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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: tell the U.S. Senate to reject the China Bilateral Investment Treaty. It's like a miniature TPP.
Papua New Guinea's prime minister says he will close the Manus Island prison where Australia has parked people who tried to go to Australia by boat. He asks Australia to find another place to put boat people.
Papua New Guinea's constitution has protections for human rights which are needed in Australia's constitution.
Muslim fanatics in Bangladesh have murdered 16 writers that stood for ideas that the fanatics dislike, and the murder campaign is accelerating.
China has imposed strict rules on foreign NGOs that operate in China to make it hard for them to finance local organizations.
The UK thugs have often collaborated hand with the rich and their media outlets against the rest of Britain. The coverup and denial of the Hillsborough killings were an example.
Obama Is Chipping Away at the 'New Jim Crow'. But More Needs To Be Done.
Germany is proposing measures that would make offshore tax evasion somewhat more difficult.
However, this would have no effect on tax dodging which is lawful.
In places where ISPs make users pay to access anything but Facebook and/or Wikipedia, they use those services for file sharing.
File sharing is good, and ought to be legal. Shame on that article for supporting the publishers' smear campaign by calling sharing "piracy".
I understand that Wikipedia does not want to be a site for file sharing. Besides which, it has a specific purpose, and letting people post whatever they wish is not it. Still, they should not support the smear campaign.
It is also a mistake to refer to works as "content".
US congresscritters have hired former tax-dodger lobbyists to write the tax regulations.
Australian Greens call for a tax on mines to pay for the environmental damage they do.
Chatbots are ideal for phishing, because they are running on a server that isn't yours.
Any speech recognition running on a server that isn't yours, you can't trust.
US citizens: call on Wall Street to stop giving "golden parachutes" to employees that move to government appointments.
The president should not appoint such people. Sanders would not.
US citizens: stand with striking Verizon employees.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass Biotechnology Food Labeling and Uniformity Act.
Everyone:
call on
Niger to raise the age for marriage so that teenagers are not
forced into marriage.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
It is wrong to refer to teenagers as "children" — that tends to encourage people to disrespect their rights. They are adolescents. Forced marriage is bad enough that we need not exaggerate by calling the victims "children".
Over a million people in the UK live in destitution, meaning they can't afford the basic necessities of life.
The Tories put them in destitution by systematically searching for opportunities for dooH niboR. Their policies for driving rents up and driving wages down contributed too.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
A UK court found that 96 football fans that died in Hillsborough stadium in 1989 were killed by the negligence of thugs.
The thugs started constructing their cover-up almost immediately.
Bangladesh's Democracy Is at Risk if Sheikh Hasina Does Not Stop Extremists [from murdering those that disagree with them].
If Not Now, When? Young Jews Refuse to Stay Silent on the Occupation This Passover.
"Nestlé Is Trying to Break Us": A Pennsylvania Town Fights Predatory Water Extraction.
Protests have broken out in Cairo, so strongly that the state can't entirely suppress them.
How ironic that the protests that the Egyptian regime arise on an issue of misconceived patriotism.
According to the Egyptian state, the two islands in question belonged to Salafi Arabia all along, and its king asked Egypt to station troops on them in case Israel tried to occupy them. I have no reason to doubt that this is true, but apparently Egyptians won't take al-Sisi's word for it.
Whistleblowers who complain about abuse of prisoners in Australia's offshore immigration prisons face mockery and punishment.
Smoking reduction measures in Germany are quite effective; few young people start smoking there now.
Plans and models for coping with global heating should not presume we will soon be able to remove CO2 from the atmosphere in substantial quantities.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Murphy-Paul-Lieu-Yoho law to limit arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens: Thank the legislators that defended freedom of speech by opposing bills to censor advocacy of boycott, divestment and sanctions towards Israel.
I do not support this campaign; rather, I support Gush Shalom's campaign to boycott companies that profit from Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. However, whatever we think of the Palestinian BSD campaign as substance, we must all support people's right to advocate that policy (and various other policies).
Pressuring Australia to cut its giant subsidies for fossil fuels.
Congress Demands to Know How Many [US] Citizens Are Being Spied On [by the NSA].
"Intelligent assistants" that listen to everything you say might someday discern your intentions to buy something. Or at least they might convince you that you intended to buy it.
US citizens: call on Obama to order no more oil and gas drilling in Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
US citizens: tell the US government to Keep federal lands federal — don't give them to states to sell off.
Everyone: call on the US Exim Bank not to support a coal plant next to the Sundarbans.
The kelp forests of Northern California are dying across a broad region. Other species that depend on kelp are dying too.
No one knows why this is happening, but global heating and El Niño may play a role.
Uber doesn't make things easy for people whose accounts have been stolen.
Michigan Officials Charged in Flint Water Poisoning, But Gov. Snyder Has Not Even Been Questioned.
The idea that he didn't know about this, while paying close attention to little details of other issues, is not credible.
People in part of New Orleans are being invited to report "suspicious" activities, such as people sleeping on the street, people walking while Black, etc.
This is being aimed at a neighborhood undergoing gentrification, and seems tailor-made to help force the poorer "undesirables" out.
Another professor in Bangladesh has been assassinated by religious fanatics. The victim this time was, it appears, a secularist but did not campaign for secularism.
The National Coordinating Center for Communications monitors the status of cell phone networks in the US, and can shut them down, too.
EFF and ACLU Expose Government's Secret Stingray Use in Wisconsin Case.
Why destroying Kenya's collection of confiscated ivory is the right way to protect elephants.
Considering how hard it is to burn ivory, and how much CO2 that generates, I wonder if there is some other safe and effective way of ruining it for sale. If ivory is chopped into small pieces, do they biodegrade?
The FCC is investigating rules to make ISPs protect users' privacy, but the proposals don't go far enough.
The ISP need to know what you are currently connecting to, but it has no need to remember what you connected to more than a minute ago. It should not be allowed to remember this, except under a specific court order.
Why Do People Get So Upset When The Government Helps The Poor?
Applications to help women get pregnant are spyware, to help companies find out who is pregnant (and who wants to be).
Fate of World's Coastlines Rests on Melting Antarctic Ice.
Chimpanzees prefer their vegetables cooked, and will save food for later in order to have a chance to cook it.
A group of congresscritters have demanded that the NSA report how many US citizens' data the NSA has collected "incidentally" through PRISM.
Egyptian Ministry of Interior Accuses Reuters of 'Spreading False News'. Journalists could be sentenced to 3 years in prison for this.
For the Egyptian tyranny, any critical news is "false" by definition.
Medical businesses are spending heavily to defeat a proposed single-payer medical system in Colorado.
The single-payer system is good, but the way it will be paid for is badly designed. It should come from income tax instead so as to make the rich pay a bigger share.
UK immigration has a habit of denying asylum with careless snap judgments, deporting people who are likely to be tortured and so on.
It will now make that carelessness harder to resist by charging so much for an appeal that most refugees won't be able to afford it.
The "need" to charge more only exists because the government is giving that money to rich people by letting them pay little tax.
Investigative journalist Nick Turse reports on how he filed 300 Freedom of Information Act requests in a year, all for his investigative work. The Pentagon calls him a troll, and wants the law changed to block such investigations.
London Next in International Campaign to Stop Pearson (Mis)Education.
A lawsuit in Chile aims to ban the use of surveillance balloons that track everybody everywhere on the street.
Tony B'liar's staff were warned in 2001 by the head of counterterrorism in MI6 that Dubya's plans to invade Iraq would inspire terrorists.
Either he ignored this, and was incompetent, or he secretly welcomed the opportunity this would offer him to look tough by attacking Britons' freedom, and was a traitor.
The UK Labour Party refused to sell McDonalds a booth at the party conference, because McDonalds persistently refuses to negotiate with workers that are trying to form a union.
I would say "Bravo!" except that this shouldn't be seen as exceptional. It should be a "no brainer". The fact that it isn't so seen, that some even question it, is a measure of how far New Labour took it into supporting plutocracy. I am glad to see it reinvigorated.
The plutocratist Labour Party, like the Clinton-Obama wing of the Democratic Party, won't try to do anything more than slow the surrender to the rich.
A well-meaning "local currency" project seems to have total surveillance as a byproduct.
I can't understand how people who presumably do not like massive surveillance can set this issue completely aside when they judge projects and products that track people. If we want to continue having democracy, we must build systems that surveil less.
I was disgusted to see today that the only way to pay for street parking in Paris (at least on the street where I am staying) is with some sort of credit card. That tracks people's movements. Even if the card is not associated with any person, the system will record that the same person paid for parking in a series of places. This is creeping total surveillance, and we must hate every single step in this campaign against our rights.
Omar al-Bashir, tyrant of Sudan, keeps on having his thugs kill students.
Big companies such as Google and Facebook have built large installations close to sea level, and they are going to get flooded.
Reporters Without Borders now ranks the US as number 41 in freedom of the press, because of Obama's persistent attacks on journalists' sources (i.e., whistleblowers).
This is where the US has a duty to be number 1.
Faisal bin ali Jaber continues to sue for information about the US drone attack that killed his relatives.
To stop global heating, it is vital to make the rich pay taxes by ending their tax-dodging.
Poor countries need 4 trillion dollars through 2030 to reduce their emissions as much as they have already pledged, and those pledges are far from sufficient to avoid disaster.
A proposed business-supremacy treaty for Asia includes restrictions on generic medicines, and would stop India from providing many generic drugs to poor people in a number of other countries.
As with other business-supremacy treaties, often referred to misleadingly as "free trade treaties" by their supporters, there is no good in this treaty. The countries involved should kill it.
It is a fundamental mistake to call these restrictions "intellectual property" because that leads people to confuse them with unrelated issues such as copyright law. Every time that term is used, it spreads confusion — so please, don't use it!
A new natural gas pipeline to Massachusetts has been blocked.
The public in the US and Europe has turned against the TPP. Will that be enough to stop it?
The Netherlands shut down an encrypted communication service, Ennetcom, on the grounds that some of its users were using it do crime.
This seems rather dangerous to me.
Foods and supplements can't "boost your immune system".
Torture victims will be allowed to sue the psychologists that designed the CIA's torture program, and subpoena documents about it.
After Turkish academics condemned the gratuitous war against Kurds in Turkey, Erdoğan can't decide whether to accuse them of "terrorist propaganda" or "insulting Turkishness".
This is absurd. Those academics do honor to Turkishness; it is Erdoğan whose conduct insults Turkishness.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to veto the dirty energy bill.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: tell the Treasury Department not to allow pension cuts for the Central States Pension Fund.
US citizens: call on the Senate to protect net neutrality by rejecting the bill designed to kill it.
The FCC's network neutrality regulations are not strong enough, but what SCROTUS want is none at all.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
Call
for closing a loophole in campaign funding law.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: ask your congresscritter to cosponsor the bill to audit the Pentagon.
After a Syrian or Russian plane bombed a hospital in Aleppo, the cease-fire has nearly collapsed.
Gene therapy has successfully treated a kind of blindness.
Investigating the causes of the US attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz. It seems to have really been confusion. I wouldn't expect the US Army to attack a hospital intentionally. Journalists, maybe.
When a Robot Kills, Is It Murder or Product Liability?
The Mika Model story starts where Ex Machina leaves off. But the part with the screwdriver is not credible. The company would just send a command to shut the robot down.
The Marshall Islands are suffering the worst drought ever recorded.
Trump's big "foreign policy" statement is incoherent, packed with self-contradictions.
I think this is because he decided to include all the points that might appeal to voters he seeks, and did not consider contradictions a problem. Perhaps he knows that his supporters won't be careful enough to notice them.
Republicans: It's OK for Corporations to Kill Workers.
Volkswagen and Shell are lobbying the EU not to reduce car emissions.
The civil war in South Sudan may have ended; the leaders of the two warring parties have started a "transitional government".
I wish them success at it.
Before British colonization, the Dinka and the Nuer used to be at war all the time, but they didn't have firearms.
A study found that some neonicotinoid pesticides harm bumblebee colonies,but one other neonicotinoid does not harm them.
There are many species of wild bees, and it is possible that the one that doesn't harm these bumblebees may harm other bees.
UK Greens: "Greens are often critical of the status quo. No wonder the police monitor us."
Some US charter school chains conceal the information that would help the public judge whether they do a good job.
Obama admitted, more or less, that the UK is of no particular importance in US policies.
Of course, we've known since Tony B'liar gave Dubya everything he wanted that the "special relationship" has a name: "subservience" or "vassalage".
Philip Nitschke, advocate for those who want to die, says that Avril Henry felt compelled to kill herself sooner than she would have preferred, from fear that she would be committed to a hospital/prison for planning an eventual suicide.
Even though she was fighting only to avoid her own pointless suffering, that was a worthy goal, and she was admirably level-headed and decisive about it. Her death was the world's loss, but we had no grounds to force her to stay alive, and it would have been wrong to do so by turning her life into hell.
Nitschke has been made a pariah for refusing to judge good and bad reasons for committing suicide.
I don't agree with him entirely. Many people want to commit suicide from depression; the depression may be treated, or spontaneously end, and then they will probably be glad they are still alive. It makes sense to stop them from making an irrevocable decision.
However, there are also same people who want to commit suicide for sane reasons, and they should be allowed to do so and should be entitled to practical help in arranging to be able to do so.
As countries lackadaisically sign the Paris climate agreement and take hesitant steps to do not enough, the treaties' climate goals are slipping out of reach.
Will Real-World Emissions Tests Clean Up Diesel Cars?
To See the Real Story in Brazil, Look at Who is Being Installed as President — and Finance Chiefs.
A large dam project in Brazil's Amazonia has been stopped because it would inundate indigenous people's land.
A large coral reef has been discovered at the mouth of the Amazon River, and oil companies are already working on killing it.
College Could Be Free In America If Corporations Paid Reagan-Era Taxes.
A Michigan official asked a technician in 2008 to artificially disguise high lead readings in drinking water.
Papua New Guinea's Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to accept forced transfer of refugees from Australia. It is not clear what effect that will have, since Australia refuses to take them back.
A man writes about how his stepfather's violence crippled his mother, and in a way him also.
I used to hear, on Saturday nights, my father belittling and insulting his wife. I don't think he went as far as to hit her, but he made her miserable. And I felt miserable for her.
Pearson is privatizing the admissions decisions for teacher training in the US.
The usual pattern with privatization is that the company cuts corners, pays peanuts, and does a bad job. According to that letter, that's what's happening here.
Oklahoma thugs tried to steal $53,000 raised for charity by Burmese musicians, by claiming (against all evidence) that it had something or other to do with illegal drugs.
The CIA used prisoner Abu Zubaydeh as a guinea pig for torture methods for years, claiming he was a member of al-Qa'ida even though it already knew this was not true.
Now it wants to keep him in solitary confinement forever so that he can't testify about the way he was tortured.
Merrick Garland, proposed by Obama for the Supreme Court, sits now on the appeals court that has waited for years without ruling on Abu Zubaydeh's habias corpus petition. If he ever gets a hearing in Congress, I hope someone has the courage to pressure him about this.
But that won't affect my conclusions about whether he should be on the Supreme Court. He's not a progressive, he's a plutocrat.
Boston College has been ordered to hand over taped interviews that supporters of the IRA made, after they were promised these would be shown to others only after they were dead.
The latest digital technology is perfect at taking note of everything you do, and informing various companies and states about it.
The article says "Your devices", which presumes the reader has fallen into the trap. I hope you don't accept products like this.
"Privacy violations erode individuals' rights to autonomously make their own decisions and exercise individual power."
In the UK, as in the US, the tax authorities harp on the non-rich for small sums, but don't bother with the rich.
In the US, this was a political choice, probably because most of Congress has been bought.
In the TTIP, Chevron lobbied for the power to sue states if they take measures to curb global heating.
Various possible replacements for the "War on Drugs".
A war that's on drugs is especially dangerous because it tends to attack everyone indiscriminately.
One reason many people eat too much is that we have become accustomed to large plates.
Sheldon Adelson has turned the Las Vegas Review-Journal into a personal propaganda rag, prohibiting a columnist from criticizing him. The columnist, John L Smith, has quit in response.
Adelson had previously bankrupted Smith with a bogus defamation lawsuit.
Asha Moni, widow of murdered Bangladeshi secularist blogger Niladry Chattopadhya, says, "I must survive to seek justice," as she expects she is also a target.
Almost 80% of Junior Doctors (across England) Took Part in All-Out Strike. "Junior doctor" in the NHS includes a large fraction of the doctors.
There are now Salafi militias in Yemen, due apparently to the intervention by Salafi Arabia.
The NAACP's campaign against North Carolina's voter-ID law lost the first battle.
Brazil is considering a "cyber crime" bill that could impose broad and arbitrary censorship, as well as threatening users' anonymity.
5 billion dollars in penalty for Goldman Sachs would be just the cost of doing business— but the US government was so subservient that it will let company off paying substantial parts of that.
Trachoma could be eradicated for just a billion dollars.
Visiting investigators say that Mexican officials refused to cooperate with their investigation into the massacre of 43 students, about two years ago.
The CIA with help from Georgetown University, is censoring cold war history.
ALEC wants to keep poor people from suing, effectively end workman's compensation, and stop the US government from acting to end depressions.
If Britain leaves the EU, it will be an opportunity to escape from present and past business-supremacy treaties. But the Tories won't use it for that — quite the contrary.
What they want to get rid of is the European human rights treaty.
The UK government is now attacking the independence of the BBC. That follows a path made by Berlusconi.
Meanwhile, in the US there's no need for right-wing state control of PBS and NPR, because the same companies that mostly give orders to the state have lots of control over them.
Cruz and Kasich decided to work together to block Trump from the Republican nomination.
