could pay higher taxes to fully fund this service.
"Predictive policing" incorporates racial bias and skews in crime reporting.
Feinstein's alarm over CIA spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee demonstrates that this committee can't check what the intelligence agencies tell them.
Many species of mammals can see ultraviolet light, so high voltage power cables look like bright flashing lights to them. Sometimes they don't dare cross under one.
Parrots can also see UV light; I wonder what influence power lines have on parrots.
Ethiopia has sentenced an exiled Somali journalist to 27 years in prison on vague charges of "terrorism".
Perhaps the Ethiopian government has been inspired by bogus accusations of terrorism in the US or the UK.
Copyright trolls are running wild in Germany.
We must put an end completely to the war on sharing by legalizing sharing (noncommercial redistribution of exact copies) for any published work.
In the mean time, Germans should run WiFi networks without passwords to resist being conscripted as enforces in this oppressive scheme.
How the NSA Plans to Infect 'Millions' of Computers with Malware.
The World Bank is being pressured not to lend money to a palm oil company in Honduras.
Considering the problems that palm oil causes, and the profit it gets, any public support for palm oil is a ridiculous handout to business.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to eliminate the Pentagon's war slush fund.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Turks held a massive protest about the death of a teenager who was hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired by thugs as he was passing by a previous protest.
In Turkey as in Israel, tear gas canisters don't hit people's heads by accident. The thugs are trained to shoot and hit a target, and they are supposed to fire these canisters at the ground. They hit people's heads when they aim at people's heads.
A prisoner on hunger strike in Guantanamo is suing to demand an end to gruesome force-feeding.
Computer and network security is like public health: we have to maintain it as a community, not individually.
The article doesn't say this, but we need to use free software if we're to do this.
Asian countries
have
not ended deforestation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A large part of the impetus is production of palm oil. Although campaigns to pressure companies can help, what we really need is to tax palm oil to the point that there is no demand for increased production.
It appears that Feinstein has not learned much from having the CIA spy on her office.
Buying out the coal industry could be a cheap way to shut it down.
Rather than beg a few billionaires to carry out this important public function, we should tell our elected representatives to have the state do it. That would avoid the danger that other coal companies would start up and try to resume the mining that had been shut down.
Senator Feinstein says the CIA undermined the constitution by searching senate computers.
This is a big turnaround for her, since thus far she has firmly defended the intelligence agencies and their snooping on everyone else. Her denunciation goes against the spirit of her previous views.
Rather than condemning her for "self-contradiction" or "hypocrisy", we should invite her to change her previous views.
Congress should change the law so that it is clearly not a crime for congressional staff investigating the intelligence agencies to get and look at their documents.
Promoting girls' self-esteem with substance rather than banning words.
There's one point I dispute: the idea that there is such a thing as "ban-worthy hate speech". That concept reflects disrespect for a right essential to women as well as men: freedom of speech.
If you are investing for the benefit of people's future, divesting from fossil fuels is absolutely necessary.
If the Malaysian Airlines flight crashed, and if 239 people on board were killed, that's less than 2 hours' death toll for cars crashes.
But the bigger danger of cars may be that they encourage people to get less exercise.
In September 2001, car crashes killed more Americans than terrorist attacks did. Terrorists have killed only a handful of Americans since then, but cars do it again every month. So why are Americans so scared of terrorists and not scared of cars?
Partly it is due to human psychological tendencies. Many victims from one event attract more attention than many separate events with the same total number of victims. Violence attracts attention too. Conversely, whether you have a car crash is partly under your own control, which reduces the fear caused by that danger.
This is exacerbated by the mainstream media's exploitation of fear of terrorists, and by the written and voice announcements in trains and buses reminding us to be very afraid of the (probably nonexistent) terrorists.
The US broke a 1990 commitment by pushing NATO to the borders of Russia. Putin's adventurism is partly a response to this.
Cities and towns in California are trying desperate measures to conserve water.
The increase in Antarctic sea ice is caused by other effects of global heating, including the slowly accelerating melting of the ice cap.
The discovery that volcanic emissions have cooled the Earth significantly during the past decade implies that the heating effect per ton of CO2 is stronger than the estimate from a year ago.
In effect, our boat has been drifting slowly towards the waterfall, and we just discovered that one engine was on and trying to push us away for the past decade. That implies the current is faster than we thought.
The analogy is limited. The current in this case is the result of our greenhouse gas emissions, and we could reduce them greatly if we take bold measures.
UK supermarkets' response to the fake beef scandal was talk but no lasting action.
The way to prevent food fraud is with simpler food chains and more inspection. Both of these require action by the state.
The UK has arrested people who went to Syria possibly to help rebels.
If they supported a group that fights to impose Islamist tyranny, that was evil, but the UK law equally punishes fighting for a good cause.
The UK government is eager to use "environmental offsetting" as an excuse to permit developers to destroy wild areas.
Theoretically the "offsets" will replace what is destroyed, but the government seems to regard this more as an excuse than as a serious goal.
Maoist rebels in India are fighting the state.
I don't think I'd want to live in the polity that the Naxalites would set up, but what these villagers experience today could well be worse. India's government is in general allowing big corporations to run roughshod over people that live in the lands they want to take or pollute.
Research shows that farmed salmon, which are genetically inferior to wild salmon, are equally fertile, which means escaping fish have the power to drag down the wild salmon gene pool.
Poor Americans can't afford doxycycline, which used to be so cheap that it was easy for them to get.
What has changed? I think it is a reduction in the number of suppliers. If so, this is yet another result of allowing businesses to merge when it ought to be banned.
The market is a useful mechanism, but it is subject to instabilities. One of them is the tendency for all the producers of a certain good to merge. Without energetic government regulation, the market will go all wrong.
A mob of Israeli "settlers" stoned a Palestinian journalist's car while soldiers looked on.
Many world academics have condemned Israel's plans to censor calls for boycott.
A study has totaled up the handouts from US states and cities to businesses, and found that the Koch brothers got 88 million dollars in corporate welfare.
A lot of these handouts are part of schemes to draw businesses away from other states and cities, which pull back by offering their own handouts. All the states and cities lose from this, while the rich gain.
50,000 Palestinians in "Jerusalem" have been denied municipal water for 3 days.
They are probably not in the city of Jerusalem but rather in areas of the West Bank that Israel claims to have annexed and added to Jerusalem.
A boycott campaign against Sabra hummus, since the company directly supports an army unit involved the occupation.
The UN Human Rights Council says that states have an obligation to investigate drone attacks that kill civilians.
Banksters' pay is going up this year.
We are not doing enough to make banking boring again.
The Chinese government
scathingly
reports on US human rights violations.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I reject a few of the items. The mass shootings in the US were not carried out by the state, and the number of people affected were not very many. The thousands of other violent crimes were not carried out by the state either, and if weak gun control paved the way for them, paving the way for crimes is not the same thing as committing them. Racist statements are nasty but banning them is censorship.
Nonetheless, the bulk of the report's rebukes are valid. US criticisms of China's human rights record are generally valid too.
The point is not which state is worse. The point is that Americans and Chinese deserve better.
The US is moving back to the dark unregulated days of a century ago.
80% of Japanese want to scrap some of the country's nuclear power plants.
I guess that's why the government, which is pro-nuclear, is provoking foreign conflict by denying the facts about women forced into prostitution during World War II: to manipulate people through their patriotism and distract them from the threat to them.
Free
Speech, RIP: A Relic of the American Past.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A UN report on the right to food says that the agribusiness-based food system is hopeless for the poor, and needs fundamental changes.
Give And Take in the EU-US Trade Deal? Sure. We Give, the Corporations Take.
A Palestinian-Jordanian who is a judge in Jordan was shot by Israeli soldiers who say he tried to take a soldier's gun.
This story strikes me as totally fishy. Only a thug could say it with a straight face.
EU citizens: contact your MEPs by Wednesday about privacy and civil liberties.
60 Israeli teenagers said they
will go to
jail rather than serve in the occupation army.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A creative use for drones: smuggling drugs into prison.
Apple and Microsoft are not patent trolls, but they own one.
US citizens: call for maintaining the protection of wolves.
A Detroit thug raped a woman who had reported domestic violence.
Shall we nominate him for US thug of the year?
Here's How Comcast Plans to Rule American Cable and Internet.
Although Netflix is being mistreated by non-neutral ISPs, it deserves no sympathy with its DRM and other mistreatment of the users.
Google says that forbidden sharing is an "availability and pricing problem."
I disagree. Authorized copies of music, books and movies on the internet have a freedom problem: they impose DRM, require signing contracts, and in most cases demand users identify themselves. (For books, for music.)
We should reject any distribution system that commits even one of those three injustices. For many works, the only copies that respect your freedom are the unauthorized copies of file sharing.
John Kiriakou points out CIA officials that committed the same "crime" he did, but were not prosecuted.
The copyright industry, after its defeat on SOPA, is pressuring companies to accept SOPA voluntarily.
Bangladesh needs more than a billion dollars a year to cope with the damage done by global heating.
Naturally, the cost increases each year. In a few decades it may cost 5 billion dollars a year to compensate for the damage to Bangladesh.
Pakistan will pay parents for getting their children vaccinated against polio.
The London thug force, a "gang of 23000 people" as one of its capos put it, is a perverted organization with a systematic tendency to cover up its aggressions with false accusations.
It was the people who have forced a public inquiry into this gang. Courts provided little help, because they catered to the thugs' demands for secrecy.
Several Venezuelan intelligence agents are being prosecuted for murdering Venezuelan protesters.
That thugs attack protesters, even kill them, occurs in many countries. That they get prosecuted for this is what's unusual.
The CIA Has Brought Darkness to America by Fighting in the Shadows.
A large protest in Tokyo demanded an end to nuclear power plants.
As CIA Fights w/ Senate Panel Over Torture, Public Left in Dark.
Libya's central government and regional rebels are coming to blows about the latter's plan to export oil to North Korea.
Obama
wants
to increase spending on nuclear weapons.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Drone attacks in Yemen stir up terror and hatred.
US citizens: oppose Obama's nomination of a public school privatizer as undersecretary of education.
A mother writes about the educational experience of taking her children out of an imposed standardized test.
One way to assuage teachers' anxiety about the school's scores is to encourage the worse students to opt out ;-). However, we must not let down our resistance to an oppressive system just because it has taken hostages.
A Swiss study found that LSD helped many terminally ill people cope better with their situations.
When there was a fire in Como Park High School, one student who had been in the swimming pool got frostbite from waiting outside wet in the cold. It was against the rule for teachers to let students sit in their cars.
25
years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the sea otter population
in Prince William Sound has recovered.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Some genetic damage remains. It will take some more generations to clear out deleterious mutations caused by the oil, and perhaps the oil remaining on the beaches continues causing some damage.
Overwork shortens people's lives. People should work fewer hours.
Why, usually, do people work so many hours? Professionals might be happy to work fewer hours, but employers usually demand long hours, and those who refuse long hours may not get hired at all. Meanwhile, the increasing fraction of Americans that work for very low wages need to work a lot to get enough to live on. We should change our laws to help these people work at a healthier pace.
US Representative Jared Polis mocks a call to ban bitcoin with a call to ban dollar bills.
The horrible thing is that other governments are limiting use of cash.
The Delhi thug department has ignored complaints since 2006; nobody knew how to access the computer account where the complaints were delivered.
I get the impression that the thugs were not unhappy with this state of affairs and saw no urgency in gaining access to the complaints.
This is one of many reasons why the thug department should not handle complaints about the thug department.
Further research confirms the thesis of The Spirit Level: greater income inequality in society makes many kinds of social problems worse and more frequent.
California citizens: support the proposed ban on keeping orcas in captivity.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state legislators to pass the extended Bottle Bill.
US citizens: call on the EPA to hurry to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
Poor women in a part of Texas will now have to travel hundreds of miles for an abortion or many other services.
Japanese historians say they have
documents
proving the government's direct responsibility for forcing women
from occupied countries into prostitution, and say the Japanese
government is hiding more documents.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US government wants to shield the UN from liability for bringing cholera to Haiti. This makes sense since it was the US that overthrew Aristide because he opposed privatization and then brought the UN to Haiti as "peacekeepers" (although there was no fighting except the government against the poor).
How Paul Ryan distorted a book about helping poor children into a falsified claim that a poor child did not want help.
Is "nuclear weapons thinking" partly responsible for other aspects of the imperial presidency?
Dropbox's sleazy forced arbitration clause has an
"opt
out" designed only as a legal excuse.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Evidence
from wounds inflicted by snipers in Kiev suggests their goal was
to inflame tensions between the protesters and Yanukovych's men.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
It would not be the first time. The killers in Tlaltelolco in 1968 shot at the "security forces" as well as at protesters. Those killers were sent by the President of Mexico, who did not hesitate to kill his own men.
The CIA spied on the Senate committee investigating CIA torture.
This is the reverse of the congressional oversight of the CIA which is supposed to happen.
If Congress has enough guts it can knock the spy agencies out. Congress can legislate for itself the power to demand any and all CIA documents and to declassify those it chooses. With a 2/3 majority, it can do this over Obama's opposition.
Does Congress have the guts?
Rugby, like American Football, involves injuries that can lead to major brain damage.
Digital records and books are vulnerable to malicious erasure.
Privacy Advocates Want To Halt Facebook Acquisition of WhatsApp.
Given the U SAP AT RIOT Act, no company can be trusted to keep any secrets about you from Big Brother. The only protection is not to give a company any data about you. Nonetheless, this merger could increase the total effect of surveillance, and blocking it could be a good thing to do.
Punishing juvenile bullying as a crime can do more harm that good.
Some Ukraine democracy advocates are unhappy with the idea of bringing oligarchs (plutocrats) into the government.
Snowden: Spy Services of EU Member States Independently Hawk Domestic Access to NSA, GCHQ.
A court ruled there are no FAA regulations about drones, which means anyone can run drones in the US.
A study in St Louis found that offering gratis contraception and abortion did not encourage women to have risky sex.
US women can't afford sterilization.
What Snowden said to the European Parliament.
Some chefs are using the term "intellectual property" to make it seem legitimate for them to claim it is an injustice to post photos of the food they prepare.
The bogus concept of "intellectual property", which confuses various unrelated existing laws and misrepresents them all, lends itself to attempts to stretch them. For the sake of clear understanding let's firmly refuse to use that propaganda term.
See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
Staying at an "all-inclusive" resort hotel means less money for the local people in the place you are visiting.
Anonymity on the internet makes possible a special kind of creativity.
A fossil fuel project in Australia was fined a mere $1500 for contaminating an aquifer with uranium.
The US 2014 trade agenda aims to distract attention from the harm done by existing free exploitation treaties by pretending new ones will do some sort of good.
US media have led the public to believe the Keystone XL pipeline would mean lots of jobs.
Ignoring the protests against the pipeline has surely helped mislead.
Even a million jobs wouldn't justify the damage that the pipeline will do in the long term. We could create a million jobs installing renewable energy systems.
Ban GMO foods, or require labeling? It turns out that the effect is almost the same.
I am not necessarily opposed to all GMOs foods, but each one requires careful testing and we can't trust a company to test its own product honestly. Meanwhile, for the sake of farmers' rights, we cannot allow the genes be patented.
We also cannot allow a GMO which is likely to contaminate other farms with the artificial genes. The likelihood of such contamination depends on the species of plant.
US Citizens: Sign this petition to free Robert Duncan.
Democracy Now covers the Crimean intervention.
If Bezos does not impose editorial changes on the Washington Post, its past militarism and support for the security state will carry forward.
Mainstream media have repeatedly touted GMOs for tremendous supposed benefits that were pure fiction.
Baptist churches in Kentucky are recruiting by giving away guns.
The US government condemned the plans for a plebiscite on secession of the Crimea.
I agree that the current plans deserve condemnation. I hope the US does not reject the idea of a future plebiscite under negotiated circumstances.
Comparing distortions on RT TV with distortions on CNN International.
What this shows is that there is a difference between the station's main editorial slant and whether it censors anyone that disagrees. RT (from what I've heard) has a main editorial slant that includes falsehoods about the Crimea, but doesn't require all show hosts to go along with that slant.
The local parliament of Crimea says it will hold a referendum in 10 days on annexation by Russia.
It's legitimate to have a referendum on the question, but holding it under these circumstances is as ridiculous as the elections run by US puppets in Honduras, Haiti and Afghanistan.
ACLU: the US
must stop
throwing people away with avoidable imprisonment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Before
Reagan, capitalism
as practiced in the US created a large middle class, and even
workers could get by. We could make this happen again, if we defeat
plutocracy.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Cancerous Culture: Top Army Prosecutor For Sexual Assault Cases Suspended For…guess what?
DRM on coffee containers illustrates one of the dangers of the "internet of things" — if it runs nonfree software.
This article does not recognize the danger of massive surveillance. Even if your coffee maker allows you to order whatever brand beverage you choose, your order will inevitably be reported to Big Brother. That's enough to convince me not to use the system.
Supporters of the Venezuelan
government held
large rallies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The huge US military and "security" budget, 73% of all discretionary spending, is disguised by putting large pieces into other categories.
Europe is taking an increasing risk of nuclear disaster by allowing aging nuclear power plants to keep running.
The environment inside a nuclear power plant degrades many materials. When things break the operators can't make them as good as new (or are unwilling to spend what that would cost), so the reactors get ever further from their designs and intended functioning.
Proposed deregulation of poultry processing factories would endanger workers' health as well as consumers'.
The main danger to consumers' health is from contamination, but if the measure makes chicken any cheaper, that could increase the tendency of Americans to eat too much meat, which is massively bad for their health.
It would also be bad for employment. That alone is enough reason to reject it.
Madrid's mayor wants to restrict the right to protest for the sake of the poor little rich businesses that lose sales due to protesters.
"Evolved" decision algorithms that nobody understands can disguise discrimination that is despised and even illegal.
CIA spying on the US Senate relates to the report of a Senate investigation into CIA torture and CIA lies.
The CIA is blocking the Senate from publishing this report. Congress should pass a law saying that it is allowed to release this report regardless of what the CIA or Obama say, and then do so. The torturers, arrogant enemies of our constitution, deserve to be knocked down.
The mainstream press cites "experts" about Venezuela with a conflict of interest.
A bogus right-wing figure, published in the New York Times, exaggerates Venezuela's inflation by a factor of 6.
UK protesters say a thug set a fire in a store for which they were then convicted.
Everyone: tell Papa Johns
to rehire
Reza Abolhassani, who was fired for getting robbed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Ukraine is in
a standoff
between two empires each of which would be glad to drag it down.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Resisting the pressure to understand the Crimea by "taking the side" of Russia or the US.
The UN is talking about the need to eliminate cholera from Haiti.
Afghanistan is still one of the worst places to be a woman.
A leading Malaysian opposition politician has been sentenced to prison for homosexuality.
If the accusation is a frame-up to keep him out of government, this sentence is an injustice. If the accusation is true, the sentence is still an injustice.
A study shows
that regional
heating causes malaria to spread.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Wisconsin Republicans plan to make it easier to hide political campaign spending.
Australia's carbon tax has been very effective in cutting emissions.
That must be why Abbott wants to repeal it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to confirm Debo Adebgile to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.
Laws against "revenge porn" need to be written carefully to protect freedom of speech.
Fundamentally, the job should be doable.
Housing in Paris is so expensive that poor workers rent closets to sleep in.
High taxes on living space that isn't a residence might help, but if that proves insufficient, it will be necessary to build a lot more living space in Paris. Banning the rental of these tiny spaces will only make the problem worse.
Even NSA employees feel the chill when they are subject to surveillance.
The Australian government investigation into the dangers of wind turbines should investigate the dangers of coal mines too.
US citizens: Call on the EPA to regulate toxic pollution from oil refineries.
US citizens: tell Obama that criticizing Russia for "violating international law" appears hypocritical when the US does it so much.
New medicines for hepatitis C may be denied to millions by patents.
The Burbank Thug
department fired
Detective Angelo Dahlia because he reported his coworkers for acting
like thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Most thugs may not attack suspects, protesters and bystanders, but nearly all of them cover up for those who do. The few exceptions deserve the title of "policeman".
US citizens: tell Kerry
to oppose
the Keystone XL pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Holder to make it safe for exiled US journalists to return to US.
Because Texas uses sales and property taxes rather than an income tax, it taxes the rich lightly and the rest heavily.
Reportedly chemical analysis shows that the poison gas used in Syria came from the regime's weapons stocks.
Abbott is using lies to justify cutting down most of Tasmania's wild forests.
With 2C of global heating, the Great Barrier Reef will cease to be a coral reef.
Everyone: call on McDonalds to rehire Heather Levia.
US citizens:
call
for taxing businesses' advertising spending.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
My Private Idaho Prison: CCA appears to have systematically defrauded the state.
Will its employees and managers be prosecuted and sent to that prison? Or will the "security" establishment protect them on the grounds that enriching the company was the purpose of privatization all along?
Traffic analysis can identify which page a user is visiting through HTTPS with up to 90% accuracy, but there are defenses that greatly reduce it.
I think these defenses should be implemented standardly in free HTTPS servers.
The NSA has made computers vulnerable to all attackers. Government malware = criminal malware.
Population growth exacerbates a wide range of environmental problems, from food shortage to flooding.
The cruel right-wing response to population growth is, "Let them starve now so that the population goes down to what that region can support." The humane (progressive) response is, "Give them the food they need now, along with contraception and abortion so that the population goes down to what that region can support."
Louisiana hopes to silence MoveOn with a bogus trademark lawsuit over the state's slogan, "Pick your passion".
Is Governor Jindal anti-gay? Anti-abortion? Anti-contraception? The slogan "Pick your passion" offers great possibilities.
Paul Ryan: stop giving poor schoolchildren lunch; make their parents scrounge a paper bag to be their "lunch".
Uri Avnery comments on Ukraine, and (by the way) how opportune it was for Netanyahu to have another crisis take the heat off his colonization policy.
The Alice-in-Wonderland trial of the al-Jazeera journalists (and miscellaneous random unfortunates) in Egypt.
Would My Blood Test Still Cost $1,132 If the US Had a Public Health Option?
A dam in Ethiopia could nearly wipe out Lake Turkana in Kenya.
An Islamic council in Indonesia has issued a fatwa against trafficking in endangered animals.
China will start a "war on pollution".
China needs one, and so do the US, Canada, Australia and the UK.
Former slave-prostitutes of the Japanese army rebuke the Abe's plans to retract Japan's apology for this.
Goldman Sachs is trying to buy forgiveness by using
1% of its
ill-gotten gains for "philanthropy".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Abby Martin, an anchor on Russia Today TV, condemned Russia's military intervention in her show.
It appears she still has a show.
This means that RT compares favorably to the way US mainstream media treated the US intervention in Iraq.
Americans' hypocrisy: condemning Russia's intervention in Ukraine while advocating past and future US interventions.
3C more of global heating would affect 1/5 of the UNESCO world heritage sites.
These include Westminster Abbey, Bruges, Naples, the leaning tower of Pisa, the Statue of Liberty. As for Venice, we're already losing that.
A survey in the European Union reports high levels of sexual violence against women.
Italy has ordered ISPs to block access to 46 domains accused of facilitating sharing of files.
Charges against Barrett Brown based on his activity as a journalist have been dropped.
He still faces three other charges and could be imprisoned for 70 years.
Thug departments buy cell phone spy tools and sign contracts of secrecy.
The US has tried for many years to gain political influence in Ukraine.
Oil surely enters into the issue, but I don't think it is the main motive for US initiatives there. For transporting Caspian oil to Europe, Ukraine is not essential: a pipeline from the Black Sea could run through Romania. The hard part would be getting that oil from the Caspian region to the Black Sea, and Ukraine has nothing to do with that.
More deceptive arguments from global heating denialists.
They start from their chosen conclusion, and hunt for arguments that might appear valid in a sound bite. With media funded to present "balance" between science and denialism, that's sufficient to give the fossil-funded politicians the backup they need.
The Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 says that a pro-Russian militia in the Crimea captured its camera team and threatened to use them as human shields.
Alpha Natural Resources
was fined
a mere $27 million for over 6000 violations the Clean Water Act.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I don't think that would do much to dissuade the company from future violations. The $200 million in spending to reduce future discharges might be more effective.
Obama's 2015 budget advances some good causes but in the context of overall surrender to some right-wing ideas.
Network neutrality should be permanent — "through 2018" is not good enough.
Asylum seekers in Hong Kong get a run-around that convinces them they are better off in jail.
Disguising soldiers as civilians is a serious violation of international law, but there is a dispute about whether removing Russian insignia from uniforms is a violation.
However, it is clearly a lie.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your state legislators to support privacy bills for license plate scanners and drones.
US residents: Tell major US companies to reject palm oil made by destroying rainforests and peatlands.
New York City residents: sign the initiative petition for an investigation of why World Trade Center building 7 collapsed.
US citizens:
call
for protection of the Book Cliffs region form coal mining.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
A study finds that immigrants to the UK take jobs from Britons during recession, but not when the economy is doing well.
The UK government pays strict attention to local approval for wind farms, which can spoil the view, while disregarding local approval for fracking which can poison the water.
Parliament is starting to face the issue of the carbon bubble in fossil companies' stock valuation.
What can governments do about such a bubble? Here's one idea: require the prospectus of a company involved in extraction, transport, sale or combustion of fossil fuel to mention the bubble, and its probable future effects on the company's stock price.
The EU is
about
to retreat again on taxing intercontinental flights for their
CO2 emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
When state legislators get money via ALEC to go to ALEC events, they are informed which company really gave that money, but they pretend not to know. Some state legislators take on secret responsibilities within ALEC.
The special UK court that is supposed to police the use of interception has no independence. It is controlled by the ministry that controls the thugs.
The UK's cruel government has cut off the funds for helping disabled old people with daily tasks such as getting dressed.
This is necessary to keep bankster's bonuses high.
Arizona Abortion Providers Sue State Over Limits On Drugs.
A whistleblower says that personnel guarding the Australian refugee prison camp in Nauru falsified records to cut corners.
Even though the Salvation Army is not (unless I'm very misled) a for-profit business, this situation is still a form of perverse privatization since organizations compete to be chosen by the state to handle a state function. This is a recipe for fraud and should never be allowed.
Godaddy took down a site criticizing the Mexican government, refusing to say why, but apparently at the government's request.
Godaddy is famous for taking sites down for questionable reasons.
A US judge ruled for Chevron, saying that the Ecuadorian court's decision that Chevron was liable for pollution there was corrupt.
I have no way of gauging the validity of that assertion.
Two states are protecting their citizens from the food-stamp cuts aimed at Democratic states.
Don't Listen to Obama's Ukraine Critics: He's Not 'Losing' — And It's Not His Fight.
The Washington DC council voted to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. However, this cannot take effect unless approved by Congress.
Idaho's War on Wolves Escalates.
The NSA seems to be trying to push a censorship bill to punish journalists that cover surveillance.
Venezuela's opposition has not offered much to the poor majority that supports Chavismo.
Why does Israel feel threatened by humanitarian workers?
Anne Irfan says her treatment, as she was interrogated and eventually blocked from entering the West Bank, shows that Israeli border guards understood that she did not threaten any violence. It can only be that Israel fears exposure of its conduct.
Israeli soldiers raided a Palestinian kindergarten and a high school.
A poll says that 3/4 of Israelis could support a peace agreement based on the Arab peace plan.
The US should appeal to them over the Israeli government's head, because the government's policy is to try to silence international and domestic criticism through intimidation.
When Shooting a 14-Year-Old Boy in the Neck Is a Minor Infraction.
This sort of impunity is par for the course in occupying armies.
A massacre of Palestinians by an Israeli soldier, or perhaps several who have gone unpunished, was the excuse for a permanent reprisal against the Palestinian inhabitants of Hebron.
In 2013, Israel doubled its rate of constructing new colonies in Palestine and increased its rate of demolition of Palestinian homes.
That expresses Netanyahu's contempt for Kerry, the US, and the idea of peace.
Colonists are taking Palestinians' farmland to extend their "illegal" colonies.
This means the colonies that the Israeli government winks at, as distinguished from the ones it officially authorizes. All the colonies violate international treaties governing the behavior of occupying forces.
Several bitcoin banks and exchanges have been forced to close by robberies recently.
(Please don't use the word "hack" to mean "attack" or "break security" — that hurts us hackers.)
I wonder whether some government is trying to make bitcoin hard to use.
Obama has proposed some spending and tax proposals that are good, though far too small.
Republicans will block them, but proposing themn is crucial so that the Republicans will suffer damage for blocking them. I don't demand that any president work wonders, only that he try his best. Obama generally has failed to do that, and even has supported right-wing plans such as cutting the deficit and the TPP Now at least he's doing some of the right thing.
Arizona's Project ROSE imprisons women for doing something that raises a suspicion of prostitution.
All forms of legal repression of prostitution reflect bigotry. Usually they pretend to be intended to help the prostitutes, but that is nonsense.