I don't agree that Trump is the worst of them all. All the Republican and Democratic candidates are lousy except for Sanders. While Trump blazed a new trail of overt hostility to Mexicans and Muslims, the other Republican candidates are probably more serious than he is in their hostility to women and poor people.
Meanwhile, Clinton has supported coups d'etat south of the border and bombs lots of muslims already.
Sanders is the only major party candidate that i will vote for. My second choice would be the Green Party candidate.
Chinese Journalist Sentenced to Nearly 5 Years for 'Provoking Trouble'.
Everyone: File a public comment asking California not to resume executions.
Malia Bouattia, elected head of the UK's National Union of Students, faces accusations of antisemitism for attacking Zionism.
England's NHS doctors, most of them, are planning an indefinite strike rather than accept the contract that the government wants to impose by edict.
The government's goal is to destroy the NHS, and paying its staff too little is the chosen method.
The issue affects only England as the other zones of the UK have separate NHS policies.
US citizens: call for moving marijuana out of Schedule 1, so as to stop pretending it has no medical use.
The UK government is talking about requiring foreign companies to disclose their true owners when they buy property in the UK or bid for government contracts.
That is a step in the right direction, but it should not be so limited. It should be a condition, for a payment to a foreign company to be deductible as a business expense, for that foreign company to disclose who owns it. That would come close to making it a requirement for doing business in the UK.
To avoid 2C of global heating, countries must strengthen their Paris Agreement pledges pretty soon.
But even 2C is too much.
Obama should declare a climate emergency and block US oil exports. That would not be enough to prevent global heating disaster, but it would be a step in the right direction. Even more important, it would set an example of recognizing how serious the problem is.
US citizens: call on Obama to block the merger of Syngenta and ChemChina.
Distribution of "child" pornography is now hidden on sites that normally appear to have only adult pornography. The result is that people trying to download the adult pornography may get "child" pornography they did not want. They could be jailed for this.
This is yet more proof that it is intolerable to prosecute people for having downloaded something, or having a copy of something — no matter what that something is.
Be careful not to take the term "child abuse images" on face value. It's accurate for some of the images, which are photos of real sexual abuse of real children, but not all of them. Some of the "children" are adolescents, or even adults that appear to be adolescents, and others are not real people at all.
The inhabitants of Ni'lin village continue regular nonviolent protests against the Israel wall that cut them off from their farmland, and Israel keeps attacking them.
US citizens: call on the Treasury Department to launch investigations of tax dodgers revealed by the Panama papers
Audi developed emissions test cheating software in 1999 but didn't use it. Volkswagen got it 10 years later and actually used it.
A Hamas militant put a bomb on a bus, and was killed by wounds from it.
Oakland, California, which used to have lots of slums, is now too expensive for poor people to live in at all.
What the Bay Area needs is a lot of non-luxurious housing built near mass transit lines.
Two FBI agents carried out a multi-stage plan to steer Khalil Abu Rayyan into terrorism. The first pretended to be in love with him, and broke his heart. Then the second one manipulated his suicidal inclinations by proposing terrorism as a substitute.
The plan didn't actually work: he didn't do anything. But it gave the FBI an excuse to search his house and find that he owned a gun.
Since the only reason to search his house was the plan to entrapment him, the gun should be invalid evidence and all charges should be dropped.
Alan Wainwright, who exposed the UK construction industry's blacklist, is suing because now he seems to be blacklisted.
Cambodia has banned a documentary about assassinated Cambodian activist Chut Wutty, who resisted deforestation.
It appears that the government is thoroughly corrupt and will go to great lengths to protect extractivist business. Killing Chut Wutty was part of that, and this act of censorship is too. Other environmental activists there have been imprisoned.
Maxima Acuña has blocked a big US company from digging a gold mine on the spot where her farm is located. Lawsuits, violence, and sabotage of her crops didn't make her back down, and international support helped her stand up to them.
The mine would have poisoned the whole zone, not just her farm.
The Koch brothers have spent 1.5 million dollars to fight a plan to protect the Grand Canyon region from uranium mining.
RIP Loomis Reef, the coral and the fish, killed by human action.
Extractivists keep saying, "Destruction is so far off that you shouldn't worry about it," until the destruction arrives. Then they say, "There's nothing left to destroy, so why not let us take all we wish?" But there are things elsewhere that we can still save, if we push it.
Face It, Britain's Corporate Fatcats Will Party Until We Turn the Music Off.
One way to turn it off: bring back high income tax rates for high incomes. While plutocratist governments compete to attract rich people to spend some money, democratic governments should ally to make sure the rich pay tax.
The billionaires financing Clinton's campaign are heavily invested in fossil fuels and pipelines.
Students at some US universities, campaigning for divestment from fossil fuels, have occupied school buildings and refuse to leave.
The UK Parliament voted to declare PISSI's attacks against Christians and Yazidis as "genocide".
This is a veiled rebuke to Erdoğan's hidden support for PISSI, but not overt criticism. Too bad — it would have been fun to see him demand prosecution of the UK Parliament for insulting him.
The ministers stubbornly refuse to do what Parliament told them to do.
There has to be a specific reason for such stubbornness. Are they protecting countries that helped PISSI reach the power to commit genocide?
Salafi Arabia's regime demonstrated hostility to visiting Obama, who has not given them the unstinting public support it feels entitled to.
The question is, will he have the courage to help curb the worldwide harm that Salafi Arabia does: oppression of women locally, and spreading extreme, fanatical and patriarchal Islam around the world.
Michigan officials face charges for poisoning Flint's water then lying to cover it up.
I agree that Governor Snyder should be the main target. We don't publicly have proof, but plenty of grounds for investigation.
However, starting by charging the small fry can be a fine way to make them testify against Mr Big.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a plutocratist "think tank" whose purpose is paid propaganda, faces investigation for aiding Exxon's global heating denial.
On the correct pronunciation of "Exxon".
Thugs that shot innocent people trying to flee flooded New Orleans have finally been sentenced to many years in prison.
Parents of children murdered in Sandy Hook are suing the gun manufacturer for marketing its product in militaristic ways that appeal to the desire to kill.
So far, global heating has affected the US mainly in less winter cold. As heating continues in this century, it will mean painful summer heat.
Unrelenting Winter Warmth Could Herald Alaska’s Future.
Another reason to leave your smartphone home: the constant search for frequent stimulation makes people more susceptible to boredom.
More trains and buses in the US record passengers' conversations.
Microphones that record all or most of the time should be banned by law in public transit vehicles including taxis.
In the UK, a university education at a non-prestigious university is no longer a path to higher income, but it saddles the student with high debt that is hard to pay off.
Malia Bouattia condemns antisemitism and says that she has always opposed this and other forms of bigotry.
It seems to be a case of the usual right-wing lie that labels all criticism of the occupation of Palestine as "antisemitism".
The leading presidential candidate in the Philippines is somewhat like another Trump, publicly promoting violence. He made a joke about a missionary who was raped and murdered, which may cost him the election.
If poor Filipinos are supporting him because society exploits them and offers them no opportunity, it follows that his campaign is yet another distraction campaign. It's the plutocrats, stupid!
Researchers are tackling the problem of extending the human lifespan.
I am very much in favor of this, but we will have even more need to reduce the birth rate.
Supposing we reduce the birth rate sufficiently, I expect life extension won't cause economic problems. This is because by the time these treatments work well and are quite common, developed countries will probably have an economic system that doesn't require people to work, and most people won't be able to find any work.
But we can't take that for granted. If the plutocrats win, they could force most people into Hunger Games poverty that few will want to extend.
The Egyptian "false news" published by Reuters is that Giulio Regeni was arrested and handed over to "homeland security" on the night he disappeared.
This doesn't prove that "homeland security" tortured and killed him, but it seems plausible from a regime so murderous.
Aggressive marketing of cosmetic surgery covers up the risk, paving the way for social pressure to make many people believe it is their only hope.
The result is a sort of beauty inflation, comparable to grade inflation in a school. When most students get an A, getting a B is in effect describes you as a bad student. When most people who aren't naturally beautiful get cosmetic surgery, an appearance that 40 years ago would have been just fine may now be regarded as ugly.
Anorexia is part of a similar phenomenon.
Republicans that oppose abortion rights mostly shy away from the logical conclusion, which is to treat their female relatives as murderers. So their excuse is to treat women as lacking responsibility for their actions.
The FISA court contrived a strained excuse to let the FBI study the bulk information that the NSA collects without half trying.
Some congresscritters are not happy with this.
Atheist Pastor Sparks Debate by 'Irritating the Church into the 21st Century'.
The amount of annual damage from "natural" disasters continues to increase.
Partly this is due to human activities; for instance, global heating makes droughts and floods happen, and deforestation also makes for worse flooding for the same amount of rain. Partly this is because of increase in human population: more people need to live in the regions that are prone to various sorts of disaster.
In addition to curbing global heating, we also need to curb the human population.
The Koch brothers say they might vote for Clinton.
This confirms that we shouldn't!
Time to Bury the 'Clean Coal' Myth.
Usually it refers to hypothetical future technology and they want you to treat it as given.
Patents will interfere with US marijuana farmers.
Patents should not be allowed to interfere with farmers' large-scale cultivation of crops.
Using the term "intellectual property" to refer to patents is a terrible mistake, because in other articles "intellectual property" refers to copyright, and in yet other articles it refers to trademarks. Patent law is totally different from copyright law, and both of them have nothing to do with trademark law, and confusing them leads invariably to total nonsense.
A decision by the CAFC effectively destroyed the right of first sale in patent law. The EFF asks the Supreme Court to reverse this decision.
New York thugs are being prosecuted for perjury, as well as for beating up a postman based on an irrational grudge.
The problems of people far away can seem very easy to fix with a little imported intervention.
Refuting several fallacious arguments offered by the lobbyists for countries that assist tax dodging.
In many US industries, profits are too high — because companies have effectively limited competition.
How Technology Helps Creditors Control Debtors, and denies ordinary people the possibility of owning things.
I think many of these practices ought to be prohibited by law. Not only because they work for the rich while restricting the liberty of the poor, but because they give publishers too much power.
A new Libyan government has been set up, mainly by foreigners. Some Libyan factions have joined it but others are reluctant. The talk about "security help" suggests that it is a vehicle for intervention, as is the government of Somalia.
I won't say that this is necessarily a bad thing, if it works. Libya is in horrible shape, due to previous US and European help. But this help could go wrong, too.
Hillary's Dance: The Two-Faced Hypocritical 12-Step.
Chemical and radioactive contamination at George Air Force Base makes the military personnel gravely ill and causes birth defects for their children.
US citizens: call on the EPA to close the loopholes in its Risk Management Plan for preventing accidents in chemical plants.
US citizens:
call on HUD
not to sell Americans' home mortgages to Wall Street.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour is on trial in Israel for a poem; the court is judging her based on a translation made by a thug who isn't even qualified as a translator.
Israel has
repeatedly
demolished the houses of Araqib, an old Bedouin village that
Israel refuses to recognize. They keep rebuilding, so Israel proposes
to fine the remaining inhabitants for each day that they have spent in
their village.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: tell Tobie Mining and Energy to drop its lawsuit against Colombia.
Colombia blocked a gold mine that could have poisoned part of the Amazon rain forest, and the mining company, based on the US, is now using the US-Colombia business supremacy treaty to sue.
It makes sense to pressure the company to drop the suit, but that's not enough. Colombia and the US should cancel this unjust treaty.
Facebook employees asked if Facebook should "stop Trump" by skewing what messages the useds of Facebook actually see.
It appears Facebook did not try to do this, but nothing prevents it. Which is another reason it is bad to be used by Facebook.
When people talk of "stopping Trump", they usually mean boosting some other candidate who is more or less right-wing, such as Cruz or Clinton. That makes no sense anyway.
India Drought 'Affecting 330 Million People' after Two Weak Monsoons.
The unparalleled heat is adding to the drought.
Chinese censorship systems actively look for Tor nodes so as to block them.
Thailand asks foreign residents to state their social media accounts, bank accounts, and the places where they buy things.
Don't go to Thailand — the state is effectively mad.
Thug representatives testifying to Congress want to add government censorship to the private censorship of corporate "app stores", as a way to ban encryption applications.
Threats by Billionaire Polluters intimidated the EU out of passing laws to curb pollution and greenhouse gases. The company threatened to move production out of the EU.
The right response would have been to tell them, "Get lost — Good riddance!"
It is true that sometimes pollution control laws can encourage companies to move the pollution to another country. That doesn't mean the laws are ineffective, though. Once some countries reduce pollution, it becomes easier to convince other countries to do likewise.
Israel has arrested a group of Jewish terrorists/ that tried to burn down a Palestinian house with a family in it.
This reminds me of what Islamist terrorists have done in Europe.
Why Is Britain Still Selling Saudi Arabia Arms to Use in Yemen?
A foolish protest at a university expresses solidarity with Muslim women who cover their hair as a statement of religious support for patriarchy.
Nobody is born with a hijab. People should have the right to cover their hair, but if you do so as a gesture of support for some religion, any religion, people are entitled to criticize you for that gesture. In particular, feminists may want to denounce the patriarchal religion that you are supporting, one that tells women (only!) that they should be ashamed if they don't do this.
Meanwhile, I suggest that the well-intentioned organizers of this event try organizing a "no hijab" day at a university in Iran, Libya, Salafi Arabia, or even Iraq.
The Council of Europe says that the EU's refugee deal with Turkey violates international law.
The EU should provide a lot more funds for food, shelter, education and health care for Syrian refugees, in the neighboring countries and internally displaced in Syria.
Half the US population lives in zones of dangerous air pollution.
Clinton gained substantially over Sanders in New York, but the fight is not over.
It would be premature to give up now and switch to supporting the Green Party.
In the US: call on American Electric Power to stop funding opponents of the Clean Power Plan.
Several Palestinian prisoners are on hunger strike against prolonged solitary confinement. Some of them have been imprisoned without trial.
US citizens: oppose the bill whose purpose is to sabotage the Endangered Species Act in name of sport.
The French government wants to extend the State of Emergency (i.e., suspended human rights) until the end of July because some important sports events are coming up.
Australian senators have proposed a ban on cosmetics with microbeads. The microbeads kill wildlife.
US citizens: call on Obama not to deliver portable anti-aircraft missiles to Syrian rebels.
The supposedly "secular" Syrian rebels collaborate constantly with al-Nusra (the branch of al Qa'ida) and any arms given to the one find their way to the other.
Thousands of Israelis rallied in support of the soldier that murdered an incapacitated Palestinian stab-attacker in cold blood.
At least one of them carried a sign saying "Kill them all." All Palestinians? All Palestinians suspected of crimes? These protesters also threatened a reporter with violence.
The UN stuck by the crushing "War on Drugs".
93% of the sub-reefs of the Great Barrier Reef have been hit by bleaching.
Bleaching typically leads to death of the coral polyps if it lasts for more than a short time.
The UK government has backed off from gagging scientists from talking about public policy, but it dragged its feet.
The UK arbitrarily ruled that MPs and their relatives are off limits for investigation for money-laundering.
The euro-banksters are starting to reveal what their next set of demands for Greece will be, after the current demands.
They say that these subsequent demands will be imposed if the current "reforms" are not "sufficient to produce" a budget surplus. That is a virtual certainty, since their real effect is to cause contraction and a bigger deficit.
What the banksters are saying is, in effect, "Next year, when it is seen that the gasoline we are throwing on the fire this year has not extinguished it, here's how much more gasoline we intend to throw."
It is a good thing that they are starting to talk about this, because it means that they have abandoned their tactic of pretending that each step is the last one. When Greeks see two steps at once, the current one and the next one, maybe they will rebel.
The FBI had many reasons to conclude that there was little pertinent information in Syed Farook's work phone, and no reason to give for demanding access to it except that there was a part of his day that it didn't know where he was. Its argument was that any gap was a valid argument for attacking all Americans' privacy.
The Swiss Federal Railways will stop collecting data on who rides where using the national rail pass.
This shows governments can respond to public demand not to accumulate data. However, what about the municipal and regional transportation authorities? Do they accumulate the data on their riders' identity, as they check the passes? They too must make a commitment not to do so.
The site makes a vicious claim to use copyright to restrict making links to this page. I spit on that, and you should too. I will never sell advertising on stallman.org, but that is for my own sense of integrity, and has nothing to do with their what they claim to "permit".
Although Obama has spoken some criticism of Salafi Arabia, he insists on continuing to give it everything it wants.
That's an Obama pattern — he does the same for the planet roasters and the banksters.
Erdoğan's latest insult to Turkishness: prosecuting a visiting Dutch journalist for tweets criticizing him.
It is not clear in the article whether she was in Turkey when she tweeted them, but Erdoğan aims to intimidate people world-wide.
Perhaps the Netherlands should post a travel advisory urging people to stay away from Turkey.
Murderer Anders Breivik is blocked from talking to other prisoners, but talks with other people every day. Is it right to call that "solitary confinement"?
"During the Second World War, our parents and grandparents had no doubt: refugee children had to be given succour and safety."
A substantial fraction of men are looking for women they can have sex with while feeling only contempt for them.
I don't understand what those men are thinking. What is the point of sex with someone you don't feel good about? I can't imagine it.
Poland's anti-human-rights government is trying to take control of a new museum built the history of World War II, so as to use it for political purposes.
I must agree with the Polish state that the term "Nazi death camps" is correct and "Polish death camps" is not. Even though Poland was antisemitic, Poles did not establish those camps, or organize rounding up Jews to kill in them. That was done by Germans under the orders of the German government.
However, the idea of prosecuting someone for expressing views about who killed how many Jews is viciously opposed to human rights. Sad to say, Poland is not the first European country to criminalize statements about that subject. France and Germany have set the example of doing so, and it is wrong there too.