The US government said it would not harass state-legal medical marijuana dispensaries, then imprisoned Robert Duncan for being an employee of one.
Suspicionless Searches at US Border: the Next Battleground for Press Freedom.
A company that was given the medical records of the UK's National Health Services uploaded them to a Google server, effectively making the whole data base available to the US.
The Obama regime fired Robert MacLean for leaking information on the grounds that it was classified — later, retroactively.
Paul Ryan's assessment of US government anti-poverty programs found that several of them are very effective.
Chomsky: US universities are following the Walmart model of job insecurity.
Chomsky: "security", for the US government, means security for state power against the public.
Idaho has adopted an ag-gag law: the legislature and the governor have surrendered to factory farm interests.
The right-wing Canadian government regards indigenous people's rights as a threat to mining.
Medea Benjamin was arrested, injured and deported from Egypt as she was trying to go to Gaza.
Everyone: call on Costco to commit not to sell GM salmon.
Five lies by Putin about Ukraine.
Criticizing some details of how Spain redistributes income from richer regions to poorer regions.
The point may be valid, but it's a secondary issue. The primary issue is that of redistributing from richer regions to poorer ones — which is good and necessary.
I have little sympathy with the Catalan selfish objections, which are being used by regional politicians who want to become the heads of a new small state. The real sources of poverty in Spain are austerity and corruption. If the people of various regions work together against these, they can all be better off.
India's population growth is still dangerous.
While efforts to treat sewage deserve support, reducing the birth rate is most important.
General al-Sisi has declared his intention to run for president of Egypt in an election that clearly won't be fair.
How Ukraine's new government has
menaced and
provoked citizens of Russian ancestry, while threatening democracy
too.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Reportedly the Russian-installed government of the Crimea has demanded a referendum on the Crimea's future.
If that is true, this demand should be granted — on condition of withdrawal of Russian troops, and with UN monitoring of the vote, and with a reasonable waiting period.
It would be hard to have a free and fair vote under Russian control, but the current Ukrainian government is hard to trust either.
Organic farmers report that contamination from GMOs is causing them substantial losses.
A university in India suspended all its Kashmiri students for not ratting on some of them who cheered for Pakistan's team in a cricket game.
Broapp is designed to help people pretend to pay attention to other people while not really doing so.
I don't think there would be anything wrong with using something comparable to Broapp if you admitted that's what you were doing. The nasty aspect is that it's intended for pretending.
This is, however, disregarding all the things that are unjust about the technology it depends on. For instance, if it is obtained from an app store, then it is obtained with nonfree software. It probably is nonfree software.
Recent pipeline spills have made people aware that underwater oil pipelines carrying corrosive tar sands oil could pollute the Great Lakes.
Can we believe the claim that these pipelines have never leaked? How would they know? If the pipelines ran across the bridge, leaks would be visible. Putting the pipelines underwater allows leaks to go unnoticed. They are now planning to use robots to inspect the pipelines 4 times a year. That means 90 days between inspections. I suppose that until now inspections have been even more infrequent.
The Australian government uses falsehoods to defend its decision to damage the Great Barrier Reef for a new coal terminal.
The big threat to the Great Barrier Reef is the CO2 that the coal will release into the atmosphere. CO2 dissolves in the ocean and makes it more acidic. This and the higher temperature both kill coral. In a twisted way, this is rational. If you assume that coal is going to be burned, the Great Barrier Reef is toast and there's no use protecting it. (This is the same assumption that the US State Department used to disregard the harm that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to do.)
This is tantamount to assuming that billions of humans and millions of species are going to be wiped out. The temperature will keep rising (from CO2 already in the atmosphere, methane released from melting permafrost, etc.) long after civilization is no longer functioning sufficiently to transport coal from Australia to China.
Here are some other ways that global heating threatens extinction.
If the heating took place across a period of millennia, organisms might adapt to it. If so much land were not occupied by humans and their farms, organisms might move to new places to find the conditions they need. But this can't happen now.
In some states, so many parents reject vaccinations for their children that it puts them at risk of dangerous disease.
Tim Cook dismissed with a sneer the pressure from global heating denialists.
The article should not confuse denialists with "skeptics".
Cook's resolve to protect the environmental is admirable. If Apple's computers (including the software in them) treated their users ethically, the company would be admirable.
A medical advance will enable pregnant women to determine safely and reliably whether their fetuses would have certain common and devastating genetic defects. Anti-abortion forces will try to prevent the use of these tests.
They are already trying to legalize malpractice and medical dishonesty. They will stop at nothing to oppress women, and don't care what else they crush in the process.
The article says "Republicans", and Republican officials indeed generally support this goal, but some Democrats support it more or less too.
A new last-ditch campaign to prevent action against global heating pretends to be "prudent" and "rational".
Undercover thugs in US high schools pressure vulnerable students to buy drugs to sell to them, in order to prosecute them.
Undercover infiltration is legitimate as a way to catch people who regularly commit crimes of their own volition. Selling marijuana to minors should perhaps be a crime even when it is legalized in general, but teenagers who do this occasionally when pressured by other teenagers are the wrong targets.
Juvenile punishment could perhaps be useful for teaching them to change course in life, if they had a second chance. However, expelling these students from school is a punishment for life, denying them that second chance.
The IMF demands more poverty in Spain.
"Reform" is the plutocratists' bland-sounding code word for making workers weaker and poorer, to the benefit of business owners.
The Welfare Dependents the UK Government Loves? Rich Landowners.
Freedom of speech is threatened in South Korea as citizens and even elected officials are imprisoned for "supporting North Korea".
It seems that some of these charges stretch the truth, which is clearly wrong. But even if some people really did make statements in support of North Korea, that is part of their freedom of speech. It's utterly crazy, but it should not be illegal.
On the difference between skepticism and denialism.
Instead of the Turing test, the right test for human-level AI might be the Pinocchio test.
Many poor Americans face jail for long periods
because they
can't pay private probation companies.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization of state functions usually means the public gets shafted somehow.
Prudish Spanish bigots are flipping out because a training course in how to succeed at prostitution is attracting plenty of customers.
Growing Reliance on Fewer Crops Will Increase Risk of Drought And Disease.
Maryam Shafipour has been sentenced to 7 years in prison for a peaceful protest.
Sad to say, Iran is not the only country that does things like this.
In Italy, protesters are being sentenced to shorter terms.
On subsidizing flood repair and global heating (flood production) in parallel.
Exterminating wolves in the US damaged rivers and caused more erosion. Reintroducing them controlled the erosion.
Too bad that people are set on exterminating them again.
Governments in southern Africa ignore sanitation and water supply for the majority of the population.
When You Give Bush/Cheney a Pass, You Can't Lecture Putin.
Heard the One About Obama Denouncing a Breach of International Law?
Comparing the cult of the invisible hand with the way free societies handled times of shortage in the past.
The cult of the invisible hand defines ethics in terms of the market and the business world; if you are poor, you deserve poverty by definition.
Karzai: "Afghans
Died in a War That s Not Ours".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
It's not literally true — this war between Afghan factions and ethnic groups was going on in Afghanistan for many years before Bush intervened. But there is some truth in it.
Everyone: call on the Washington Post to disclose about Amazon's relationship with the CIA when it covers the CIA.
UK academics condemn the attempt to turn them into visa police.
It is impossible to remove elephants' tusks and let them return to a normal life. That puts a crimp in the idea of farming elephants for ivory.
Global heating is projected to increase annual flood damage costs in Europe to around 30 billion dollars a year by 2050.
After that it will get much worse.
Protests in Venezuela fit a long pattern of US destabilization campaigns.
The shortages and the general violence that plague Venezuela are real. They don't justify US destabilization, but they provoke real opposition.
Some possible food packaging contaminants are probably not dangerous because they occur also in traditional foods.
As I recall, the claim that was made is not that "each of these chemicals is poisoning you," but rather, "some of them might be poisoning you, and this ought to be studied."
US citizens: tell the Bureau of Prisons to stop its dishonest and illegal threats against John Kiriakou.
John Kiriakou told us about the CIA's torture.
Austin thugs arrested a jogger for crossing the street while listening to music.
That can make you vulnerable to many sorts of dangers, which makes it a bad idea, but it is no reason to arrest someone.
The Great Barrier Reef Authority said that dredging for a new coal port would cause unacceptable damage. They it turned 180 degrees and approved the dredging.
David Nutt is working on a safe replacement for alcohol which has similar effects but only up to a certain point, and is not addictive.
One drawback is that it spoils the taste of wine. I loathe all stronger drinks because they taste like alcohol. I wonder what they would taste like with this substitute instead. But I still probably wouldn't want to use it.
A campaign to pressure universities to disinvest from fossil fuels.
The BBC promoting global heating denialism in the name of "balance".
Only a fool wants balance between science and pseudoscience.
US citizens: Tell President Obama: The NSA telephone data dragnet is unconstitutional and it must be dismantled.
Bikini Atoll, 60 years after nuclear weapon testing, is still too radioactive for the exiles to return safely.
As the Idaho legislature considers legalizing carrying guns on campus, a professor asks what the rules will be for shooting students.
I Lost My Dad to Fox News: How a Generation Was Captured by Thrashing Hysteria.
The Faux News fictional universe seems plausible to the people who get information from nowhere else.
The US government railroads young men into prison for mere alleged association with terrorists, then subjects them to conditions tantamount to brainwashing.
UN Report Identifies 30 Drone Strikes That Require Public Explanation.
Everyone: call on the CEO of Lowe's stores to stop selling bee-killing pesticides.
Mass murder in Indonesia received the
enthusiastic
support of the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
The US also supported the Indonesian takeover of East Timor and the repeated massacres there.
Shades of Watergate: mysterious burglars have raided several organizations involved with whistleblowers, including the lawyers for some whistleblowers.
Two thugs in Maryland attacked and threatened a man who was videotaping them.
A woman was elected head of an Egyptian secularist party.
This would be heartening news if I could believe the military would allow such parties any room for action.
Mining nodules from the ocean floor is fine in principle, but the details can destroy ecosystems.
If precautions made mining twice as expensive, it would still be profitable (if not now, then in 10 years) and could extract all the metal we need while avoiding the damage.
Speaking of ships and transponders, while it would be easy for a ship to switch off its transponder, this would be easily detectable. Unless the ship hid forever, it would be found later. With a suitable legal regime, captains would not dare do that.
Plutocrats and businesses have deeply corrupted US "public" television; they buy coverage with the spin they want.
Many US nuclear plants have known vulnerabilities that could cause disaster.
The underlying problem is the attitude, "Just ignore possible accidents that are rather unlikely." When the unlikely happens, as at Fukushima, you get screwed.
Amnesty: "Trigger-happy" Israeli Army And Police Use Reckless Force in the West Bank.
Thanks to Olympics construction, it now takes 2 hours to get from the village of Akhshtyr to a bus.
They can't get water either.
This case is egregious, but it's standard practice for Olympic games to leave non-rich people in their vicinity worse off.
'Oddball Science' Has Proven Worth, Say UMass Amherst Biologists.
While the Pentagon hands out cash to contractors, it pays soldiers so little that their families need food stamps. But Congress is cutting their food stamps.
Republicans are desperate to repeal Obama's health care plan but have given up talking about what to replace it with.
Protesters and government supporters have been killed in Venezuela, but not many of either side.
The US is force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike in a prison that is "a cleaner version of hell".
Some of these prisoners have been in solitary confinement for many years. No one deserves such treatment, not even a mass-murderer like Dubya. Everyone, even a prisoner, is entitled to the right to refuse food and die.
Tennessee State University has
ordered all staff
and students to wear visible ID tags at all times, and plans to
equip them with pox chips to track them in all their activities.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-15 because the old link was broken.]
I urge everyone to quit or transfer in protest.
Russia has effectively declared war on Ukraine.
Venezuelan TV channels give plenty of coverage to the opposition and to the opposition's protests.
The Koch brothers pretend to be defenders of Americans with cancer, except when it comes to releasing carcinogens from their factories.
State subsidies to movie companies screw the public to the tune of almost 2 billion dollars a year.
The general practice of giving business tax cuts to win business away from other cities, states or countries makes different regions compete to kowtow to business. It is nothing but dooH niboR, and every company that asks for this should be told to jump in the lake.
The US government's sleazy dealings with John Kiriakou about his treatment in prison have convinced him he is a political prisoner.
Even a hero can be slow to catch on to some things ;-).
The US Congress seems likely to legislate permission to unlock a portable phone from a phone company — but only until 2015.
The ban on unlocking portable phones is one specific case of a broad injustice: the DMCA's prohibition on breaking digital handcuffs of any kind, and on distributing software or hardware that can do so. The obsession with this tiny part of the injustice has distracted people from the rest. Instead of banning people from breaking digital restrictions management (DRM), we should ban DRM.
Join our campaign against DRM!
Exploring for oil in the US Atlantic coast would injure and kill marine mammals including endangered whales.
Burning the oil would endanger most species on Earth.
Background to the Dan River ash spill: business-subservient Republicans ordered the water pollution inspectors to think of businesses as their "customers".
Plutocratist politicians (mostly Republicans, but Democrats do it too) aim to abolish "job-killing" regulations so as to open the door to people-killing pollution.
Global heating in Australia has brought heat waves that kill lots of bats.
This is a sign of the massive extinction that we are bringing on the world. I've seen estimates that 2/3 of all species will be wiped out, but nobody can really predict this; it might be as few as half, or it could be a lot closer to 100%.
The EPA says it will oppose the Pebble Mine.
I have signed and posted several petitions against that mine.
The starvation wages of tea pickers in Assam makes their children vulnerable to slave traffickers.
A Russian stooge in the Crimea is asking Putin for military assistance, which of course Russia says it will grant.
It also appears someone in the Crimea is fighting back.
A few days ago I suggested that the Crimea should hold a plebiscite in two years to choose whether to be part of Ukraine. I still think that would be the proper course. If the Crimea's inhabitants are determined to rejoin Russia, it would be wrong to stop them by force. However, if Ukraine gets its democratic act together, a couple of years' reflection may convince the Crimeans that being ruled by Putin is undesirable.
Putin does not want them to have a chance to reflect.
Pakistani Taliban attacked the guards of a polio vaccination team.
Everyone: call on Israel to allow Shuhada Street in Hebron to reopen.
The Service Employees International Union will picket the Oscar ceremony to protest the company that was hired for security.
Ocean acidification has wiped out three years of production at a scallop farm in British Columbia.
Since ocean acidification will get progressively worse with each year's emission of CO2, you can see that there won't be a lot of scallops growing in 30 years. In 80 years they may be extinct, along with clams and lots of species of fish.
There will be plenty of jellyfish instead.
The proposed Nicaragua canal, whose environmental impact study seems to be being written in a corrupt way, threatens lots of ecosystem damage.
The US Navy knew the USS Reagan was contaminated with radiation from Fukushima.
Lying to the public is the Reagan tradition.
Poking holes in Monsanto's "scientific" arguments for pesticide-resistant GMOs.
The US-imposed government of Haiti arbitrarily seized an island, Ilavach, inhabited by 16000 people, to turn it into a resort that will provide income for business owners and a few employees.
The inhabitants were not asked their opinion. Colonial regimes see no need to ask the colonized people what they want.
US courts exempt corporations from the legal and moral responsibilities of human beings even while absurdly granting them the rights of human beings.
This is plutocracy at work: the rich demand society find an excuse to place them legally above you and me.
Developments in Lidar threaten our privacy.
I wonder if we could regularly jam lidar.
Australia must cut carbon emissions 15% by 2020 to do its share to avoid global heating disaster.
That is three times what the Australian government says it plans to achieve.
Two girl scouts launched a campaign that eventually resulted in a commitment to make girl scouts cookies from ethically produced palm oil.
While commitments of this sort, from the girl scouts and from Kellogg, are steps forward, I am skeptical that this sort of commitment can be enough to end deforestation for palm oil production. The problem is that many companies buy palm oil, and if we convince the well-known companies to reject palm oil made by deforestation, the other companies will buy it instead.
For real victory we need stiff punishment for everyone that cuts down rainforest and grows palm oil, together with a tax on palm oil to pay for helping the forest reclaim land from seized plantations.
Steps like these can contribute by building a movement strong enough to eventually succeed in enacting such laws.
This winter is the wettest ever recorded for England and Wales.
Israel's lobby in the US has gone off the deep end, presenting a massive collection of falsehoods instead of history.
Florida's save-all-the-money-for-the-rich government wants to send just a single fireman when a wildfire is reported.
Moazzam Begg was inspired by his torture in Guantanamo to become a human rights defender; now the UK has accused him of "terrorism", apparently twisting that word in the usual way.
Honoring the persecuted dissidents who opposed fighting World War I.
I won't say that the UK (or France, or the US) should have stayed out of World War I, but even without totally agreeing with these dissidents, I can condemn the way they were oppressed by the state.
Fossil fuels are becoming more expensive, and this is causing rioting around the world.
What Does a Soviet Submarine Have to Do With US Government Secrecy?
Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has been banned from communicating with the press or the public.
From Guantanamo to Limitless War, Obama's Failure to Live Up to His Own Five Commandments.
Wang Yam was convicted of murder after a secret trial (obviously unjust), and there is evidence that the UK government is covering up some sort of skullduggery. Not the least of this evidence is the decision to prohibit him from telling the European Court what happened.
I hope he told someone else who is in a position to tell the public these secrets.
01 March 2014 (Urgent: Oppose all kinds of fast track for business empowerment treaties)
US citizens: tell Senator Wyden to oppose all kinds of fast track for business empowerment treaties.
The Express Tribune has given up covering Taliban terrorism after the murder of several of its employees.
Pro-Russia forces (probably Russian soldiers out of uniform) have taken over two airports in the Crimea.
It seems to be a full-scale Russian invasion in disguise.
The EU will require large companies to report on the environmental and social impacts of their operations.
This could be the basis for actions to protect the environment and reduce abuse of workers, but results are not guaranteed; they depend on followup to these reports.
Proposed FDA labeling standards could be a small step forward, but Americans need a lot more information about what their food contains.
A British man starved to death after his welfare benefits were cut off because he was declared "fit to work".
In the US, where such benefits are essentially not available to single adults, I'm sure thousands of unemployed homeless people die from their situations every year.
Burma has ordered Medecins sans Frontieres out of Rakhine state, site of ethnic/sectarian violence, apparently to prevent information on the extent of the violence from getting out.
Everyone: call on Texas to investigate the possible murder of Alfred Wright and the possible cover-up.
Obama says $47k a year makes you "wealthy" so Medicare should charge you more.
How Ohio Pulled 4 Billion from Communities and Redistributed It Upwards (to the rich).
It started with a trickle-down tax cut that was supposed to make more jobs (but naturally didn't).
US citizens: call on the EPA to stop approving pesticide-resistent genetically engineered crops, and instead focus on non-toxic integrated pest management.
US citizens: phone Senator Reid to support limiting massive general surveillance.
The US Freedom Act is just the beginning of what we need, but we need to start somewhere.
Everyone: tell Ohio officials to cancel their plans to hinder urban blacks from voting.
Although these measures were chosen to disproportionately hit blacks, the motive for them is not racial hatred as such. Rather, it's a plan to rig the election by Republicans who know that blacks won't vote for them.
Tony B'liar has thrown off his Labour pretensions and endorses right-wing views while he hangs around with plutocrats.
For Britain's honor it must prosecute him, just as the US needs to prosecute Dubya.
The UK government ordered a disabled woman to look for work even though she is in a coma.
Deciding whether someone is disabled or capable of working calls for care and thought, if it is to be done right. However, the right-wing government would rather treat it as a no-brainer. Indeed, the job could be done exactly to the government's liking by a woman in a coma. Just tell her to "push this button if the person really is disabled."
Since the state wants to reexamine disabled people frequently, this could provide work for every comatose person in the UK.
A US appeals court twisted copyright law to justify banning the video, "The Innocence of Muslims".
The video is full of bigotry and intolerance, and is of no value in my opinion. However, the pressure to censor it reflects bigotry and intolerance too, and courts should not cater to this.
Above all, we must never surrender freedoms to rescue hostages taken by the enemies of freedom, and that's in effect what the plaintiff's situation was.
The European Commission, which opposes network neutrality, is using a tricky plan to outfox the MEPs that support it.
The US government says it will keep companies suggestions for reforming NSA surveillance secret — for privacy's sake!
These suggestions are probably worthless, because they are about details of implementing a minor change that would not really restore our privacy rights. (That's why Obama proposed it.)
Nonetheless, the hypocrisy of citing privacy as a reason when the whole point is wholesale trampling of Americans' privacy stinks.
The State Department is squinting very hard not to see the conflicts of interest in its environmental evaluation of the Keystone XL pipeline. A very narrow investigation saw nothing wrong.
The sophisticated way to rig an investigation is to decide precisely what to investigate, how, and who will do it, so as to assure the desired result. I think this result reflects a decision to approve the pipeline no matter what level of obtuseness and dishonesty it may require.
"Stand your ground" laws have shielded over 130 killers, in a racially biased fashion, and more states are adopting them.
Paradoxically, "stand your ground" gives everyone the same privilege that thugs enjoy.
The privilege is dangerous in the hands of a thug, and dangerous in anyone else's hands too.
Around 1/3 of the thugs of King City, California, were arrested for impounding the cars of poor residents in order to make off with them.
EU citizens: Please answer the copyright consultation by the March 5 deadline.
US citizens: call on Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to delay cutting off food stamps for some families.
EU citizens: Please answer the copyright consultation by the March 5 deadline.
US citizens: by March 4, submit a comment to the USDA to insist that companies that make or grow GMOs must be responsible for genetic contamination of other farms.
Everyone: call on Israel to allow Shuhada Street in Hebron to reopen.
Hong Kong's press freedom is threatened by the business ties of its mainstream media, much as occurs in the US, but Hong Kong journalists are often physically attacked too.
Unidentified professional soldiers have seized the regional parliament of the Crimea on behalf of Russia.
I suppose this was arranged by Russia.
Egyptian workers have concluded that the new government will do nothing for them, and have started a wave of strikes.
Documents Say Navy Knew Fukushima Dangerously Contaminated the USS Reagan.
DOJ Still Ducking Scrutiny After Misleading Supreme Court on Surveillance.
The UK Conservatives reject plans to reduce child poverty. I guess they conflict with the Conservatives' plans to increase poverty.
The US Senate is pursuing Credit Suisse for helping 22000 Americans evade US taxes.
GCHQ collected Yahoo webcam images of almost 2 million people, some of them nude.
It's irrelevant for investigation but handy for blackmail.
Author Stieg Larsson made progress in investigating the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme.
The Prevailing Myth of Consumer Clout Distracts Us From the Reality of Cartel And Monopoly.
Proposed geoengineering methods have inherent limits and can't counteract global heating.
The US NAS and the Royal Society go on record affirming that global heating has not ceased since 2000.
A South Korean missionary arrested months ago in North Korea has confessed he was setting up a spy ring. Under the circumstances, I am skeptical of this confession. Truth is of little importance to the North Korean state.
Bullying people to make false confessions is, alas, not limited to North Korea.
Fast food companies are working hard to market unhealthful foods to children.
Foreign workers in Qatar and some other Gulf states are forced into a sort of indentured servitude called Kafala.
The cost of caring for disabled middle-class old people in the US regularly bankrupts them.
Amnesty International has accused Israeli soldiers
of killing
and wounding many Palestinian civilians for no reason.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
These soldiers enjoy almost total impunity.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose two anti-environment bills.
Everyone:
call
on Proctor and Gamble to commit to stop buying palm oil made via
deforestation.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The Australian government offers aid to farmers hit by drought now, but hides from the need to stop making drought more frequent.
A 30% insufficiency in fresh water is predicted for 2030.
I think the fresh water scarcity demonstrates that humanity needs a new ethic of reproduction and resource use.
A UN warning: the effect of fracking is to delay the adoption of renewable energy.
Companies are trying to make plastic by taking CO2 out of the air.
Plastics made in this way should not have to compete on an equal basis with plastics made from petroleum. Rather, they should be subsidized through a greenhouse gas emissions tax, which in their case would be negative (a subsidy).
15-year-old Palestinian prisoner Ubaida Asaid, who is imprisoned without charges, needed two hunger strikes to get transferred to a political prison rather than being locked up with criminals.
Convicted anti-fracking protester Natalie Hynde calls for more to resist fracking.
The US continues to claim that it works to "promote democracy", although its actions often hardly fit that description.
Tiny GPS trackers on birds are providing a wealth of surprising information about their migration practices.
I'm entirely in favor of this, but the threat of using such trackers on people should be obvious.
Right-wing criticism of needed cuts in the US Army illustrate the political power of the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about.
The Manifold Lies of Chris Christie.
The US will take steps to make school meals less fattening.
This seems like a positive step, but the fact that it needs the support of beverage companies illustrates the lack of democracy in the US. In a democracy, the people would be strong enough to adopt policies that some businesses don't like.
Please don't buy any Coca Cola Company products; please support the world-wide boycott of Coca Cola Company, launched because of the murder of union organizers in Colombia.
Credit cards will be connected with cell-phone location tracking.
Schemes like this, that pressure people to let themselves be tracked, worry me greatly for the future. However, this one will only pressure those that are already surrendering to pressure, by paying with credit cards. Don't be tracked — pay cash!
A few Palestinian children threw stones at some Israeli occupation soldiers, so the soldiers fired tear gas at a crowd of fleeing children.
Israel arrested a Palestinian journalist for calling an Israeli official "the mayor of occupied Jerusalem".
Does that look like a crime to you? I don't know whether I agree with the statement or not, simply because I don't know the pertinent facts about that man's office; but even if the statement is a stretch, it must not be a crime.
For a Palestinian, getting a permit to bring a 7-year-old child to Gaza after surgery is not easy.
Cutting back on nurses in European hospitals increases the death rate after surgery.
US hospitals cut back on nurses 20 years ago. A friend who was a nurse quit the profession rather than take legal responsibility for supervising lots of untrained personnel, more than she could effectively supervise, and be at risk of a lawsuit if any of them screwed up.
People who smoke a few cigarettes a day underestimate the danger to their health.
[Somali] Security Agents Still Hound Journalist After Detaining, Torturing Him.
Kareem Khan was grabbed by Pakistani thugs and tortured for campaigning against US drone attacks.
Turkish PM Erdogan is accused of corruption with phone call recordings he claims are falsified.
I don't know what the truth is about these recordings, but it is clear that he is the enemy of freedom in Turkey.
Iranian journalist and dissident Mohammad Nurizad was attacked and arrested by thugs as he protested in front of the "intelligence ministry".
In the Crimea, with a Russian-descent majority, there is agitation for secession from Ukraine.
It seems to me that if the inhabitants of the Crimea want to become part of Russia, they should be allowed to do so; therefore, I suggest committing to hold a plebiscite in two years time to decide this.
That will give the Crimeans a chance to see whether the government of Ukraine is democratic and to think about whether they really prefer to be ruled by Putin.
North Korean escaper Park Sang Hak sends balloons with leaflets over the sky of North Korea.
The US Army
infiltrated
antiwar protesters in Washington State.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Chinese Man Demands Local Government Repay Cost Of His Treadmill In Landmark Anti-Pollution Lawsuit.
Over 60 West Virginia Facilities Could Contaminate The Elk River's Water Supply, Report Finds.
9 of the 10 most unhappy US states are run by Republicans.
A Uighur Chinese faces possible execution for calling for independence for the Uighurs.
I have no opinion on the question of independence for the Uighurs, but criminalizing his point of view is clearly wrong.
Pilots that flew US planes that had previously been used to drop Agent Orange on Vietnam were exposed to the toxin, perhaps to high levels of it.
Keep this in mind with regard to the corn that is designed to be resistant to Agent Orange.
Don't shrink the US post office — what the US needs is jobs.
A complete US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a good idea.
Which expenses the media blame for tight
budgets reflects
assumptions about values.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
When we're talking about proprietary software such as Mr Bill profits from, don't get distracted by the price paid for it; that's a secondary problem: proprietary software is an injustice even if it costs nothing.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which was supposed to hold nuclear waste and never ever leak, is leaking.
I'm not sure that this leak is dangerous, but until people understand how it happened, there is no way of guessing how much more may leak.
Ireland faces a lot of embarrassment for imprisoning anti-military protester Margaretta D'Arcy.
Right-wing extremists have been arrested for plotting an attack on the US government.
I have no more sympathy for these right-wing militants than for Islamists, but in both cases we must beware of letting the state manufacture plots to prosecute people who would otherwise never have done any harm.
Foreign domestic workers in Qatar are subject to slave-like conditions.
This happens in the UK too, and it's unacceptable in either place.
Personalized "news" feeds are atomizing society and facilitating well-funded pseudoscience such as global heating denialism.
For a thug to visit a person with a sign is not violence and doesn't deny that person's human rights. Thugs often bully and threaten people, but if all the thug does is show up at someone's door with a sign, that is not bullying.
Thus far, I don't see any reason why this needs to be restricted or why it matters what the algorithm is that selects people for visits.