Behrouz Bouchani has been given asylum in Papua New Guinea, but he never asked for asylum there. He never wanted to go there. He was forcibly taken there by Australia.
I can understand his not wanting to live in Papua New Guinea. It is not much of a happening place. There is no Iranian or Kurdish community there. And it is hot and humid. Much of Iran is also hot, but not humid like New Guinea.
On the other hand, if one is making the case, "Please let me into your country because they will kill me if I can't leave," it would seem that Papua New Guinea ought to suffice. No one will persecute him there for being a Kurd.
Will they ostracize him for not being a Christian? I don't know.
The suicide rate in the US has increased by 1/4 since 1999.
Important causes seem to be the spread of poverty, and the fact that many Americans don't have coverage for treatment for depression and can't afford to pay for it themselves.
The Nissan Leaf has a built-in cell phone modem which allows effectively anyone to access its computers remotely and make changes in various settings.
That's easy to do because the system has no authentication when accessed through the modem. However, even if it asked for authentication, you couldn't be confident that Nissan has no access. The software in the car is proprietary, which means it demands blind faith from its users.
Even if no one connects to the car remotely, the cell phone modem enables the phone company to track the car's movements all the time.
Someone I know physically disconnected the cell phone modem as a security measure.
Matthew Keys was sentenced to 2 years in prison as an accessory to digital graffiti, demonstrating that the CFAA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act) is no less unjust now than it was when it was used to drive Aaron Swartz to death.
Industrial chicken farming is cheap only because it does not pay the costs in terms of pollution, CO2 and antibiotic resistance.
For our long-term good, we need to make it pay those costs rather than dumping them on the rest of us.
Turkey has charged thug chiefs, among others, for the murder of Hrant Dink.
I am surprised that this can happen while Erdoğan is president, but I am very glad.
A German is on trial for calling some people "cattle" and "scum".
This reveals how Germany fails to respect freedom of speech. Freedom of speech includes the right to insult anyone and anything. We should defend people's freedom of speech regardless of whether we agree with what they said.
I don't call anyone "cattle" but I've referred to some people as "sheep". (I don't hate them, but I an very disappointed with them.) I am proud to call banksters and SCROTUS scum. Would I be put on trial for saying this in Germany?
Down with censorship!
Making naloxone available where people use opioids (for instance, in their homes) could save many of them from being harmed by overdoses.
The chance that old men develop dementia has fallen considerably in the UK since 20 years ago. Scientists speculate it may be due to adopting healthier lifestyles.
The probability for women has remained mostly the same. I wonder how that probability compares with that for men.
Freddie Gray, One Year Later: Baltimore's Black Residents Still Waiting For Changes.
Smoking tobacco through a water pipe seems to have the same danger as smoking cigarettes.
A new scientific approach confirms that essentially all the global heating since 1950 was caused by human activity.
Many countries have seen urban movements for the rights of the city dwellers.
The Limits to Growth forecasts of 40 years ago were right about pollution (which includes greenhouse gases).
US citizens: file a comment opposing new coal leases on federal land.
The word "empowerment" has been taken over by business and self-promoting celebrities, and changed from "helping some group win equal rights and respect" to "doing anything you chose to do, no matter how frivolous or unimportant."
There's nothing wrong with posting a nude video of yourself, and doing so could help defeat oppressive prudism (which is still a real problem).
However, outside of special circumstances, it's not going to do anything against the world's other big injustices, such as gender or racial discrimination, and plutocracy.
Vice President Biden says Washington must pressure Netanyahu to make peace.
A first step would be to calculate the amount of US aid to Israel based on the rate of decrease of the population of Israeli colonies in the West Bank. Separately, the US could offer to finance housing construction on Israeli territory. The US could also buy colony housing constructed before 2010, and turn it over to Palestinians.
The government of Queensland loosened laws against deforestation, and almost 800 square miles were denuded in 2 years. And that measurement was almost 2 years ago; deforestation has presumably continued apace.
Deforestation is a major contribution to greenhouse gases, so it threatens the whole world.
Proof of the nocebo effect: people who think that electromagnetic fields cause them to suffer really do suffer when interacting with someone else that believes special electromagnetic fields are present — whether that's true or not.
The US Supreme Court accepted the decision that Google Books is fair use.
That is a small victory for all of us against copyright tyranny.
Even negative interest rates don't convince big companies to invest. That's because there is excess capacity, world wide, and investments don't seem worth while in any case.
The way to make the economy grow is the Sanders way: tax the rich and invest heavily in renewable energy. That will put more money in people's pockets, and they will spend some as well as save some.
Imagine a back door in your clothing.
Stephen Lawrence's mother rebuked the head of London thugs for continuing to cover up how thugs spied on the family while the family campaigned for them to do their job properly.
Calling on the World Bank to treat censorship as a reason not to lend to countries that practice it.
Arms fair protesters presented evidence in court to prove that British arms fairs promote illegal arms sales. Now some MPs want to investigate the arms fairs.
What a big victory for these protesters.
'An international disgrace': Jesse Jackson calls for Chicago to close Homan Square.
Teenagers in Colorado have not increased their use of marijuana since it was legalized for adults.
We should not call teenagers "children" — they are adolescents. That error encourages treating them as incapable and trampling their rights.
Moving Australia 100% to renewable energy by 2050 would be a very profitable investment, yielding 90 billion dollars before that year.
There would be even bigger profits afterward.
But this study seems not to count the world-wide benefits of avoiding global heating disaster. Counting that, the rational course of action is a crash program to cut down fossil fuel use much faster.
The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also caused the large volcanic eruptions, already in progress, to flow twice as fast.
An Interview With Gustavo Castro, Sole Witness of the Murder of Berta Cáceres.
Proposing tax disobedience by the non-rich to make governments stop letting the rich off the hook.
In the US: call on PEN America to stop working with the Israeli embassy.
Pakistan is in the process of passing a law for arbitrary censorship of the internet.
The Israeli soldier who killed Abed al-Fatah al-Sharif has been charged with manslaughter — a rather weak charge for what appears to be murder of an incapacitated man in cold blood.
It is peculiar that the Guardian obeys a foreign demand to conceal the name of the soldier, who has already been identified in Israel and world-wide.
Many Israelis celebrate that soldier as a hero for this murder, which is disgusting. I won't mention his name, because I don't think he deserves more fame, but it is in the article pointed to above.
Two Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine were tried and sentenced for "terrorism".
I don't know the details of this "terrorism" but I am skeptical about it. They might have committed a war crime, but I have no faith in Ukraine's courts to judge that question honestly. To trade them for Savchenko seems legitimate, but there was no need to try them to do that.
An airplane hit a drone while landing; it was not damaged. However, pilots are concerned that a drone might damage an engine if it were sucked in.
It is important to keep drones away from airports, and it seems reasonable to design them to stay away from certain areas. But I am afraid that this will be done in a way that requires some proprietary software in the drone.
Due to a badly designed communication protocol, anyone can track and snoop on any mobile phone.
Protesters against plutocracy are getting themselves
arrested
daily at the US Capitol building.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Hamas is once again building tunnels from Gaza into Israel.
Making a tunnel is not in itself violence. It is a preparation for war, but Israel also is preparing for another war. I don't see anything particularly bad about this kind of preparation.
An important and quite old magazine editor in Bangladesh has been arrested.
The article seems inconsistent about the reasons for the arrest. It says "sedition" and talks about suspicion he is planning murder. Which one is he charged with?
But either way, it is clearly wrong. Charging anyone with "sedition" is automatically an injustice. That's not the case with charges of planning murder, but the idea that a respected editor would do that is totally incredible.
Everyone:
call
on the 5 biggest greenhouse emitters to deliver big emissions
reductions.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Greenpeace activists put gas masks on many statues in London.
Brazil's President Rousseff has been impeached by a vote of many criminals in congress.
It seems a travesty that she is being removed for a much lesser accusation while they can't be removed.
The procedure will be carried out over 180 days.
The IMF calls for more government spending. However, the plutocratists that control most governments are more interested in dooH niboR.
File-sharing has failed once again to kill the movie companies, which are enjoying record profits.
What's especially sad is that most of their profits are for films that are crap. Very likely, you often pay to watch a movie while knowing in advance that it is crap. Why do that?
I recommend joining me in a near-boycott of Hollywood: don't pay to watch a movie unless you have reason to believe it is likely to be good. In principle, that's quite different from an outright boycott; in practice the results are nearly equivalent.
Several US states forbid prisoners from having blogs, even maintained by their friends or relatives in their name. They can be punished by solitary confinement (i.e., brainwashing).
Obama admitted, in effect, that the US government secrecy system is totally broken.
This creates a great opportunity for selective prosecution. Those that the government wants to get can be prosecuted for revealing insignificant "secrets" while those with establishment friends get treated in a reasonable fashion.
The pharmacy company Boots was subject to a leveraged buyout; then it began running its staff ragged, endangering the lives of sick people. Of course, also not paying taxes.
I think it would be appropriate to impose a special tax on companies that have had a leveraged buyout. That would discourage the practice for the future. For the companies that have already suffered a buyout, this could drive them into bankruptcy, at which point they will be sold off for a much lower value to someone who won't have to run them with an extractivist approach.
Real terrorists don't bother with encryption.
There's a persistent pattern that Muslim passengers on US airlines are treated as terrorists for doing things that are totally innocent.
It's a form of systematic bigotry, comparable to the systematic bigotry that leads many US thugs to irrationally regard black males as threats, and kill them.
Implausible fantasy situations, as unlikely as the "trolley problem", are regularly used to justify torture and drone bombings.
I've also written about why the trolley problem is not pertinent to real life moral choices.
The cease-fire in Yemen has not worked: Salafi Arabia continues its US-supported bombardment.
US citizens: tell the National Marine Fisheries Services to recommend protecting manta rays under the Endangered Species Act.
The Pastafarian Church has conducted its first wedding.
Thousands marched "against terror and hate" in Brussels, calling for an end to useless and harmful "security" measures.
The Afghan army uses schools for military purposes, sometimes even when children are there.
Dawkins is right: when a fetus has Down's syndrome, you should abort it and try again.
(Some) mothers can indeed love a child with grave handicaps, but that's no excuse for saddling the child with them.
Methods for ending tax dodging, both the legal kind and the illegal kind. The only hard part is building a movement powerful enough to actually do it.
With enough political will, a state can simply refuse to treat payments to a hidden company as business expenses. They will more or less disappear, then.
An interview with Lula about Brazil's political crisis.
A quarter of British Muslims want to impose Islamic law, which means they are against many human rights. Half of them want to prohibit homosexuality. About 40% are against equality for women.
We must respect people's freedom to choose their beliefs in the sphere of religion, but that doesn't mean we can't condemn their choices.
We don't have to ignore people's religious views in deciding whether to admit them as immigrants. It is rational to refuse to admit immigrants who hold the views that many British Muslims hold.
One way to do this, which has the virtue of rejecting to fanaticism regardless of which religion it is inspired by, is to require immigrants to sign a public declaration in favor of equality and human rights. That implies, in particular, rejection of Islamic law and inequality. Those willing to put their names publicly on this statement are ok.
Thugs and religious fanatics joined to attack a feminist art festival in Indonesia.
This is what US support for Salafi Arabia has wrought.
Human Rights Watch: Why We Need to Ban Killer Robots.
They would allow countries to bring about likely war crimes for which no one would be legally responsible.
The UK government is about to gag state-funded scientists from talking about the political implications of their research.
Living near a highway, like 10% of Americans, is bad for your health due to the air pollution, including ultrafine particles.
I suppose that poor Americans are more likely to live near highways, so this explains part of the 14-year difference in life expectancy between rich and poor American males.
I think these ultrafine particles are what diesel engines produce so much of, and Volkswagen was found to be falsifying in emissions tests.
Raising cattle on grass rather than farmed grain avoids causing antibiotic resistance, as well as being far more efficient.
If we ate only the beef that can be grown this way, we would eat less beef and that would be good for our health.
Snowden points out that "We didn't break any laws" is not an excuse for pursuing journalists' sources.
Shoe manufacturer New Balance says the US government offered it a contract in exchange for not condemning the TPP.
Obama said that intervening in Libya was his biggest mistake, but history will say that was the TPP and such like.
An automatic basic income for citizens is about to be tested by Finland and maybe Switzerland.
A heatwave in the sea is playing havoc with marine life near Tasmania.
Dr. Avril Henry killed herself at age 81 because various illnesses were making her life unbearable. She was already too sick to go to Switzerland for help in suicide, but her suffering could have continued for many years.
To get materials for this, she had to fool thugs who tried forcibly to prolong her suffering.
I am sorry for her that she became so ill that she could not have a life worth living, and glad for her that she succeeded in escaping in the only possible way. As for the thugs, shame on them for their "illogical and cruel" policy of forcing the innocent to suffer.
Hilary Clinton is the most hawkish candidate in the two main parties. She seems to have learned nothing from the repeated failures and backfires of US interventions.
Criminals and terrorists get AK47s in the EU through a simple scheme: they are modified simply to "deactivate" them, sold lawfully, then criminals revert the change to make them work again.
The European Union has known about this for almost a decade but is only beginning to think about changing the laws to stop it.
The banksters' imposed spending cuts and their attacks on Greece's industries have produced the expected economic contraction, and increased deficit; so now, as predicted, they demand even more cuts.
Greece will have to default. The sooner, the better, since each year of surrender to the banksters' attacks enables them to make Greece weaker and more helpless. Greece will need to act aggressively, looking for any and all threats it can make against the banksters and their institutions — including ways to cause a bigger crisis.
The Real Reason Dilma Rousseff's Enemies Want Her Impeached.
Don't believe quack claims for treatments to "cleanse" or "detox" the inside of your body.
What's worse for a Silicon Valley executive: ties to the Chinese military or friends in the US Defense Department?
In Iran, political prisoners don't get proper medical care.
The prohibition of abortion in Nigeria drives women to illegal abortions and regularly they die.
Although the Panama papers came from a business in Panama, it would be a mistake to single out Panama for blame.
However, we should not let Panama off the hook. All the governments that bow down to the plutocrats in ways that hurt the public are to blame, Panama included.
It sounds like Panama allows companies to route income through Panama and thus avoid taxes on it, and that is a specifically bad policy.
GCHQ grabs all sorts of private data bases with information about all sorts of people.
93 different diesel cars tested recently in Europe all failed emissions tests in real driving, even though they did not have specific "defeat devices" to cheat.
What they do have are systems that have many tunable parameters: enough that it is possible to tune them to reduce emissions under the sort of conditions found in the test, while increasing performance at the cost of excessive emissions in other circumstances.
There would be less pressure to create this sort of problem if the state's method for bringing about greenhouse gas emissions were a general carbon tax instead of specific measures such as "Make more diesel cars." However, the way to end this particular abuse is to test car emissions by real driving.
Replacing coal with wood from forests that won't recover after being logged does not constitute renewable energy.
Russia is flying artillery into Aleppo, apparently planning to terminate the cease-fire and attack the Syrian rebels supported by the US and various tyrannical regimes.
Mitsubishi admitted falsifying emissions data for 600,000 cars, and the Japanese investigators raided an office to look for documents.
Job opening at the Free Software Foundation.
Sanders campaign’s commitment to victory irritates media, offends Clinton campaign.
How can the Guantanamo prison be closed?
Berta Cáceres's daughter asks European countries to stop aid to Honduras to pressure for human rights.
The US deserves a president who won't support coups such as the one that crushed human rights in Honduras. In other words, not Clinton.
New York State removed a large fraction of voters from the electoral rolls before the primary this week.
Some voters are suing.
There were other obstacles to voting, too.
UK Spy Agencies Have Collected Bulk Personal Data Since 1990s, Files Show.
Even when the data is about persons "of interest", that should not mean it is ok for them to collect whatever data they can get.
Australia brought back 54 minors from prison on Nauru. Half of them show mental illness.
Drought in Africa means more than just crop failure — people actually have trouble getting enough water to drink.
Calling on Australia to close the loopholes that enable shell companies to dodge taxes.
San Francisco has adopted a law that new buildings must have solar generation or solar water heating on the roof, unless they are over 10 storeys tall.
Instead of that strange exception, they should require taller buildings to have solar panels on the south-facing walls as well as on the roof.
Activists in Oakland, California are fighting to block a new coal export terminal.
It is crazy to boost the coal trade; it shows the US is not serious about avoiding disaster. The only redeeming feature is that maybe no one will buy the coal. China is cutting down its use of coal, to reduce air pollution that makes it impossible for cities to operate; India mines its own coal. The investment of building coal terminals could be wasted.
But we can't be sure of that, so it is important to fight against the terminal.
Going from 1.5C of global heating to 2C would mean a big increase in worldwide disasters.
A leak of radioactive waste at Hanford, perhaps the largest ever, is very dangerous to workers trying to clean it up, and will increase the contamination of the whole site.
Why Isn’t Everyone In Favor of Taxing Financial Speculation?
The US could also direcly limit the kinds of financial derivatives that may be traded.
South Australia already gets half its electricity from wind and solar power.
A program to subsidize building owners in buying batteries would quickly go the rest of the way.
Why does Obama threaten to veto a bill that would allow victims of the September 2001 terror attacks to sue foreign governments if they are responsible?
Maybe because he doesn't want the US government to be sued for things like drone bombings. Or maybe he is defending Salafi Arabia. Both reasons are bad. Maybe it is both. He may not want Yemenis to sue the US for providing weapons that Salafi Arabia is using to bomb civilians there. Both Sanders and Clinton support the bill, but Sanders also calls for publication of what the government's report said about Salafi Arabia.
As for the Salafi threat to sell some assets in the US, the US should not cower in fear of that. On the contrary, it suggests that Salafi Arabia has reason to expect it will lose such a lawsuit. The US needs to stop supporting Salafi Arabia in any case, so that it can't keep spreading fanatical Islam around the world.
US citizens: tell Congress you support the bill to impose stricter conditions on US arms for Salafi Arabia.
The country's official name is "Saudi Arabia", but "Salafi Arabia" reminds people of that country's most important export: an oppressive and fanatical form of Islam.
Khairuldeen Makhzoomi, who moved to the US from Iraq as a child, was taken off a flight in the US because another passenger found it suspicious that he was speaking Arabic.
High-tech traps are designed to eradicate the feral cats that threaten Australia's small wildlife.
Maybe in the future it will be possible to eradicate other feral animals that endanger unusual local species in other places.
Oxfam reports hat the world's rich are rapidly grabbing the world's wealth from the poor: they have taken a trillion dollars since 2010.
They do this with dooH niboR policies designed to take from the poor and give to the rich. Often these actions are lawful, but that doesn't make them legitimate.
The rich are not entitled to hold on to this wealth merely because the laws they procured legalized their grab. We must strengthen Robin Hood so that he defeats dooH niboR.
Tens of thousands marched in London against bleed-the-poor "austerity" policies.
Neoliberalism — the Ideology at the Root of All Our Problems.
Renewable energy investment has succeeded in decoupling economic growth from growth in greenhouse gas emissions.
The UK's new catch-22 for low-paid workers who are forced to work unpredictable hours demands they come frequently and uselessly to appointments at a "jobcenter", and if their working hours make them miss an appointment, they get fined.
The Tories' general aim is to take as much as possible for the rich that they serve, and generate excuses to condemn and crush everyone else.
Verizon is forcing customers to switch from copper lines to fiber through a policy of refusing to fix those.
This March set a new global heat record for March.
Each of the last 11 months has set a global record for that month.
UK spy agencies presented secret evidence to quash the lawsuits of Libyan dissidents that those agencies handed over to Qadhafi's regime for torture.
This demonstrates how such secret evidence perverts justice.
German "defamation" law is extremely broad censorship.
This shows why we must fight all attempts to criticize "hate speech." People have a right to insult anyone, even you or me.
The US State Department's report on human rights in Salafi Arabia is a gross whitewash of the US-supported bombing campaign in Yemen.
The idea of a tool to determine whether a driver's phone was used for text messaging at the time of an accident is fine in principle, but it is almost impossible in practice unless it snoops on a lot more than that.
I get the impression Android Auto is based on using proprietary software to restrict users.
SCROTUS gave cable companies a present by passing a bill that threatens the FCC's network neutrality requirements.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
In the US, rich men live 14 years longer than poor men. Now dooH is taking years from the poor and giving them to the rich.
Syed Farook's iPhone turned out to have nothing interesting on it, but it was a handy excuse to try to set a precedent.
The Solution to the Migrant Crisis is Jobs in Low Income Countries.
However, that should not be taken as a reason to replace well-paid workers with poverty wages. The right way to boost jobs in poor countries is to block the rich elites of those countries from sneaking their wealth into tax havens.
A collection of recordings of the sounds of wildlife is now the only remnant of many wild places that humans have destroyed.
Don't believe Time Magazine's national debt panic — it's as wrong now as it was before.
This Study Shows How Low Corporate America's Taxes Really Are, But Tax-Dodging CEOs Complain about High Rates All the Same.
One less than obvious injustice of many internet services is that they decide what "service" means. If you use these more than very rarely, their algorithms run your life.
Many of the companies they talk about have bigger, absolute injustices which absolutely rule out their use. Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and Uber are examples. But even if a site isn't outright unjust, using it to the point that its algorithms control your life is unjust.
Is the UK refusing to recognize PISSI's genocide a matter of catering to Erdogan?
Over a thousand species of animals and plants have been moved by humans because humans endanger their survival in their original ranges.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Tax Filing Simplification Act of 2016.
In Arizona, poor people have often voted by absentee ballots which volunteers bring to the polling place. This is because there are too few polling places where poor people live. Now the antidemocratic politicians of Arizona have passed a law to imprison those volunteers.
Never mind arguing whether the embarrassment of dating a sex worker should remain private, or be exposed. The main wrong here is whorephobia.
Canada's New Democratic Party has made itself useless with a swing to the right, a la Bill Clinton and Tony B'liar. Now it is considering adopting a platform to really address national and world problems.
Sanders announced in the debate the need to support Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, and criticized Netanyahu for unjustified violence.
Protesters arrested at a London arms fair argued in court that they were preventing crimes…and the judge dropped the charges.
It is pretty clear that digital technology is increasing unemployment and driving down wages.
We need to defeat the plutocrats and share their income with the non-rich.
Merkel authorized prosecution of a German comedian for insulting Erdoğan.
Since the existing law says that such prosecutions require authorization from the government, Merkel is telling a falsehood when she claims that the decision is not for her to make and she is only recognizing independence of the courts.
If the case results in repeal of that law, at least there will be a positive outcome.
SCROTUS's latest attack on women is a bill to ban choosing an abortion based on the sex or race of the fetus.
Some feminists want to ban sex-selection abortions, because they are often based on a preference for male children. I've warned that this position is misguided and would put abortion rights in danger.
An article about tracking down a swatter shows details that could provide an easy way to stop swatting: just take note when the call to 911 is not a local call.
Apple internally expects iThings to last only 3 years.
A UK privatized prison company has been fined 100 times for violating its contracts.
For such companies, contracts are made for cheating on.
Norway's giant investment fund has divested from coal companies.
Australia is attacking journalism by accessing journalists' phone records.
A refugee dumped by Australia in Nauru tried to commit suicide. He didn't die, and was prosecuted instead.
Journalists are effectively excluded from Nauru so there is not much good information about how these refugees are treated.
Learning about what psychedelics do to the brain, from brain scans.
A UK food bank organization warns that dependence on their aid is now normal for poor people in the UK.
The Tory goal, though Tories don't openly admit it, is to stop helping poor Britons survive. This shows how successful their policies have been.
Missing Mexican Students Abducted in Front of Federal Police, Witness Says.
Coal vs Coral: will Australia destroy the Great Barrier Reef with coal mining?
The chutzpah of those who help the rich dodge taxes: "If it isn't illegal, you can't blame me."
What nonsense! Impoverishing the rest of society does not become ok just because the rich procure a law that lets them do it.
When it isn't illegal, we cannot prosecute them for it. But we can condemn them as enemies of society, boycott them, shun them and ostracize them — as part of the movement to make their tax-dodging illegal.
Burundi's tyrant is sending death squads into refugee camps in Tanzania.
A Chinese human rights lawyer has been arrested, apparently for posting information about the secret offshore bank accounts of relatives of high officials.
Beef, soy, palm oil, and wood products are the main causes of tropical deforestation.
Beyond blaming the victim: investigating the victim. Students at Brigham Young University who report being raped are suspected of violating the "honor code", and are investigated for this.
This reminds me of countries where, under unjust Islamic law, women who are raped are convicted of having sex outside marriage.
Goldman Sachs vs. Democracy Spring: America's Two-Tiered Justice System on Full Display.
Western companies should stop collaborating with Chinese censorship.
Corbyn says that leaving the EU would allow Tories to attack the rights of workers and the non-rich.
The EU is undemocratic, and should be abolished if it isn't fixed. But Tories don't want to fix what is wrong with the EU; they want to unleash it.
Clinton, defending the millions of dollars rich people spend on her campaign, uses the same arguments that were used to justify the Corporations United decision.
That group of corporations called itself "Citizens United", but we should not repeat their falsehood just because they said it. The name "Corporations United" describes them correctly.
Tory Minister John Whittingdale's scandal is not that he had a non-business relationship for six months with a woman who was a sex worker, but that he pleads about how fast he broke up with her when he found out.
Money Influences Everybody. That Includes Hillary Clinton.
Terrorists in France were at least considering an attack on a nuclear waste storage facility.
These sites are impossible to defend properly. Maybe they could keep out people armed only with bombs, guns and cars, but they can't keep out a hijacked airliner. These wastes should be stored underground in tunnels with few, well-guarded entrances.
Leaked US diplomatic messages show that US officials are very worried about violence caused by water shortages.
Global heating is not the only cause of water shortages, but it will make them worse.
A transgender man in North Carolina has prepared cards to hand out in the women's toilets that he is now legally required to use, to allay the anxiety of other women about the presence of a man.
Microsoft is suing to defend customers' right to know if the US government looked at their email.
It is a worthy attempt, but I doubt you will ever have the same rights over your email stored in a company's server that you have over your data in your own server.
The European Parliament voted for three directives that protect privacy inadequately or harm it.
The UN could have avoided loosing cholera in Haiti with a $2000 package of tests and antibiotics.
The German law that criminalizes insulting foreign rulers dates from the time of the German empire.
Italy, Poland and Switzerland have similar laws. All these countries must take this opportunity to repeal those laws.
Was the Panama Papers leak a CIA operation? There is some suggestive evidence.
Canada is considering a law offering euthanasia, but only to Canadians with terminal illnesses.
Once again, this omits people who are paralyzed and likely to live years of boredom and futility. And why be cruel to non-Canadians?
Marching across India, to free Dalits from the job of manually pawing though human excrement, without any protective gear.
That work is not only disgusting, it also exposes the workers to disease.
The US oil industry was warned in 1968 about the danger of global heating and how disastrous it could be.
New Documents Reveal Oil Industry Knew of Climate Risks Decades Earlier Than Suspected; Suggest Coordinated Efforts to Foster Skepticism.
It's Time to Get Cops Out of Schools.
A school that has thugs is asking for its students to be jailed for minor things, thus set on a path to a life of persecution.
Five big US banks still present themselves as "too big to fail": they have not provided credible plans to for handling their bankruptcy.
Above 1.5C of global heating, we are likely to encounter tipping points that will drive large global changes.
Luqman Onikosi knows that being deported to Nigeria will kill him.
Verizon is raking in billions but demands to treat its workers worse. They have gone on strike.
Bernie Sanders joined their picket line.
Would Clinton do that? I doubt it. She loves getting endorsements from the leaders of unions but doesn't really care about their members.
US citizens: call on Congress to support Peace Now rather than AIPAC.
ACLU Sues Bureau of Prisons Over Missing Torture Documents.
Keith Allen Harward was convicted of murder because the prosecutor denied his lawyer the evidence that proved the culprit was not him. 30 years later, this evidence got him freed. But prosecutors keep on with the same trickery, knowingly convicting innocent people.
A foolish man, Brok, saw a beautiful woman in a store. He posted her photo, asking people to introduce him to her.
Brok has foolishly attached exaggerated significance to a minor event, a momentary infatuation. He will learn that seeing beauty in someone is no reason to think that the two would like each other. He will learn that he has the same chance — the same minuscule chance, I suppose — of finding happiness or pleasure with any of the other fish in the sea.
The author has also foolishly attached exaggerated significance to a minor event, namely Brok's posting of the photo. However, the author's reaction is far worse, because it attacks everyone's human rights. The author advocates making it a crime to take photos of people you see in public places and publish them.
Low-Income Americans Spend As Much As $400 to Get Tax Refund, Report Finds.
Israeli Expansionism Is Key Driver of Violence.
The Israeli right wing attacks human rights organizations because it is hostile to the general idea of rights that everyone deserves.
The Israeli population is becoming ever more right-wing, nationalist, and opposed to equal respect for human rights.
Obama should support the Palestinians' Security Council resolution.
Campaigners against the death penalty in Georgia hold a vigil every time someone is executed.
I have never understood the idea that execution is wrong specifically and only for people who are mentally deficient. I think the death penalty is wrong in all cases — for the mentally deficient, for geniuses, and for people of average intelligence.
Homeless teenagers in Delhi publish a newspaper.
(I don't want to call teenagers "children" because I think that will support the idea of limiting their rights.)
A historian faces the possibility of imprisonment in Poland under an outrageous censorship law redolent of France or Turkey, but much broader.
Regardless of whether the Polish government charges Professor Gross, it is guilty of contempt of human rights.
The UK is imposing a system of extreme repression against resident foreigners, restrained only by occasional court decisions.
The 50 largest US corporations are storing over a trillion dollars in foreign countries to dodge taxes.
The Hong Kong museum dedicated to the Tiananmen Square massacre is being shut down by its landlord. The museum operators scent Chinese meddling.
Many taxi drivers in Australia are racist and refuse to take indigenous passengers. One who is famous is using that fame to push for an education campaign.
Zika causes many kinds of prenatal brain damage.
I think that subhuman babies should not be considered human beings. It is legitimate to euthanize them rather than bear the burden of taking care of them for decades.
The new Canadian government said it was too late to cancel arms sales to Salafi Arabia, while in fact it hadn't yet signed the permits.
Just how fanatical is Ted Cruz in opposition to sex?
Part of Australia proposes to give thugs power to impose restrictions arbitrarily on citizens.
US citizens: call for an investigation into a federal official's decision to let some Republican-controlled states require voters to show proof of citizenship.
Such rules are very effective at preventing some US citizens from voting, particularly poor people.
Uber gave the US government data on millions of customers.
In Hollywood movies, female actors have less dialog than male actors, and it gets to be even less when the female actors are over 30 years old.
There are some who want you to be very very worried any time a stranger talks to your children.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court rebuked prosecutors for misconduct in 250 cases, but the prosecutors never face punishment for this. Usually their names are not even published.
Israeli soldiers dumped rubble and sand on a Palestinian's farm, apparently because the inhabitants of a nearby unofficial Israeli colony want the land.
Israel's latest excuse for demolishing many Palestinian homes near the center of Jerusalem is to create new "national parks" and a "Bible trail".
Oxfam says that Israel is increasing the rate of demolitions.
EU Plans to Tackle Tax Avoidance Are a Good Start — But Only a Start.
Greenland has set a new record for widespread melting of ice.
How to make elected officials heed the voters that elected them: keep reminding them.
The European Union's woefully inadequate proposal to stop tax dodging.
Clinton turns reality upside down, pretending that the coup in Honduras was not a coup.
Dumping tritium from Fukushima into the ocean may be the safest thing to do with it.
It is a small amount of tritium compared with the amounts already in the ocean.
A man who announced he was living in a wooden "pod" in someone else's house has been forced to stop, based on "safety rules".
These rules are beneficial when it is possible for everyone to get housing that follows them. However, that's not true today. Is the pod more dangerous than living on the street?
Disposable cutlery that's also edible.
Mariah Walton's parents, religiously cruel, condemned her to a life of suffering by denying her a heart operation when she was a baby.
That's religion for you.
A poll found that more than 90% of young Iraqis consider the US an enemy of Iraq.
I can't blame them.
When US thugs kill, fairly often the state quietly decides to make no charges against them, with no announcement.
Chicago thugs killed a teenager, then said he had pointed a gun at them.
You can't take their word about such things.
Why Is the USDA Silencing Its Own Scientists' Warnings About the Dangerous Effects of Pesticides?
In Idaho, thugs are authorized to arrest runaway children, but does it make sense to arrest one because he has returned home? And smash his face, while they are at it?
Global Fisheries Are Collapsing — What Happens When There Are No Fish Left?
Overfishing is an example of extractivism: treating the whole Earth as something to use up and throw away.
Planting 40,000 trees saved a town in England from the floods that affected the surrounding region.
A study of 9000 subjects found that replacing animal fat with vegetable oil failed to reduce heart attacks.
US citizens: call on Congress not to privatize the Vieques National Wildlife Refuge.
Refugees living in Australia on "bridging visas" have no health care, and sometimes no heat or food. They are not allowed to do work to get them.
More Than 400 Arrested at the Capitol During Protest Against "Big Money".
I wonder why the newspaper put quotations around "big money" in the title.
The UK government proposes a definition of fracking which excludes lots of ordinary fracking.
The Chicago thug department made it almost impossible for lawyers to tell that their clients were being held in Homan Square for interrogation (perhaps torture).
Thugs will break any rule, if they get away with it. If all that we do when we discover such a practice is to make them stop that one, they will find another. We need to jail thugs for participation in such oppressive practices, and there needs to be a separate prosecutor for this.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the Feinstein-Burr anti-encryption bill.
Panama Papers Show How the Very Rich Use Art to Get Richer.
Shell companies even enable them to hold on to stolen paintings by hiding from courts.
Americans agree broadly on many political issues, but plutocrats block the US government from doing what Americans want.
Goldman Sachs was just fined for deceiving investors — fined an amount too small to do any good. No banksters were jailed.
Patients Waiting Hours for Ambulances after NHS Transport Service Privatized.
Tax investigators from 28 countries will plan a joint strategy for investigating tax dodging.
However, most tax dodging is legal, and what it needs is changes in laws.
India's Supreme Court ruled that temples cannot exclude women.
Health systems should not have to rely on crowdfunding: governments must shoulder their responsibilities.
James Hanson: sounding an alarm should not be dismissed as "alarmist".
US tobacco companies marketed menthol flavoring as part of a plan to prey on US blacks' anxieties.
BP continues to search for more oil reserves even though we have too much already. What could it do with the additional reserves, other than destroy civilization?
The UK has adopted ambitious carbon emission targets, then defined them in a phony way.
A San Antonio school thug knocked a 12-year-old student to the ground, then made up lies to excuse it. The thug has been fired, but that's not enough.
A museum of pinball machines may have to close because kids these days have lost interest in taking machines apart.
Pinball machines made with integrated circuits are not worth preserving, in my opinion, because in that period they were designed to be showy and distracting. For instance, In 1970, each sound that a pinball machine made indicted a certain amount scored. A few years later, they were meant only to distract the ear. That was also the era of point inflation, when the smallest score was 100 instead of 1.