The real question here is, does that visit tend to make a person less likely to commit crimes? And if so, what other effects does it tend to have?
If the visits — or other consequences of selection — tend to have harmful effects on the person selected, that would be a real problem, and whether race indirectly causes people to be selected would become a real issue.
The patent system is, at best, not work keeping.
A $10.10 Minimum Wage Would Make A DVD At Walmart Cost One Cent More.
U.S. Lags Behind World in Temp Worker Protections.
President Obama Is Fighting Cuts to the Military, Not Demanding Them.
The US Should Respect Venezuela's Democracy.
The growth and retreat of the giant Qori Kalis glacier in Peru has been linked to world temperature.
Public Knowledge has condemned a bill to legalize unlocking of portable phones because it has been modified so as to endorse in principle the idea that copyright should control this activity.
I agree. The DMCA provisions that ban breaking DRM must be repealed entirely and replaced with a ban on DRM (digital restrictions management).
Everyone: tell the CEO of ExxonMobil that he's not the only one whose backyard shouldn't be fracked in.
Don't let the oil companies drive us to frack and fruin.
Denial of global heating is a form of pseudoscience.
LinkedIn is setting up a censored Chinese subsidiary.
A man in Japan tried to kill strangers, but since he couldn't find a gun, he had to use a car, and didn't succeed in killing anyone.
New York City postponed a plan to wake up all the homeless people sleeping on the E train line.
Edward Snowden's moral courage, and why massive surveillance made it necessary.
I know something about moral courage. Thousands of programmers could, in 1983, have decided to reject the enticing profits of proprietary software and develop a free operating system, but I'm the only one who did it.
I had the determination to swim against the current, and keep doing so despite ridicule, insults, and attempts to convince me to ruin everything by compromising too far. But I didn't have to face a threat to put me in prison.
Snowden's act demanded far more moral courage than mine, and I honor him for that.
Boko Haram
murdered
school children sleeping in their dormitory.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Prestigious journalistic outlets now publish advertising designed to look just like news articles.
The perpetrators of mass murder in Indonesia in 1965/6 remain in power and honored. A documentary that offered them a chance to re-enact the crimes they are proud of has started a debate about the crime.
China's air pollution is so bad that it interferes with agriculture.
If Hillary Is the Only
Candidate, Where
Does She Stand on Keystone XL?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
I won't vote for a right-winger like Hillary Clinton. I did not vote for her husband in 1996 after I had seen what a right-winger he was, and I did not vote for Obama for the same reason. It was clear even in 2008 that he was talking about "Change" to avoid taking a stand for any important change.
I think it will be an advance if a woman can get elected president, just as it was an advance that a black man can get elected president, but I won't support a candidate because of that person's sex or race. Nor will I support the Democrats merely because Republicans might be worse. Voting for the "lesser of two evils" is a road to ever worse. If Ms Clinton is the Democratic candidate, I will vote Green (again).
I hope to have the chance to vote for Elizabeth Warren.
Former plantation colonies of the UK want reparations for the slave trade.
The descendants of slaves in the US deserve reparations because the effects continue. Whether this applies to most of the countries in the Caribbean, I don't know, but Haiti certainly deserves reparations from France.
The people of Ukraine
should think
carefully before making a deal with the EU.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Proposing a world-wide fishing police force.
Yanukovych's hidden millions spotlight how easy it is to hide the fruit of corruption offshore.
Volcanic eruptions since 2000 have caused a temporary cooling that cancels out part of the heating effect of greenhouse gases.
To cancel it out entirely would require a higher level of vulcanism. However, that would work only for a time. As we pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, cancelling them out would require a steadily increasing level of vulcanism.
Setting aside the harm those eruptions would do if they occurred, there is no reason to expect them to happen.
Moreover, eruptions can also emit greenhouse gases, so over the long term they can make things worse.
GCHQ uses dirty tricks to ruin people's reputations. It uses this tactic against dissidents who are in no sense terrorists.
There may be an active whistleblower inside the NSA now.
Is digital delivery of bills and such more sustainable than mailing paper? It's not clear.
What is clear to me is that I'd rather not have the information going through the internet. I don't do banking over the internet, and I get my statements in paper.
Anatomy of the Deep State:
Beneath Veneer
of Democracy, The Permanent Ruling Class.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Hypocrisies of the Super-Rich.
Australians rallied against the government's secrecy about how it is treating refugees.
Sea Shepherd says Japanese whaling ships attacked one of its vessels in an attempt to damage it.
Australia's right-wing government does not know what is happening because it cancelled a commitment to send a ship to monitor the whaling fleet.
The anti-Putin protesters of 2012 have
been sentenced
to 4 years in prison, a little less
than some
US protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Economic growth in Africa is going mainly to the rich.
I suspect "free trade" and other neoliberal dooH niboR policies that are designed to transfer wealth to the rich.
11 million homes are empty in Europe, as many are homeless.
Homeless is still increasing in Ireland.
US citizens: call on Obama
to cut the nuclear
weapons budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Ever since Obama told the NSA to stop snooping on Angela Merkel, it has snooped on her aides instead to get the same data.
Obama's men continue promoting the TPP with a long string of falsehoods and half-truths.
Ukraine now faces the threat of IMF shock treatments and "free trade" with the EU.
Uganda's president signed the anti-homosexuality and censorship bill.
Artificial intelligence could make massive surveillance even more dangerous.
Everyone:
support
Russian environmentalist Yevgeniy Vitishko.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call on the US
Olympic Committee to reject Billionaire Polluters as a sponsor.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens:
call
on the EPA not to lift Billionaire Polluters' suspension from new
federal contracts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Make BP mean Billionaires Punished.
Some US businesses install lots of sensors to monitor employees' movements and conversations.
The proposed HTTP 2 spec includes allowing ISP proxies to decrypt communications between your computer and any web site. Just what the NSA wants!
Uganda's president Museveni is backtracking on signing the anti-homosexuality legislation.
The most clearly unjust provision I've seen listed in this law is its prohibition on expressing the position that homosexuality is acceptable. I'm not saying this provision is more unjust than the others (I am not trying to compare them on that dimension), but rather that the injustice of this provision is the most indisputable, because it violates freedom of speech.
In Ukraine, Chaos and Violence Hide Nefarious Role of US.
This article points out a side of the situation which our media tend to ignore; but it seems to ignore the other side which our media focus on. President Yanukovych's thugs were the ones that started shooting the protesters, and as long as they continued, there was no reason to criticize the protesters for shooting back.
A lesson in real life for the foolish judges that tell activists they should limit themselves to the ineffective and ignored methods of protest that have not been prohibited.
If any lawful method of protest starts to be effective, the state finds an excuse to ban it or crush it. Consider how the Occupy protests were violently crushed. Now consider the ag-gag bills.
Global heating's reduction of Arctic sea ice has accelerated global heating worse than scientists expected.
Is drug kingpin Guzmán the Mexican state's prisoner or its ally and honored guest?
Everyone: tell the Justice Department that protesting nuns shouldn't be imprisoned while banksters enjoy impunity.
It is impossible to tell whether some of the people in the Yemeni
wedding party were supporters of al Qa'ida, but even if some were, is
it right to
attack a
wedding party?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The US military produces propaganda clothing in foreign sweatshops.
Egypt's military rulers are saying the US is plotting against them while continuing to accept lots of US support.
Honeybees are spreading diseases to bumblebees.
Egyptian soldiers attacked alleged terrorists from helicopters.
If the people attacked were indeed bombers associated with al-Qa'ida, that's a good reason to arrest and prosecute them; but does Egypt need to attack criminals in Egypt with the army? This attack is the sort of thing one would expect in a civil war.
Pension funds that invest in fossil fuels are ruining their clients' descendants' lives.
The campaign for privatization of US public schools started from a false report of a nonexistent fall in US educational results.
Governments that want more control over the Internet are using the revelations about government snooping as an excuse to promote dangerous changes in "internet governance."
The Athabasca River in Alberta is being contaminated by waste from tar sands oil, which was disposed of in the cheapest possible way: dumped on the ground.
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve funding for vital conservation programs.
The UK government still denies that its policies have pushed many Britons into hunger, and still pretends that they are poor because they are lazy, as an excuse to waste their time applying for an inadequate quantity of jobs.
Food banks are admirable, but their inadequacy demonstrates the need for adequate government aid for the poor.
Anti-Putin protesters from 2012 have
been convicted
of "rioting" and attacking thugs.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
It's probably the "He hit my stick with his head" accusation that thugs around the world like to make after they attack someone. Even in the US, courts tend to believe the thugs if there's no hard evidence to the contrary.
California is considering a law to make schools protect personal data of students.
The proposal is well-meaning, but I think its provisions are inadequate because the US government will find some way to collect that personal data.
The law really should order schools not to release data about their students to any one except the student, or to another school that the student wishes to enroll in.
Fix the Debt's campaign to cut government spending on the non-rich has failed.
However, if Obama is presenting a smaller deficit as an improvement, rather than a sign of a failure to stimulate the economy, he is still a right-wing influence.
US citizens: phone the Bureau of Prisons to demand an end to (illegal) threats against whistleblower John Kiriakou.
The IRS proposals for campaign spending by 501(c)(4) organizations
don't
go far enough to stop them from filtering dark money from
billionaires and businesses.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The FCC
is trying to
defend network neutrality with half-measures instead of the common
carrier status that really should apply.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Venezuela is filtering the internet as a reaction to the protests.
US citizens: tell the Secretary of the
Interior not
to allow drilling for oil in Arctic waters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Islamist fanatics in Syria reportedly killed a girl for being used by Facebook.
Being used by Facebook is bad enough — these people need help quitting, not punishment.
Judge Tosses Muslim Spying Suit Against NYPD, Says Any Damage Was Caused by Reporters Who Exposed It.
Everyone: call on Ms Clinton to heed Jeffrey Sachs and oppose the Keystone XL pipeline.
Recommendations for what the UK NHS should do to allay fears of misuse of people's medical records.
I think this does not go far enough. No companies should be given access to any of this data. We can't trust pharma companies to investigate the effects of their own drugs, so that work should be done by universities with no direct contact with the company.
In Ukraine, the protesters and the president have made a long-term peace deal.
US citizens: call on Senator Leahy to change the practice that enables a solitary Republican senator to veto a judge nominee.
US citizens: tell the FDA to ban the practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock even when they are not sick.
The Committee for Public Safety — oops, Department of Homeland Security — has not canceled its plans for systematic tracking of drivers via license plate recognition.
It should be illegal for companies to systematically accumulate records of license plates unless they are (1) invalid or (2) subject to specific surveillance orders issued by a court.
Ukraine's parliament removed President Yanukovych, but the country may be in the process of splitting up anyway.
Accusations that Germany and the US are paying protesters in Ukraine.
A new canal through Nicaragua could cause tremendous ecological damage and is likely to be of no benefit to most Nicaraguans.
Container shipping has no need for a canal. The containers can be offloaded at one coast, then shipped by rail to the other coast. This would require a little more work, but (with a fast train line) could even reduce shipping time.
A study concludes that hot weather increases violent crime and theft.
Global heating might then lead to an increase, though it is not certain that the effects of week-to-week temperature variation would apply also to a permanent temperature rise.
Supposed limits on US surveillance of journalists' communications are meaningless because they don't apply to using the PAT RIOT act against journalists.
AT&T's surveillance report is more misleading than accurate, because it omits 80 million NSA targets.
Welcome to Algorithmic Prison.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives operated entrapment mills across the US.
A proposed ban on aiding military interrogations won 53% of the votes at the American Psychological Association's conference, but failed because it needed a 2/3 majority to pass.
Egyptian thugs crammed 45 prisoners into a van meant for 24, left them for hours in intense heat without water or air, then finished off most of them with a tear gas bomb.
Then, of course, the thugs made up lies to excuse this.
US citizens: call on the FAA to respect the wildlife refuge on Merritt Island.
US citizens: call for regulating emissions of methane.
Meet The Family The Tar Sands Industry Wants To Keep Quiet.
Cop Allegedly Shot And Killed Teenage Boy After Mistaking His Wii Controller For A Gun.
The important issue is not the mistake made on this one occasion but the general factors that make such mistakes likely.
The Troubling Fine Print In The Claim That Raising The Minimum Wage Will Cost Jobs.
Saturated with Oil Money, Texas Legislature Saved Industry from Pollution Rule.
US courts are moving to discard the "third party" doctrine which says that people have no "expectation of privacy" in information that they provide to a "third party".
If this change is universally adopted, it will only partly reduce the harm done by accumulating massive digital dossiers about everyone.
Colombia spied on email between FARC peace negotiators and foreign journalists.
The FARC is Colombia's second-worst terrorist group. The worst one is the army-backed paramilitaries.
US citizens:
call
on the Navy to drop its plans for sonar exercises that will kill
lots of marine mammals.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Prostitutes in Italy demand the right to pay tax and get a pension.
New Report Exposes America's Highest Paid Government Workers.
Wal-Mart
firmly
denies the idea that it will give its workers a raise.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
However, the worst thing about working for Wal-Mart is that it usually is too few hours to make a living, and has no benefits or job security.
EU citizens: call on certain MEPs to support a specific aspect of network neutrality when they vote on Feb 24.
People are exposed to low levels of toxic and hormone-disrupting substances throughout their lives, as they leach into food from plastic packaging. There is very little research into the effects of this.
It is a difficult question to study; there is no way to do a controlled experiment, and it is hard to find comparable populations that differ mainly in how much they keep food and beverages in plastic packaging.
Press under Threat on Anniversary of Libyan Revolution.
Journalist Luke Harding reports that someone was messing with his word processor as he wrote a book about Snowden.
US citizens: call on Rep Pelosi and Senator Reid
to advocate
changes going the opposite of fast track.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Privatization of electricity in parts of Australia turned out to be inefficient: it caused prices there to shoot up.
High prices of electricity might have a positive effect: incentivizing conservation efforts. But it would have been better to do that with a tax increase, rather than giving away the increase to private parties.
Wages in Australia have been falling, but right-wingers warn of the danger of a "wage explosion".
This is standard right-wing tactic.
Australia has put refugees in danger by leaking their personal data to the countries they fled from.
In the UK: opt out of the UK's
lax medical records sharing system.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Islamic oppression reaches a new extreme: in Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to go to a medical clinic without a male guardian.
New Hampshire is considering a bill to restrict local thugs from acquiring armored vehicles, machine guns, and so on.
The local citizens would be empowered to permit exceptions.
Let's have this in every state!
Criticizing "voluntourism": don't think that your brief participation in an aid project will be constructive if you don't have a special skill to do the job.
HIV denialists are using the DMCA to censor criticism of their video.
Vindictive San Francisco thugs arrested and beat up a man for helping people who had a bicycle accident.
Some poor Venezuelans have joined in protests.
It would take many Snowdens to give Americans a picture
of all the
things the US government is secretly doing that might be
dangerous.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Snipers killed protesters in Kiev.
Ukrainian thugs burned down the internet tent at the protest camp.
The western part of Ukraine is starting to break away.
Naturally, the government calls the protesters "terrorists".
I hear that some sort of deal has been made.
The Ethiopian woman raped in Sudan won't be executed, but faces a fine she surely cannot pay.
Al-Jazeera journalists are now on trial in Egypt for their journalism.
South Africa tried to force a gay rights activist unto a flight to Uganda where he would face imprisonment for his political views.
Drone
Report: US
Must Account for 'Turning Wedding Into a Funeral'.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Chevron: if our frack well explodes, you get a free pizza!
Readers have served Penguin India with a demand to surrender the copyright on The Hindus if it is not going to publish the book there.
I wonder if Doniger's contract says the rights revert to her when the book goes out of print.
The existence of one billionaire who plans to support candidates that intend to curb global heating does not make it ok to let billionaires determine the results of elections.
The massive extinction at the end of the Permian period occurred in a time span between 10,000 and 110,000 years — rapid in geological time.
One candidate is a supervolcano that emitted tremendous amounts of CO2.
US citizens: tell Congress to bring the minimum wage raise bill to a vote.
A Republican extremist claims he wants to reduce poverty by pushing more of the right-wing policies that have increased poverty in the US so far.
Rand Paul: telling Americans that the NSA spies on us all does not make it right to do so.
I disagree with his "cheating spouse" analogy, since I do not believe monogamy should be a requirement for love.
Right-wing ideologues deny global heating because confronting it requires massive governmental activity.
This is not to say there is no room for markets in preventing this disaster. One of the advantages of the carbon tax is that it puts the free market to work in reducing emissions.
One good use of massive surveillance surveils forests rather than people.
A web comic explains the injustice of the TPP.
Even if we defeat the TPP, we should not forget the politicians who are trying to inflict it on us. They have proved they are on the wrong side, the 1%'s side.
Ukrainian protesters defeated riot thugs to take control of Independence Square, but it seems the right-wing extremists are taking the lead among them.
A delusional man faces the death penalty in Pakistan for blasphemy.
This law is the reason I will not go to Pakistan. Nobody should go there.
More about the protests in Venezuela.
I do not find it implausible that the US has helped organize the protests. I do not find it implausible that a provocateur (either working for the Venezuelan government or working for the US) has killed people on both sides.
In any case, it is clearly wrong to prosecute the leader of a protest because violence breaks out later. This resembles what the US did to the Haymarket martyrs.
The cleanup manager at the Hanford nuclear facility was fired after informing the public about safety faults.
Previous whistleblowers were fired, too. I guess we can't believe anything the employees say unless they get fired.
Republican state politicians in Tennessee bullied Volkswagen workers, who then voted not to unionize.
Republicans have seized on a study that predicts that increasing the minimum wage would eliminate 500,000 jobs but lift 900,000 workers out of poverty.
The minimum wage needs to be combined with a welfare system for those who are unemployed. That way, all low-paid workers benefit, whether they are still working or not.
To work out an example, suppose half a million jobs are eliminated, and 50 million minimum-wage workers get a raise. If those workers pay 3% of their increase in income as tax, that would cover the costs of supporting the other half-million, and all will be better off than they are now.
This sort of system to transfer income from the rich (who have grabbed an ever-increasing share) to the rest is exactly what we need.
A new land-grab for US farmland by big companies threatens to
increase
consolidation and could make working conditions worse.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
G8 Brings Big Ag Colonialism to Africa
It's the usual neoliberal "solution": big foreign companies lobby for permission to "invest", which means taking control.
The G8 New Alliance facilitates investors' "access to land", which means local people lose their land and end up in penury.
Another aspect is pushing farmers to seeds they can't reproduce. This makes them dependent on agribusiness and reduces diversity.
The G8 New Alliance also threatens Ethiopia's distributed seed bank.
Australia is practically giving away its natural resources to foreign mining companies.
I would guess that a few strategically chosen Australians receive some of those profits.
US citizens: sign this
petition for bringing back postal banking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Ecuador's oil drilling in the Yasuni National Park is supported by roads it calls "trails", as it pushes indigenous people off their land. To cover up the truth, it restricts access by journalists.
I would not criticize Ecuador for starting the planning to exploit the area before formally announcing failure of its plan to permanently protect the area. That plan depended on donations from wealthier countries, and it was already clear that the funds requested were not forthcoming. Its failure was not Ecuador's fault.
However, it appears that Ecuador treated this as more than a contingency plan.
Meanwhile, Chevron, which is grasping at even imaginary straws to get out of its judgment for pollution in Ecuador, is twisting the RICO law to claim that any criticism of Chevron is "racketeering".
US citizens: call for extending unemployment benefits by cutting the war budget.
Kellogg has agreed to buy palm oil only from suppliers that protect wildlife and human rights.
We will have to keep after Kellogg to truly implement this agreement, since it will have an incentive to wink at abuses. However, what worries me even more is that the unethical suppliers will simply sell to other companies. To stop the deforestation caused by palm oil requires systematic enforcement not dependent on one purchaser.
Residents of Ile a Vache, Haiti, are resisting an attempt to evict them all for an ecotourism scheme.
The Ukraine
thugs attacked
20 journalists as well as many civilian protesters.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The fighting in Kiev was started by thugs who had been positioned as snipers.
Comcast regularly mistreats its broadband customers.
If it gets permission to merge and get bigger, this can only get worse.
US citizens: call on the Federal Housing Finance Agency to support the use of eminent domain to rescue US home owners from the banksters.
The Australian shark cull is driven by the aim of reducing tiny risks to zero, together with exaggeration of those risks, stirred up by sensationalist media.
It's too bad we don't attend with similar determination to the really big risks: obesity, environmental pollution, plutocracy and its consequent often-deadly poverty, and global heating.
A deal between protesters and the government broke down and thugs attacked the protesters, who fought back.
Guatemala's attorney general, who prosecuted the corrupt and genocidal elite, has been forced to leave office early.
Thugs broke up a Pussy Riot performance by attacking the performers with whips.
US protesters for nuclear disarmament have been sentenced to as much as 5 years in prison.
The "sabotage" they were convicted of was symbolic.
Keep this in mind when other countries threaten large penalties against protesters. It's equally wrong when the US does it.
US citizens: reject the idea that presidents are allowed to kill at will.
US citizens: call on the Department of Agriculture not to let poultry agribusinesses inspect their own chickens.
That would be letting the fox watch the henhouse.
Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López has surrendered to the state, daring the state to prosecute him.
I don't know what his political platform is. I suspect it is to benefit foreign businesses and their local allies, which I do not support at all. Nonetheless, he is also standing for political freedom, in a short-term sense. Maduro had better get behind this too.
On the erroneous idea that everyone needs to be good at math.
Speaking as one who loves math as it ought to be loved — for its beauty — I agree with the article. My knowledge of mathematical logic informs me that it is a fallacy to think that "There are mathematical jobs available now for workers who are good at math" implies "If everyone were good at math, there would be mathematical jobs for everyone."
The US, especially, has no need to increase workers' productivity. Its production is high enough. The US needs to change the economic system so that everyone can have a decent life, not just the small fraction whose labor is still in high demand.
Now we see why same-sex marriage rights have gained so much in the US: businesses want to be able to hire gay professionals.
Legalizing same-sex marriage is the right thing to do. But if we need to depend on business support to win for a worthy cause, we can't defeat the plutocrats' class war that is driving most Americans, gay or straight, into poverty.
The Casualty of America's Same-Sex Marriage Fight: Civil Unions.
North Carolina riverbed coated by toxic coal ash, officials say.
The UK's excuse to crush the poor is to demand they futilely apply for jobs at a grueling pace, or be left to starve.
This "culture of fear" often leads to hunger and homelessness.
Refuting the apologists for the 1%'s class war.
"Free trade" agreements block vital regulations on banks.
Where Syrian Islamists take control, they oppress women, and men too.
A UK court ruled in favor of the interrogation of David Miranda even though it was intended to interfere with press freedom.
Laws that authorize oppression are typical of unjust regimes. All that court did was confirm, yet again, that the UK is one of them.
The proposed "European internet" is not meant to protect Europeans from massive surveillance.
South Dakota is considering a law to give purchasers of digital products a right to be able to repair them.
The US government has published a falsified history of the Vietnam War — a work of propaganda directed at misleading future generations of Americans.
Mozilla is planning to put advertising into Firefox, and talking about it in ways that don't acknowledge that.
The Ethiopian government snuck spyware into an Ethiopian exile's computer through a Word file.
This is one of many reasons you should refuse to open a Word file.
FEMA falsified the flood risk for 500 rich people's seaside mansions so they could get cheap government flood insurance at our expense.
An Ethiopian migrant in Sudan faces capital charges for getting raped.
Wikipedia Mounts Courtroom Defense for Editor Sued by Politician.
The editor (i.e., contributor) was ordered to delete the text that he wrote in that politician's page, and did so, but others restored it immediately. The judge does not seem to understand this.
Two banksters get lots of money from Bank of America and Citigroup and then were hired by the White House to work on the TPP.
This is the worst kind of corruption of the government.
Former members of Pussy Riot were arrested in Sochi, apparently to prevent a hypothetical protest.
Sochi is under special Olympic repression that is worse than the usual repression of Russia.
One proprietary software developer fights with other proprietary software developers, with the user's computer as battlefield.
Wendy Doniger's book, The Hindus, has been "recalled" in India by its publisher, which was threatened legally by a Hindu militant group that didn't like the book.
The censorship has extended to web downloads.
This act of censorship has provoked a world-wide reaction.
Many important works are banned in India, including the book Lajja by Taslima Nasrin which describes persecution of Hindus in Bangladesh.
Corporate Cronyism: The Secret to Overpaid CEOs.
How the NSA combines phone call data with internet contact data to collect more information about Americans in general.
Two UK thugs face criminal charges for arresting a student protester.
High-tech fishing operations are leaving Senegal's traditional fishers with no fish.
Ray McGovern is suing the CIA for putting him on a watch list because of his lawful political activity.
True Free Market Proponents Should Support Private-Public Competition.
The antidemocracy movement in
Thailand attacked
with guns and teargas.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Over a million EU citizens
have filed
an initiative petition against water privatization.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The legal effect of the initiative is only to direct the European Union to consider the issue. We will have to see whether this has more influence than a petition on whitehouse.gov.
University students in Venezuela have been protesting for days against Maduro's government, and a leader of the opposition has been accused of terrorism.
Several other South American countries condemned the protesters' violence.
I can well believe that US diplomats are plotting to overthrow the government of Venezuela. The US supported the coup attempt a decade ago. However, the shortages, caused by price controls, and other real grievances are stimulating real opposition.
Accusing protesters of "terrorism" is wrong in Venezuela just as it's wrong in the US or Russia or Egypt.
Sousveillance in a competitive situation can become, in effect, a form of nearly obligatory self-implemented surveillance.
Everyone: call on Monsanto to stop selling its wildlife-destroying pesticide, Roundup.
Debate: Was Snowden Justified? Former NSA Counsel Stewart Baker vs. Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
US and UK surveillance specifically targeted Wikileaks.
US banks make tremendous money from the fees on credit card payments.
In addition, when you use a credit card, they get data about your purchases. That's more important to me than the 2% fee. Don't be tracked, pay cash!
The frequency of heat waves in parts of Australia has already exceeded what was forecast for 2030.
Kerry gave a strong speech about the danger of global heating.
Will he practice what he preached, and kill the Keystone XL pipeline?
Free enterprise does a great job…except for certain giant and sometimes deadly flaws.
Farm deregulation, based on right-wing pander-to-business ideology, exacerbated the floods in England.
Fossil fuel use is subsidized almost 2 trillion dollars a year, which makes renewable energy appear discouragingly expensive.
Karzai said he will change the law that would have stopped abused women from testifying against the relatives that did it.
The latest right-wing bigotry tactic is to claim bigotry is an expression of religious freedom.
Venezuela banned a Colombian TV channel which was the only one that gave substantial coverage to anti-government protests.
US citizens:
support
clarifying IRS rules about electioneering by nonprofits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose the bill to ban states from mandating GMO labeling.
US citizens: phone to ask your Congresscritter to cosponsor the Government By The People Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Paris Censors Street Artist Who Criticized Anti-Piracy Law.
Egypt in 2012 experienced a dangerous jump in births.
This was perhaps due to Morsi's policies.
Gay rights activist Vladimir Luxuria was arrested for a nondisruptive protest in Sochi.
Banning any point of view is an offense against human rights.
The US had subservient UK agents harass Jesselyn Radack, Edward Snowden's lawyer, as she was going to the UK.
They told her she is on a sort of US no-fly list, the "inhibited persons" list. Perhaps as a lawyer she appears "inhibited" when asked to talk about her clients' affairs.
The UN warns Kim Jong-un that he could face charges at The Hague for crimes against humanity.
Here are details of the charges.
Even if the Security Council approves the charges, I see no way the court could have a chance of getting him and trying him. Still, this recognition of how monstrous North Korea is may do some good.
How Privatization Perverts Education.
5 Obnoxious Libertarian Oligarchs Who Earned Fortunes from the Government They'd Like to Destroy.
The US taught Australia how to spy on the Indonesian government about its position in a trade dispute with the US.
If the trade dispute was the one about clove-flavored cigarettes, Indonesia deserves no sympathy for insisting the US allow those deadly addictive products. Trade treaties are being used world-wide to block measures to discourage smoking, which is an additional reason those treaties must be abolished. But these treaties and the surveillance are different issues.
US citizens: call for repeal of "stand your ground" laws that provide an excuse for what is effectively murder.
US citizens: tell Congress
to reject
politicization of the NSF grant procedure.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The CEO of AOL tried
to shaft the
employees on their benefits because a couple of them had big medical
expenses.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
In this context, I have to mention that I don't think it serves society's interests to go to such lengths to save a very premature baby which hasn't even started to become a human being. But that does not justify Mr Armstrong's position. There are lots of reasons why employees (or their family members who are already human beings) might need expensive medical care. Also, the point about commercial pressures that lead women to delay having children and thus face greater risks when they do is valid.
Resistance is growing against the Gates Foundation's plan for redesigning education in the US.
A series of spills and explosions have highlighted the danger of fossil fuels under a right-wing deregulating state.
Investigating all sorts of dangerous facilities, and punishing infractions with stern rectitude, is one of the many necessary jobs that only a state can do well.
The Moral Movement (against right-wing cruelty) brought 80,000 people to Raleigh, North Carolina, and is spreading to other nearby states.
Bravo!
The ACLU warns that Obama's drone assassination program is illegal.
Supposedly, in post-constitutional America, Obama can kill anyone anywhere for any reason.
Future global heating is likely to cause Britain worse droughts some of the time, as well as worse floods at other times.
So you think you have nothing to hide…
Why the Comcast-Time Warner Deal Is Far More Dangerous Than You Think.
Obama is rewarding donors with ambassadorships a lot more than his predecessors did.
Thugs in California tased and beat up a deaf man for trying to sign at them.
US citizens: call on Obama to appoint more public interest lawyers as judges rather than corporate lawyers.
The Australian government is trying to intimidate the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Earth has had six massive extinction events, each apparently for a different cause. This one is caused by humans.
Leaked orders show Congolese exiles face torture if sent back by the UK.
400 construction workers have died working on sports facilities in Qatar, due to the abusive conditions. 4000 are expected to be killed by the time they are used in 2022.
The wealthier Americans are
increasingly
unwilling to "pay for them" (i.e., all the rest).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
We should not give those arrogant bastards any choice about it.
Senator Sanders
restored cuts
in veterans' pensions by taking the money out of the war budget.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
It is a net plus for Americans because military spending (especially overseas military spending) benefits mainly a few businesses and makes few jobs.
The New York Times reported on a sham right-wing "institute", but then for the sake of "balance" criticized Liberal groups that don't do the same thing.
NAFTA and the US-Korea free exploitation treaty have both done US workers documented harm.
US companies said they would create more jobs if NAFTA were signed, then did the opposite.
"Child pornography is great" — as an excuse for internet censorship.
US citizens: call on the US to restore Snowden's passport.
The US now allows banks to deal with state-legalized marijuana businesses.
Everyone: call on the US to promise no foul play against Snowden.
Fish farms accused of destroying wild salmon in Scotland.
UK citizens: support the Don't Spy on US campaign.
This campaign does not go far enough, but it is worth supporting anyway.
US cities and states are discovering
that privatization
is costly and harmful.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
A private operator has a financial incentive not to do the whole job. If it sells to the public in a competitive market, people will judge it on that. Otherwise, it will screw people without restraint.
EU citizens: talk with your MEPs to support network neutrality.
Uganda's law censoring "promotion of homosexuality" and imposing prison for any touching in public has been approved.
The influence of genes on homosexuality is not a secure base for arguing for equal rights for homosexuals.
I think the issue is simple. People who don't want to have sex with you have a right not to have sex with you, and aside from that it's none of their business who you have sex with.
A global heating denialist tactic is to misrepresent the consensus of nearly all climate scientists and pretend it is something very weak.
As business increasingly looks for land grabs, efforts to confirm indigenous people's land rights are stalling.
The Syrian peace talks are hopelessly deadlocked.
No one has any idea of a feasible form of intervention that would make things better.
A British Muslim extremist, perhaps a convert (judging from his name), has been banned from preaching on pain of arrest.
Incitement to murder is legitimately punished. This man's "vigilante patrols" may have included attacking passers-by. (Some such Islamist vigilantism in Britain has done that.) If he advocates Shari'a law, then he has no respect for others' human rights. He is evidently an example of the tendency for religions to inspire hatred, which is common today in Islam, Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism.
But that doesn't justify banning him from stating his views, which is not a crime. That tramples his human rights.
The UK fails to distinguish between "discrimination and persecution" and stating a political position.
The Turkish government is taking control of the judiciary so as to resist corruption charges against relatives of ministers.
In Dubai, the law makes every battered wife a prisoner.
When US politicians stimulate fear of terrorism in order to take more control, the US mainstream media support them.
Thugs implementing the War on Drugs shot Eugene Mallory to death in his bed, then made false accusations about him (as usual).
A former FCC commissioner regrets the media consolidation that the FCC permitted over and over.
Although the water in West Virginia is supposed to be "safe", people are still having horrible reactions to it.
A Utah law banning private license plate recorders is being challenged in court.
This sort of law is vitally needed to curb massive surveillance. People must be free to take photos and videos, but companies should not be allowed to systematically watch everyone.
The perverse Corporations United decision (to call it what it really is) in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are entitled to human rights may lead to a bad decision on this law. Please support the campaign for a constitutional amendment to cancel that decision.
Pakistani anti-drone activist Kareem Khan was arrested and tortured by Pakistani thugs.
The History of Surveillance and the Black Community.
Congresscritters in the pocket of the copyright industry abolish and create subcommittees to make sure Hollywood has power over you.
I recommend people join in my almost-boycott of Hollywood: never pay to see a movie unless you have some reason to believe it is actually good. While in theory this is not a complete boycott, in practice the difference is small.
Of the 19 places where winter Olympics have been held, 13 will be too warm in 2080 to do so again.
By 2080 I expect the world economy will be too shattered to continue holding events like the Olympic games. Thus, I have to admit that global heating will have occasional minor benefits. However, they will be minuscule compared to the disaster.
The thugs who shot innocent women in LA (while looking for one man) won't even be fired.
For the US government, leaks from people who like drones are good; leaks from people who don't like drones are bad.
GMOs Are Killing the Bees, Butterflies, Birds and... ?
The latest clever idea for persecuting homeless people: Pensacola has banned using a blanket or newspaper to protect oneself from the weather.
Everyone who supported that deserves to be sentenced to a year of homelessness.
Another danger from massive surveillance: once investigators believe someone is guilty of a crime — any crime — confirmation bias will encourage them to focus on whichever parts of the surveillance information confirm that suspicion, and ignore the parts that say otherwise.
California and the US government are considering laws requiring a remote kill switch and erasure feature in all smartphones.
This would make them even more open to attack by the state.
Obama said, "We must not protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrassment to the government", but that's exactly what the government continues to do.
"How far would [officials] be willing to go to cover up serious crimes such as torture and assassination?"
Brazil is persecuting sex workers to "clean up its image".
Idaho's "Ag-Gag" Law Latest to Criminalize Defenders of Animals.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Obama's anti-abortion judge nominee.
US citizens: call on congressional Democrats to stand firm against Republican hostage taking.
US
citizens: object
to GM corn designed to be used with Agent Orange.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The Other NRA: National Restaurant Association Eviscerates Rights of Customers, Workers, and Children.
Natural gas leaks a lot more methane, and contributes a lot more to global heating, than was previously believed.
Ocean heating seems to have caused grave damage to an old, remote coral reef whose location keeps it safe from other human-caused depredations.
A privatized prison in Idaho covered up its understaffing by fraudulent overbilling.
The million dollar non-fine seems inadequate as a punishment. The company ought to be prosecuted and put in its own prison.
It has been pointed out that one aspect of white privilege is that whites are less likely to be prosecuted for certain crimes than blacks are. By the same criterion, the most privileged class in the US is that of corporations.
Comparing protection of elephants with prohibition of drugs.
There is a significant difference between the two. Ivory has no physiological effect; if people like owning ivory, that is just an acquired taste, which they could easily learn to change. Nonetheless, the article could be right.
TEPCO Blasted for Withholding Data as Fukushima Radiation Levels Soar.
Almost 6 million Americans can't vote because of previous criminal convictions,mainly from minority groups because members of those groups are more likely to be prosecuted. This is enough to change the outcome of elections.
US citizens: tell the State Department not to follow its joke of an environmental impact statement for the Keystone XL pipeline, and reject it.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to have the EPA block Pebble Mine.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Geologists are seriously considering the idea that humans, through global heating and ecological disruption, have caused a new geological period, which they propose to call the Anthropocene.
I am concerned that the name "Anthropocene" may provoke irrational pride: some humans may think, "An epoch named after US humans proves our importance — we've really made it now." Even people who would not say this may feel it and be subtly influenced by it. That would be most unfortunate, since considering the epoch as an award would lead people not to recognize this development as the catastrophe that it is.
I therefore suggest choosing another name. The name that best characterizes what's coming in this epoch is "Obscene".
Seriously, since the change consists primarily of global heating, how about "Thermocene"? The heating is caused mainly by combustion (of fossil fuel and forests), so how about "Pyrocene"?
An ACLU victory: a federal court ruled that the government needs to get a warrant before it can access the confidential data base of people's prescriptions.
It's a step in the right direction, but access is still too easy. The state should not create a centralized data base of everyone's prescriptions.
School shootings are happening in the US at record pace, and 3/4 of the shooters found their guns at home.
Congresscritters say Deputy Attorney General James Cole's testimony about snooping on their phone calls was "not entirely accurate". It was the usual misleading half-truth.
21 things you can't do in the US while black.
US citizens: call on the US to block the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable.
These are the two biggest US cable operators.
It should be a no-brainer to block such a merger, but the US government is too corrupt to be counted on even for no-brainers.
These two companies are both ALEC members, and ALEC supports their lobbying campaigns to eliminate local regulation of cable TV and ban public network access.
Freedom to protest in the US is under systematic attack.
The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement is protesting against President Rousseff's support for agribusiness.
In the 1990s, I was told, activists of this movement were arrested on the pretext that they were using unauthorized copies of Windows. They could not afford authorized copies, of course. Then I heard that they had switched to GNU/Linux to protect themselves.
US citizens: tell the mainstream media to start talking about the TPP.
Everyone: Support Children 404 and demand Russia drop charges against Elena Klimova.
Iran has executed an Arab poet, labeled as "terrorist".
Belgium will give children dying slowly in great pain the option of euthanasia.
The devastating UK floods are part of a trend: 4 of the 5 wettest years ever recorded have occurred since 2000.
Elizabeth Warren Calls for Closing Loopholes for the Rich to Cut Student Loan Debt.
US citizens: tell Obama, no chained CPI — no cuts in Social Security, not even veiled cuts.
US citizens: call for extending the Clean Water Act to all waterways.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service not to delist wolves from protection.
NSA Whistleblower: USA Freedom Act Will Not Go Far Enough To Protect Civil Liberties.
It falls short in other ways too.
We should support it, but we must demand more.
The Australian plan to kill large sharks violates a treaty meant to protect migratory endangered species such as the great white shark.
ISP lobbyists have pressured (or paid?) 20 states' legislatures to ban public broadband.
If US Republicans are serious in their concern for future generations, they should protect them from global heating disaster.
This reasoning won't influence congressional Republicans, because they don't care about future generations except for the wealthy. Their pretended concern is nothing but an excuse to kick the poor today.
The protests in Bosnia are aimed at privatization which (as usual) was done so as to screw the non-rich, and at the corruption of the state.
I don't know the facts, but my guess is that some of the ex-Yugoslav industries should have been privatized, because they made products for a competitive market. That doesn't justify cheating the workers. Perhaps they should have been turned into worker cooperatives.
Russian environmentalist Evgeny Vitishko faces three years in prison for spray-painting on a fence.
Similar repression of nonviolent protest is found also in the US.
Biggest Rises and
Falls in the 2014 World Press Freedom Index.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The big music factories are trying to force a major Irish ISP to start punishing customers accused of sharing.
To make a deal with the copyright industry is self-delusion. If you try to "meet them half way", they come back later and demand the rest.
Janet Yellen acknowledged that the US "economic recovery" has failed to provide jobs.
While I am glad Yellen recognizes the problem, interest rates have little leverage for correcting it. Low interest rates help banksters make more money, but they have no reason to put this into the rest of the economy. What we need is to expand deficit spending. When Obama endorsed the Republicans' goal of deficit cutting, he screwed the US until we replace him.
The Stasi, the East German secret police, collected metadata too. But it could not collect everyone's metadata as the US does.
Obama is considering launching an assassination of an American in a country where the US is not at war.
The fact that no attempt has been made to charge that person with a crime adds to the scandal, but if there were charges against that person, that would not justify summary execution.
More about how CIA drone attacks are aimed at SIM cards identified based on metadata.
Glenn Greenwald says he will not remain in exile forever, even though the US government refuses to say whether he will be prosecuted for his journalism.
The Committee to Protect Journalists warns that mass surveillance endangers journalism.
Israeli soldiers shot and killed unarmed Mohammad Mahmoud Mubarak as he was busy directing traffic. Then they claimed he has shot at them first, although he was unarmed and nobody shot except them.
The Israeli army arrests Palestinian children and tortures them into signing confessions they can't read.
North Carolina's first response to Duke Energy's coal ash spill was to minimize it and protect the company from penalties.
The EU envoy to Israel says that relations will depend on the outcome of peace talks with Palestine.
Since the peace talks began, Israel has accelerated its demolitions of Palestinians' houses.
A bill in the US congress would punish universities for making statements in support of a boycott of Israel.
It might be harder to punish them for supporting a boycott of companies and institutions that support the illegal Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
The US and UK have fallen down in ratings for freedom of the press.
It may not be enough to help us but it is a start.
After floods have caused tremendous damage to houses and transport in the UK, the government says it will provide "unlimited" funds for repairs.
Given their perverse austerity policies, they will take those funds out of aid for the poor. But why didn't they offer unlimited funds to prevent floods — including curbing CO2 emissions that are likely to make for worse floods in the future?
US Sailors Sick From Fukushima
Radiation File
New Suit Against Tokyo Electric Power.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Iowa farmers tell a presidential hopeful that supporting big food processing companies does not mean supporting them.
Canada's government is attacking democracy on behalf of oil companies.
US citizens: support the campaign for proper prosecution of rape by soldiers.
Everyone: Endorse
the Google
shareholder resolution aimed at Google's support for right-wing
groups such as ALEC.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Google wants to detect that lots of people are taking photos or videos with their phones — and call the thugs.
Why should Google be allowed to know what people are doing?
Anger in Bosnia, But This Time the People Can Read Their Leaders' Ethnic Lies.
Everyone: tell the governor of North Carolina to start protecting people rather than the mining companies that make toxic pollution.
US citizens: call on Agriculture Secretary Vilsack to implement the Farm Bill in a way that favors healthful food.
It is so warm in Sochi that snowboarders are having trouble.
In 2054 they will need to hold the winter Olympics in a far more northerly place. By 2074, the world will have no attention or money left to hold such games.
UK victims of undercover thug infiltrators in political groups have launched a campaign for an independent inquiry into the practice.
One sheriff in the Seattle area wants to run a police department instead of a gang of thugs.
UK thugs arrested student protesters for no reason except to get their names, then the university suspended them for protesting.
The thugs had besieged the students for hours.
Greenwald/Scahill: How the NSA Helps the US Assassinate.
The railroading of human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart demonstrates the degradation of the US trial system.
You can see the effects of this in the repeated convictions of "criminals" who only went along with plans suggested by thugs and would never have been able to carry them out.
Cecily McMillan elbowed the person attacking her from behind, who turned out to be a thug, so she is threatened with 7 years in prison.
I wonder who groped her breast — was that the thug?
Thugs often attack innocent people, and make a special point of attacking people who are particularly virtuous (such as protesters for good causes). They are hardly ever prosecuted for this. If once in a while they get hit back, that's only a small step towards justice.
An Indian mining company is suing poor villagers as well as destroying their forest.
Xenophobia is rising around the world: "these are dangerous times to look foreign".
I understand the pressure to limit immigration. As millions start to flee from land that has turned into desert or ocean, this pressure will become enormous. No country is obliged to accept millions of refugees.
However, it makes a difference that our carbon emissions are responsible for the spreading deserts and oceans — and stop them. If we don't want to accept those millions of refugees we should stop destroying their land.
A Spanish judge has opened a criminal investigation of Chinese
ex-officials for
crimes
against Tibetans.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
I suspect that the mostly-right-wing US government is pressuring Spain's government to end this practice. Obama protects Bush and his torturers from criminal prosecution.
Time to Take a Stand to End US Impunity
Obama will imprison another whistleblower, who was identified by massive surveillance of journalists' phone call records.
European Parliament candidates are asked to sign this proposed Charter of Digital Rights.
It is not strong enough on certain issues. For instance, it fails to oppose the censorship which many EU countries have already imposed, and fails to call for an end to existing mass surveillance measures such as the mandatory data retention for ISPs and phone companies.
However, I support it anyway.
Now that US network neutrality has been
eliminated, Verizon
is slowing Netflix traffic.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
It would be great if Verizon killed off Netflix, whose business is fundamentally unethical because of DRM. But there is little chance of that; eventually they will make a deal, with Netflix paying Verizon some money.
Aristide reported in 2005 that Dubya had him removed because he was unwilling to privatize as the US demanded.
Thugs in Egypt and Sudan regularly conspire with kidnapers that torture Eritrean refugees to squeeze money out of their relatives.
To ransom hostages is cowardly; the right thing to do is to hold a funeral for them, in effect spitting in the kidnapers' faces. This takes courage, but discourage kidnapers, whereas a cowardly response keeps it going.
It is not clear how the Eritreans first fall into the hands of traffickers.
The US government destroyed and hid photos of Osama bin Laden body in contempt of a Freedom of Information Act request.
What can you expect from these thugs? They murdered bin Laden to avoid the inconvenience of putting him on trial.
Under today's British laws, the volunteers who fought in Spain against Franco and fascism would be charged with "terrorism."
Qatar will undertake to protect construction workers from abuses, but only on a few specific projects.
Republicans controlling state governments are trying to amend the US Constitution to require a balanced budget, which would mean making recessions worse.
Overseas, Culture
of 'Impunity' for US Soldiers Guilty of Sexual Assault.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The first rule of ensuring that a foreign army can get along with local civilians is to punish any crimes by soldiers against civilians very sternly. The US may think it doesn't need to do this. The US is mistaken.
The enormous US military aid to Israel includes bombs and planes used to attack civilians in Gaza.
Everyone: tell General Mills to remove GMOs from all its cereals, not just from Cheerios.
Everyone: demand that the World Bank stop financing land grabs in Kenya and elsewhere.
An Australian supporter of boycotting Israel is being sued for refusing to support a study application by an Israeli academic.
If Lynch's grounds for refusal were as stated, that the scholar was associated with a university with a campus in a colony in Palestinian territory, that was political, not racial. So I think the lawsuit is mistaken.
However, I criticize Lynch's decision to apply the boycott to an individual person. The American Studies Association, in adopting a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, emphasized that this was not aimed at Israeli scholars.
California's drought may be the worst in 500 years, and it is going to get worse.
How Entitlements for the Rich Cheat the Rest of Us.
A Catholic school in the US fired a teacher for getting pregnant.
China has started helping Kenya prosecute ivory smugglers.
The Thai government has arrested a leader of the antidemocratic protest movement.
I can't criticize the arrest of people that represent a minority and try to sabotage elections.
Bottom Trawling: How to Empty the Seas in Just 150 Years.
Tar sands leaks in Canada that were reported last May have not been stopped.
An unprecedented speed-up of the trade winds is driving the Earth's heat gain into the ocean instead of letting it accumulate in the atmosphere.
Aside from the point that the speed-up is cyclical, there's also the point that the reason it causes heat to go into the ocean is that the air is hotter than the ocean. Once the ocean gets sufficiently hotter, heat will start to remain in the air.
Today's extreme weather is just a foretaste of what we have already made inevitable in a few decades. The question is whether we will take steps now to prevent it from getting even worse.
To prevent all but the rich from being squeezed out of major cities, we must build, build, build.
The obstacle is zoning that was designed to prevent the sort of density that we need in order to accommodate everyone.
US citizens: call on the government to make college tuition gratis.
(I try to avoid using the word "free" to mean "zero price" even when we're not talking about software.)
Once again, Turks protested state-imposed internet censorship on the street.
Across the US, businesses and products that aim at middle-class customers are failing — because those customers aren't there any more.
Responses to creationists' 22 questions.
Substitute drug maintenance problems are
pretty effective
at saving addicts' lives and enabling them to do useful work.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
I speculate that what makes the substitute drugs safer is that they are regulated and medically administered. In other words, part of what makes the original drug so dangerous is prohibition.
The US spent 7 years covering up the fact that it had put Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list by mistake.
This list is punishment without trial, and as such is a prima facie injustice.
Syngenta's own documents prove that it tried to sabotage and discredit Professor Hayes, whose work showed that Syngenta's pesticide atrazine was dangerous.
US television has a nearly total blackout about the TPP.
Republicans set up fraudulent web sites pretending to represent Democratic candidates so as to divert donors' money.
This reflects the motto of the Republican Party, "By hook or by crook", as observed in voter suppression laws and distribution of false information about where to vote, as well as just plain lying about Democrats.
Everyone:
tell Whole
Foods to stop firing workers because they have to leave for an
emergency.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The time scale of global heating makes it hard to treat as news, but it could be the end of all news.
US states are slowly passing laws to allow the terminally ill to get help in suicide.
This is a step forward, but it is a shame to limit this escape route to those who are going to die soon anyway, and exclude people who can't commit suicide on their own because they are totally physically incapacitated. Some of those people face possibly decades of futile boredom, in some cases combined with horrible pain.
Mexican gangsters roam villages and kidnap girls as young as 7 for prostitution. No one dares openly resist them; the corrupt thugs are no help.
Widespread flooding has shown what a disaster global heating will bring to Britain.
The hard part will be to make the government confront the costs of avoiding the disaster, which get higher with delay.
Now that homosexuals fleeing Uganda can claim asylum because they'd face persecution there, how to decide if someone is not faking being gay?
Why
Are Bitcoiners Going to Jail for Money Laundering While Big Banks
Walk?
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
A bunch of protesters were convicted of being led by thugs to prepare molotov cocktails, but they were acquitted of "terrorism" charges.
Another blow to Australia's immigration policy secrecy, which consists of "We won't tell you what we're doing" and "How dare you make accusations?"
Shezanne Cassim was imprisoned in Dubai for posting a humorous video that didn't even criticize country's despicable government.
Humans are depleting groundwater around the world, just as global heating is reducing rainfall in many areas.
Britons: tell the NHS not to sell patient data to companies.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in favor of network neutrality.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The UK's environmental research organization has made a dirty deal with Shell.
Protesters in Rio de Janeiro occupied the main train station and let everyone travel gratis.
The Australian plan to kill large sharks, which migrate very far, pushes this endangered species towards extinction to save a tiny number of humans.
South Africa is concerned that this will wipe out sharks there too, since sharks swim between the two continents.
Boat people towed to Java by the Australian Navy in an Australian lifeboat say the Navy sailors burned people as punishment for asking to use a toilet.
Since the Australian government is covering up the whole activity, its denials are worthless. If it wants to convince us, it should make recordings as proof. As long as it covers up its actions we should believe all the accusations.
If vitamins don't address medical problems, will university researchers funded by a vitamin company tell us?
I need to point out that the same exact problem exists for the Big Pharma companies.
The US Green Party says the Farm Bill
should
be vetoed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Mainstream media are still struggling to cover up US and UK's actions in the Middle East.
Sponsors of the Olympic games that refused to publicly criticize Putin's repression: Atos, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, General Electric, McDonald's, Omega, Panasonic, Procter & Gamble, Samsung and Visa.
Garry Kasparov says that the Sochi Olympics are all about Putin's cult of personality.
Part of the cause of lower pay for women is that male senior managers are afraid of being accused of sexual harassment if they socialize or meet with women employees.
Israeli thugs attacked a Palestinian protest camp near Jericho.
Japanese women are organizing a sex strike against men that vote for a sexist candidate.
The UK's privatization of its post office was a giant give-away to the investors.
If you are like most Internet users, the way you use the net is bad for you directly, in addition to snooping on you.
Ralph Nader: The Law Must Be Free and Accessible to All — Not Secret and Profitable.
The US is ignoring efforts towards nuclear disarmament.
It's no use retraining US workers to fit jobs better, because the available jobs are simply far too few.
Perverse economics contribute to the lack of jobs.
US citizens: Tell Senator
Reid, don't
allow a vote on Fast Track.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your senators to defend EPA regulation of power plant CO2 emissions.
US citizens: sign this petition calling on Kerry to get the facts right about the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Please do not access this page with Javascript enabled. I would be ashamed to have posted the link if you did that.
Brazil's Government Has Set the Favelas And Middle Classes Against Each Other.
The Ukrainian Protesters Must Make a Decisive Break with the Far Right.
The FBI is forcing ISPs and phone companies to install metadata monitors called "port readers".
Haiti deserves more than forgiveness of it dictator-imposed debt. It deserves reparations.
Palestine has been negotiating for 20 years under grave threat; now Israel is starting to feel the pressure of possible European boycott.
ABC spins very hard to pretend that stock market trends are relevant to most Americans.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to support bills that would end the war on marijuana at the federal level.
US citizens: call for stopping the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion.
Children of the Occupation: Growing up in Palestine.
3000 civilians were killed by fighting in Afghanistan in 2013, mostly by the Taliban (as usual).
New video surveillance systems can see everyone's movements in a whole city.
Here's the ACLU's response.
What matters is not which people they do track, but which people they could track after the fact. If they can track where journalists or whistleblowers went in the past, democracy is sunk.
In the US it is legal to pay partially disabled workers a pittance, and thousands of people are exploited in this way.
A test of 900 foods in the UK found that over 300 were falsely labeled.
In Egypt people are arrested for carrying cameras on the street.
Assad has agreed to a truce and to allow civilians to be evacuated from Homs.
Privatized probation companies in the US jail poor people who can't pay the fees.
These companies have thousands of poor Americans jailed when they are too poor to pay the fines they owe.
Cambodian journalist Suon Chan, who reported on use of illegal fishing methods, was killed by fishermen.
Campaigning for women's rights in Morocco.
The practice in which relatives despise girls that have been raped is found in many parts of the world. In Samoa, men used (and perhaps still use) surreptitious rape to as a means to force girls to come and live with them; they knew their families would reject them for being raped. This happens because the girl's parents think of her as an asset rather than as a person.
US citizens: call for extension of unemployment benefits.
Senator Warren challenged other senators: does anyone believe that US enforcement of banking regulations is working?
The UK plans
to entrust
everyone's medical records
to proprietary
software (which is asking for trouble) made by a company with
a track
record for shafting the public, thanks to an inadequate concern
for privacy starting from the top.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The system will also allow the state easy access to all the data. Naturally.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Empty Oceans Act.
Now that Obama can get judges confirmed, he should appoint public interest lawyers as judges.
A Ukrainian protest leader says
that thugs
captured him and tortured him into making a confession that he was
paid by the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
A UK thug has been sentenced to prison for making a false accusation, saying that an important politician called him a "pleb". The politician, being a Tory, probably thought this but apparently did not say it.
While this is the right thing to do, I wonder when the UK, US, and other countries will start sentencing thugs to prison for making more serious false accusations against people who are not important politicians.
Philip Seymour Hoffman Is Another Victim of Extremely Stupid Drug Laws.
Teenage girls in Britain are campaigning against female genital mutilation.
They know that girls in their communities are at risk.
Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin is held and interrogated for hours every time he returns to the US.
Turkey's new internet law allows the state to block a web site by administrative decree, and requires ISPs to record people's contacts.
Several European countries also block web sites by decree, and the US government "seizes" domain names by decree. India has the power to take down a web site by decree. These practices are unjust in any country.
The tracking of web visits also exists in Europe and to some extent in the US.
Citizens of Massachusetts: sign this petition for establishing a public health care option.
The Australian government, which will do anything to boost the fossil fuel industry, is now fabricating an excuse to end the program to promote renewable energy.
More than half of the world's marine reserves are inadequately protected and fail to encourage wildlife.
The DEA's guide for how to disguise use of secret snooping data has been published.
The Chaos Computer Club has filed a criminal complaint accusing the German government and other governments of illegal surveillance.
Five predictions made by Karl Marx that fit today's extreme form of capitalism.
Cities and states are lured to paying millions in subsidy for big sports events based on wildly exaggerated estimates of how much the local economy will gain from the events.
This article refers to the Superbowl, but it's the same for the Olympics or the World Cup.
I would tell the boosters of these games to seek private investment if they are so profitable.
Qatar Airways subjects flight attendants to a regime almost like prison, firing them for the slightest infraction of absurd rules.
Qatar is one of the countries I would never visit. The required iris scan is just one of the reasons. I won't even change planes in the U.A.E.
Nobody should ever work in a country that demands exit visas.
New Zealand's digital snooping agency says it failed to preserve the data for Kim Dotcom's lawsuit alleging illegal snooping.
UK agents ran DDOS campaigns against Anonymous, interfering with their chat sites and with all the other sites co-hosted with them.
I reject the term "DDOS attack". When activists do it, it is a form of online protest; I won't call it an "attack" when someone else does it. What happened here is that the state sent a crowd of state agents to protest at a people's houses and the pubs where they meet.
US citizens: support fixing the Voting Rights Act.
US citizens: Support the Government By The People Act.
Egyptian journalist Hossam al-Meneai was tortured by thugs, says the American journalist who was arrested with him.
Americans need to be concerned about Japan's secrecy law.
2013 was the second-hottest non-el-Nińo year since records began.