Several witnesses deny the San Francisco thugs' bogus excuses for killing Luis Gongora.
Ironically, Trump may be defeated by the nondemocratic system of Republican candidate selection.
I would not rejoice at that, since Cruz is even worse in his politics than Trump. I also don't agree with the attitude of the author that it was Trump's fault for thinking the system worked in a more democratic way. Rather, it is the system's fault for not doing so.
It appears Chicago thugs tortured Jaime Galvan to death.
Wall Street economist Asher Edelman says that only Sanders can clean up US banking.
Obama is willing to say, in the Clinton case, that most secret information is not important. When prosecuting whistleblowers, the tiniest, unimportant detail is enough excuse.
US citizens: Tell the FEC: Crack down on illegal political contributions by "ghost corporations".
Everyone: call on the members of the Internet Association to publicly disavow its endorsement of the TPP.
These members include major Internet companies, including Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo. Some of those companies are despicable, while others are not — either way, we want to press all of them to denounce the TPP.
Everyone: tell Unilever to clean up the mercury it dumped in the ground in Kodaikanal.
US citizens: call on Clinton to reject campaign funds from fossil fuel companies.
Plans to examine the phones of drivers, after accidents, to see if they were texting while driving.
This extremely limited search, in a situation where there are special reasons for it, seems legitimate to me.
Malware Found on Security Cameras Available Through Amazon.
A camera that records locally on physical media, and has no network connection, does not threaten people with surveillance — neither by watching people through the camera, nor through malware in the camera.
Contract official Shay Assad campaigns unceasingly to stop overcharging by companies to the Pentagon.
Now the companies are trying to win the support of treacherous congresscritters, to hamper his efforts.
Global heating will make water scarce in most small oceanic islands.
Some of them will, however, have too much water — they will be inundated.
Palestinian farmers in the West Bank face constant obstruction from the policies of the occupation.
Obama says that the intervention in Libya was a mistake.
Is Hillary's Personal Story About Student Loans a Fabrication?
Erdoğan's poison is spreading from Turkey to Germany, as a comedian faces prosecution for "insulting a foreign leader".
Germany must repeal that tyrannical law on the double.
"We Should Treat Offshore Wealth as Terrorist Finance."
I think that's not hostile enough. In Europe and the US, terrorism is a minor threat compared with plutocracy. We need to treat the organs of plutocracy as something far worse than terrorism.
Ireland's blasphemy law, which its government doesn't dare try to enforce, gives comfort to religious tyranny everywhere.
Documents confirm the torture methods of Chicago thugs.
Pity poor David Cameron, "trapped in wealth".
Thugs evicted protesters in Paris, but they plan to return.
Rebuilding parts of Palmyra with modern materials and techniques would be a lie. It is better to leave the ruins as a memorial to the evil of religious fanaticism.
The Cameron family tax-dodging strips bare the Tories' claim that the sacrifices they impose on poor Britons are for the country. Now no one can avoid seeing that those sacrifices are for the tax dodgers.
Maybe the world needs a global body to decide international tax policy.
Such a body might be helpful, but the idea does not get to the root of the matter. The article assumes that this issue is a clash between "national interests" of the poor countries and the rich countries, and that each governments involved is trying to serve the national interest of its country.
As we know, that's not always true. In particular, most governments of rich countries nowadays typically serve the interests of plutocrats rather than the interest of the country overall. If these governments tried to truly serve their own national interests, they would clamp down on tax dodging just as the poor countries would want them to.
Bleaching now affects half of the Great Barrier Reef.
Coral animals often die after bleaching. In the more equatorial parts of the Great Barrier Reef, half of them are dead.
Australian scientists are trying to breed a replacement coral that could survive higher temperatures and higher acidity.
Bravo to them, but supposing if that effort succeeds, it won't avoid disaster. 400 known species of coral that live in the Great Barrier Reef; there may be others as yet unknown to science. Losing all but one, or all but a few, would still be disaster.
Iranian presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi, held under arrest since his last defeat, accuses the state of rigging the elections.
Now that the Panama papers show clearly how the rich are cheating the rest of humanity, the question is whether we will fight hard enough to defeat them and make them stop.
Beware the temptation to respond cynically, because that's an excuse to give up.
Right now, Americans have a special opportunity to fight back: work for the Sanders campaign. Toadies like Clinton follow the orders of the rich, and those orders say to protect all their means of cheating us. Simply electing a president who wants to stop them will bring us one big step closer to stopping them.
Tourism to the Arctic, to "witness" how global heating is destroying it, is adding to the damage.
A Republican US official is trying another avenue for voter suppression: allowing Republicans in some states to demand voters prove their citizenship to register.
The Republican Party is a vast conspiracy to disenfranchise Americans.
Arizona legislators have made up an excuse to keep reporters out of the state house.
The 1% hide their money offshore — then use it to corrupt our democracy.
US citizens: Tell Senate Democrats: Don't help Republicans sabotage retirement protections.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Incorporation Transparency and Law Enforcement Assistance Act and thus crimp the use of shell corporations in the US.
Trump mixes dirty words with bigotry to imply that bigotry is no worse than a dirty word.
Someone tell Israel that fighting the soldiers in an occupying army is not terrorism. The proper term is "guerrilla war".
Alexandra Elbakyan is freeing scientific literature from paywalls.
Three cheers!
Shame on the article's author for taking the side of the restricted access journals, by using words such as "pilfer" to describe liberating science from its feudal lords.
The dictator of Burundi has driven 250,000 people into exile, fleeing from torture meted out to anyone that didn't support him.
Stretched and subjective definitions of "bullying", "prejudice" and "trauma" make it easy to paint political expression as "violent harassment". It's a tendency we need to reject because it leads to censorship.
UK immigration officials are allowed to crack security of refugees' computers, specifically their phones. This could endanger their right to confidential communication with their lawyers.
I think it is legitimate for the state to crack security for investigations, but only with a specific warrant.
The US created Panama for purposes of tax evasion.
David Cameron dodged around $130,000 in inheritance tax a few years ago.
Great apes in Africa are likely to be wiped out by diseases that humans help spread.
A whistleblower alleges that large Brazilian projects including the Belo Monte dam were used to siphon off money to the Workers' Party and the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party.
Anti-abortionists in Northern Ireland betrayed their flatmate to the state for having an abortion, and she was prosecuted.
Now women there fear betrayal by their acquaintances, and doctors worry that women who have complications after an underground abortion will not dare go to a hospital.
Northern Ireland's political parties are sectarian and worthless. I hope the fight for abortion rights will lead to the creation of a secular party that stands for human rights and people's well being.
I also suggest a form of action for people in Northern Ireland: post a sign on your door saying, "We do not rat on women for having abortions." The statement is not illegal, yet it clearly defies the evil law.
Research shows that an important positive feedback in global heating, water droplets in clouds, will be bigger than previously thought.
That means we need even bigger emissions cuts to avoid total disaster.
Only a fool bets that the road runs off the cliff further rather than nearer. Don't be a fool: demand big cuts soon.
The Panama Papers Prove It: We [the US] Can Afford a Universal Basic Income. Plus good infrastructure, good public education, good medical care, and so on.
The Brussels terrorist bombers were planning to attack France, but they saw that investigators were closing in on them, so they made a hurried plan to attack in Brussels instead.
This is a sign that state powers to investigate terrorists are already adequate. There is no need to give the state additional power — though using its power more efficiently could be an improvement.
People who broke free from controlling religious sects talk about how they found the strength to escape.
Italy says Egypt is being uncooperative in the investigation of the murder of Italian researcher Giulio Regeni.
Probably the killers were part of the state's mechanism of repression, which operates almost unchecked on Egyptians.
Thomas Piketty: Panama Papers: Act now. Don't wait for another crisis.
Amazon wants to wipe out local grocery stores.
I will never buy from Amazon. I hope you won't, either.
Higher crime rates in US black communities is not a cause of their poverty, it is a consequence of that poverty. White communities with similar economic levels have similar crime rates.
The US treasury proposes a badly designed rule about shell companies with another badly designed rule about shell companies that might have an even bigger loophole.
President Sanders would fix this problem for real.
A Polish Abortion Ban Would Turn Women Back into Childbearing Instruments.
Philippine farmers who received bullets instead of rice from the state are the picture of what global heating will do to ever more millions.
Ralph Nader: Big unions support Clinton at the expense of their members.
Clinton and Sanders seem to have patched up their recent harsh criticism.
I am not part of that deal. Clinton would be almost as bad a president as the self-admitted Republicans, aside from specific areas such as women's rights.
One of the banksters that rigged the Libor rate says that the bank's high executives approved of the plan.
The 1st quarter of 2016 is the third warmest year on record in the US.
Systematic special surveillance of poor people in the US feeds algorithms that tend to exclude them from ordinary opportunities, thus trapping them in poverty.
The FBI is building a data base of nearly all Americans' faces, and can search it for any reason.
Since it is made from the data bases of photo IDs, that Americans need to have to drive, to ride in a plane, to open a bank account, to buy certain prescription medicines, and in some states even to vote, it amounts to something very close to a national ID card.
When combined with the cameras on the street that recognize faces, they add up to a system of total tracking of everyone's movements.
Of course, this sort of total control over the population makes the work of the police easy. It makes the legitimate activities easy, and the illegitimate ones easy too. It can be used to find rapists, or find heroic whistleblowers.
However, while finding the occasional rapist in hiding is positive, the good it does is puny compared with the harm of intimidating potential heroic whistleblowers. The effect is repressive control that we must overthrow.
Americans, have you the courage to resist the state's seductive offer to "protect" us from various smaller dangers, at the cost of total monitoring?
There is no known way to dispose of the remains of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, so the plan is to cover it with a metal dome that is expected to last 100 years. Engineers hope that, within that time, we will find some permanent solution.
That approach may work assuming technology continues to advance. But what if technological advance ceases because global heating is too much of a drain on society? Then the reactor will degrade, and leak more. In centuries, or millennia, that fallout will pollute a much bigger area.
Green chemistry: designing chemical processing to avoid making hazardous wastes, even from the product itself.
Blacks have a privacy advantage against current face recognition snooping systems, but this can work against them when thugs assume the system's judgment is correct.
Cameras on the street that match everyone's face against a database are a threat to everyone's freedom. Even if you're not on a list of suspects, and they don't immediately arrest or investigate you, they are doing wrong to you.
Laws should require such cameras not to recall who they see, except court-designated suspects.
El Salvador has raided the local office of Mossack Fonseca and seized documents, apparently to investigate possible crimes involving its clients.
The melting of Greenland's ice, due to global heating, has measurable effects on the movement of Earth's poles.
In response to the Panama papers, the EU will propose tougher disclosure regulations for EU companies' foreign subsidiaries in other countries that are considered tax havens.
Why not apply this to all other countries? This would avoid the need to define which countries constitute "tax havens".
If regulators were not scared of the power of the businesses, they would not try to take such small steps.
Yet another man convicted due to "bite mark" matching has been exonerated.
That technique is worthless.
Stand Your Ground, Unless You're a Battered Woman.
The Clinton campaign has made a series of false attacks against Sanders, with gaps between them, but now it is attacking in high gear.
Senator Warren and a few others blocked a vote of the Banking Committee about two Obama nominees for the SEC that are banksters' pets.
Estimating the funding of paid climate obstructionism: perhaps $500 million a year.
The UK government has cut the rate of solar installation to 1/4 the rate of a year ago.
Good work, planet roasters!
Although courts and the prosecutor now recognize that the conviction of Fran and Dan Keller for "satanic abuse" was based on no evidence, and that a retrial could not convict them, they refuse to drop charges.
The participants in the system believe it should go to the mat rather than admit anyone's innocence.
US publisher McGraw-Hill discontinued a textbook because it included a map of Palestine, which met with condemnation.
Evidence Shows New Pipelines Will Not Solve Alberta's Economic Woes or Support a Clean Energy Transition.
US citizens: Call on Obama to think about his climate legacy and put public lands and waters off limits for gas and oil extraction.
Spanish banks will have to repay some of the charges they made to people who were foreclosed.
Unfortunately, that won't be enough to save many of these people from spending the rest of their lives excluded from all visible employment. (If they earn any money, they would have to pay it to the bank.) In Spain, they are known as "fiscally dead".
I've suggested they should do a protest on the Day of the Dead, but nobody seems to have picked up on the idea.
The new government of Myanmar has freed many political prisoners, carrying out Aung San Suu Kyi's new policy.
Mass peaceful night-time political discussion meetings have spread across France.
Assad has released an imprisoned American journalist after 4 years.
Assad didn't have the journalist beheaded, as PISSI would have done, but that is damning with faint praise.
General Electric CEO Immelt said GE executives "saw it as our task to outsource manufacturing". No wonder he condemns Sanders, and the feeling is mutual.
The new Argentine government, apparently turning repressive, has imprisoned a local leader for protesting. Amnesty International has taken up her cause.
A mother in South Carolina was arrested for letting her 9-year-old nephew accompany her 3-year-old son to buy a snack.
Oh, wait — they were headed for McDonalds. What neglectful parenting, allowing a kid to eat McDonald's food. Parents are supposed to know that this is "fast food", made for fasting, not for eating.
World wide: participate in global heating protests May 4-16.
Clinton favors continuing to operate the Indian Point nuclear power plants. Sanders says it is dangerous and should be shut down.
Clinton wants to continue fracking. Sanders says it is dangerous and must be banned.
David Cameron Admits He Profited from Father's Offshore Fund.
The thug that killed John Crawford III was not punished, but the man who called 911 may face criminal charges for exaggerating the situation.
This is backwards. A thug, as a public officer, has a specific responsibility to tell when there is no real threat, and is supposed to know how. Citizens of course should not lie or exaggerate about such dangers, but they have no responsibility to get training in doing so.
Two Widely Used Pesticides Likely to Harm 97% of Endangered Species in US.
The EPA dropped its investigation into water pollution from fracking in Wyoming, but two scientists continued the research and proved the contamination came from fracking.
A thug was in a big hurry to shoot Yvette Smith dead, and he lied to excuse it. Now he has been acquitted of murder by a judge who more or less said he would always take the thug's side.
We will never be safe until thugs face real punishment for their killings and their lies.
Doublespeak in IT security: the UK will certify VOIP systems as "secure" only if they have been built with a back door.
Many US school principals are studying interrogation methods that often make students give false confessions.
Los Angeles has prohibited homeless people from keeping more property than what will fit in one garbage bin.
I suppose that is to facilitate putting their property in the trash, which thugs do from time to time as a harassment measure.
If the city wants to do reduce how much they keep on the street, it should offer each homeless person a substantial shed. That would not cost much — the building codes for sheds are not very strict — and it would keep their property off the street without screwing them.
Of course, what the city should really do is provide them with decent places to live.
An illegal traffic stop, followed by an illegal public strip search, were the penalty for Driving While Black in South Carolina.
A Clinton-supporting Alaska "superdelegate" shows stubborn
determination to support Clinton
in the
teeth of the Alaskan public.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
If Sanders clearly wins the public primaries and caucuses, and superdelegates make Clinton the nominee, the public will not respond well to such treatment.
Here's how the Clinton campaign bought the support of 33 state Democratic Party organizations, including superdelegates.
Global disparity of income between countries has grown tremendously in recent decades, and it is still growing.
Disparity of income within countries is growing too in the advanced countries.
Koch and co. are pumping millions of dollars into US senate races.
"As a taxpayer, David Cameron is innocent. As a lawmaker, he is guilty."
An officer of the former US-backed military regime of El Salvador will stand trial in Spain for murdering civilian dissidents.
It is noteworthy that the US knowingly sheltered this murderer for 15 years.
El Salvador's other elite repression unit was called the Atonal Battalion. They used to torture prisoners by making them listen to Schönberg's music for hours on end ;-{. (I wish that were true, but I suppose they did much worse things.)
Everyone: call on Wolf Blitzer to ask Clinton and Sanders how they would deal with Panama-style tax-dodging in their trade policy.
SCROTUS are trying to relax regulations to protect borrowers from misuses by banks.
The banksters say respecting borrowers' rights is "too expensive". How can that be true? US banks are not losing money.
Beyond Panama: What the World Really Needs is the Delaware Papers.
In Fact, Sanders Has a Very Clear Plan on How to Break Up Too-Big-to-Fail Banks.
A poll found that 1/4 of Sanders supporters would not support Clinton in the general election.
I am one of them. Clinton is not as bad as Republicans on all issues — I am sure she would support women's rights more than Cruz or Trump — but on the crucial issues of corporate power and armed aggression she is no better than them.
The US government wants to collect data about movements of boats and use that data for all sorts of things.
I see nothing wrong in requiring large vessels (over 65 feet) to be tracked all the time. I would not object to requiring this for vessels owned by corporations, since they are not entitled to the same rights as real persons.
However, luring people into more surveillance in the name of safety is a dirty trick.
The US has developed a robot ship to scan for submarines.
It won't be long before other countries have such a system, too. They won't even have to design one, since they could steal a US ship and reverse-engineer it. Enemies of the US have done this with cruise missiles.
Some states in India have banned sale of alcohol. However, the prohibition policies are not as strict as the US prohibition of various other drugs.
Why We'll Continue Our Fight to Save Lambeth's Carnegie Library.
Cutbacks on libraries are part of the right-wing policy of not bothering to educate poor people.
If It Weren't for Tax Havens, Lambeth Might Be Able to Afford Its Libraries.
Of course, tax havens alone are not solely responsible for dooH niboR. Many other unjust policies help take from the poor and give to the rich.
US citizens: call on Congress to invest in world-wide family planning.
We Are Blind to an Epidemic of Domestic Abuse.