Iraq's US-installed government imprisons women without trial, tortures them into confessing (or threatens to rape their daughters), then executes them. All this to punish their male relatives.
French protection for organizers of the Rwandan massacres may be exposed in court.
The NSA spied on German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder because he refused to help Dubya conquer Iraq.
Evidence that Sri Lankan soldiers and thugs destroyed graves to cover up murders, under orders from the high command.
There is evidence also against the LTTE, which is no surprise. But those responsible are dead.
What's good and what's bad in the US Farm Bill.
Evidence that the Three Mile Island meltdown made lots of people sick in Pennsylvania, and killed animals.
Israel continues making a mockery of peace talks by
authorizing
additional construction of colonies in Palestinian territory.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The European Parliament strengthened the weak energy targets that the European Commission had proposed.
Congress and Obama, with the cuts in food stamps, are making America's children go hungry.
Republicans aim to force US women to have more children and prevent them from feeding these children.
Oil and gas drilling in the US are using up lots of water in the driest areas.
Although Russia has banned saying "It's not bad to be gay", its law is
does not go as far as some
other
countries' laws against homosexuality.
Obama harps on "opportunity" to distract from high US inequality, but
the US poor
haven't
got much opportunity either.
CVS has
decided
to stop selling tobacco.
I don't advocate banning tobacco, because prohibiting addictive drugs
does great social harm. However, it should not be sold in pharmacies
because selling it there gives tobacco a sort of medical endorsement.
The US has
temporarily
ceased drone attacks in Pakistan to try to encourage peace talks.
Extractive
agriculture is part of the cause of the UK's floods.
Russia is arresting people who monitor environmental damage from the
Olympic games, using
bizarre
and meaningless pretexts.
Some US claims about the use of chemical weapons in
Syria can't
be true.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Chomsky reports on how Syria
was destabilized
by effects of global heating and by the consequences of Dubya's
occupation of Iraq.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
This does not in any way excuse Assad for his tyranny and crimes. It also does not excuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia for funding and encouraging an armed rebellion in Syria when peaceful protests were going strong.
The recent report about execution of prisoners by Assad's men was paid for by Qatar.
That doesn't mean the it isn't true, but Qatar should not succeed in hiding its atrocities behind Assad's atrocities.
The NOAA has retreated from trying to abolish state bans on shark fins.
Facebook's mobile
app snoops
on SMS messages.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Indian thugs attacked a demonstration by Christian Dalits outside the parliament.
Republicans want to make it easier for employers to leave workers without health care: just give them only 39 hours a week of work.
Since the US deficit has gone down greatly, why do Republicans keep trying to hurt the unemployed?
Because the misguided goal of cutting the deficit was always just an excuse to take from the non-rich.
The Republicans will pursue their War on Drug Users to the end, but only against non-rich drug users.
NAFTA hurt family farms in Mexico, the US and Canada, at the expense of agribusiness. The TPP threatens to do the same in many more countries.
Researchers say that tar sands oil companies have greatly underestimated the amount of toxic pollution they produce.
To build the Olympic games venue, Russia destroyed forests and wetlands and "replaced" them with ecologically worthless artificial substitutes.
Is Freeing a Duck "Terrorism"?
I only partly agree with the idea of animal rights, but I do support human rights, and labeling animal rights activism as "terrorism" clearly violates them. I don't have to agree with them to support their right to campaign for their views.
Google, Facebook and other companies have released statistics showing at most 100,000 users have been subject to FISA orders and national security letters.
That's a small fraction of the users — but if they include journalists, whistleblowers and dissidents, democracy is in danger.
What matters is not how many people's data the state has looked at but how many people's data the state could look at when it wishes.
US citizens: call on Obama to stop South Dakota from taking Lakota children away from their relatives on trivial excuses.
I think the word "kidnapping" used in the petition is incorrect, but I signed anyway because I think the substance is valid.
US citizens: urge your congresscritter to oppose several bills intended to attack wildlife and wetlands.
US citizens: call on your senators to extend the Production Tax Credit for renewable energy.
With the International Olympic Committee supporting Russian repression, the Olympic Spirit means repression.
This is not surprising given that the Olympic Games have for many years brought repression to every place they have been held.
Colombia's principal terrorist group, the state-linked paramilitaries, have announced bounties for the murder of political candidates.
Karzai has been holding peace talks with the Taliban for months.
I wish these talks had made progress. Given that the Afghan government lacks the support necessary to defeat the Taliban, and that it increasingly spits on women's rights, I don't think trying to "win the war" makes any sense.
Pakistan is also trying to talk with the Taliban.
The Antidemocratic Party in Thailand has sued to invalidate the elections on the grounds that the actions of the Antidemocratic Party interfered with voting.
Several foreign journalists succeeded in escaping from Egypt before they could be captured by the forces of state repression.
The coup has taken Egypt from a danger of repression to blatant repression.
With cancer rates increasing world-wide due to tobacco, alcohol and
obesity, cancer treatment is not enough —
laws are needed to
make it easier to avoid those dangers.
Superstitious Nevada farmers are
holding
prayer sessions asking for an end to the drought in the
southwestern US.
They ought to be holding Keystone XL protests instead: that would at
least have a chance to reduce the future droughts that are expected to
be much worse.
One writer tried to "opt out" from tracking by commercial data brokers
and found that the
possibility
of doing so is rather spotty.
I have opted out from these data brokers by paying cash.
NPR
published
a whitewash of toxic sewage sludge.
The
hiring
collusion between big tech companies shows that their adoration of
the "free market" is just a story they tell to fool the gullible.
A competitive market is a kind of social system. For certain
purposes, is a good solution. Keeping it competitive depends on state
regulation.
The West Virginia toxic spill
isn't
over yet. Moreover, it's just part of a permanent toxic spill
that usually goes unnoticed in the media.
Mexico's supposed crackdown on pimps that force women into
prostitution has got off to a
weak
start.
Clever
tricks that web sites use to collect information about visitors
and correlate those with names.
How these companies currently use the data they collect is not
significant because (1) they could change those policies tomorrow and
(2) those policies don't apply when government agencies such as the
NSA collect the data.
Uganda's first step to impose control on women is to
ban
miniskirts, not to mention bikinis, and any pictures of them, and
any writing about them.
I think even the song "Itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polkadot bikini"
will be criminalized by this law, not to mention lots of movies that
could get a G rating in the US.
One user writes that Facebook led her to be
in
love with "the projection of [her] own desired life".
Cutting down on the amount of her usage by Facebook may have addressed
this problem, but not
all the others.
People in Rio de Janeiro are
mocking
the surreal prices provoked by the coming World Cup.
Seafood caught in Galveston Bay, Texas, is
contaminated
with dioxin.
Prince, who briefly thought of changing his name to Jerk, has dropped
a
lawsuit
against his fans for distributing "bootleg" recordings.
I see nothing wrong with that practice.
The US "War on Drugs" has
cost
a trillion dollars in South America, and resulted in over 100,000
killed.
Clothing, even for children, often contains
toxic
substances.
Japan wants to sell India some
potential
meltdowns.
The Pentagon spends millions on directing Hollywood to make
pro-military
propaganda and convince Americans to support military adventures.
Obama's "MyRA" retirement accounts
won't
do much good for the Americans who might try to use them.
Ten
arguments against prohibition of prostitution.
It's not just Muslims that try to shut down art that makes fun of
their religion. In Australia,
Christians
are trying.
Sea Shepherd described Japanese whalers'
violent
tactics.
The Theater of Security Agency and all its staff
knew
in advance that X-ray scanners were useless and dangerous. The
TSA delayed and endangered passengers with those machines solely to
give the impression it was Doing Something.
The article also says that power-tripping TSA agents impose extra
searches and delays as a form of harassment, while dishonestly
claiming it is a "random search".
Obama says he thinks prohibition of marijuana is unfortunate but fails
to recognize that
he
could end that prohibition any day.
Staples and many other stores offer
different
prices to different customers and don't admit that they are doing
so.
This is a consequence of letting them have too much information about
the purchaser. When I buy something, the store doesn't know who I am,
because I pay cash.
In gaming terms,
Straight
White Male is the lowest "difficulty setting" for real life.
The anti-government movement in Thailand, a substantial minority with
some powerful backing, has
blocked
tens of thousands of people from voting in the election.
We have to consider them the anti-democracy movement.
Afghanistan is trying to have a democratic
election
for president.
Canada is negotiating a
business
rights treaty with the EU, and says it has to be kept secret in
order to negotiate it, even the parts that are supposedly finished.
Leaked: Pakistan's secret record of the
casualties
of US drone attacks. In 2009, it abruptly stops treating which
casualties are civilians.
Refuting
the pseudoscience that the US Senate was told about global
heating.
George Lakoff's advice on
framing
is vital for progressives.
It's also vital for the free software movement. We reject the weak
compromises advocated under the term "open source"; we take a clear
moral stand.
The Australian government is
secretly
transferring boat people onto its own lifeboats and towing those
boats to Indonesia.
Studies confirm that "free trade" is the
main
cause of increased inequality in the developed world.
Many companies
say
they support action to curb global heating, then contribute to
groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce that try to prevent it.
Obama
still
supports Clapper even after admitting (euphemistically) that
Clapper lied to Congress.
Obama was never much of a supporter of human rights.
More about Canada's
WiFi
tracking scheme, which seems to have been a dry run for the NSA.
China struggles to pretend it is not kicking out foreign journalists
in retaliation for
criticism
in the press.
The US is not spotless on this issue either: it requires journalists
to apply for a special visa, even if they come from countries whose
citizens normally don't require a visa.
The Gates Foundation and the US government want to
track
all students from preschool to workforce.
Utah
School Threw Out Students' Lunches Because They Were In Debt.
It is disgusting for public schools to make students pay for lunch, or
for anything.
The UK wants to
secretly
subpoena journalists' notes.
The US State Department adopted
another
bogus evaluation of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Global heating was expected to bring flooding to the UK in 2030,
but
it is hitting already.
The US is going
to pressure
Sri Lanka to investigate war crimes committed against Tamil
civilians.
This is the right thing to do, but when will the US investigate
the war
crimes committed by Dubya in Iraq?
If Obama wants to save our
climate, he
must drop the "all of the above" energy policy.
US citizens: call on Congress
to raise the minimum wage.
I've promoted similar campaigns before, and it is good to keep showing
Congress pressure to do this.
Citizens of California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia,
Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and
Wisconsin: call on your senators
to oppose
the cuts in food stamps, which will fall mainly on those states.
Surveillance in the US
today exceeds
Orwell's worst nightmare.
This level of surveillance
is incompatible
with democracy.
7
big omissions in the State Department's whitewash of Keystone XL.
Global heating
is helping
fungus kill the Douglas fir trees of the Pacific Northwest.
Record-Breaking Long-Term Unemployment in Virtually Every State, and
Obama
Turns to Big Business?
The Indian ID card
is the
world's biggest biometric scheme, and the state has tried to
impose it on everyone.
Media
Suffer Winter
Chill in Coverage of Sochi Olympics.
Bayer CEO
says, "We
did not develop this medicine (Nexavar) for Indians, We developed it
for Western patients who can afford it."
Heed
the Warnings in Extreme Weather — Or Risk Losing Earth.
Proposed vehicle-to-vehicle communication systems for cars
could
turn out to be a way to track them.
It's possible to design such a system so that it provides the same
benefits and can't be used for tracking. All it requires is political
will.
The More We Learn about Nuclear
Past, the
More an 'Accident' Seems Likely.
Most Americans consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
failures.
The conquest and occupation of Iraq were much worse than a failure
— the right term is "crime against humanity". Bush deserves to
be prosecuted for it.
But was it a failure? In terms of its stated purpose, eliminating
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, it was a success before
the start — since he
didn't
have any.
New product:
mobile
surveillance robots for shopping malls.
I do feel irritated when I get checked by "security", usually at
airports. I hope you do, too. If this robot keeps permanent records,
which I expect it will, it will be like a mobile surveillance camera
installation.
In coal country, toxic spills happen continually and
people
are disposable. It has been that way for over a century, as
companies find excuses to block or ignore regulations against
pollution.
The EU has a
secret
plan to put devices in all cars to allow them to be stopped
remotely.
This would be used by the state against criminals and protesters,
but experience shows that others will find out how to use it too.
Islamist
terror is growing in Egypt.
Forget
Iron Man-Child — Let's Fight the White Maleness of Geek
Culture.
The Spanish government's plan to nearly ban abortion
has roused
big opposition.
Canada's spy
agency snoops
on WiFi users in airports, then follows them through other
connections. We don't know how it does this.
US citizens: call on
Obama not
to approve the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
US citizens: call on Minority Leader Pelosi
to oppose
"fast track" for the TPP.
Clapper thinks Japan's state secrecy law, which impedes access to
information about the handling and status of the Fukushima
meltdowns, is
a great thing.
Assad's army
has demolished
entire neighborhoods whose inhabitants were thought to favor the
rebels.
For-profit colleges in the US prey on people desperate for a way to
escape
poverty using
exaggerated claims and high-pressure sales.
Federal student loans should not be available for these
schools. However, the underlying problem is that of
the plutocratic
policies that favor the rich
and have
driven 1/3 of the middle class down and out.
The evolution of the death penalty in the
US responds
to a philosophical conflict.
The skinflint UK government
is rationing
access to health care through the NHS.
That dumps Britons into a US-like situation where the wealthy can pay
for their own care while the rest are screwed.
The Great Barrier
Reef faces
death by a thousand cuts.
As some cities consider removing their money from the big fraudster
banks, they need another place to put that
money, such
as public banks.
Some penguin species
are threatened
by the effects of global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress
to end
the NFL's tax exemption.
US citizens: call on Obama
to permanently
cancel plans to drill for oil in Alaskan Arctic waters.
India passed a law to end manual scavenging of human wastes,
but isn't
implementing it very energetically.
Simply dictating "no more manual scavenging of human wastes" won't
change anything in places where the systems require manual scavenging.
What's needed is a program to build sewer systems and toilets
connected to them. That will take money and time.
17 rural communities in
California are
about to run out of water. They contain at least 11,000 people.
The drought extends across most of the state, but it is only a
foretaste of what global heating will bring.
The only independent TV
channel may
be pushed off the air for asking a question about Russia's strategy
during World War II.
Whatever you think about the question, the response seems suspiciously
extreme.
In the US: join a protest vigil against the Keystone XL pipeline
on
Feb
3.
Armed, masked Israelis
attacked
some Palestinian farmers; Israeli troops came and molested the
Palestinians further.
Netanyahu's proposal to give Palestine sovereignty over some Israeli
settlements was meant to provoke Palestinian rejection, but
some
Israelis rejected it first.
More
comments on the situation in Ukraine.
A
review
of Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat.
The article dares to raise the question of how many children we should
have.
Having no
children is an important way to contribute to civilization's
survival. It also frees you to do something that matters with
your life, even if you're not rich.
A new study shows that a neonicotinoid pesticide
damages
bumblebees' ability to collect pollen for their young.
Bumblebees are important pollinators; endangering them is playing with
fire. The doubts that are raised in the article might affect the
level of damage that normally occurs, but not the fact that it
happens.
The
axolotl
seems to be extinct in the wild.
Public
pressure made the UK government back down from prosecuting the men
who tried to 'steal' food from a supermarket's garbage bin.
Persecution of gays in Nigeria
ranges
from betrayal to trial to lynching.
Egypt plans to charge 20 al-Jazeera journalists with
ludicrous
charges ranging from belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood to
"harming the national interest" and illicit possession of broadcast
equipment.
This is Putinesque contempt for freedom of the press.
Some of these journalists are being kept in
brainwashing
conditions similar to those Bradley Manning suffered.
This also reminds me of the
Yemeni
journalist imprisoned at Obama's request for interviewing
terrorists.
China
is installing
solar generating capacity at an amazing pace, but coal generating
capacity 3 times as fast.
This is not progress, merely regress a little slower than it might
have been. Progress will be when the amount of coal-based generation
goes down.
The US government is advancing a regulation about sharks that
would overturn
state and local bans on selling shark fins.
Flooding Experts
Say Britain
Will Have to Adapt to Climate Change — And Fast.
This is the result of failing to curb global heating a decade ago.
With the fossil policies of today's fossil governments, it will be a
lot worse in 30 years.
The NSA
spied
on other countries' participation in the 2009 Copenhagen climate
conference.
This was when the attempt to reach a global agreement to reduce CO2
emissions and avert disaster failed spectacularly because many
governments were unwilling to agree on a real solution. The US was
unwilling, and this NSA surveillance surely helped the US government
achieve its aim of "no deal, burn away!"
Clapper told Congress that al-Nusra, one of the Syrian factions that
labels itself as
"al-Qa'ida", would
like to attack the US.
Clapper
has lied
to Congress before with impunity; I would not put it past him to
lie about this too. Whether this is true or not, his am is surely to
convince us that massive general surveillance is necessary.
If he is not lying, perhaps he is exaggerating. Perhaps some member
of al-Nusra said to others, "Wouldn't it be great to attack Americas
some day?" and others said, "Sure, after we kill all the Syrian
Shi'ites and Christians, let's kill Americans next."
An interesting point is that al-Nusra is part of the group of Syrian
factions that the US may support
because it
is fighting against ISIS.
Syria is a fight involving at least three sides that are murderous and
evil. If any one of them were the only one, we could envision
intervening against that side if the Syrian people wanted us
to. Those who want an intervention against one side can easily
cite valid reasons for it.
But it is not feasible to intervene against all the evil
sides; and if we were to intervene against only some of them, in
effect we would be supporting the others.
I don't see any military way to make things better in Syria; at least
let's avoid making them worse.
Now
that "school
choice" proves to give no academic benefit, the advocates of this
indirect scheme of privatization hunt for bizarre excuses.
How many other UK convictions of protesters and others
are invalid
because of dishonesty by the thugs? Their own investigations
can't be trusted.
US and EU
citizens: sign
this petition for network neutrality.
US citizens: tell Obama
to stop
pushing the TPP.
Right-wing "marriage promotion" programs are
an excuse
for shafting the poor, and do nothing to reduce the obstacle that
make poor people's marriages fail: poverty itself.
The article also shows that ease of access to divorce has nothing to
do with successful marriages.
As for Ross Douthat's idea of trying to force women to have babies so
that they might feel it necessary to get married, it's not only a
nonsequitur, it is
perverse. We
need fewer babies to be born.
Israel is blocking Gaza's wastewater plant from operating, which is
causing
further pollution of Gaza's aquifer.
I guess the plan is to make Gazans get sick and die.
Tony B'liar
has endorsed
the Egyptian military government.
It's true that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood trampled Egyptians'
human rights. That's what Islamists stand for. However, the coup
government has gone much further in this harm.
Shell abandoned
plans to drill for oil in the Alaskan Arctic this year.
That delays the damage but we need to block it entirely.
Unable to do
both, Scarlett
Johansson chose to promote SodaStream rather than Oxfam.
I guess SodaStream pays more.
Activist Vera Scroggins has
been banned
from going to the local hospital, the local supermarket and the local
Chinese restaurant by an extremely broad anti-protest injunction
for a fracker.
Merely to ban someone from really protesting is injust in itself.
Roundup
is responsible
for the great decline in Monarch butterflies.
Fanmi Lavalas
activists face
criminal charges, which seem to have been fabricated.
Pakistan's Prime
Minister wants
negotiation with the Taliban.
US citizens: condemn
the House's foodstamp cuts and call on the Senate to undo them.
Justin Bieber is Lucky That He's
Rich. Poor
Immigrants Don't Get Off so Lightly.
If Bieber was driving drunk, that charge should not be dropped. Drunk
drivers risk killing someone, and stars are no exception. On the
other hand, people shouldn't be deported for minor things.
Does Obama Administration View Journalists
as Snowden's
"Accomplices"? It Seems So.
US citizens: Call on the American Pharmaceutical Association
to ban
pharmacists from making up drugs for executions.
Showering
in Formaldehyde? Fresh Fears in West Virginia.
Everyone: call on Wilmar to carry out its promises
to stop
causing deforestation.
Schools where US
taxpayers fund
teaching of anti-science.
Obama's efforts aimed at ending imprisonment without trial are so slow
and narrow that we can
conclude they
are programmed not to do the job.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to ban
the pesticide sulfoxaflor, which is known to hurt bees.
Israeli troops attacked
a peaceful protest in the Jordan Valley. The authorities arrested
two activists, handcuffed them, kicked them in the ribs, blindfolded
them, lodged false charges against them, and did not let them contact
lawyers.
Frackers should have to pay a lot of money to cover
the
environmental damage they will do.
A
Ukrainian Explains 10 Things The West Needs To Know About The
Situation In Kiev.
The rich in Haiti say that Port-au-Prince is being rebuilt, but the
poor
don't
see much improvement since the earthquake.
Boat people accuse the Greek Coast Guard of
causing
their boat to sink and then kicking people who tried to cling to the
Coast Guard ship.
If these charges are false, why didn't the Coast Guard make a video to
document the truth?
The migrants share the responsibility for the death of the children,
having brought them on such a dangerous trip, but that doesn't excuse
the Coast Guard for killing them.
This doesn't mean that migrants are entitled to go to Greece just
because they would like to. I understand that they had to flee
Afghanistan and Syria, but they could stay in Turkey (which is where
they were coming from).
Pakistan has imposed a state of emergency, including
secret
courts and allowing thugs to freely shoot to kill, supposedly as part of a plan to suppress the Taliban.
A British lawyer told members of Parliament that
much
of GCHQ's spying is illegal.
Karzai
accuses
the US of carrying out false-flag suicide bombings in Afghanistan.
I don't think it is true in this case, but the US has
done
things like this before.
Global heating may be responsible for making many species of fish
smaller, up to
1/3
smaller than 38 years ago.
Intense fishing may be responsible, because there is usually a size
limit on allowable catch; that selects for fish that become mature
with a smaller size.
US citizens:
phone
your senators to support extension of unemployment benefits.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to end prohibition of marijuana.
Some
obvious ideas for what San Francisco techies could do to help
convince the rest of the city's residents not to resent them.
However, there is no substitute for building a lot more living space
in San Francisco.
US states can't get drugs to execute people with, so they are trying
experimental
combinations with unpredictable results.
I think the means of execution is a secondary issue — the death
penalty is
wrong
regardless of how it is done.
US prison is
illegally
harassing prisoner John Kiriakou, for instance by reading the
letters he sends, and reading mail from his lawyer, and claiming he is
forbidden to write to the media.
When users log in to a site through Facebook, Facebook
gives
the site access to lots of information about the user.
If this is what a site demands from you, you should not touch it anyway!
Australian protesters are
trying
to block the clearance of a forest which is needed to launch a
coal mine.
Both the means and the end endanger civilization's survival.
If you use Google Maps from a smartphone, you're
giving
data to the NSA.
To some extent this is because Google designed it to track you. This
includes the fact that it asks you which address you're interested in.
I used to use Google Maps, back when it worked without running nonfree
Javascript code, but I never entered an address; instead I scrolled
around in the area I was interested in and found the address for
myself.
I've pointed out for years that the system could do the same job while
respecting privacy more by
searching
the map data in your own computer for the addresses you're
interested in.
ALEC claims it does not track the progress of bills that follow its
proposals, notwithstanding
proof
that it does so. It could be that ALEC faces an IRS investigation
and is trying to cover up.
The UK
will
prosecute three men for taking food from a supermarket's garbage
bin.
This decision is coherent with the rest of UK policy. The UK
government has worked hard to drive Britons to starvation. To allow
them to eat food meant for the landfill would spoil all that work.
In a place with a sufficiency of food overall, hungry people
who can't afford food are entitled to steal food.
Alabama's legislature is on the verge of extending the Republican War
on Women by
authorizing
hospitals and medical personnel to refuse medical care (even in an
emergency) involving ending a pregnancy.
NYC thugs
beat
up an old man who was crossing the street against the light, then
charged him with "resisting arrest" (he ignored their orders because
he doesn't understand English). Naturally, the New York thug
commissioner stood up for the thugs.
The author may be right that most thugs would not engage in such
violence. But nearly all thugs will defend their fellow thugs who do
carry out such attacks, and that's why they deserve the name of
"thugs".
The US is
suffering
from its growing inequality.
Robert Gates' former boss in the CIA
evaluates him
again.
FDA
Concealed the 'High Risk' Livestock Antibiotics Pose to People.
A study suggests a
connection
between DDT and Alzheimer's disease.
Costs
of Privatization Hidden in Plain Sight.
It is no accident that privatizations are set up to give the public a
bad deal. They are designed to do that.
Information-gathering companies want to know so much about you
that they
can tell when you're about to buy something.
If these companies know what you're likely to do, the NSA will know if
you are planning to be a whistleblower. The existing level of general
surveillance in the US is already too much for democracy.
I will
continue not
to use most of the systems that would give companies such information
about me. Don't be tracked — pay cash!
The government has made a small
concession allowing
companies to publish the rough numbers of certain kinds of demands for
people's data.
This is not quite enough for us to tell whether we are all being
surveilled. One single order (such as the one for Verizon) can cover
the data of millions of people.
What we really need is for each company to publish a figure (even if
approximate) for how many people's data was actually delivered to the
government.
RNA interference can be used to make
pesticides, but
they can go wrong.
The proposed applications vary in terms of the danger of bad side
effects. Dosing bees with RNA to kill varroa mites is unlikely to
result in exposing other wild insects to that RNA; if it doesn't hurt
the bees, it won't do harm. By contrast, corn that generates
interfering RNA can't avoid exposing all the species that live near
the field, and there are lots of those.
I think that the interfering RNAs should be delivered in sprays, not
made by crops, for two reasons:
The predicted fastest-growing US jobs for the next decade are, mostly,
very
susceptible to automation.
It looks like the US is heading for a situation where millions of
people who are fit to work can't find any jobs. The plutocrats would
like to take advantage of this to force wages down for just about
everyone. Instead we must redesign society so that everyone can have
a decent life, even those who get no work. This could involve welfare
for everyone. This could involve rejecting, even banning certain
forms of automation. One way or another, it must be done.
A Dutch appeals court says ISPs
are not
required to block access to the Pirate Bay.
This is a victory for internet freedom.
Rick Falkvinge says
the copyright
industry is doomed, because it can survive only by surveilling all
forms of private correspondence.
I wish I could be so confident. I fear that states, which already
seek to surveil all private correspondence and already act as agents
for the copyright industry, will extend their surveillance to the
point of achieving what Falkvinge considers impossible.
There is another way that the copyright industry can succeed in
subjugating everyone: through streaming. If people are so foolish as
to tolerate streaming instead of having a copy, no one will be able to
share.
It is clear that we must reject any streaming service that doesn't
allow users to download copies. And if it does allow users to
download copies, we must make a point of using it that way.
Out, out, damned Spotify!
If You Used This Secure Webmail
Site, the
FBI Has Your Inbox.
This is comparable to searching all the apartments in 20 blocks of
Manhattan just in case their might someday be warrants against some of
the residents.
Police Banned From Enforcing Traffic Laws In Oklahoma
Town Over
Abuse Of Traffic Tickets For Money.
Can we get governments
to fund
research in integrated pest management instead of supporting
Monsanto?
Ukraine
has repealed
the new repressive law
that forbid
protests and imposed censorship.
Thugs in the
Philippines tortured
suspects for fun.
US citizens: support Bernie Sanders' bill
to use
money allocated for war to pay for benefits for veterans.
Plutocrats
often compare
progressive taxation with Nazism.
Propaganda: The
Dominant Grand Narrative Of Our Time.
Angry
Birds spies
for the NSA as well
as for
companies.
UK residents who were sentenced in effect to restrictive probation
without
a trial for suspicion of perhaps intending to commit crimes, who
ran away and hid, are appealing the probation order.
One of them faces criminal charges for violating the restrictions of
this punishment without trial.
Peru has approved gas
prospecting deep
inside an indigenous people's reserve.
1/3 of the US middle class in
2008 is
no longer middle class.
Edward
Snowden responds
to Obama's proposals for minor changes in the general surveillance of
everyone.
Everyone: tell Kellogg's
to adopt
a firm policy to stop causing deforestation.
Obama's "Promise
Zones" promise
very little.
A US bomb attack in
Somalia killed
one of the main leaders of the Shabaab.
I have no sympathy for Sahal Iskudhuq, or for the Shabaab, which is an
Islamist extremist group. However, the death of a leader in such a
group is generally not much of a setback. Lots of others are ready to
take his place. What affects the success of the group is its power to
recruit. Did this attack reduce that, or increase that?
Given that there is a civil war in Somalia, in principle the US can
legitimately give the government military support. Did that
government ask for this attack? Maybe in general terms.
But let's not forget that this government
was imposed by outside intervention.
While it now has control of substantial territory, it's not clear that
it qualifies as more than a puppet. Furthermore, al-Shabaab is
the result
of the previous US-organized intervention, carried out by Ethiopia as
a proxy, which destroyed Somalia's previous stable government,
which was Islamist too but not as extremist as al-Shabaab.