That applies to many countries, perhaps all. Meanwhile, right-wing rulers are cutting funds to the centers that support victims of domestic violence.
Mining magnate Donald Blankenship has been sentenced to prison for directing Massey Energy to persistently disregard workers' safety.
The World Bank says it will put 28% of its future investments into dealing with global heating.
This is a small step forward but nowhere near enough to avoid disaster.
Hungary's right-wing ruling party wants to
ban
encrypted communication outright.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Even worse than solitary confinement: two people kept 23 hours a day in a tiny cell that's too small even for one person.
The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn't Just Her Corporate Cash. It's Her Corporate Worldview.
The Global Consequences Of Hillary Clinton's Predatory Pragmatism.
Clinton prefers to take advantage of the Corporations United big money rather than fight to change it.
US citizens: call on Obama to ban new fracking on public lands.
Everyone: call on 5 big fast food companies to stop using meat made with regular use of antibiotics.
David Cameron acted directly in 2013 to keep offshore tax dodging schemes functioning in the UK.
How Big Telecom Gets Away With Rewriting America's Laws (to ban municipal WiFi and broadband).
Just because a WiFi network is municipal does not necessarily mean it respects users' freedom. If the network requires users to identify themselves, or to run nonfree JavaScript code, that's an injustice no matter who does it.
Why Is Honduras the World's Deadliest Country for Environmentalists?
Clinton played a significant role in bringing this about, by allowing or endorsing the coup.
Many teenagers can be dissuaded from joining PISSI by conversing with them and paying attention to what they say.
A plutocrat says his million dollar donation to campaign for Jeb Bush was laudable because it was opposing Trump.
I don't think it is clear that Jeb Bush was better than Trump, or that Cruz is less bad than Trump.
However, buying elections is not democracy even when the purchase is a good one.
A US court ruled that people don't in general have the right to record what thugs are doing on the street.
Let's hope that this decision is overruled by others.
Technology for efficient heating and lighting in buildings could be based on tracking people through the building.
I am sure there are other ways to implement the goal of controlling heating and light locally.
A Bangladeshi atheist blogger was murdered; he had made postings criticizing Islamism.
Note that Islamism is not the same thing as Islam. The latter is a religion; the former is a political stance. Human rights include the right to criticize either one.
Oculus virtual reality is going to provide only a virtual suggestion of privacy.
1000 nonviolent protesters that were arrested for no good reason in the G20 protests in Toronto will sue the thugs.
In order for this to be effective at controlling wrongdoing by thugs, the thugs must be held personally responsible. When the city pays the damages and the thugs do not, the thugs can still shrug off responsibility.
The US and Canada announced a useful plan to cut methane leaks, but they act as if they had all the time in the world.
Recognition that eating sugar is a major cause of obesity was suppressed in the 1970s by scientists who had endorsed the "blame saturated fat" theory.
Poverty continues because it's very profitable for some (just not for those who suffer it).
The UN half-plan to make airlines reduce CO2 emissions is too weak.
It seems that plutocracy is having its usual effect, helping companies continue practices that they know damage the world.
China is trying to suppress all mention of the Panama papers.
Queensland in the north of Australia is rapidly destroying forests and wiping out wildlife.
An extractivist government made this happen.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
call
on Massachusetts senators to support designating a Marine National
Monument in the ocean off Cape Cod.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on NOAA Fisheries not to help fishing boats cover up
the
amount of
"bycatch" (sea animals that they catch inadvertently, and throw
away dead).
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to provide lawyers to represent children in immigration hearings. Stop making children as young as five years old represent themselves.
Everyone: call on the CEOs of the 50 largest companies to come to an Earth Day meeting and make a plan to curb global heating and environmental destruction.
US citizens: Support Fish and Wildlife Service for blocking Alaska's plan to kill lots of predators and screw up ecosystems.
The right-wing terrorists in Colombia are having a resurgence.
The paramilitares have been Colombia's worst terrorist group because they have connections with the army, with politicians such as ex-president Alvaro Horrible, and with the elites that think they should own the country.
Wall Street lobbyists are raising funds for Clinton while she quibbles about the details of Sanders's plan to neutralize the banksters they lobby for.
Meanwhile, the major US media didn't try very hard to understand Sanders' plan.
Big banks are systematically providing big loans to the owners of rent-controlled buildings, obviously expecting the buildings to be converted to condominiums and the tenants kicked out.
Flint residents have brought a racketeering lawsuit against Governor Snyder and his collaborators.
One of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the arbitrary and unaccountable US "no fly" list is a child, not quite 5 years old.
Apparently he was put on the list when he was 7 months old.
Over 100 Medical Groups Urge Congress to Fund CDC Research on Gun Violence.
The obstacle is NRA pressure.
Google/Alphabet has intentionally shut off home automatic control products, cheating the customers who bought them.
Google/Alphabet had that power because the product depends on a company server. The lesson is, don't stand for that! Insist on self-contained computers that run free software!
The article doesn't take a firm line against anything. How weak that seems to me.
Pfizer canceled its merger with Alergan, once the US Treasury decided to block the intended tax dodging.
Hot Dusty Weather Makes Flint's Lead Crisis Worse, because lead comes out of the soil.
It got into the soil from burning leaded gasoline.
Americans with lower income get much less social security benefits, because they die several years younger.
Thousands of Bangladeshis are protesting plans for coal-fired generators that would kick them off their land. Thugs shot some of them dead.
The US is a bigger tax dodge sanctuary than Panama is.
The UK does plenty of it, too.
Mississippi has legalized discrimination against people on the basis of almost anything related to sex, as long as it is motivated by religion.
In effect, religion is the designated place for hostility to accumulate.
The activists of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition say that there is no sharp boundary between surveillance and harassment.
Our greatest cities are now pricing out even middle-class people.
Poaching has wiped out tigers in Cambodia.
The UK, and China have similar net censorship systems, and maybe soon South Korea.
After Australia eliminated its tax on CO2 emissions, emissions went up.
It appears that HSBC has refused a bank account to a Hong Kong political party as an act of political interference.
In the sick and prudish spirit imposed on US universities in the name of Title IX, even a mural that refers to sex is considered dangerous and illegal.
When the "safe space" obsession goes overboard, an anonymous political poster is seen as "harassment".
Good thing King George III didn't have this idea. If he had had this excuse to turn people against anonymous pamphlets, he could have prevented the American Revolution from starting.
In the UK under Tory austerity, "care" companies regularly cheat their workers, who then mostly cheat the old people they are supposed to take care of.
The workers can't possibly afford to spend as much time with the patients as they are supposed to, since then they'd be paid well below minimum wage.
The US allows tax-exempt organizations to support violent Israeli extremists.
I have to point out that while celebrating the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is despicable, criminalizing the expression of such views is disrespect for freedom of speech.
Rabin was assassinated because he wanted to end the occupation of Palestine. There used to be large demonstrations in Rabin's honor, for as long as many Israelis continued to want peace.
A few Israelis still want peace, and joined Palestinians for a protest march against the occupation.
But only a small minority of Israelis still want peace. For the most part, anyone like Rabin would be ridiculed in today's Israel. Most Israelis don't today celebrate his assassination, but they don't miss his efforts any more.
Israel is considering a bill to imprison children younger than 14. Palestinian children only, one understands.
Good news for Australia: the coal market is collapsing so fast that the cost of cancelling all planned fossil fuel projects now would be only 1/5 what it was in 2013.
In Tennessee, a mother faces punishment for allowing her children to go farther away than arms' length.
It's the parents that drive their children around that are negligent. They are failing to protect their children from obesity and all the consequent illnesses.
A cupcake sale intended to teach about gender and racial inequality in wages inspired nasty men to post death threats.
The UK economy is screwing the poor for the sake of trickle-up to the rich, but the rich confuse the issue by presenting it as a conflict between old and young.
Half the UNESCO World Heritage nature sites are threatened by human activities in the vicinity.
A protest in Parliament took place against UK cuts in benefits to disabled people.
The Tories ordered the BBC to stop broadcasting the protest.
Sanders plans to phase out nuclear power plants, one by one, by not relicensing them.
I would be in favor of continuing to run them, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if they were not so dangerous. Meanwhile, with a massive campaign to install renewable generation, we can do without them.
Goretti Horgan says she will continue buying abortion pills for women in Northern Ireland.
The Treasury Department changed the rules on "inversions" that allow "US" corporations to become officially foreign corporations and dodge US taxes.
Wisconsin illustrates three ways that the rich undermine US democracy by controlling elections.
Over 30 New York State legislators want to ban a campaign for Palestinian rights from the City University of New York, after accusations that it is "anti-semitic" which appear to be based on equating opposition to Israel's occupation policy with "anti-semitism".
Be careful of the term "hate speech", because those who use it want you to presume it ought to be and is prohibited.
US prosecutors are never held responsible for arranging unfair trials, not even when that causes conviction of the innocent.
The White House warns that global heating will kill perhaps around 30,000 Americans a year by 2100.
How many people the heat kills would depend on heating occurs. But this seems like an underestimate, not counting many kinds of effects. Another study suggested global heating would kill 100 million people world-wide by 2030.
Christian Universities Increasingly Apply for Exemptions From Anti-Discrimination Rules.
The Australian government decided to cut scientific research for the public good, in order to focus on research that appears profitable.
But their idea of "profitable" was focused on the short term. In the long term, the most profitable investment humanity can make is to cut down on carbon emissions fast, and climate research is a start on that investment.
Egyptian Editor, Press Freedom Advocate Faces Arrest.
What else would one expect from the US-backed military regime in Egypt.
Thailand is preparing "re-education camps" for dissidents.
US Abortion Providers Faced 94 Threats of Violence in 2015 And Just One in 2014.
Tinder collects and saves lots of data about its users, including their locations.
The fact that others can see this information too is a secondary symptom of Tinder's collection of the data.
100 women in the Central African Republic charge UN peacekeepers with rape.
Vietnam has sentenced 7 dissident bloggers to prison.
The Vietnamese have got the worst combination in their government: subservience to the US, and oppression to the Vietnamese.
Why does Clinton believe the millions she gets from rich people can't alter her political views?
It's simple. She has already shaped those views to match the donors.
Chambers of Commerce across the US took a poll of their member CEOs and found that most of them supported various measures to help working people, such as increasing the minimum wage and better benefits.
So they told their lobbyists to design a way to convince the members to forget about it.
Drought destroyed the crops in part of the Philippines, so people are demanding the government provide food. Instead, soldiers shot them.
A second Indonesian minister says it is not true that de Caprio faces a threat of being excluded from Indonesia for campaigning against deforestation.
I would like to see a clear statement that Indonesia will not bar foreigners merely for criticizing anything about Indonesia: in other words, that Indonesia respects freedom of expression.
Tax-dodging through companies such as Mossack Fonseca adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars per year.
An investigation of posted Russian bombing videos reports that nearly all the Russian air attacks in Syria through the end of February were outside PISSI's territory.
This is no surprise, because it was clear at that time that Syria was mainly attacking enemies that Assad found threatening. And that was before the partial cease fire, I believe. Since then, Russia does seem to be fighting PISSI.
5 years ago, Bernie Sanders objected to the US - Panama business supremacy treaty because it would exacerbate the problem of tax dodging through Panama.
Polar bears' suffering from decreased Arctic sea ice has been measured: the average weight of females in one area has gone down by 10% since 1984.
I speculate it will be harder for them to have and rear offspring with the lower weight. Thus, the population will dwindle and eventually disappear.
Non-rich retired people in the UK can get some meals from charities on a pay-what-you-can basis. But only if they are well enough to travel to the meal.
A woman in Northern Ireland was convicted of having an abortion using abortion drugs. Here are the other lousy options she rejected.
In parts of the US, women are imprisoned for having miscarriages.
The participation of Muslim scholars enables polio vaccination campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan to make progress.
Corbyn says the UK has the power to directly order the tiny British islands to stop permitting tax dodging.
Here are suggested measures for prying open the secrecy.
But why would Tories screw up a racket that is so useful for them?
Educating Girls Could Cut Child Marriage in Bangladesh by a Third.
The UN denies its responsibility for bringing cholera to Haiti, but an internal report took note of the UN's faulty sanitary measures just before that occurred.
To refer to the UN's troops as "peacekeepers" is misleading, since there was no war there, only a US-backed overthrow of the elected government.
Disabled and poor people in Britain, who can barely afford to eat, face jail because they are now required to pay as much as 10% of their income as local tax.
These vicious Tories don't really expect to get blood out of those stones (people), who already can barely survive. They want to reduce the expense those people cause and have found an excuse to drive many of them to death. Not quickly, but faster than they would have died while they could still afford food.
Instead of shame, the victims should feel hatred. They are martyrs and they should recognize the cause they are dying for: fighting the tyranny of the banksters.
If they have courage, they have a way to carry the fight to the enemy: they can dare the state to burn up more of its money by jailing them. Once in jail, they must thwart any state plan to extract money from them, such as by making them do work.
Thailand has become a totally military state in which soldiers can arrest people anywhere. Their powers are almost arbitrary.
Please don't ignore this injustice by vacationing in Thailand. As for me, that dictatorship is so crazed that I would not risk going there at all.
Big US school districts hire cops rather than counselors.
Thugs in San Francisco maimed Stanislav Petrov, leaving him too injured to use his hands for work, then tried to cover up their crime by offering his belongings to homeless witnesses so they would keep silent about what they had seen.
Now the FBI is prosecuting Petrov and refuses to say what those charges are.
I have no way of knowing whether Petrov was guilty of some crime, but if so, it cannot justify acting like this.
Everyone: state support for witness Emad Abu Shamsiya, who faces threats from Israeli fanatics.
Prisoners in Texas prisons have gone on strike against abuses such as being charged for medical care, solitary confinement, and forced labor.
I think it is legitimate to make prisoners work to keep the prison going, but when they do any other work, they deserve the same rights and working conditions as other workers. Otherwise, prison labor is an injustice to the prisoners and to the non-imprisoned workers that they compete with.
I admire this strike. Joining with others for the common good is exactly the sort of activity that can transform a habitual criminal into an upstanding and dependable member of society. It builds the skill to defer immediate gratification for long-term good, which helps people stay away from crime.
UK government officials no longer waste time pretending to pay attention to heed human rights organizations.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
WordPress Wants Statutory Damages for DMCA Abuse.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are trying to make the "self-driving" cars of the future depend on their servers (and thus be totally tracked and controlled remotely).
These cars won't be "self-driving", they will be driven by a company, one that has a history of snooping.
The workers in Trump's hotel in Las Vegas voted to unionize.
Protecting parrotfish might save coral reefs, for a while.
Racism against blacks is rampant in the San Francisco thugs.
Charlie Hebdo receives criticism for calling Islamist terror the extreme point on a spectrum of campaigns against criticizing Islam.
I think that is not true — that Islamist terrorists aim for something far beyond merely suppressing criticism of Islam.
There is a campaign to deny people the right to criticize Islam, and we must fight it resolutely, starting with rejecting the idea that such criticism is wrong. But we should not confuse this campaign (which is not violent, only unjust) with other forms of Islamist activity, such as terrorism.
It is clear that we should not hesitate to criticize any aspect of any religion, including Islam, when we have a reason to. People have a right to choose their beliefs, and within some limits to practice them, but no one is entitled to the right not to be criticized.
A study estimates that the economic damage to human assets from global heating above 2C could range from 2.5 trillion dollars to ten times that.
It would be far cheaper to spend the money now to prevent global heating. The question is whether the rest of us can defeat the planet roasters who have spent millions to confuse and delay. They are the biggest enemies of human civilization — PISSI is a pipsqueak by comparison.
On the correct pronunciation of "Exxon".
Yanis Varoufakis argues for trying to save the European Union by making it democratic.
A democratic union of Europe might be a good thing, but it won't be easy to achieve against all the institutions that are already tentacles of the banksters.
I noticed the EU's lack of democracy a decade ago, and proposed that vote of the citizens should replace the council of Europe for final approval of directives.
Using computers for receiving votes is dangerous. Using obsolete computers leads to additional problems, because they break.
Having people cast their votes in a computer creates a risk of massive centralized undetectable fraud. Don't do it!
The ID requirements for students to vote in Wisconsin are especially complicated, and no one has told students what they need to do.
Each additional activity that requires a government-issued ID is a step towards the tyranny of massive surveillance.
Atrocities in Conflict Mean We Need the Geneva Conventions More Than Ever.
HSBC lobbied Mossack Fonseca to continue serving Assad's cousin despite sanctions.
For some people, belief that ads were targeted at them based on their "sophisticated" interests can flatter them into being more interested in a product.
I expect that advertising agencies are years ahead of other psychologists in discovering things like this, and already use them.
Thus, the massive surveillance on which digital ads are based not only threatens really important things, such as democracy, whistleblowers, dissidents, and your willingness to state views that are controversial. It also threatens to cause you short-term trouble by luring you to spend more money.
It is well established that people tend to spend more when they are not paying cash.
Don't be tracked (and save money)
Pay cash.
Face recognition creates a danger of systematic tracking of everyone everywhere, in businesses and on streets.
Suitable laws could reduce the danger, but they have to be strict and stern, not lax. They must go beyond the bare minimum that one might claim will be sufficient. They must not presume either the good will or honesty of the companies involved, or their ability to maintain proper security.
Imagine if people could wear specially reflective jewelry which had the effect of telling most cameras "Blur my head!" Of course, anyone could have a camera which did not obey this, but businesses would need special permission to use such a camera, and publishing such photos would require justification such as serving journalistic purposes. Security cameras, not connected to any network and making only local recordings, would not have to obey the blurring.
Employment laws were designed to protect rights for employees. Businesses increasingly game the system by converting staff into "independent contractors" whose work is controlled tightly by the company but get none of the rights or benefits of employees.
One way to fight back is for the state to rule that these people are employees or must get the same benefits as employees.
Another, which may be more durable, is to redesign the protection of workers' rights and benefits so that it doesn't depend on who is the employer at any given minute. Benefits should be paid from income taxes and wealth taxes, not from payroll taxes. There should be minimum rates for piecework jobs based on how long they are likely to take, or actually do take.
The danger of plutonium fallout, and a few ideas that might help reduce the danger.
At present, nearly all the plutonium we have generated is highly localized, so most people are not in any real danger from it. But substances tend to mix. In 10,000 years, will the plutonium have spread around enough that all humans get lung cancer eventually? If technology advances, we will presumably have no trouble treating those cancers — but if it collapses due to global heating, that could wipe out humanity (and other sufficiently long-lived species).
Cancelling the UK's planned new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point would save 60 billion dollars.
Right-wing austerity and mass unemployment, over some years, can destroy permanently the social ties that show young people a path to strive for a successful life.
New York State has joined California in programming a $15 minimum wage, though it won't take effect for several years.
However, as more and more workers become piecework contractors, we need to cover them too.
Decommissioning Europe's nuclear power plants will cost almost half a trillion dollars.
But that's a lot less than what it would cost to run them until they fall apart and spew fallout.
Ecuador has started drilling for oil at the edge of the pristine Yasuni forest.
Over a set of comparable Austronesian cultures, human sacrifice was more common in the societies with less equality.
Nowadays millions of people are effectively sacrificed by the Cult of the Invisible Hand.
"Tax Havens Don't Need to be Reformed. They Should Be Outlawed."
When car loans impose a remote shutoff device, loan companies can use this power to get away with cheating.
They have various habitual ways of screwing customers. Pushing across the line, to see if they get away with it, is their way of life.
I think it should be a crime for companies associated with selling or insuring a car to put remote shutoff or interference devices into cars.
Tasmania has the same problem as Venezuela: shortage of rain leads to shortage of electricity.
One of the predicted effects of global heating is bigger and more frequent droughts, as well as bigger and more frequent floods. We will more and more often find big expensive hydropower dams high and dry, leading to more use of fossil fuels. This is a positive feedback effect, and they make it even harder to escape disaster.
But we can still escape, if we push hard enough in the right direction.
US citizens: call on Obama to nominate commissioners for the Federal Trade Commission who will defend people from abuses by businesses.
Expanding a natural gas pipeline close to a nuclear power plant: asking for trouble.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission puts its rubber stamp on every pipeline application. This is the inspiration for the "rubber stamp" protest that is planned.
The rebellious area of eastern Ukraine is full of landmines, which kill civilians trying to return home.
Mexico is torturing Mexicans that speak only Mayan, demanding that they say they are Guatemalan and give the state an excuse to deport them.
A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal is What's Been Legalized.
Medicine is recognizing that chronic fatigue syndrome is a physical illness often resulting from some sort of infection.
The Air France flight attendants' union rejects the company's order for female flight attends to cover their heads while stopping over in Iran.
I suggest a way to protest this: the male flight attends can wear headscarves saying, in French and Farsi and English, "Solidarity with all women in Iran."
The company that makes proprietary software for filing US tax returns also lobbies heavily to stop the US government from providing any easier automatic method.
I refuse to run proprietary software. I fill out my tax returns by hand. It is not terribly hard — the main work is collecting the data on my income and deductible expenses, which I would have to do anyway.
The US media don't subject Clinton's health care proposals to scrutiny. Perhaps because they are so vague it is hard to evaluate them at all.
The real crisis in US education consists of setting up to blame public schools for social conditions, as an excuse to privatize them, so businesses can wolf down public funds and cheat the students and the teachers.
The article uses the word "monetize" to mean "profit from". I shun that usage and recommend that you shun it too.
Habitat for Humanity proposed to use Federal funds to improve housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant for poor people. But gentrifiers took over the housing.
What our expensive cities need now is not upgrades to housing. They need more places where poor people can afford to live — and that calls for driving prices and rents down.
For Older Americans, Divide between Rich And Poor Gets Bigger.
One secondary danger of the systematic tracking of mobile phones is that crackers could steal the data and use them for criminal purposes.
However, the worst danger from the data is that the state can get them easily. Many countries are using panic inspired by rare acts of terrorism as an excuse to eliminate all protections.
Rather than offer users an opportunity to "opt out", the data should not be collected at all except when the state gets a specific warrant to track a specific phone.
Tax havens that enable people and companies to dodge taxes, whether legally or not, do great harm.
In Africa, the high rate of offshoring wealth impoverishes everyone.
The claim that corporations' duty to shareholders takes priority over all other responsibilities was imposed by a systematic effort starting in the 1970s. We have no obligation to grant it any legitimacy.
Leaked documents papers from a company that arranges offshore tax havens show that many people are hiding lots of wealth, including politicians from many countries.
One of them is the Prime Minister of Iceland, who probably will face a new election as a result. The Pirate Party has a chance to form the next government.
The documents show Putin has enriched his friends and family by 2 billion dollars by making the state give them preferences and financing. Alas for Russia, it doesn't have the option to replace Putin democratically.
Special beacons will make it possible to track a mobile phone's location to within 10 cm, inside buildings.
More reason to refuse to carry one.
US citizens: tell Congress to stop exposing fetal tissue researchers to threats from religious fanatics. It is doing this with a gratuitous harassment-investigation, as an extension of the gratuitous harassment-investigation of Planned Parenthood.
Fetal tissue research is vital for advancing medicine, including understanding the effects of Zika on fetuses.
Put it all together, and this harassment scheme aims at saddling as many women as possible with brain-damaged babies.
US citizens:
ask your congresscritter to
support internet radio broadcasting and stop the RIAA from killing it
off.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
The governor of Mississippi has proclaimed April "Confederate Heritage Month", showing no recognition of the evil of slavery, the perpetuation of which was the purpose of the Confederacy.
I would encourage Bernie Sanders to propose a rally during this April to recognize "Confederate Heritage Month" by denouncing all of its evil forms: slavery, the KKK, lynching, the "Jim Crow" segregation laws, the great foreclosure fraud of a few years ago (which disproportionately affected blacks), the many killings of blacks by thugs who hastily assumed they were criminals, and today's voter-suppression laws.
British Museum Must Sever Its Links With BP.
Will No One Stop Poland Destroying Europe's Most Precious Forest?
The MPAA opposes a ban on revenge porn in the name of freedom of speech.
The worse contract for most NHS doctors is especially hard for women and is likely to drive them out of medicine.
Trump probably won't be elected president, but he has convinced most Americans to ban Muslims from visiting the US.
In principle, it would make sense to exclude people with fervent Muslim or Christian or Orthodox Jewish views, since they are likely to promote repressive policies towards women if they become powerful enough here. However, it is too late, since there are so many of those people (especially Christians) in the US already. It would have been necessary to enact the policy around 1615.
Poor children in San Jose, who are a large fraction of the city, say, "My mom won't let me get a [library] card because she doesn’t want fines."
I wonder why they so often return books late. I suspect that children in poverty face simple practical obstacles to returning books on time, and I wonder if there are practical solutions. For instance, could a system for them to return library books through their school help?
Hello magazine admitted its "exclusive interview with George Clooney" was completely fabricated.
The magazine says it did not know the article was fabricated, but will someone be held accountable enough to make sure it doesn't happen again?
Coal companies will evade the obligation to clean up their polluted strip mines and mine waste by going bankrupt.
Arizona has passed a law to obstruct access to abortion drugs.
Knee-jerk reactions to a shocking event tend to be bad ones. The biggest danger to Europe from terrorists is in the foolish attacks on freedom in Europe that are now threatening.
The big record companies, through their tentacle the RIAA, are pushing to make the DMCA even nastier.
Americans have not fought hard enough to demand repeal of the DMCA.
Many physical retail stores have stopped ordering products for ordinary sale. Instead, they tell customers to order the product on the internet, then show a government photo ID to pick up the product.
This is a massive surveillance system. I won't use it, and I hope you will reject it too. Don't reward or encourage surveillance!
When I buy things, I absolutely refuse to give any personal information. The store has a right to my payment. If the store demands more, I say "no sale".
"We won't accept a coup": Brazilians rally to defend president Rousseff even though they were not her supporters.
Indigenous people do not have a right to demand "return" of everything that they gave or sold to Europeans, nor a right to control all the ideas of their culture.
No one has a right to a monopoly over a cultural practice. An Australian indigene has no more right to enforce ownership over a style of artifacts, or all its examples, than an American has the right to enforce ownership over jazz, rock or rap. And people have the right to make fusions of these with other styles, too.
If you don't like those fusions, don't watch or listen to them.
The Australian government found a cute way to shift the blame for insufficient spending and taxes onto the states — so taxes won't be raised, and hospitals and schools will continue to run short.
Disabled artists in the UK use their art to show what the state's contempt for the disabled means.
Erdoğan's war of choice is leading many young Turkish Kurds to join the armed PKK.
The PKK had had a cease-fire with the Turkish state for many years until Erdoğan broke it. If he had respected it, those youth would be campaigning for the human rights party HDK instead of planning to fight. Poor Kurds, poor Turks, as long as Erdoğan oppresses them both.
But that's fascism for you: scapegoat a minority, whip up hatred for it among the majority, and get its support to impose tyranny on all.
"Donald Trump's disastrous comments on abortion show that the best way to undermine irrational politicians is to give them a platform to speak."
"Modest" fashion, designed to suit dress codes imposed on women by male clerics, teaches us about the patriarchal demand for women to be "modest".
Al Qa'ida, PISSI and Netanyahu all say, "Never mind what we do to people we hate."
Everyone: Thank state attorneys general for investigating Exxon's global heating fraud.
Everyone: call on New York Mayor de Blasio to fire all the thugs involved in killing Ramarley Graham.
Everyone: call on the Georgia governor to veto the guns-on-campus bill.
Honduras has decided to allow Gustavo Castro Soto, witness to the murder of Berta Cáceres, to leave the country.
As long as he remains in Honduras, the murderers will have easy access to kill him too.
The EPA raised the allowed level of cadmium in waters, ignoring its duty to consult about the danger to wildlife.
Ohio plans to make electric customers bail out old and dangerous power plants.
Chicago Teachers, Workers Come Together for 'Unprecedented' Strike for Public Funding.
A Briton was convicted of the crime of treating his wife (who arrived from Pakistan) as a domestic slave.
The Muslim religion and the culture that goes with it is partly responsible for this crime, because it is pervaded by that attitude towards women. Not all Muslim men act this way, but when you teach men to despise women, some will follow their teaching.
The Indonesian government spoke of deporting Leonardo DiCaprio because he criticized the policies that encourage massive deforestation.
To consider deporting someone for that reason is disrespect for human rights. Indonesia deserves better government than that.
Most women in Papua New Guinea suffer from domestic violence, and most men participate in gang rapes. Women are fairly often burned for "witchcraft".
The New York Times obeyed an Israeli demand not to mention the name of the soldier that murdered a Palestinian in cold blood.
The other soldiers and medics who saw the murder did not react at all, suggesting that they were accustomed to witnessing such murders.
The American Association of University Professors accuses a branch of
the US government of imposing far-reaching censorship on college
courses, based on
equating
uncomfortable subject matter with harassment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
In effect, the Department of Education has set up an unofficial system for censorship, bypassing actual courts, and trying to pretend it doesn't punish universities while in fact threatening to cut off their funding if they don't comply.
Some US states have
laws
to boycott companies that boycott Israel, or even decide not to
have subsidiaries in Israel.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
When Massachusetts adopted a boycott of companies that did business in Burma, the US government decided that state purchasing boycotts were prohibited by the WTO. I wonder if that will be enforced in this issue too. However, I think that states should have the right to boycott for any criteria.
Wisconsin's voter-ID law called for a public education campaign so that voters would know how to comply. But the Republican legislature disregarded that and never appropriated funds for it.
No surprise. After all, the real purposes of these bills is precisely to bar poor, old, minority and student voters from voting.
Awareness of general surveillance leads people to self-censor their dissenting opinions.
We must seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of Bernie Sanders. Being cautious will at best continue the status quo, whose nature is to keep getting worse.
The Mexican state couldn't bear the scandal of trying soldiers who murdered civilian prisoners, so it has stopped releasing information about such cases.
New York State has given employees paid family leave, but this is paid for by the same employees while they are working.
It would have been a mistake to make employers pay for this leave for their employees. That would have discouraged hiring workers.
But it is also a mistake to make the employees pay. That turns it into a forced savings plan that will be useless to those that don't have children and don't take time off work to care for parents.
The right way to fund such programs is by taxing the rich, and companies in ways that have nothing to do with how many people they employ.
Protesters chained themselves to cars to block the road to a Trump rally.
Some towns near the border of Texas supply water with so much arsenic that it isn't safe to drink.
This is a extreme case of a general problem in the US: too little money for infrastructure. The cause is the success of businesses and the rich in reducing their tax rate, starting under Reagan.
Pollution Is Now Coming from Donald Trump's Golf Course, in Addition to His Mouth.
South African president Jacob Zuma faces calls to resign for his corruption, including from one of the heroes of the African National Congress.
Assad's forces report finding a mass grave in Palmyra containing 42 corpses, over half of them civilians and including three children.
One can't entirely trust Assad's forces, but this is a plausible claim. Gratuitous cruelty and violence are part of PISSI's ideology and recruiting method.
A fool notices that bringing children into the world facing disaster is not a wise choice, then convinces himself that it couldn't be wrong because it feels so good.
You don't have to be foolish like that.
The idea of a "biological imperative" that constitutes a reason why you should reproduce is nonsense. There is a biological tendency to reproduce, which exists for well-known evolutionary reasons, but a tendency to do something is not a reason to do it. I have a tendency to mislay things and forget where I put them, but that is no reason why I ought to forget.
Anything that makes you focus most of your attention on the well-being of one specific other person — which is almost guaranteed to call for more money than you can gain honestly — is a road to cheating or abusing people. It is wiser not to set foot on that path!
The EU-Turkey deal to return Syrian refugees to Turkey without considering their applications for asylum might violate treaties about refugees.
Hibo Wardere describes the suffering that genital mutilation caused her, and continues to cause her now that she is an adult. She now dedicates herself to putting an end to the practice.
Those accused of sexual abuse, but never tried, have no way to clear their names. They are treated in many ways as guilty.
In Texas, at least 100,000 women have tried to give themselves abortions due to the law denying them access to safe abortions.
Greenpeace Reveals Indonesia's Forests at Risk as Multiple Companies Claim Rights to Same Land.
Finally, a good reason why the UK should leave the EU: to thwart the IMF's continuing attack on poor Greeks.
Amerindians are protesting an oil pipeline that could pollute their drinking water: the Missouri river.
Snowden urges future whistleblowers not to regard exile as defeat or disaster. He says he can campaign more effectively for freedom from exile than he could have done in the US.
Belgium plans to require immigrants and long term visitors to sign a statement in favor of "European values" and promising to report plans of terrorism.
I think this is basically legitimate, but "European values" is too vague.
It is self-contradictory to claim (1) that one can take this for granted so there's no need to raise the issue and (2) it would drive some immigrants away.
I think most immigrants will agree with it and sign it, and it will lead them to reflect on the values they are agreeing to.
El Al staff told a female passenger to change seats because her neighbor, a Jewish religious fanatic, said that a woman near him was against his religion.
This sort of thing has happened on El Al many times before, but now the defenders of equal rights for women have a good case to fight. The woman in question was an 81-year-old widow, making the supposed danger of her attractiveness absurd.
However, even if she had been a beautiful 21-year-old wearing something skimpy, that would not give another passenger the right to demand that she move. There is nothing wrong about being 21 and beautiful, and wearing revealing clothing is not an aggression against anyone.
If the man had been less arrogant, if his goal had been to follow his beliefs rather than to subjugate women in general, he might have looked for someone who would switch seats with him.
The ultra-orthodox continue looking for ways to oppress women in Israel, and I fear that as their numbers grow they will eventually win. At that point, non-orthodox Jews will face oppression in Israel and will need to seek a homeland somewhere else.
New pun: "Sculpture of David Cameron".
Canadian journalist Ben Makuch says he will go to prison rather than reveal the messages he exchanged with a source who is now in Syria fighting PISSI.
Piketty and Varoufakis explain what it takes to save the sinking ship of Europe, but the elites are getting into the lifeboats already.
Elizabeth Warren Warns Banks Are Lying About Upcoming Rule Change, Potentially Breaking The Law.
During Erdoğan's visit to the US, his bodyguards attacked Turkish journalists as they tried to enter the hall in Washington where he was going to speak.
They also threatened to kill one of the journalists.
It looks like Erdoğan and Putin are Trump's role models.
The FBI has replaced the publicly visible order for Apple to crack security on an iPhone with another case, which is being argued in secret. The FBI is trying to sneak this past the American people.
In this case, the targets of prosecution are gang members, not terrorists. In other words, this is part of the cruel and foolish "War on Drugs".
This should teach people to stop thinking of the FBI's demands as an "anti-terrorism" measure. It's an "anti-anyone-accused-or-suspected-of-anything" measure — exactly what our constitution is supposed to put limits on, for our freedom's sake.
The ACLU defends our constitutional rights. I'm an ACLU member. How about joining?
The scorn directed from all quarters at women who have been raped pressures many of them to deny that it happened.
Why is it worse to be raped than to be stabbed? As a physical injury, the stabbing is worse; but there is no general pattern of scorning people for being stabbed.
In a healthy society, the word "slut" would be incomprehensible.
When a right-wing terrorist killed Hanne Lovlie, her family decided to help victims of violence as her memorial.