It all raises the question of whether these interventions are good for
anyone except arms companies, participants in the perhaps puppet
Somali government, and Islamist extremists.
Right-wing US policies have made American workers and students so
afraid of losing the competition with each other
that they
dare not fight back.
The Taliban
are intimidating
Pakistani journalists who might criticize their crimes.
Tunisia has adopted a constitution
that recognizes
religious freedom. However, freedom of expression may not be
strong enough.
8 years after Hurricane Katrina, the poorest neighborhood in New
Orleans
has
only partly rebuilt.
Global heating is raising sea level. What would be considered today a
100-year-flood will in 50 years be much more frequent.
The right to a public trial
is threatened
in the trial of Chicago protesters accused of terrorism.
DNA from plants humans
eat gets
into the human bloodstream. This adds to the reasons for concern
about genetically modified plants.
It's clear that these GMOs can't be broadly toxic to humans, for the
consequences would have been impossible to miss. However, problems
affecting particular classes of people (perhaps depending on the
details of their immune systems) are not impossible.
What worries me most is the spread of pollen. Plants do hybridize in
nature.
The UK
press fears
a system of mandatory prior censorship will be imposed.
The maker of fraudulent "bomb
detectors" paid
the UK government to help sell them.
The US government also acts as the marketing arm for companies such as
Microsoft. In 2011 the Indian state of Tamil Nadu switched from
distributing computers with GNU/Linux to distributing them with
Windows, and this is suspected to be the result of a visit by Hillary
Clinton.
This adds
to many
other reasons for not supporting her candidacy for president.
The anti-government Thai protesters, representing a substantial
minority with a lot of
clout, have
seized and shut polling stations to block the election.
Half the children in Afghanistan
are stunted
from early malnutrition.
I think people should not have children under such circumstances, but
women in Afghanistan are not given the choice.
Snowden says the NSA does
industrial
espionage.
The CIA paid Poland
$15
million to run a secret prison there.
Activists have used
"citizen's
search warrants" to make governments come clean about dirty plans.
Yes, Things
are Very Bad at Fukushima but it's not the Apocalypse.
The word "disaster" can be applied to events considerably less severe
than the end of humanity, and it clearly applies to the Fukushima
meltdowns even though no significant radiation reaches the US.
JP Morgan
shows that crime does pay.
How wolves in the US, and big cats in Africa, keep ecosystems in
balance by
preventing
population explosions of their prey.
Sea otters protect the kelp forests of the Pacific coast; the decline
of sea otters fuels global heating.
Ukraine's president has started
offering
concessions to the opposition, but the torture of many protesters
and journalists by riot thugs has made the protesters so angry that
they demand more.
US citizens: phone your senators to
oppose
S. 1881, the bill to provoke war with Iran.
Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe are being
sued
for conspiring to keep wages down.
US citizens:
call on the
World Bank to stop funding coal.
Everyone:
call for
dropping charges against Darrin Manning.
US citizens:
tell
your state legislators not to be scared when Big Food companies
spread false claims that state laws to label GMOs are
unconstitutional.
Indian villagers have obtained a demolition order for a Coca Cola
plant that
sucks
the water from their farmland.
5 journalists have been killed in Egypt since the coup in July,
dozens
have been attacked, and dozens imprisoned.
The Global
Elite: Rigging the Rules That Fuel Inequality.
Anti-government protesters (some pro-Morsi, some pro-democracy) faced
repression
in Cairo.
With pro-government rallies too, it is not easy to tell which side has
more popular support.
A UK politician
faces
threats for saying that a shirt showing Jesus and Mohammed
greeting each other is not horrible.
Companies say the US has a "skills gap", but really it's just that
employers are trying to push wages down and
skilled
workers are not enthusiastic.
Even if there were enough job offers to give every American that would
like to work a low-paid job, that wouldn't make the country
prosperous. Additional demand for workers is needed in order for
wages to rise. So we need to create more jobs — until we
reorganize society so you can have a decent life without working if
nobody wants your labor.
Electric cars can reduce pollution (including greenhouse gas) provided
they are combined with a push for
cleaner
electric generation.
San Francisco residents are up in arms against
employees
of Google and other companies for driving up the price of housing
there.
I sympathize with them, and with everyone that wants to live in San
Francisco, and I think the real solution is to build a lot more
housing space there.
Obama banned physical torture, but
authorizes
brainwashing techniques such as long-term sleep deprivation and
long-term solitary confinement.
Long-term solitary confinement is also
practiced
on many US convicts.
Medical marijuana is
the
only hope for some children with epilepsy.
A court ruled that Texas law
doesn't
require keeping a corpse on life support for the sake of the deformed
fetus inside it.
The
campaign
to eliminate toxic substances from clothing factories.
Everyone:
call
on Monsanto to stop hiding the costs of GMOs.
Fracking in the
UK may
produce marginally less CO2 than using imported gas; but if that
gas is used elsewhere, the emissions from fracked UK gas will add to
the total.
When demand is elastic, increased supply causes a lower price and
increased consumption. To burn less fossil fuels we must reduce the
supply. A rising price would indicate success.
The UK has passed a law that
will restrict
organized political activity, except by the companies that can
afford their own lobbyists.
Three protesters are on trial in Chicago for alleged terrorism,
although it
seems that thug provocateurs may have fabricated everything.
The intense security and obstruction of public and press access to the
trial is, in effect, a way of prejudicing the jury to think the
defendants are very dangerous people.
The result of skimping on higher education is
that most
teachers are exploited "adjuncts" with no hope of tenure and
intolerably low pay.
Proprietary video
games give
the illusion of agency because the players can choose the little
details of what they do. The important choices are imposed on them.
Further emission of
CO2 will
cost business money. Given plutocratic (thus, illegitimate)
government, that seems to be a crucial point to try to limit global
heating.
Egypt's repression
includes arrest
of an al-Jazeera news team, supposedly accused of "broadcasting
false news" although they have never actually been charged.
For such a thing to be a crime indicates tyranny.
A series of terror bombings in
Egypt have
been claimed by self-described Islamists.
The regime blames the Muslim Brotherhood for these bombings, with no
evidence. A few months ago I predicted
that some
Islamists who formerly supported the MB would turn to violence in
response to the massacre of protesters.
However, another possibility occurs to me. Given how much these
bombings benefit the military rulers, I wonder whether some of them
are false flag attacks — carried out by the military and
attributed to Islamists.
Neither explanation seems impossible. I can envision Islamist
extremists who continue using violence even when it is self defeating,
and I would not put anything past al-Sisi's men.
A mentally ill man has
been sentenced
to death in Pakistan for claiming to be the prophet Mohammed.
Muslims who don't want their religion to be equated with oppression
had better demand the repeal of laws against blasphemy.
The European Court of Human Rights
has demanded
information from UK ministers about GCHQ for a case about whether
it violates privacy rights.
Chinese dissident in exile Wang Yam
was sentenced
to life imprisonment in the UK through a secret trial, almost as
if he were in China.
Genetically modified
crops might
produce the "fish oils" that are made in nature by algae and
accumulated by fish.
Will these crops be safe for humans to eat, and for wildlife? I don't
see any obvious reason why they would not be, but you can't predict
what will happen in complex systems such as the human body or natural
ecosystems. Only trial will tell.
It could be that it is safe for most people but a few are allergic to
it. It is important to maintain alternatives, so that anyone who is
allergic can avoid this.
These crops would be patented, which means they would deny farmers
their traditional right to save seeds. Note how the person
interviewed cites
the bogus term
"intellectual property" to justify the radical claim that the
results of publicly funded research should be used to extract money
from the public.
Why did the thugs in Wisconsin mistake a basketball victory gesture
for "gang membership" and arrest three happy teenagers?
Everyone: call on
Iraq not
to execute prisoner al-Qahtani, who was tortured into a confession
(like many others in Iraq).
The
Modern Day 'Starving Artist' Is Likely On Food Stamps.
Everyone:
support
the bill in the State of Washington to refuse cooperation to NSA
massive surveillance.
US citizens:
support
the science-based estimate of the cost to society of emitting
CO2.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to order a living wage for federal contract workers.
US citizens:
Call on China to
free imprisoned Tibetan singers.
There was a second possibly toxic chemical in the West Virginia toxic
spill, which the company
didn't
bother to report.
Since the company is already bankrupt, its owners probably see no
reason to care what happens.
Once the spill happens, our system for preventing spills has already
proved inadequate. We must inspect chemical plants frequently, and
tax them enough to pay for it. They must be required to report about
the storage of toxic materials, too; we cannot cater to their desire
for secrecy.
"Homeland Security" attacked a man who wore his Google Glasses into a
movie theater, because the MPAA suspected him of
"movie
theft".
I would ask people to remove Google Glasses in any private gathering.
It's not a wise idea to depend on them for your lenses.
Attempting
to convince finance ministers that they need to curb global
heating for the sake of economic growth.
It makes perfect sense if you want growth in jobs and income for most
people. It's not good for fossil fuel billionaires, though.
Beijing will go
all-out
to reduce air pollution from both cars and power plants. This
includes moving away from coal.
Iran's president is at Davos
asking
for western investment.
Western investment comes with dangerous strings, which would add to
(not replace) Iran's home-grown repression.
Väexjö, in Sweden, builds
"passive
houses" that need no heating even in the coldest winters.
The US could do this too, if it appreciated the extent of the danger
that threatens.
The Australian government
says it
can't afford the welfare system. Meanwhile it proposes to offer
amnesty to rich tax-evaders.
It's just a matter of priorities: the rich or the poor.
Assad
has cut
off polio vaccination in rebel-controlled areas, as well as other
supplies necessary for public health such as preventing water-borne
disease.
The Ukraine anti-protest law
also abolishes
fair trials and imposes arbitrary censorship.
It also bans collecting information about thugs, which I presume
includes photos or videos of what they do. In the US, that's not
illegal, but the thugs wish it were, so they fabricate accusations
against those who take photos.
Thugs have been fighting with protesters in
Kiev, and
the protesters have been fighting back.
Subsequently a truce was agreed, for talks between the president and
the
opposition. However,
no deal was reached.
This
report claims that the violence was started by right-wing
infiltrators. I have no way to evaluate this claim.
A clever scheme
for distributing
anti-censorship software in China.
People should try this in the UK!
The Canadian
government liquidated
the library of Health Canada. The scientists are scrambling to
create their own research resources.
Tunisia's new constitution seems pretty good in regard to freedom of
expression, but
some points need improvement.
The EFF explains how the presence of software in products is used
to prevent
people from owning them.
It's a good article but has two flaws. It uses
the weak
term "digital locks" to refer to DRM, and refers to
the confusing
term "intellectual property".
Tracking phone calls to a newspaper, to find a
leaker, has
created a scandal in Costa Rica.
I wish the US courts responded with such diligence to the scandal of
its own far worse surveillance.
In cereals other than
Cheerios, General
Mills will continue to mean Genetically Modified.
China plans
to stop
using agricultural land as large as Belgium because it is polluted
with heavy metals.
US citizens:
call on congressional
Republicans: if they want to interfere with abortions, they should
support the rights of pregnant workers.
The ACLU is
suing
to make South Carolina public schools stop imposing Christianity (and
mocking students that don't agree).
The school teaches bogus science, too.
The independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded
that
NSA
massive surveillance is illegal.
The US
systematically
imposes harsh punishments for minor cyber "crimes".
I don't think most of these "crimes" should be punished at all. In
particular,
net
protests at a web site virtual are the equivalent of a protest on
the street. It is a mistake to call them "attacks".
Bugs in Chrome allow sites to turn its speech recognition into a
listening
device.
If the speech recognition is implemented, as I suspect, by a Google
server (this would be
SaaSS)
then Google and the NSA are certainly listening to anything you say to
this "feature".
Utah has a solution for homelessness:
give
homeless people apartments.
Another
attempt
to do a citizen's arrest on Tony B'liar failed, but eventually we
will make him stand trial.
The NSA and GCHQ collect
200
million phone text messages a day, and look through them with
little restraint.
The FISA court judges have recognized they cannot truly oversee the
NSA, but
they
oppose any change that might fix this.
A woman in India was
sentenced
to be raped as a punishment for not paying the fine for having
unauthorized sex.
Her lover seems to have been fined as well, but it was his wife who
actually paid the fine.
California is in drought,
perhaps
the worst ever recorded. Little snow has fallen in the US west
this winter — it has all gone to the center and east.
Global heating is
expected
to make the US southwest more arid, so this is just a foretaste.
The Gates Foundation's investments,
compared
with its stated principles.
The article presents the information annoyingly via images, which help
the companies by presenting their logos. I see no reason to do that.
Here's what the text in those images says.
Gates Foundation says: "Our nutrition efforts focus on delivering
proven interventions and developing better tools and strategies for
providing pregnant women and young children with the foods and
nutrients they need"
The foundation's trust invested in:
Bill Gates says: "As a businessman, I believe the free market fuels
growth. Unfortunately, the market often fails to address the needs of
the poorest".
The Gates foundation trust invested in
Walmart.
Gates Foundation says: Bill and Melinda Gates "Have defined areas in
which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit
model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find
egregious".
The Foundation's trust invested in:
Gates Foundation says: "The foundation believes that climate change is
a major issue facing all of us, particularly poor people in developing
countries …"
The foundation's trust invested in:
14 things that
conservatives compare to slavery.
I won't say that nonfree software is as bad as slavery.
It's oppressive, but not as much so as slavery.
Republican wreckers in Congress have
repealed the energy efficiency
standards
for light bulbs.
US citizens:
tell
the SEC to bring back its rule to make public corporations
disclose their political spending.
In Massachusetts:
call
on Stop and Shop to label products with GMOs.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to repeal the authorization for war with Iraq.
UK thugs demand
water
cannon to use against the people, saying that austerity is going
to cause riots.
Nobel laureate Randy Schekman
campaigns
against the "luxury journals" that use their prestige to maintain
an exploitative relationship with science.
The percentage of US adults in or looking for employment fell to
under
63%. Large numbers have recently given up looking for work.
Perhaps they gave up hope of finding a job long ago, and were counted
as seeking employment only because of their unemployment benefits.
Once those were cut off, they had no reason to keep looking for
work that they know they can't find.
NOAA says 2013 is tied for the
4th
warmest year on record.
Snowden
refutes
the absurd charges that he spied for Russia.
It is no coincidence that Snowden is in Russia. It is because the US
blocked him from going anywhere else.
Why does the US want Snowden to be in Russia rather than Bolivia or
Venezuela? I conjectured last July that it is in order to smear him
one way or another.
A new supermarket plans to
sell
edible but slightly bruised or wilted food, that is currently
wasted.
Reportedly Kerry
wants
to extend the Israel-Palestine peace talks, because they are
deadlocked (of course).
Netanyahu would like the talks to continue so that (1) he can say he
is trying to make peace, and (2) occasionally the US will make a
concession to him.
An Israeli teacher may be fired for
saying
negative things about the Israeli army and the occupation of
Palestine. His students have taken to the street to support him.
The most ironic part is the claim that such ideas should not
be heard in a civics class.
The London thugs are so committed to institutional racism that they
systematically
attack the organizations that resist it.
They
offer
money to innocent victims of their attacks, but never admit
responsibility.
Erdogan's struggle to retain power in Turkey at all costs now
endangers
rule of law.
The EU has adopted
targets
for greenhouse gas reduction and for renewable energy generation,
for 2030.
Announcing a target is only the first step to reaching it. It is a
good thing that the corrupt EU governments (mainly UK) that serve the
fossil fuels were overridden, but they did weaken the targets.
Meanwhile, these targets are
insufficient
to prevent disaster.
The big question, for civilization, is whether the
US,
Canada
and
Australia,
effectively subservient to fossil fuel companies, will frustrate hopes
for a climate protection agreement in 2015. They have won every time
so far.
Success requires cooperation from China, India, Brazil, Indonesia
and other major countries.
Many
Chinese anti-corruption
activists are being put on trial.
The Chinese government hardly tries to disguise the fact that they are
being tried for political activities, unlike the US
where protesters
face charges of a "terrorist hoax" for the glitter that fell off their
banner.
Shell has
been blocked
from oil drilling in Alaskan waters on the grounds that the
threats to the environment have not been studied.
The European Union's new renewables
target does
not apply to individual countries; the UK now has no target for
renewable energy.
This is what
the UK
government fought for, so that it could slow the increase of
renewable energy and burn as much fossil fuel as possible.
The Russian law against "homosexual propaganda"
has stirred
up a wave of private violence against homosexuals.
Advocacy
of gay rights is also banned by the law.
Syrian
women are organizing to campaign for peace in Syria.
9 of the 10 hottest years on record were since 2001, the exception
being 1998 which had a very strong El Niño. In 2013, the short-term
variable factors operated for cold; despite
them, it
was tied for fourth hottest on record.
When we get another strong El Niño, we will see what hot is.
The American Psychological
Association dismissed
the ethics complaint against its member John Leso, who help plan Bush
regime torture policies, despite conclusive evidence.
The organization claims to have high ethical standards but apparently
will go to great lengths not to uphold them in practice.
The Koch
brothers paid
for ALEC's report, "Rich States Poor States", which ranks states
based on how little they spend.
Students in
London supported
a planned strike by university staff.
Poor women in various
countries face
more abuse from men and use less contraception.
Lack of money to meet ordinary needs could be responsible for both.
The sense of desperation causes stress that leads to anger; some men
would express that anger with violence. Poverty may also impede
access to contraception.
A decent society offers everyone a decent life. This can involve
having to work, but should not impose the stress of being poor.
Two Australian thugs were
convicted
of shooting a prisoner repeatedly with tasers.
Heavy air pollution from China
spreads
smog to the US west coast.
An
artificial
island built near Lagos for Nigeria's wealthy shows how the elite
plan to wall themselves off and leave the rest to suffer from human
and environmental disasters.
Victoria (in Australia) is considering laws that would empower thugs
to
ban
a protest based on their subjective impressions. This is
tantamount to a policy of no protests but the state could pretend it
is not so.
Major western banks help the Chinese political
elite hide
their wealth.
The US, UK and Canada
are turning
their "national security" system on peaceful protesters, on behalf of
fossil fuel companies.
Bristons convicted of a protest against coal-fired electricity had
their convictions overturned because prosecutors concealed evidence in
their trial — for
instance, that
an undercover thug was snooping on them.
This is good, but prosecuting people for a peaceful protest is an
injustice even with a fair trial.
The UK thugs continue attacking protesters arbitrarily; a legal
advisor at a fracking protest
was left
injured after thugs attacked him as he was talking to them.
Syrian
refugees strongly
wish for a negotiated settlement and a cease-fire.
Everyone: call on Iceland
to stop
killing whales.
US citizens: call on your congressional representatives
to counteract
the Corporations United (*) decision.
* Officially called the "Citizens United" decision.
In my message I urged legislators to work on various corrective
approaches in parallel.
Australia has converted Nauru into a quasi-satellite and is therefore
responsible
for Nauru's absolution of independence for the judiciary.
The growing opposition to the TPP means
we
may be able to defeat "fast track", which would make it hard for
it to be ratified at all.
19
things that conservatives compare to slavery.
I won't say that nonfree software is as bad as slavery. It's
oppressive, but not as much so as slavery.
As Obama's health care program starts giving Americans health
coverage, people who were taught to despise it
become
grateful.
Everyone: answer the European Union's
copyright survey. You can answer
even if you are not European.
Here are
explanations
of what's behind the questions, and suggestions for answering.
Here's
more
advice.
US citizens:
support Senator
Reid in blocking the impetus for war with Iran.
The Pakistani Taliban
fatally
attacked a Pakistani TV team, and it's not the first time.
My not having a TV or a DVD player and not doing internet shopping
protects me from the deepest level of that strange trap.
Mining may expose Haiti to the
"resource
curse".
Denial of global heating had no political influence in 1990. That
movement results entirely from a
paid
political influence campaign.
A Syrian government photographer defected with his photos, which
showed
11,000
prisoners' corpses that appeared to have been tortured as well as
killed.
A widely used pesticide makes bumblebees smaller, which tends to
harm
colony survival.
The Turkish government has
prohibited
offering first aid to injured protesters.
France is considering a
wide
range of laws to give women social equality.
The UK government holds millions of old files that have been withheld
from publication, apparently
illegally.
Some of these files go back to the 17th century.
US citizens: sign
350.org's petition against
the TPP.
350.org is against the treaty because it would obstruct efforts to
avoid global heating disaster.
Centralized digital medical records risk privacy violations, but the
UK's
lax policy is turning "risk" to "ensure".
A group of multinational tech companies, probably including Google,
are
lobbying
secretly to prevent the EU from taxing their earnings.
Large numbers of protesters, enraged by new limits on protests,
battled
thugs in Ukraine.
The anti-protest restrictions are interesting. The ban on amplifiers
follows New York City, which restricted Occupy Wall Street the same
way. The ban on masks is found in France and in many other places.
These restrictions on protesters are antidemocratic no matter where
they are found.
Fighting 'extremism' in Syria by
supporting
whoever its enemy is at the moment is not well thought out.
Iran has
stopped
enriching uranium to 20% U235, with inspectors to witness.
Turks protested again on the street against internet censorship,
and were
attacked
by thugs.
CO2 emissions are being
'outsourced'
by rich countries to rising economies.
Global inequality is rising due to plutocratic governments.
The
richest 85 people own more wealth than half of humanity.
Cuba is
moving
to allow private business, in a limited territory.
This can be good if it leads to respect for human rights. It will be
bad if, as in China, it leads to corrupt plutocratic tyranny.
Thirty
Years Since Betamax, and Movies Are Still Being Made.
A study suggests unusual "extreme" El Nińo events, which cause
economic damage and can kill thousands of people, will
double
in frequency due to global heating.
Today's face recognition technology can't recognize you as you walk on
the street, but the US government is
setting
out to develop that.
Congress added a rider to a large bill to
bar
Obama from transferring CIA drone attacks to the Pentagon.
The reason for that transfer is that the Pentagon has to obey laws of
war which the CIA
secretly
ignores. It is bizarre for Congress to concern itself with such a
thing. I wonder if some members of Congress were blackmailed.
"Freedom Industries", the company responsible for the toxic spill in
West Virginia, has gone
bankrupt.
In a small way, this is deserved punishment for the owners — but
nowhere near enough. Chemical and fossil fuel octopuses operate by
atomizing their facilities under lots of tentacle corporations, so
that in the event of an accident,
only
one tentacle goes bankrupt and the victims can't get compensation.
Perhaps we need laws to make holding companies responsible for the
debts of their tentacles.
An NSA whistleblower says that the only way to do sufficient oversight
is
to appoint
a team that can investigate anything the NSA does.
How many members of
Congress does
the NSA control through blackmail?
The UK appears to
have snooped
on Belhaj's communication with his lawyers, and played legal games to
get the judge in his lawsuit to disregard that violation of his
rights.
The End of
Ownership: Why
You Need to Fight America's Copyright Laws.
The Iraqi government
is attacking
Ramadi.
I've seen reports that local Sunnis are allied with the government,
and reports that they are the ones being attacked. I don't know which
to believe.
The World Bank lent millions to a Honduran palm oil company that
peasants
say forced
them off their land.
The CPFB is considering
whether to
stop banks from requiring customers to use arbitration rather than
going to court.
This is good, but mandatory arbitration is found also in other
contexts, including between companies and employees.
The Mayor of Hoboken says Chris Christie
is blocking
Hurricane Sandy rebuilding funds to extract support for a building
project for rich cronies.
A specialized machine
can replace
human cooks for making hamburgers. This threatens to eliminate
millions more jobs in the US.
Keeping wages low is not a solution. That would force people into
worse poverty, and then the machines would get cheaper.
Although it is a different issue, keep in mind
that it
isn't healthy
or sustainable
to eat lots of hamburgers.
UK prosecutors falsely claim that prostitutes are controlled by
unidentified pimps as
an excuse
to evict them and force them to work on the street.
98% of Egyptians voted for constitutional changes
which combine
greater rights for women with greater power for the suppression
forces.
I have no knowledge with which to weigh the good of the former against
the bad of the latter, but I would guess that the Egyptian
constitution still fails to defend human rights, including
the right
to change one's position regarding religion (including ceasing to
be a Muslim) and
the right
to criticize or mock any idea (including, for instance, Islam).
The one-sided result convinces me that charges of intimidation are
valid.
Tiny
transmitters allow
scientists to track migrating birds.
That's very good, but I fear they will track us too.
A few heroic
Nigerians continue
defending the rights of gays.
West Virginia Chemical
Spill: When
Small Government Doesn't Work.
The privileged few businesses that have access to the TPP text
give
lots of money to the congresscritters most closely involved.
Ukraine
has plans
to adopt the whole suite of standard forms of Internet repression.
An
Iran Hawk's Case Against New Iran Sanctions
The DMCA takedown
system undermines
fair use by making it easy for bullies to get fair use taken down.
Pennsylvania's voter-ID
law was struck down as unconstitutional.
This is not final; it will probably be appealed to other courts.
US citizens: Sign this petition calling on your congresscritter and
senators
to support
the USA FREEDOM Act.
It is not enough to protect democracy from digital surveillance, but
it is a step in the right direction.
US
citizens: support
paid family and medical leave.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to promote
biofuel made from plant waste and cut down the use of ethanol made
from food.
Everyone: call on Google, Facebook and Yelp
to stop
supporting ALEC.
US citizens: call on your senators
to oppose
S.1881, which is designed to get the US into war with Iran.
Bizarre accusations in Egypt that
the US
wants to assassinate General al-Sisi.
This is ridiculous. The US is more or less a supporter of the
Egyptian military government, as it was of Mubarak.
US
media repeat
persistent government smears against marijuana.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to replace the part of the Voting Rights Act that the
Supreme Court struck down.
US citizens:
tell
Obama not to propose veiled cuts in Social Security again.
London wants to use
RFIDs
in cars to charge for parking. And track people.
Poaching of rhinos in South Africa is accelerating and
on
track to wipe them out in 20 years.
Of course, the last few will be better protected, so it might take a
few more years for poachers to get them all. However, when a species
is reduced to a few individuals, its genetic diversity is reduced and
it is more vulnerable for hundreds of thousands of years thereafter.
Former undercover thug Peter Francis was given immunity and testified
about the
infiltration
practices of UK thugs.
The UK government
worked
closely with fracking companies to manipulate the public and
overcome opposition.
It's no surprise. The UK government's goal is to emit as much
CO2 as possible, as soon as possible, while slowing down
development of renewable energy as much as it can get away with.
The soldiers that control US nuclear missiles are
prone to
various peccadilloes which, in that context, might lead to
something really important.
Obama's NSA
'Reforms' Are Little More Than a PR Attempt to Mollify the Public.
Advocates
and Digital Rights Defenders Reject Obama's Whitewash of Intrusive
Spying Regime.
Obama
Continues War on National Security Whistleblowers.
The small improvements in US bank regulations may be doing some real
good: the
banksters
profits are down.
Obama's drone killings have
roused all
Yemen to demand the US stay out.
Israel is considering a
plan
to ban the word "Nazi" outside a few specific exceptions.
Would it be forbidden to call a right wing-group "Neo-Nazi"? What
about "Soup Nazi"? Would Seinfeld be banned in Israel?
Now that many of Rio's favelas are peaceful, and relatives are
returning to them, they are
threatened
with eviction in the name of possible landslides, or as schemes
for gentrification.
The UK Labour leader says he will forcibly break up the big 5 banks
…
a
little.
Why push for just 7 big banks? Why not make them split into 20 or
even 50, so that none of them is too big to fail? It's the same work
either way.
Instead of micromanaging the splitting, my tax proposal would
pressure
the banks to split themselves up.
Greenhouse gas output
grew
faster from 2000 to 2010 than in the previous decades, says the
IPCC.
The report cites growing human population as part of the cause. For
decades this problem has been the one whose name most people dare not
mention.
One proposed
genetically modified organism seems like probably a good idea.
Genetic engineering is a method of modifying organisms, not a kind of
organism. The results are disparate. Whether any given genetic
modification is safe (for humans that eat it, for the environment, for
the rights of farmers) depends on the details. It has to be tested
and evaluated separately for each GM variety, since we have too little
experience to generalize about the effects. Likewise, whether it
really improves anything is also a matter of details. The GMOs now in
use mostly go with use of pesticides.
Ellen Brown is running for treasurer of California as a campaign to
set up a state-owned bank
for
the state to deposit in and borrow from.
Censorship
in Greece: a satirist has been imprisoned for making fun of a
long-dead monk.
Calls
Intensify for Obama to Fulfill Campaign Promise on GMO Labeling.
If you put together what Obama says with what NSA officials say,
it adds up to an
assassination
threat against Snowden.
New York City had to pay
18 million
dollars' compensation to protesters injured by thugs in 2004.
These compensation claims don't make up for the initial wrong, and if
they don't convince the city to make the thugs stop attacking
protesters, they are totally inadequate.
The US military infiltrates internet multiuser games such as
Second Life, and may be using them to
propagandize
Americans in favor of certain policies. Perhaps increased
military spending, or war, or whatever the president tells them to
propagandize for.
US citizens:
Tell the
USDA you oppose the growing of corn designed to be resistant to
Agent Orange.
Changes in marijuana have made it
impact
memory a lot more now than it did 30 years ago.
As Australian heat waves get ever worse, the government
cracks
down on renewable energy projects.
Greg Palast reports Chris Christie's
financial
connections with the Koch brothers.
More about
surveillance
of Americans by "border" patrol drones.
Ukraine has adopted a new anti-protest law,
banning
unauthorized megaphones and also masks.
If face recognition software comes into widespread use, wearing a mask
will be the only way to avoid being tracked everywhere on the street.
The UN still
does
not screen its peacekeepers for cholera.
An Australian was kept in solitary confinement for a month, before
trial, on charges of
being
in a pub with four members of a banned motorcycle club.
These charges, whether true are false, are obviously unjust.
It is prima facie injustice to ban groups without trial.
Asylum seekers parked permanently on Christmas Island have started a
hunger
strike.
The EPA reports that the Pebble Mine would
devastate
salmon fisheries in the region of Bristol Bay.
Heat waves in Australia have become
considerably
more frequent since 1971.
The West Virginia chemical storage facility that leaked
did
not maintain adequate safety precautions, and neither does the
site where the company moved the chemicals after the spill.
The US Trade
Representative spreads
distortions and lies about "fast track".
US citizens: call on the EPA
to go
ahead with stricter rules on emissions from cars.
A secret UK report from 2003, recently leaked, said
that criminal
gangs had infiltrated several UK agencies including prosecution and
customs, as well as the thugs.
This is the small-time organized crime. The big-time cheating occurs
in the banks that compose the City of London, and they have made most
of it legal.
Very
little is known about the health effects of the chemical that spilled
in West Virginia. No research has been published.
Everyone: urge
Brazil to offer asylum to Snowden.
Cesium from Fukushima
has spread
around the Pacific Ocean and plankton samples contain small amounts of
cesium.
A lot of the fish caught in the Pacific Ocean
are showing
small levels of cesium from the Fukushima meltdowns.
When large numbers of people are exposed to small levels of
radioactivity, a small danger for each person can add up to a
substantial number of additional deaths. It might mean, for instance,
101,000 cases of a certain kind of cancer in a population of 10
million, instead of 100,000. 1000 deaths is worth avoiding if
possible, but there is no reason for any one person to go to great
lengths to avoid this small danger.
Some of Europe's "foreign aid" is
really loans
to countries that would struggle ever to repay.
The UN climate head calls for
a trillion
dollars a year of investment to avoid 2C of global heating.
Each year we wait will increase the rate of spending required.
NSA to
Sen. Sanders: We
Can't Legally Tell You if We Spied on You.
Will Congress dare pass a law saying "yes you can tell us"?
"These days
Americans have as much familiarity with democracy as they do with
homesteading on the frontier."
The environment chapter of the TPP has been leaked. It
offers toothless
pretend protection for the environment.
US citizens:
call on
the Department of Justice to go after the company (perversely
named "freedom industries") that spilled toxic chemicals in West
Virginia's water.
Everyone:
call on
West Virginia to hold the company responsible for the large toxic
spill fully responsible.
Wait,
We Inject Antibiotics Into Eggs for Organic Chicken?!
The world
cannot
address economic inequality without preventing global heating
disaster
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Whole Foods, under pressure, agreed to stop selling food grown in recycled sewage sludge.
NAFTA's harmful legacy affects more than just the three countries that signed it. NAFTA introduced the unjust "investor-state" provision.
Drone surveillance of the US "border" goes beyond what the US government says.
The "border" area stretches a considerable distance from each frontier or coast, and includes the homes of most Americans.
Even US farmers are starting to reject GMOs.
In principle, genetic engineering could be great for agriculture. But not when it's developed by companies that are always seeking opportunities to cut corners on safety.
Kurdish protesters leaving the UK for Paris were robbed of their cash by the border guards who accused them of planning to give it to the PKK.
The is a rebel group; I don't know whether it is terrorist. Banning contributions to the PKK is legitimate, but taking away small amounts of cash like this on unproved suspicion is gratuitously nasty. The PKK would be on its knees if it depended on that funding mechanism.
Global heating at work: signs of spring in January in the UK.
Trees grow faster as they get bigger.
This means that cutting down old forests and replacing them with new tree plantations — as the UK government wants to do — would require the new plantations to be far larger.
Global investment in clean energy is falling, reflecting powerful efforts by politicians whose goal is to keep people burning lots of fossil fuel.
Billionaire Polluters predicts that greenhouse gas emissions will rise 30% by 2035.
In effect, it predicts that the half-hearted efforts to curb global heating will fail, partly thanks to the lobbying of fossil fuel companies such as BP itself.
US emissions of CO2 rose slightly in 2013 due to increased burning of coal.
Coal spews lots of toxic pollution, including radioactive fallout. The EPA needs to make rules to reduce use of coal.
Canada says it will increase CO2 emissions almost 40% by 2030, which is probably an underestimate of the emissions that extraction of oil from tar sands will cause. Furthermore, it doesn't count the emissions from burning that oil in other countries.
How Israel obtained nuclear technology, with the help of various western countries, and the US was eventually drawn in to the pretense.
People in Britain are accused of arranging to have children sexually abused in the Philippines and get video streamed to them.
Censorship laws are not needed to prosecute this, since they have participated in conspiracies to abuse those children. In general, the real abuse of real children can be stopped without censorship.
Georgina Roberts obtained poison, then helped her hopelessly ill parents kill themselves.
It is horrible that people find themselves in such situations. It's even more horrible if they are denied escape.
German and British companies sold goods made by prison factories in East Germany during the 70s and 80s.
The companies may not have done this intentionally, but it should not have been able to happen.
The idea of making an agreement with the Great Satan is creating deep debates in Iran.
Everyone: call on the governor of Maryland
to reject
a huge natural gas export terminal which would push for more
fracking.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, no new sanctions against Iran — allow diplomacy to work.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The latest election in Bangladesh was won by banning opposition parties.
Megan Rice is likely to be imprisoned for the rest of her life for a protest in which she trespassed in a US military base. The maximum sentence is 30 years, and she is already 83 years old.
Her protest demonstrated that security protecting US atomic weapons is totally inadequate; that alone was a service. She did, and intended, no harm.
Contrast this with Putin's threat of only 15 years' imprisonment for Greenpeace protesters.
Non-fanatical Islam in Pakistan is under attack from Saudi-funded strict fanatics.
The incorporation of lots of superstitions in Barelvism makes it vulnerable to rationalist criticism, but the replacement they propose is not rationality.
This is one of the dangers of Islam: the forms that are not cruel and harsh are vulnerable to fanatics who claim that it isn't true Islam if it isn't cruel and harsh.
US citizens: call on the FCC to classify ISPs as telecommunications services and make them common carriers.
US Black leaders signed a declaration of empathy with Indian Dalits.
Survey found that 1/5 of Britons borrowed money to pay for their housing last year.
This is what the totally unnecessary cruelty of the government causes.
Netanyahu's ally called Kerry "obsessive and messianic", which is ironic given how far Kerry has acceded to ridiculous Israeli demands and ignored the Israeli government's contempt.
Israel is using these negotiations to kill time, and demonstrating how much contempt the US government will swallow from that direction.
Time after time, new GMOs are touted in the media as solutions to big problems, and they turn out not to do the job after all.
US citizens: sign this petition against "fast track" for the TPP.
There was a shooting in a school in Roswell, New Mexico.
It has not yet been claimed that a UFO or an alien is involved, but I think it's only a matter of time.
Senator Warren's program goes deeper than Mayor de Blasio's.
Under a judgment from India's Supreme Court, the Dongria Kondh people denied approval for a giant mine in their territory.
Victories like this are not final. Businesses generally make another attempt to undermine the same opposition.
Google's purchase of Nest indicates that Google wants to control the "internet of things" — and entice people into handing over lots more information about their lives to Google.
If you want something to figure out that it should turn up your home thermostat because you're heading for home and the day is cold, there is no a priori reason why that should involve any company's server. That computation is yours, personally, and need not involved anyone else.
Google wants it to involve a Google server, but doing it that way is SaaSS (service as a software substitute).
A memo shows that Kissinger directly urged the Argentine government to do away with dissidents.
All the governments in South America that worked together in the 70s to crush dissent said they were fighting "terrorists". Remember that any time a government proposes an "anti-terrorist" law.
A study of real cases finds that the US government's general surveillance has very little to do with stopping terrorism.
The UK has established quotas for defeating asylum seeker appeals.
The UK thug who demanded journalists' notes etc. about an undercover thug whistleblower says he wants this because the whistleblower refuses to testify. The whistleblower says he won't testify because other UK thugs have threatened to prosecute him if he does.
In effect, the thugs' left hand pleads it is justified in attacking journalism to compensate for the right hand's attack on justice.
Thugs who beat a man to death were acquitted of murder.
It makes no difference that the man was suspected of a crime. That would be grounds to arrest him, but not to batter him to death once he was held down on the ground.
What could possibly have been in the minds of those jurors? Were they kept in the dark about important evidence? Do they give "officers of the law" improper respect?
Bulgaria is considering a law that would punish journalists working for foreign news organizations.
Everyone: call on Northern Dynasty
to cancel
the Pebble Mine
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The other two companies have already dropped out.
Citizens of the EU: ask your MEP to oppose the European Commission's plan to allow ISPs to censor the internet, blocking or slowing down sites however they wish.
A Florida thug has been charged with murder after shooting a man in a theater in an argument.
I hope that the "stand your ground" law won't let him get off.
Apple is trying to sabotage and replace a court-appointed monitor whose job is to make sure Apple obeys anti-trust requirements.
I guess this is what happens when a court-appointed monitor tries to do his job right. It suggests that Apple is too big to monitor, and therefore too big to be allowed to exist.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose "fast track" for the TPP.
The TPP is a dooH niboR treaty, designed to give more riches to the rich, and would do it based on taking freedom and safety from everyone.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The FCC'snet neutrality rules were found unconstitutional because it didn't go all the way to make ISPs common carriers.
The solution is obvious: make them common carriers.
Rima Najdi walked around Beirut in an unrealistic suicide bomber costume to encourage people to think.
President Hollande refused to answer questions about a sex scandal in his private life, insisting that it is a private matter.
I agree. Furthermore, I think scandals about the "other lover" are to be blamed on the misguided demand for monogamy, which is tantamount to demanding "perfection or nothing".
How oil heated up the factional and interethnic rivalry in South Sudan to the point of warfare.
The UK, Poland and a few other governments that are evidently for shale have blocked EU-wide fracking regulations.
Noorzia Atmar, former member of Afganistan's parliament, had to flee when threatened by reprisals from her family and her ex-husband's family.
Sahar Gul, tortured by her in-laws, faces the danger of a law that
would ban
women from testifying when they accuse their relatives or in-laws of
torturing them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
I wish we could do something to protect Afghan women, but supporting Karzai's government isn't doing it. There isn't enough will in Afghan society to do this.
The only idea that occurs to me is to arm Afghan women and help them form refugee camps where they can defend themselves. That plan might be inadequate for various reasons, but it illustrates the though of new thinking that we have to try.
US citizens:
insist on no cuts to
food stamps.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Obama to close the Guantanamo prison.
Plain packaging for cigarettes in Australia was followed immediately by a big jump in the numbers of people asking for help in quitting.
Individual banksters face criminal charges for falsifying the Libor rate.
They were in charge of local trading activities, and must have been 2 or more levels down from the top management. Was it possible that Libor rigging could be so widespread without encouragement from above?
An experiment shows that humans can often detect that there has been a small change in a scene, even though they cannot determine what the change was.
This mental ability provides a rational explanation for many experiences that people often interpret as premonitions or otherwise supernatural.
Egypt's vote on the new constitution, which gives the military too much power, is being run in unfair conditions.
Many Egyptians intend to vote yes, but the point is that the unfair conditions mean they have never been exposed to arguments against.
Another victory for bigotry, as Nigeria imposed long prison sentences on homosexuality and even membership in organizations associated with homosexuality.
ACLU Stops Suspicionless Home Searches in Etowah County, Alabama.
The US is good at starting wars, but doesn't seem to be able to end them.
9%
of wetlands in China have been lost in the last decade.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Apple's ibeacon gives physical stores a new way to track patrons.
E-commerce already enables the abuse that you can't tell what price is offered to someone else. Things like ibeacon could extend the abuse to physical stores.
An Iranian woman fled in a boat to Australia, only to find out on arrival that Australia had just announced a policy to refuse asylum to anyone that arrived by boat.
She had to struggle to get medical care for her husband.
The Palestinian Authority won't allow Israeli colonies to use its landfill, so Israel has shut it down entirely.
Pseudoscience: there is no evidence that yoga can cleanse anyone's liver.
Everyone: tell Starbucks to stop trying to undermine San Jose's living wage law.
Ten Examples
of Welfare for the Rich and Corporations, in the US.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Israel shoots at Palestinian fishing boats that get 4 miles from shore.
Sometimes they get shot even closer to shore.
US citizens: call on your senators
to oppose
the lunatic plan to tie restoration of unemployment benefits with an
attack on the EPA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The Israeli government asked for bids to expand colonies in Palestinian territory.
When Israel demolishes a colony in Palestine that it has not authorized, the fanatical "settlers" retaliate against any Palestinians that are handy.
Even settler children age 12 participate in pogroms.
The fanatics enjoy protection from the Israeli army even in the act of attacking Palestinians.
There have been dozens of such attacks, amounting to a sustained campaign of robbery.
A man from Afghanistan has been given asylum in the UK because he is an Atheist.
Afghanistan follows most Muslim countries in having legal retribution against Muslims that convert to any other position. The world needs to be more aware that Islam in political power means persecution.
The UK thugs are fishing for an excuse to punish the whistleblower who revealed that UK thugs spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence.
This is the way whistleblowers are generally treated.
EU farm subsidy policies pressure farmers to cut down forests for no use at all.
Comparing the West Virginia chemical spill, which has poisoned the water for a while in that region, with the New Jersey bridge harassment.
While it was an accident that this particular plant leaked toxins into the river just now, it is no accident that the US has lots of chemical plants that have a certain chance of poisoning people or exploding at any time. That is the result of policy choices.
Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mohamed faces charges of "lack of respect for the prophet" for an article criticizing Mohammed.
What else would you expect from a man whose name parodies "Mohammed" twice ;-).
Mauritania is not alone in this sort of injustice: most countries that identify themselves as Muslim trample religious freedom and freedom of expression. It is one of the standard injustices of Islam.
A study finds that in nondemocratic states, the internet does not boost democracy; rather, it has become an instrument to suppress dissent.
It can do this in the US too: the US massive surveillance system is the seed of what the elite will want whenever anything makes the populace desperate enough to demand change.
William Binney proposed to give the NSA a spy system that wouldn't spy on ordinary Americans, but the highest officials rejected it.
The Ugly Truth about Charter Schools: Padded Cells, Corruption, Lousy Instruction and Worse Results.
Charter schools are a form of privatization. In general, privatization is presented as a way to make some service more efficient, but its real effect is to enrich a few. That's true in this case, but it also represents a way for the state to abandon poor people, now increasingly considered superfluous by the plutocratic state.
Some restaurants are replacing waiters with computerized order-takers. This threatens to leave millions more Americans unemployed.
Applebees alone may cut half a million jobs.
Using an ithing to take the orders is bad for restaurant, too. It is full of nonfree software that tramples the freedom of the user (in this case, the restaurant) and exposes the user to malware
For the sake of sales clerk's employment, I refuse to use the self-checkout machines in supermarkets and drug stores. When I go into a drug store that has these machines, I shout to the people who use them, "Using those machines puts Americans out of work".
I think we should prohibit those machines simply to keep employment up.
Handing over personal data to stores turns out to be no safer with big stores than with any other stores.
The risk that the store's copy of your personal data might be obtained by crackers should not distract you from the bigger risk — the use that will be made of your personal data with permission of companies that possess it.
I won't give any personal data to a store, because I don't want my purchases to be associated with me. I won't give the store even my name.
The worst piece of data to give to a store is your credit card number. Even if it is never obtained by crackers, it will identify you to the store's data base together with what you bought.
Do as I do: pay cash, and never give stores your personal data. If you never give it, you won't learn it as a habit, so you won't start handing it over as a habit.
The UK government is entirely for shale, and hopes that local councils are for shale as well.
Iran and other countries have worked out the last details of the nuclear agreement, and the implementation will begin on Jan 20 — provided Congress doesn't ruin everything.
Everyone: urge Brazil to reject Monsanto's BRM (Biological Restrictions Management), also known as "terminator seeds".
Syria outside Assad's control is a mosaic of mutually hostile militias.
Global heating has pushed the giant Pine Island Glacier into irreversible melting, and will melt away over the next few decades.
This is expected to raise global sea level by just one centimeter. If only the melting ice were limited to this! However, melting for the whole Antarctic melting is speeding up.
This demonstrates once again pro-surveillance officials' predilection for stretching the truth. Aside from that, the issue is a secondary one. Even if terrorists change their tactics, and even if that helps them a little, they are a secondary threat. A government that surveils everyone and thus eliminates democracy is more dangerous than any independent terrorists.
A lawsuit by the Electronic Privacy Information Center pushed the US government to recognize that x-ray body scanners could be dangerous. Now EPIC has made the DHS yield its information on test results and radiation risk estimates for airport body scanners.
Cultivation of genetically modified soybeans by plantations has taken over most of Argentina's agricultural land, and this involves taking land away from lots of peasants.
US sailors say they were drenched with radioactive fallout which caused them persistent medical problems, while their ship was rescuing people swept out to sea near Fukushima.
UK generals in the Bush forces, and politicians, face possible prosecution in the International Criminal Court because they did not prevent torture of prisoners.
Yoshitatsu Uechi, a worker at Fukushima, says he repeatedly
encountered
dangerous
cost-cutting and slipshod work there.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
A tracking company is encouraging stores to track customers through the WiFi chips of mobile phones.
This particular company doesn't know anyone's name, but there are other companies that can relate the phone's MAC address to a name. Put those two data bases together and presto, it says who has gone where.
If the phone talks to the phone network, then the phone company already records where it goes. The two methods of tracking lead to the same intolerable result.
A few congresscritters are
trying
to smear Snowden by saying that his disclosures "could" do harm to
US national security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Such a weak assertion could be said of anything you do, even getting out of bed.
Since the security of America includes the security of our democracy, massive general surveillance by the US government does great harm to our democracy.
Snowden is a hero because he gave us the beginning of a chance to defend our democracy from that threat.
Everyone: support the Feb 11 action against NSA surveillance.
To fight surveillance effectively, our target must go beyond the NSA. Other branches of government do surveillance too; we must limit license plate recognizers and face recognizers even if they are run by local governments.
The root of surveillance is when digital systems record data about people. We must demand the redesign of digital systems to retain little data about people in general.
Quantifying the social cost of carbon emissions might encourage governments and companies to take necessary steps.
If you understand that global heating is probably leading to disaster, and we don't know exactly how far away the disaster is, you don't need to a measure of the cost of short-term effects. However, that measure may help to convince short-term-minded people.
Privatization of electric generation in Argentina was supposed to attract investment, but the companies extracted money instead of investing.
The UK's "lobbying" bill threatens to restrict civil society, while business lobbying will simply adapt.
The Australian government's plan to reduce CO2 emissions is to give money to the companies that produce it, then let them do whatever they wish.
It also endorses cap-and-trade, which pretends to reduce emissions but really promotes pretend reductions.
That government will say anything whatever, but its actions are in service to fossil fuel companies.
Hrant
Dink, martyr for freedom of speech, was tried in Turkey for the
"crime" of affirming the genocide of the Armenians. Then, when France
first considered a law to make it a "crime" to deny the genocide of
the Armenians, Dink said he would go to France and deny it as a
protest.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Turkey now plans to increase internet censorship and make it harder to evade.
Banning "hate speech" is an excuse for dangerous policies. No matter what we think of views, we must not ban their expression.
Former Merck employees claim in a lawsuit that Merck falsified data
about the effectiveness of its vaccine against mumps, and
used
incorrect test procedures designed to make the vaccine look more
effective than it really was.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
I found out about this through a site called nvic.org, but that site exaggerated and distorted this issue by presenting the vaccine as unsafe. Another page claimed that a tiny amount of formaldehyde in a vaccine was dangerous on principle, though it is much less formaldehyde than is normally found in the human body. While that site is not 100% false, it is not reliable either.
Unfounded rumors claiming vaccines are dangerous has led people to refuse vaccination for their children, which ironically has resulted in disease outbreaks that really damage children. The most glaring instance is the opposition to polio vaccination in Pakistan and Syria, which results in permanent palsy for some children.
Obama talks about helping small areas in the US with lots of poverty, but part of the "help" is cutting taxes for business.
Once a tax cut gets applied to a part of the US, businesses will push to spread it to more parts. Then businesses elsewhere say that "fairness" means they should get a tax cut too. Eventually it spreads into a general tax cut for business.
Business pays too little taxes in general. If we want to put specific zones at an advantage, let's raise taxes for business everywhere except those zones.
Study: Polarization and Gridlock Work Well for the Wealthiest Americans.
The idea that Congress is "not functioning" represents a fundamental misunderstanding, comparable to saying that a football game is "not functioning" because the score is 0-0. What it means is that neither side can overcome the other side to score.
However, that analogy goes only so far. In Congress, it's not a mere game. The two sides are "totally for the rich" and "mostly for the rich but with some concern for the rest", and the points that are occasionally scored against the poor do tremendous harm.
The US has replaced checks and balances and rule of law with the
national
security jihad.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Nauru, where Australia stores unwanted asylum seekers, now demands $7000 dollars for a journalist's visa, effectively saying Australia's dirty deeds are off limits to journalism.
It is an injustice to require special visas for journalists. The US should set a good example by abolishing the practice.
Exposure Chris Christie's underlings' disguised retribution scheme has called attention to bad decisions that are clearly the responsibility of Christie himself.
I won't claim that Christie must have known about this particular scheme. I would not expect a governor to personally pay attention each specific action taken, whether ethical or not. However, he may have told, or led, his underlings over the years to plan various kinds of political pressure and retaliation and not bother him with the details. That would still make him responsible overall.
Medecins Sans Frontiers
has wrestled
with various ethical and political questions about how to carry out
its mission.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
One form of massive surveillance, usually ignored, is surveillance of prescriptions.
US policy has
spread al Qa'ida to many countries.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Baraa Shiban has received a death threat for investigating the casualties from a drone bombing in Yemen.
Most members of Congress are millionaires.
The Pakistani internet rights group Bytes for All is suing the UK government for surveillance of its communications.
India has implemented massive surveillance of communications, with no court supervision.
Two points Gates does not mention when criticizing Obama about Afghanistan.
Notwithstanding these points, Obama is ultimately responsible for his decisions.
Feminist playwright Meltem Arikan was driven out of Turkey by threats from fanatical supporters of the ruling party.
They accuse her experimental play Mi Minor of being a plan for the Gezi Park protests.
Everyone: call on California Governor Brown not to permit fracking.
Global heating may have to do with more frequent blooms of plankton in certain parts of the Pacific, but they have nothing to do with radiation or Fukishima.
Canada's government in 2013 displayed a record of blatant and shameless corruption and pandering.
The UK is pushing a law to make arbitrary prohibitions (ASBOs) even more sweeping and arbitrary.
People could be subject to two years in prison for almost any sort of behavior that judges dislike. Protests and meetings could be banned arbitrarily.
The FBI has shifted its focus to terrorism, neglecting white-collar crime. The attorney general sets an example of neglecting white-collar crime by declaring the banksters too big to jail.
The US Fish And Wildlife Service plans to drop rat poison on the Farallon Islands to eradicate mice that threaten the survival of endangered storm petrels there.
To eradicate mice (or rats or cats) from an island in order to protect endemic wildlife is entirely legitimate. It is only the method they propose that threatens to be very foolish.
Lester Grinspoon explains how his clinical observations convinced him that marijuana is not harmful and should be legal.
A committee of the European Parliament has decided to invite Snowden to give testimony remotely.
What It's Like When The FBI Asks You To Backdoor Your Software.
I am shocked that anyone would agree to do this — or that anyone thinks most developers would agree to do this.
An artist who visited Guantanamo was not allowed to speak with prisoners, or even see them clearly, but she could see the evil that has contaminated the US.
Guantanamo attacks the freedom of prisoners' relatives, too, when it requires them to communicate through the Skype client, a program that denies freedom to its users.
The campaign against eating shark fin is making great strides in China.
The only reason banquets ever serve shark fin soup is to prove how much the sponsor is willing to spend.
Life in the electronic concentration
camp: the
many ways that you're being tracked, catalogued and controlled.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US hospitals systematically gouge on prices.
NSA Insiders Reveal What Went Wrong.
Advocates Hail 'Groundbreaking' Guidelines to Stop 'School-to-Prison Pipeline'.
I think another crucial point is to make sure that no thugs are stationed normally in the school.
Over 40,000 people may have been falsely convicted due to dishonesty
in a Massachusetts crime lab. The ACLU wants the State of
Massachusetts to take the initiative
to reinvestigate
the cases and free anyone who ought to be freed.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
How "too
big to fail" turns into "too big to jail".
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Taxing banks' gross income, at a percentage that increases with the
size of the bank,
would put
large banks under financial pressure to split up.
[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the Truth in Settlements Act.
I might suggest going even further: rather than publicizing the details of these settlements so as to embarrass the government out of accepting weak provisions, why not rule out weak provisions?
Israel is proposing to raise the threshold for a party to enter parliament, in the aim of excluding the Arab parties. Juggling the threshold is the parliamentary system's equivalent of US voter suppression laws.
Meanwhile, in a complex of ironies, the extremist Lieberman wants to transfer some Arab villages from Israel to Palestine, as a drop of ethnic cleansing, but the inhabitants would rather be Israeli Arabs.
US citizens: call on the EPA
to require
and help chemical plants to switch to safer chemicals and
processes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The series of heavy rains (and floods) experienced by the UK in the past month is more likely due to global heating.
It would not have been impossible before, but CO2 and methane emissions are making it more probable in the future.
Corporations hide in cyberspace, with no physical address, making it hard to sue them.
US mainstream media talk about the Bush forces' destruction of Falluja as if it were a heroic sacrifice, rather than an atrocity.
A cell phone for children that's turns the child's whole world into a cell.
The aim is total robotic tracking of children, then old people, then everyone.
Don't make the mistake of postponing your rejection of intrusive surveillance technology till it gets even worse. I started years ago.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose putting new sanctions on Iran.
Give diplomacy a chance!
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: support the Social Security expansion bill.
US citizens: tell the FDA you oppose the plan to stop states from requiring GMO labeling.
Everyone: call on Morocco to change the law that allows rapists to escape punishment by forcing their victims to marry them.
For a politician to be a "strong leader" overlaps with being a bully.
Peak oil has not gone away: the supply of oil per unit time may contract, and cause economic problems.
The crucial question, not apparently addressed here, is: would it be possible to burn oil faster than it's going to be available, while avoiding the worse disaster that global heating is taking us towards?
A limit at a place that, for other reasons, we must not even approach is no real limit.
Maybe the forces in control in Falluja are not al Qa'ida.
This would be entirely plausible, except for the report that local Sunnis said they are allied with the Iraqi government against al Qa'ida.
I'm not sure what to make of this.
US protesters could be imprisoned for 10 years because prosecutors called their banner a "terrorist hoax".
We should tell those prosecutors to go to Russia if they don't like American freedom.
Senator Leahy's "privacy and security" act would make the CFAA even easier to stretch. People could face years in prison for just proposing to violate the terms of service of any web site.
A lawsuit might allow Verizon to trash net neutrality for cabled Internet even as AT&T trashes network neutrality on mobile devices.
CREDO Mobile is the first phone company to report how many times it had to give customer data to the US government.
This information does not really tell us much, since any one of these requests might have covered all of the company's customers. But it shows their heart is in the right place.
US data brokers sell lists of people with HIV, lists of people with drug addictions, lists of elderly gamblers, and other lists that are particularly subject to abuse.
Senator Rubio's "reforms" for US help for the poor have hidden dangers.
New modeling concludes that global heating won't limit itself by causing more clouds.
When Wisconsin's anti-worker Governor Walker was facing recall, the Koch brothers bought TV ads invoking a peculiar principle that it's unfair to recall an official merely to stop him from pushing horrible laws.
The NSA's capabilities for breaking security of specific systems are an argument against "need" for massive surveillance of everyone.
Robots are being developed for many farm tasks.
These jobs are done inefficiently by humans, often at very low pay and in bad conditions. If new the robots are able to do the jobs, it will be good that people don't have to live like that. On the other hand, it will not be good if they starve instead.
At a meeting in Cambridge, some 15 years ago, a man said, "If robots make it, we've gotta take it." We must not let the owners of the robots own what the robots produce, leaving most people with only trickle-down.
If you're a farmer, watch out for nonfree software in these robots!
Senegal's coast guard captured a Russian intensive fishing ship. Russia's response is to blame Greenpeace.
Several Republican governors are being attacked for soliciting secret-source money to support their campaigns.
Personal insults directed against Edward Snowden reflect a general pattern of smearing whistleblowers, but the real target is not Snowden but the act of whistleblowing.
Ford says its cars have GPS so they know everywhere the car goes.
This is a consequence of the fact that the GPS data is stored by software that is nonfree, not controlled by the driver or car owner.
It is not clear to me whether this applies only when the car has a GPS navigator installed, or whether it means all new Ford cars.
More about surveillance of cars in the US.
NSA whistleblowers warn that Obama's "reforms" are being managed so as to avoid any real improvement. They make recommendations for real reform.
The loss of large carnivores around the world is causing damage to plants and animals through ecological effects.
US citizens: call on the FCC to enforce the requirement for TV stations to say who pays for ads.
Everyone: call on 60 Minutes
to clean
up its smear of US clean energy industry.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Four Years after Earthquake, Housing, Sanitation, Health Care are Still Pressing Needs in Haiti.Aid has been misused, or diverted into plans to employ more Haitians working for export for a pittance.
What Haiti really needs is to end the US occupation.
US citizens: email your congresscritter
to oppose
"fast track" for the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: support the EPA's plan
to regulate
carbon emissions from new power plants.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The Liberal Democrats in the UK are looking at a platform involving reducing the collection of data.
US electric utilities are slamming the brakes on installation of solar panels, and homeowners are fighting back. I've heard that the same is happening in Spain.
Many homeowners would be delighted to disconnect from the electrical grid, and depend on their own solar power and their own batteries. If they use heavy equipment such as washing machines only when the sun shines, and leave refrigerators closed at night, it might work. However, some cities in California prohibit this: I'm told that in San Jose, a house with no electric utility account will be condemned just for that.
A campaign in the UK to reduce the general level of sugar in foods.
NSA's Harshest Critics Meeting With White House Officials Tomorrow.
A last-ditch scheme to block mandatory labeling of GMOs: a
scheme for
voluntary labeling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
California Introduces Landmark Bill
to Deny
the NSA State Resources.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
This effort is good because it is resistance, but a real solution can't be reached in this direction.
20 million Indians work making bricks, many of them children, and many of them as slave labor.
Citizens of Massachusetts: demand a clean minimum wage bill that doesn't cut unemployment benefits.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, oppose HR 2279, which would turn the laws requiring cleanup of polluted land into a sham.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
While it's the cold that directly kills homeless people, the underlying cause is the inequity that makes them poor and therefore homeless.
The NSA wants to have
companies accumulate
dossiers for the NSA to look at later.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
To a large extent, this is how the massive surveillance system already works.
Thugs in Nebraska seized the victims' cameras that held proof of their crimes, but fortunately there was a third camera.
There won't always be another camera. For thugs to seize or destroy cameras or their contents should be a crime, regardless of other circumstances.
The fans of Insane Clown Posse are suing the US for harassing them by labeling them as gang members.
UK ISPs, by applying censorship, have made themselves liable for anything illegal that they do transmit.
I fear that the UK government will respond by immunizing them.
The incidence of hypoglycemia is highest at the end of the month, because poor people with diabetes have spent the month's money and can't afford food.
The solution is difficult if we accept as immutable that they can't get more money. However, Congress could give them more money easily enough. The problem is ill will.
Is America Ready for a New War on Poverty?
Mystery: why does chicken meat from chicken never exposed to antibiotics carry superbugs just as often as other chicken?
The jury ruled that London thugs lawfully shot Mark Duggan.
It's possible that the thugs really believed Duggan had a gun. It's possible he did have one, in the box. It's possible the thug who shot Duggan really believed at the time that the gun was in his hand. These are not implausible.
But it seems clear that someone other than Duggan put the sock-covered gun on the other side of the fence, and the obvious suspects are thugs trying to make the shooting look justified.
I think that calls for its own investigation.
Warning: antibiotic resistance is creeping up on us.
Wetlands are being
contaminated
with neonicotinoid pesticides, which threatens disastrous effects on
wildlife.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
These pesticides are persistent Even if we stop using them, it could take years for them to dissipate.
NAFTA: 20 Years of Regret for Mexico. (Not to mention the US.)
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
How Obama and Clinton made Afghanistan go from bad to worse.
How Uncle Sam's Cash Is Funneled Into Abusive Sweatshops (in Bangladesh).
The Internet of Things Is Wildly Insecure — And Often Unpatchable.
When the article says "Linux operating system", I think it really does mean Linux — the kernel Linux, not a complete operating system such as GNU/Linux.
In Brazilian Amazonia, enforcement of laws to protect the forest is so weak that the loggers barely put a fig leaf over it.
Puncturing the right-wing claim that the US should have kept the Bush forces in Iraq.
The USDA's standards for approving GMOs are limited to such narrow concerns that they are little different from deregulation.
In 1971, heroic activists stole FBI documents that proved the FBI was infiltrating US dissidents.
They found that the FBI had specifically tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. into committing suicide.
One of the activists explains
what they did
and why.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Large parts of Australia are stricken by drought again, after just a couple of years of adequate rain since the previous drought.
This combines with the effects of the hot weather. Global heating is expected to make Australia more arid as well as generally hotter. It is also expected to reduce global food production; indeed, it seems to be already doing so.
India has imposed the usual tax rate on commercial use of the grounds of the US embassy.
Bravo for this, but the government of India would do a lot more good for Indians by cracking down on inadequate wages for Indian workers, whether they are working in the US or in India.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose bill HR.7, which would require women who were made pregnant by rape to prove the rape to justify an abortion.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The "sharing economy" smears the word "sharing" — "sublet/resale economy" would be a better term. And note that these activities generate few jobs, so they can't solve society's real problems.
Congress
must hold a
real investigation of the NSA.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The UK government considered making alcohol more expensive to encourage people to drink less, but changed course after 130 meetings with lobbyists.
Pumping sulfur dioxide into the air could cancel global heating, but it would cause massive droughts.
Israeli intelligence continues using torture, distorting a Supreme Court ruling against torture into meaninglessness.
Professor Ahmad Qatamesh has been freed from Israeli prison after 2.5 years. He was never charged with a crime, and Amnesty International pushed for his release.
The government of Ghana wants to close the refuges for people accused of witchcraft; this is likely to cause those people to be killed.
Comparing Arab and Israeli racist insults.
Journalists in Burma protested the jailing of a journalist.
The charges are typical of states that want to punish journalism and pretend that it is something else.
Honduran peasants' land was stolen to grow palm oil, which provides "carbon offsets" for international businesses, so they can avoid cutting emissions. Crushing the resistance peasants' resistance seems to have part of the motive for the coup.
Emissions trading is a mistake in general; it has been gamed so much that it achieves nothing, while promoting evil like this in Honduras. A tax on fuels can't be gamed.
The Syrians fighting the Islamic State of Iraq include al-Nusra, another al-Qa'ida supporter.
Cuts in UK support for offshore wind energy has led to
cancellation
of many projects.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Spain reduced fossil fuel use in electricity by around 30% last year due mainly to installation of a lot of renewable energy generators.
Various methods are being tested to reduce the numbers of birds and bats that are killed by wind turbines.
New Jersey ignores 99% of accusations about attacks by thugs.
Stealing Americans' retirement funds in 4 despicable steps.
The network of pollinator species and the plants that depend on them could collapse suddenly if it is stressed past a certain point.
Climate Change Imperils Peru's Drive to End Poverty.
US mainstream media persistently disparage the idea that banksters should be punished for well-documented crimes, including the fraudulent foreclosures against thousands (maybe millions) of American homeowners.
Obama gave up on the war in Afghanistan in 2011.
So why didn't he end the war? Fear of being called a quitter, I guess.
86% of Americans believe the government has the responsibility to fight poverty.
The fact that so many politicians are elected who oppose this is a measure of voter suppression and dishonesty of the media.
JPMorgan Chase seems to be involved in just about every banking scandal.
Highly profitable Boeing has imposed pay and benefit cuts on its workers by threatening to move production.
This is, of course, what the rich generally want to do: pay workers less. Laws and treaties need to be changed so that they can't.
The body of a brain-dead woman in Texas who is 20 weeks pregnant is being kept alive so the fetus can be born.
This might make sense if the father wanted that baby as a relic of his deceased wife — which he doesn't — except that nobody knows whether it is healthy.
Paradoxically, the extreme cold in the US today may be due to to the heating of the Arctic.
In the US: Call on Disney to stop promoting fracking to children.
The longest running sequence of measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentration may come to an end because funding has been cut.
A wild dolphin that lives near the Australian coast keeps trying to play with humans and ignores other dolphins.
There are reasons to avoid accustoming wild animals to people, but when that has already occurred, there's no use denying it. At some point, we might as well accept that this dolphin needs human company.
There have been thousands of complaints that fracking wells harmed water supplies in he US. Only a few of the complaints have been confirmed, and maybe many of them are spurious. However, I suspect that the tests miss some real problems.
Secrecy about what chemicals are used in the wells may make it hard to confirm that contamination is due to fracking.
AT&T invites web services to pay to for exemption from data caps, thus proving the supposed reason for data caps does not exist.
The result will be to give bigger companies an advantage of smaller competitors.
Of course, many of these services are bad in their nature, such as the movie rentals with DRM. But that's an independent issue.
Please don't refer to web pages as "content".
Everyone: call on Hanes to stop robbing and swindling workers in Haiti.
The EU's commitments to free expression: Libel and privacy.
It appears that rhinos can no longer survive in Kenya except in special sanctuaries. And maybe not even there.
Digital Rights Ireland asks for help coping with legal costs imposed when it asked for permission to intervene in a trial and was denied.
If not helped, the organization could get shut down.
CIA
Lawyer: Stopping Torture 'Would Have Been Easy,' But I Approved It
Anyway.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
LBJ's War on Poverty cut poverty in the US by 40%.
It proves that governments can reduce poverty. But then right-wingers took power, put an end to these efforts, and drove poverty up again.
Conservative media provide a platform to the 3% of climate scientists who deny global heating, and don't mention how their predictions have proved wrong in the past.
The enemies of al Qa'ida in Syria include other Islamist groups.
Five Australians face charges of being members of a motorcycle gang and staying in the same hotel. Being in a hotel is not a crime for people in general, only for them.
Next will they pass a law making it a crime to breathe and have your name?
A heat wave killed thousands of bats in an area of Australia.
In a couple of decades, none of those bats will live anywhere near.
New South Wales gave permission to build a house near the coast, on condition it be demolished in 20 years if sea level rises as expected.
It is a kind of foresight — at least it does not ignore the issue — but it seems wasteful and foolish to build a house that will need to be demolished in 20 years.
What the court appears to have done is much more foolish: permission with no foresight at all.
Judging who to hire based on Facebook pages seems to be completely ineffective. (As well as an invasion of privacy.)
China has destroyed a large stockpile of confiscated ivory to campaign against buying ivory.
I can't understand the mentality of a person who would buy something totally frivolous at the cost of rushing a species to extinction.
Bluefin tuna are so overfished that most of the fish caught are juveniles.
Peace negotiations in South Sudan
failed
to get started.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Part of the basis for the fighting is tribal hatred, but when interethnic hostility reaches the point of fighting, often it has been stirred up by politicians.
I have a suspicion that the oil in the ground has something to do with it, and that the US government is playing some sort of game to get control of that oil.
The UK government announces more punishment for Britons on the way to a mythical, meaningless "recovery".
"The [unlikely] possibility of success is used to call the majority of people failures."
The US government didn't need any more surveillance to stop the Sep 11 attacks. It had plenty of warnings — here are the details.
Even to preserve the public domain from further attacks requires a fight.
Preserving the public domain is not enough. Copyright is too restrictive and we must reduce it.
The US government goes to cruel extremes to collect college debt.
The idea that the US government needs to collect student loans from those who are unable to work is absurd. The only "economy" that depends on collecting this money is that of the evil rich. Even asking students to pay for college is right-wing. If they have to pay, it should be based on their incomes, as in the Oregon plan.
What's more, a large part of these debts were for payments to for-profit colleges that tend to be a waste of money in the first place. By allowing loans for those colleges, the government entices people into debts they can't pay.
Drug trafficking involves lots of killing; the number murdered, over decades, may amount to millions.
Those directly responsible are the killers. Drug users help create the circumstances that encourage the traffickers/killers, but they are not alone in doing so. Prohibition plays an equally crucial role.
Rich Republicans have put 50 million dollars into defeating Tea Party loonies whose risible statements have imperiled their dooH niboR agenda.
The Canadian government trashed archives of scientific data and research, especially pertaining to the environment.
Canadian scientists say this was done to sabotage informed resistance to the extractivist agenda.
US citizens: call on your senators
to oppose
new sanctions against Iran. Give diplomacy a chance.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Long-term unemployment makes many young people despair and think of suicide.
The "defensive patent license" ought to be called the "still offensive patent license", because of the exclusion of anything it calls a "clone" — which is itself dishonest, since it the way they define it, it includes a lot more than clones. It includes any similar functionality.
Apple could license its patents this way and still use them against free software smart phones.
The US is plagued by redistributionist politicians, redistributing as usual to the rich.
I'm proud to be a redistributionist: I say we should move that money back.
Peer
pressure turns
children into competitive consumers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The NSA refuses to say whether it snoops on Congress.
I suspect it makes special efforts to snoop on Congresscritters, in order to blackmail them.
Underfunding of medical care in the UK kills people by slowing down the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
The UK government wants to destroy old-growth forests and replace them with tree plantations.
The full text of Jacob Appelbaum's speech about NSA attack methods and what they can do to computer systems.
Everyone:
call
on the US and UK governments to stop persecuting journalists that
write about the wrongdoing of the state.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The non-al-Qa'ida Syrian rebels say they have launched outright war with al Qa'ida.
Before rejoicing, we need to get confirmation of what is really happening, though that won't be easy to get.
Welcome to the New America: Low-Wage Nation.
The USDA says it wants to deregulate GM corn that is resistant to Agent Orange.
Talk about "bringing the war back home"!
The Government Accountability Project Statement on Edward Snowden and NSA Domestic Surveillance.
The US does not have a choice between fixing unemployment and fixing
inequality.
Fixing one
requires fixing the other.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The Israel Lobby in the US is
trying
again to kill the deal with Iran.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
As the US endorses letting Israel retain control of the Jordan valley, maintaining a permanent siege of Palestine, Netanyahu demands even more.
Idaho will take back a privatized prison that has been run horribly.
For a company to squeeze a profit out of a prison, it has to mistreat the prisoners somehow.
Imploring Mayor de Blasio to close the school-to-prison pipeline.
2013 was Australia's hottest year, and for each of its regions too.
Abbott says he will bring about a small, insufficient reduction in emissions by 2020, by methods that aren't likely to work at all. Planting trees may be good in other ways, but it takes a long time for them to pull CO2 out of the air, assuming they don't die or even burn.
The new planned coal mines would swamp that.
Meanwhile, Abbott has appointed a "business advisor" that campaigns loudly to deny global heating.
We can guess what business his advice represents.
What will we see next on the Abbott and Australia show? Perhaps this: Abbott lights a match on Australia, and Australia says, "Hay, Abbott!"
The carbon price in emissions-trading schemes has fallen
so
low that the schemes do nothing to reduce emissions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Large UK landlord companies are refusing to rent to people on welfare.
The Tories are evil, greedy monsters that deserve to live on the street along with the banksters.
Senator Sanders has
asked the
NSA whether it snoops on Congress.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
As poor in the UK face hunger and homelessness, the government has announced it will cut off another aid program which is meant to help in "emergencies".
It would defeat the purpose of pushing millions into emergencies, if there's a program that would help.
Cambodian thugs
shot
garment workers protesting for higher pay.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
We must put an end to the treaties that drive countries to compete to offer foreign business the lowest wages.
The Australian government wants Greenpeace activist Colin Russell to pay for the useless "assistance" it gave him when he was persecuted by Putin.
In effect, Abbott seeks a way to punish him financially after Putin jailed him for months.
This is because Abbott and Putin are on the same side — the extractivist side.
How MIT's callousness and exaggerations condemned Aaron Swartz.
David LaMacchia set up an internet bulletin board site where anyone could upload and download files. He didn't put the files in it himself, but the US government wanted to hold him personally responsible for the files that were uploaded. US government representatives systematically smeared LaMacchia, who on his lawyer's advice did not dare say they were wrong; but he had already explained the facts to people at the Artificial Intelligence Lab, and that's where I heard them. This article repeats the givernment's claim.
The government used this smear to push for the passage of the law that criminalized noncommercial sharing on the Internet, an attack on our rights that we will have to fight to undo.
The US regularly puts nonviolent accused "terrorists" in solitary confinement for years, blocking them from discussing their cases properly with their lawyers, and eventually gets them to plead guilty after their minds have broken.
US suppression of possible Muslim "radicalization" has been stretched to the point of prosecution of thoughtcrime.
You don't have to be Islamist, or even Muslim, to think that people in a country conquered by the US have the right to resist occupation. Anyone who hates oppression believes that. Why shouldn't Muslims say that?
On the other hand, anyone who is such a "good" Muslim as to support Islam's contempt for women, its cruel Shari'a law, or its disrespect for everyone's religious freedom, deserves plenty of criticism. You can't duck the odium of those views by saying it's a religion.
US citizens: Sign this petition calling on Congress not to turn the Endangered Species Act into a hollow absurdity.
US citizens: sign this petition calling for prosecution of Clapper for lying to Congress.
US citizens: sign this petition for Obama to give Snowden amnesty.
And this one:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
There is another campaign asking people to fax Obama copies of the New York Times editorial that says Snowden should be offered a reduced punishment. I think that is an insult to a hero, and I didn't support it. I support this instead.
Just about all the sides in Syria and Iraq are fighting against al Qa'ida. Even some other Islamist militias.
The defeat of al Qa'ida would mean the defeat of the worst sort of fanaticism. However, if the other Islamist militias are part of the winning side, I fear that women, human rights and non-Muslims in those areas will still be on the losing side.
Taliban attacked and murdered foreign climbers on a mountain in Pakistan, as an intentional reprisal against people who had nothing to do with the war.
This is much nastier than US drone attacks. Imagine if the US had deliberately targeted a wedding party while believing that everyone there was a noncombatant, and you'd have an equivalent for this.
Pakistan says it has arrested those responsible.
The US
participated directly when Colombia attacked a FARC camp just across
the border in Ecuador.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The argument that a state has the right to fight its enemies when they are sheltered by another state is valid in some circumstances, but one must look at the rest of the situation. For instance, did the Ecuadorian government shelter or sponsor that camp (or even know about it)? Did Colombia ask Ecuador for assistance in dislodging it?
There may be other relevant factors. The Colombian state was and still is closely connected with the worst terrorist group in Colombia, the paramilitaries.
Although the FARC have degenerated into drug trafficking and kidnap for profit, they are still better than the paramilitaries. Is support for the FARC justified on these grounds?
Michael Moore: The Obamacare We Deserve.
I'm a real Liberal, and Obama is hardly much of a Liberal, so I don't silence my views to support him.
Israel Cages
Palestinian Children in Outdoor Holding Pens During Freezing
Storm.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Employees of Mèdecins Sans Frontières seem to have
been kidnaped
in Syria.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Ralph Nader calls on Dubya to accept responsibility for turning Iraq into a place of horror.
US citizens: call on the Senate
to extend
unemployment benefits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Bretons are protesting and destroying cameras to prevent implementation of a tax on truck travel.
Taxes like this are necessary to conserve fuel, and the pain they impose is nothing compared to the pain they will avoid. I think the protesters are making a mistake — like protesting about a visit to the dentist.
The tax money should be to stimulate the economy in other ways.
The Iraqi state
has allied
with non-radical Sunnis to fight al Qa'ida.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
If Sunnis and Shi'ites can work together, it might offer some hope for ending the terror in Iraq.
Everyone: call on Peru to ban hunting dolphins to use as bait for sharks.
The dolphins are not endangered, but the sharks are on the road to being wiped out.
US citizens:
tell
the Senate, no cuts in food stamps!
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
UK local governments use "back to work" schemes as a way to make people do real work for much less than the minimum wage.
UK austerity is about to create a wave of mass homelessness.
Newly released papers expose several lies by and about Margaret Thatcher.
In particular, there was her lie to the striking miners, claiming she had no plans to close additional mines. What else would right-wing politicians do besides lie?
Selling out to business has made India rich, while making half of all Indians abjectly poor.
What India needs most is to provide reliable modern contraception to every woman in India.
The UK's "porn filter" is a system of outsourced state censorship, based on the standard idiotic excuse.
Mesh networks could make the internet more flexible and reduce surveillance.
Iceland's ice is melting fast, and when it goes, Iceland will be short of water.
Its longest bridge spans a river that has gone permanently dry.
The plan to remove the grey wolf from the endangered species list is based on twisting the meaning of the law so as to make it systematically ineffective.
Information about the tiny physical surveillance devices that the NSA (or anyone) can install.
I am not especially bothered by the NSA's having these, since they won't be installed everywhere (and in the US would require a court order). What's dangerous to democracy is general surveillance applied to everyone.
An Indian girl who reported rapes was subsequently murdered by the rapists.
Giant mines planned in Sweden will block reindeer migration, and dust spread by the mines will kill reindeer anyway.
If someone tells you that the ship now caught in sea ice near Antarctica disproves global heating, here's the real science.
The software freedom fight comes to the farm, as computerized farm machines have created a battle over whether farms will control their own computing and data, or be prey to Monsanto and other large companies.
It's regrettable that this idealistic author adopts the anti-idealistic term "open source", which was designed to suppress this sort of idealism. Clearly, the suppression does not work 100%, but it continues to weaken our movement.
An Economy
That Benefits Ordinary People? What We Learned From the 1%.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
How to reverse financialization.
2013 was Iraq's deadliest year since 2008.
Republicans are planning a new series of artificial impediments to abortion.
Considering the many ways not having an abortion can harm a woman — before, during, and years after birth — it would make more sense to require a waiting period for the decision not to have an abortion.
Chomsky on the NSA, earth's destruction, the loss of journalism, the downgrading of education, and more.
NSA, Benghazi
and the Monsters of Our Own Creation: the US government knows
everything but learns nothing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
The same can be said about al Qa'ida in general. Despite all its intelligence gathering, the US has only managed to make al Qa'ida stronger.
The ACLU is trying to find out about the surveillance of Americans that the NSA does as a byproduct of supposedly spying on foreigners.
NSA Intercepting Laptops Bought Online to Install Spy Malware.
Gmail was planned from the start as a massive surveillance system, to make psychological profiles not only of Gmail users but of everyone who sends mail to Gmail users.
The New York Times (and other media) use truncated time lines to claim that fighting between Israel and Gaza is always started by Gazans.
A few years ago it was noted that it was typically Israel that broke the truce with Hamas.
US citizens: call for allowing the Monsanto Protection Act to lapse.
From Turing to Snowden: How US-UK Pact Forged Modern Surveillance (of everyone).
It should be noted that the US got various warnings of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, but officials did not take the warnings seriously.
A world-wide poll found that the world's population considers the USA to be the biggest threat to world peace.
An ACLU victory: families applying for welfare in Florida can't be required to take drug tests.
I joined the ACLU when George I criticized Governor Dukakis for being a "card-carrying member", effectively likening the defense of civil liberties to Communism. I asked myself, "If Michael Dukakis can be an ACLU member, why am I not one?" Then I joined.
22000 students in New York City are homeless.
Will Mayor de Blasio help them find shelter? There are places in New York City where tents could be set up.
Legal marijuana stores are opening in Colorado.
Transporting oil by
rail is
very dangerous, but pipelines are becoming less safe, too.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
Why are pipelines less safe than previously? Maybe they are just getting old. Maybe the government doesn't require as much inspection and maintenance as before. Maybe the government has fewer inspectors, or doesn't dare fine companies enough to make them comply. It certainly isn't trying hard enough.
Abbott is using his "business advisor" to spread global heating denialism.
Abbott warned Australia that he isn't the suppository of all wisdom, but who needs a suppository with shit like this?
Ideas for compromise about Netanyahu's demand for recognizing Israel as "a Jewish state" rather than just a state.
The Israel double standard: other countries get sanctions for violating human rights, but Israel only gets a boycott.
10,000 Palestinian children living with their parents in Jerusalem can't get Jerusalem residency cards, or health care , and after they reach 16 they won't be allowed to live with (or even visit) their mothers.
Required identity cards are an injustice in themselves, of course, even if not applied in this discriminatory fashion.
Daily Kos: 15 things everyone would know if there were a Liberal media.
Congressional Republicans ask the IRS to produce a one-sided report, creating an appearance of a scandalous political bias, which the same Republicans then attacked.
Japanese companies recruit homeless people to work on the Fukushima cleanup, then cheat them of their wages.
I'm glad that there is work available for homeless people, but cheating them is despicable. (It's common practice for businesses to cheat workers.) And this work might be dangerous to them, and to others if not done right. It needs to be done by people who know what they are doing.
Services that claim to test your DNA and predict risk of various diseases don't really know what they are doing.
Some researchers expect that 10 to 20 percent of jobs for college graduates will be replaced by AIs in the next two decades.
This is in addition to many other jobs that will be eliminated — drivers, for instance, and supermarket sales jobs.
We are already seeing the effects of this, in long-term unemployment of people who have given up looking for jobs. All economic growth goes to the rich few, so it creates few jobs. The jobs lost to computerization will not be replaced by other jobs.
If you are a young person now and you are not brilliant or aiming at a career such as medicine, I recommend that you not get yourself in debt to go to college. You'll never pay that debt off. Instead, organize for your state to adopt Oregon's plan for funding a college education. If it takes ten years to win, you can go to college then, and you'll still be better off.
Passing the entrance exam for a Japanese university is less challenging for an AI than you might suppose. Those exams focus on rote learning, so passing requires a lot of knowledge but no creativity. It does, however, require human-style common sense for the reading comprehension, and that is the central challenge in AI.
Oil extraction from Canadian tar sands spews out mercury, which is toxic.
Burning coal also spews mercury.
Letting companies "regulate themselves" is a standard right-wing agenda. The conservative regime in the US is considering letting chicken factories inspect themselves.
The NSA's methods of spying on computers include physical spy devices such as radio-transmitter USB plugs, as well as devices they insert into a computer while it is being shipped.
What
this implies.
Greenwald and an ACLU lawyer comment on how
Obama
is the NSA's trojan horse in the Democratic Party.
We had a name, in the 1980s, for politicians with views like Obama's:
"Republicans". I used to be a Democrat … until the Democratic
party as a whole turned conservative and no longer deserved my
support. However, we are now electing some Democrats worthy of the
name, such as Elizabeth Warren.
The owners of the factory in which fire killed 112 workers now face
murder
charges.
I don't think that the executives of western clothing lines deserve to
be charged with murder. It is more effective to make them responsible
for the working conditions of the factories that make their clothing
— and prosecute every time they fail to check, not just
on the rare occasions when that kills someone.
3 more
prisoners in Guantanamo have been released.
The US has known for 10 years that there was never any reason to
imprison them.
Obama
keeps
lying to whitewash the NSA.
Shoot-to-kill rangers protected elephants, but
oppressed
humans.
What can the replacement be?
Egypt is applying
US-style
forfeiture to 500 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Extreme
weather disasters in the Caribbean.
The Shocking
Redistribution of [US] Wealth in the Past Five Years.
A new climate model says we are on track for
4C
of global heating by 2100.
The Israeli government displayed its contempt for Kerry's "peace
negotiations" by
backing
a plan to annex a large fraction of the West Bank in order to keep
it permanently under siege.
Netanyahu does not care how this affects the "negotiations", since he
has no intention of making a peace agreement. I think his goal is to
show that he still has the US government cowed; that he can ridicule
the US and the "negotiations" and Kerry won't dare make a peep.
The NSA's
catalog
of attack software: they can attack BIOSes, routers, even the
firmware of hard drives.
The NSA has a special unit to
crack
security of machines that are hard to crack.
It is legitimate to have a unit like this, but its operations must be
very strictly controlled, and we cannot trust officials that lie to
Congress to do that.
The comparison with "plumbers" is telling, since Nixon used the
same metaphor to describe his team of burglars, whose best known
crime was in the Watergate hotel.
States that vote right-wing
tend
to take from the Federal government, while Democratic states
contribute.
Another oil train collided and started
another
big fire.
We were lucky this time — the collision took place in a deserted
area and it seems nobody was directly hurt. Oil trains go through
towns and cities, and we can't be lucky every time.
Everyone: On Jan 3, make a sign saying "Edward Snowden", go to an
airport, and wait for
him to arrive.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-14 because the old link was broken.]
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