The UK is trying to set a precedent of requiring people to turn over passwords to them, using someone accused of cracking US computers as a convenient example. It is keeping the trial secret so Britons won't notice their rights are being threatened.
Clinton claims she doesn't take money from fossil fuel companies. But she has accepted over a million from their lobbyists.
Greenpeace organizer Eva Resnick-Day describes how she confronted Clinton about this.
Obama has worked to improve security for the world's civilian stores of highly enriched uranium, but has neglected the far larger military stocks.
In the US: participate in the Democracy Awakening rally in Washington on April 17.
Everyone:
call
on Quebec not to destroy the old-growth forests around the
Broadback River.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
The immediate proposal is to build roads, but companies would use them to cut down as many trees as they can sneakily get away with.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the bill to audit the Pentagon.
US citizens: call on Obama and Congress not to sell fighter jets to Qatar until it stops funding al-Nusra (the Syrian branch of al Qa'ida).
Turkish border guards are accused of shooting Syrian refugees at the border.
This is part of a general pattern: it isn't entirely safe to be a Syrian refugee in Turkey.
A peace agreement in Syria could enable many of the refugees to go home. That should be the goal.
France accuses Russia of bombing civilians in Damascus for purposes of terrorism.
Many Arab countries quietly cooperate with Israel. If Israel only were willing to end its occupation of Palestine, those countries would become its eager friends.
Most of them are eager friends with US money, and as a patriotic American I find the friendship of such tyrants rather embarrassing. But Israel has less world influence than the US and perhaps shouldn't be asked to reject possible friends on such grounds. If Israel simply pulled back its colonists and ended the occupation, I would have no criticism of its foreign policies.
There remains, however, the issue of democracy. Israel is considering a law that would allow it to expel all the Arab members of parliament.
Middle-Class Feminism Has a Blind Spot over Female Cleaners.
The many articles about the "glass ceiling" for female executives strike me as a distraction from the main issue.
Doctors and teachers in the UK should go on strike together.
Gouging in US health care shows why we need a single universal health care payment system.
Women in parts of Nepal and India are treated as disgusting when they are menstruating.
How cruel superstition is.
Use of tissues from aborted fetuses is essential for research on Zika.
Step by step, Australia abolishes the right not to testify against oneself.
North Korea kidnaped people from various countries in the 1970s to force them to train spies.
The Japanese ruling party calls itself the "Liberal Democratic Party" but it is really a conservative party.
Xi Jinping's grab for total power over China is compelling him to develop an Erdoğan-like sensitivity to criticism, which he implements with Erdoğan-like overt repression.
Nuclear Power Plants Are Pre-Deployed Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Meanwhile, accidents are still a danger. The Indian Point nuclear plants, near New York City, are among the most accident-prone in the US.
If an accident occurs, it may make New York City unsafe to inhabit, decades before the rising seas would do so. However, evacuating 5 million people from New York and surrounding suburbs would be impossible as well as unsustainable.
Senator Warren called for replacement of the government's system for collecting college loan payments.
Using private companies to do the government's work is inviting fraud. Each indirection in the chain reduces accountability, and we have seen the effects here.
GlaxoSmithKline announced it will not patent its new drugs in countries that are the poorest of the poor, such as Afghanistan, Rwanda and Cambodia.
I wonder, though, whether this apparent magnanimity will have any practical effect. I don't think there are generic drug factories in countries such as Afghanistan, Rwanda and Cambodia. If the countries such as India that actually make generic drugs are not covered, if GSK continues using patents to prevent the manufacture of generic drugs in those countries, this gift will turn out to be an empty gesture.
The reason this problem exists is that the World Trade Organization treaty requires India to allow patents on drugs.
The real solution for this is to abolish the World Trade Organization.
Senator Wyden's speech for a bill to defend encryption from state interference and to narrow the "third party" doctrine that is the excuse for so much state surveillance.
These would be major advances, but what we really need is to prevent systems from keeping records about what people do. We should require digital systems to offer the maximum possible level of anonymity.
The UK pays to discourage coal-fired power plants, then pays to keep them running.
Such a policy contradiction can also be seen in the area of trade secrets: the US adopted the patent system explicitly to discourage trade secrecy, then adopted specific trade secret laws to encourage trade secrecy.
The UK's foreign aid "for the poor" is being diverted to consultants in the UK.
California has increased the minimum wage. After several steps it will reach $15 in 2022.
Prince Edward Island, in Canada, will legalize abortion.
Some US food companies are going to stop using BPA, a hormone disrupter. But the replacements may be bad for people, too.
After Leading The Attack On Investigative Journalism, President Obama Whines About A Lack Of Investigative Journalism.
In Mexico, the ability of the rich to buy their way out of prosecution is now coming under exposure.
US citizens: support the rule to require companies to report how their pay scale varies with employees' gender and race.
Movie companies are suing to eliminate a Star Trek fan film, and trying to stretch copyright law in the process.
An imprisoned computer manipulation operative says he helped manipulate elections in Mexico and several other countries.
Donald Trump's Most Recent Attacks on Women Point to a History of Misogyny.
The Corporations United decision allowed foreign companies and people to fund US election campaigns.
The corporations called their organization "Citizens United", but there is no reason to support their falsehood.
Poland's right-wing government is also fanatically Christian and wants to ban all abortions.
Mississippi is passing a law privileging religious discrimination and hatred.
This shows the nastiness at the heart of common American versions of Christianity.
Hindu nationalists failed in their attempt to excise coverage of bigotry against Dalits from California textbooks.
Delivering an abortion drug by mail can avoid many of the artificial impediments imposed by right-wing state legislatures.
If Azerbaijan Is a Democracy, Why Were We Imprisoned for Our Views?
US ex-officers condemn Trump for rejecting the Geneva Conventions.
Soldiers understand that they depend on the Geneva Conventions as much as, or more than, civilians do.
The thugs who shot Jamar Clark while he was handcuffed will not be prosecuted.
The city of Nantes is moving its administration completely to LibreOffice. I hope this will be followed by moving to GNU/Linux.
The article uses the confused term "intellectual property" which refers to a dozen or so unrelated laws and misleadingly suggests they are similar. Too bad.
Merrick Garland is a "moderate" in the sense that he decides cases to support the power structure. He was a prosecutor, so his decisions tend to support the state over people and especially accused people.
Watch a Black Student Assault White Teen Because His Dreadlocks Are Cultural Appropriation.
No person or group is entitled to own a hair style or any other cultural practice.
Imitating practices that in some other group have a meaning you don't understand can in some cases be insensitive, and doing so might make you look foolish — but that doesn't entitle them to stop you. And some practices, such as your hair style, don't have any meaning unless you say they do.
Colorado proposes to make sexting a misdemeanor for teenagers, which could result in more prosecutions of teenagers for sexting.
Laws concerning teenagers and sex or reproduction tend to be twisted up by prudish irrational impulses.
San Francisco thugs stopped a public defender from protecting her clients' rights by arresting her on false charges.
To reclaim our cities from these thugs, we need to teach them a lesson. We need to put them away for periods of many years.
Mass transit in the US is scraping to a halt for lack of maintenance funds. We need to increase the gasoline tax — but the politicians in the pocket of the planet roasters will never allow that.
Japan's public pensions are so meager that old people can only survive by stealing and getting in jail.
"The more money [or gifts] doctors receive from drug and medical device companies, the more brand-name drugs they tend to prescribe, a new ProPublica analysis shows."
The EFF is starting to fight more strongly against Digital Restrictions Management.
Senator Wyden will personally block bills to require software developers to block their encryption.
Drought is crippling hydropower in Venezuela.
This is likely to be a world-wide problem — it will rain too little, except where it rains too much.
Now people in Turkey are threatened with prosecution for repeating rumors.
This resembles China and Thailand.
Queers still face repression in Ukraine; the pro-Western (but somewhat fascist) government is no better than the previous pro-Russian government.
Subcontracting is increasing in Silicon Valley, and this is spreading poverty.
Shell's Headquarters Raided and Formal Investigation Launched over Billion Dollar Nigerian Oil Deal.
The French minister for women's rights compared women that wear burqas to American blacks that supported slavery.
I agree. Those women are entitled to wear what they wish — it should not be prohibited — but we should recognize what the burqa stands for.
Meanwhile, there is nothing insulting about the word "negro". The fuss about the minister's word choice is foolish.
Pakistan's government promised religious fanatics it would not repeal the vicious blasphemy law.
This crowns with success the murder they rallied to support.
Depending on a GPS navigator leads you to lose your ability to read maps and understand where you are.
A new study, considering more processes that affect the Antarctic ice, estimates an additional meter of sea level rise in this century.
Sea level will rise further after 2100. Many coastal cities are likely to be swamped sooner or later.
France is trying to extend the so-called "right to be forgotten", i.e., right to exclude articles from searches for your name, into a global censorship regime.
The French state has a pattern of attacking freedom of speech. It is forbidden to say there was no genocide of the Armenians, as well as to say there was no genocide of the Jews.
I reject both of those statements (see evidence for the genocide of the Armenians) but we must defend people's right to say these things even if they are incorrect.
You can also be prosecuted for saying "Don't buy from Israeli companies."
That goes somewhat beyond my form of opposition to Israel's occupation policies, but the right to advocate a boycott is part of human rights.
Even saying "I am not Charlie Hebdo" can get you harassed by thugs.
When France, a supposed champion of freedom, imposes persistent and ever-extending censorship, that clears the path for tyrants such as Putin and Erdoğan to impose their own forms of censorship.
US government standards, being effectively imposed on colleges, say that it's not enough to say "yes" to sex — only an "enthusiastic" agreement is enough to avoid accusations of crime.
It won't take much more to reach a 1950-style "abstinence only" rule.
The idiotic arguments that have put the US and Europe in danger of surrender to plutocrats are now being deployed against Africa.
Understanding some of the biological basis of anorexia.
The Smart Con: Clinton vs. Trump.
Clinton Campaign: No More Debates Until Sanders Starts Being Nicer.
The FCC told some app developers to stop working with SilverPush. It seems that SilverPush is claiming to have stopped this practice, while also continuing to offer it to advertisers.
The root cause of this practice comes from advertising that tracks people. We need to put an end to that, totally.
Monsanto is pressuring the government of Nigeria to grow Bt cotton, but farmers are fighting back.
Obama is choosing drug treatment over drug repression, to reduce heroin addiction.
This much is good, but I am still concerned about the War on Pain Sufferers.
Cooper Union has removed all gender signs from its toilets.
It would be useful, however, to indicate which ones have urinals, since some people may want to use a urinal, and others may prefer not to see exposed penises.
Sanders is the only candidate that recognizes the precarious nature of work for young Americans.
Hollywood romantic comedies teach people to expect, even demand, behavior that is rather twisted.
Human Rights Watch accuses Louisiana of denying prisoners access to medical care for HIV.
Top Scientists Back Federal Plan to Protect Alaska Predators.
The predators to be protected are animals that prey on animals (not multinational mining companies.)
A lawsuit tries to stop Canada's sale of arms to Salafi Arabia.
Trump's campaign manager faces criminal charges for grabbing and yanking a journalist.
Erdoğan petulantly ordered the German ambassador to have a satirical German video deleted because it makes fun of him.
Trump, despite all that is bad about him, has the merit of attacking business supremacy treaties constantly.
I am reluctant to trust that he would really try to get rid of them, however. Trump is more manipulative than honest. The people who support Trump for this reason should support Sanders instead.
Everyone: Support a new wildlife refuge in Massachusetts.
Everyone: call on Connecticut to drop charges against Cherelle Baldwin.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate Arizona voter suppression.
US citizens: call on Congress not to fund groups that attack Syrian Kurds.
Why Do the Tories Want to Hide Who Owns British Land?
The US and Russia are cooperating to fight PISSI in Syria.
Evidently, Russia is not withdrawing all its forces from Syria quite so fast.
This cooperation is useful. It also demonstrates that the US and Russia don't need to be enemies. To be sure, Putin is capable of various sorts of aggression. Nonetheless, if the US avoids pushing too hard (for instance, inviting parts of the former Soviet Union to join NATO), the US and Russia need not be in conflict.
It will still be a shame that Putin has done away with democracy, the independent press, and other human rights in Russia. But the US is not in a position to do much about that.
I am concerned that Russian bombardment of Raqqa will be indiscriminate, a series of war crimes. The US makes some effort to avoid killing civilians, though it denies these killings when they happen. Russia hardly bothers to try to avoid killing civilians.
The Fight for the Environment And the Fight for Blue-Collar Jobs Are One And the Same.
In both cases, it's a fight for democracy against plutocracy.
Link between Fossil Fuels and Great Barrier Reef Bleaching 'Clear' And 'Incontrovertible', Say Scientists.
Koch Brothers Attempt to Kill Single-Payer Health Care in Colorado.
The FBI wants prominent people in the Muslim community to counsel troubled youths, and report in detail on them.
One might expect them to report any actual criminal plans that they learn about, but this demand goes for beyond that.
A trillion dollars in planned investment in new coal-fired power plants will be a wasted and the money lost, assuming we save civilization from disaster by not actually using those power plants.
Was the British colonization of Australia an invasion?
Colonization is not synonymous with invasion. The British colonization of Massachusetts started very slowly and did not become a violent conflict until many years had gone by.
The colonization of Australia, starting 170 years later, went much faster; exiled were sent by thousands. "Invasion" could be an accurate term for that.
Thousands of Pakistanis are rallying in favor of a religious fanatic who murdered an official for advocating tolerance.
Pakistan is one of the countries I absolutely refuse to visit, because it is a hotbed of vicious fanaticism.
Repression in Thailand has reached absurd levels: posting a photo with a gift from exiled former PM Thaksin Shinawatra brought a woman prosecution for "sedition" and a possible sentence of 7 years in prison.
Perhaps they will sentence her to one year in prison and ask to be admired for how merciful they are. However, the very idea of prosecuting someone for "sedition" is evil, never mind what the punishment is.
Rich people like to think poor people have genes for stupidity, rather than admit that growing up in deprivation holds them back.
An FBI informant won Khalil abu Rayyan's heart, then got him to talk about fantasy terrorism to impress her. Now he is being prosecuted.
Writer Akram Aylisli is being persecuted in Azerbaijan because he wrote about the persecution of Armenians.
Sperm whales are dying from filling their stomachs with floating plastic waste.
Global heating will cause bigger heat waves and floods, which could cause large numbers of people to get sick at once. The UK's medical system could be overwhelmed. That is probably true in other places as well.
France's plans to punish convicted terrorists by loss of citizenship have been defeated.
Hooray! Alas, some other countries have similar plans, but this may deal them a setback.
This measure was never conceived as a rational scheme to reduce terrorism.
"When Israeli leaders keep pushing the message that killing Palestinian attackers is a laudable act, is it any wonder that the shooters become our national heroes?"
Breaking the Silence, which organizes former Israeli soldiers to witness the crimes they committed or saw other soldiers commit, is now the target of a right-wing phony scandal, comparable to the one cooked up against Planned Parenthood and previously against ACORN.
Israel has adopted higher taxes for bank executives' pay above a certain limit.
It is a step in the right direction, but I would do it in a more general way, by adding higher tax brackets with higher tax rates.
US Girl Scouts' rules say that even high school students are not allowed to sell cookies without an adult's supervision.
China is considering blocking access to all non-Chinese internet domains.
This would amount to cutting China off from most of the world's internet entirely.
Spreading in the UK: boroughs where no state school even offers the advanced high school classes that universities expect entering students to take.
This results from the combination of two aspects of Tory plutocracy:
20 US states are investigating Exxon's climate lies together.
The American College of Physicians calls for the US government to keep the prices of medicines down.
The natural way to do this, used by most other wealthy countries, is to have a national health service that negotiates with manufacturers on behalf of all patients.
The Associated Press got permission to keep operating in Nazi Germany by serving as Hitler's propaganda outlet to the US, and aiding Nazi propaganda in Germany.
Many US companies and business leaders eagerly helped the Nazis. IBM's cooperation is famous, and there was also Mr Bush.
US citizens: phone the FCC to oppose the merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable.
Most of the ancient city of Palmyra is still in good condition.
We should recall that Assad's bombers have destroyed other ancient urban areas.
Everyone: Call on Nike to stop renting a big store in Trump Tower.
A poll reports that most Israelis support the recent murder of an incapacitated Palestinian.
They have dehumanized Palestinians to the point of being ready to kill them with hardly a thought.
Utah has found a creative way to endanger pregnant women with fetuses with severe birth defects: requiring anesthesia for their abortions.
Brazil should recognize Zika is a sexually transmitted disease, and promote condom use.
The FBI backed off from demanding Apple write software to facilitate decrypting data on an iThing.
However, other such cases are still pending.
The Arctic set a record, this February, for least ice in winter. This broke the previous record, set last year.
The lack of ice is not just a sign of global heating, it also tends to cause more heating.
Right-wing Israelis cheered the summary execution by a soldier of an incapacitated Palestinian suspect. Perhaps a majority of Israelis support the murder.
Next the Israeli state will punish the deceased's family by destroying its home.
Some during the 70s and later in the second intifada Palestinian militants often treated Israelis as vermin. They have mostly stopped doing so. Now the Israelis have taken over that attitude.
US citizens: call on Arizona election official Helen Purcell to resign.
US citizens: call on the US government to investigate Arizona voter suppression apparently aimed at Latinos.
US citizens: call on Democrats to reject non-budget riders in budget bills.
The Australian minister in charge proposes to work hard to protect the Great Barrier Reef from all the major threats, except for the biggest one: global heating.
Meanwhile, the same CO2 that causes the heating will eventually kill all coral by making the ocean too acidic for them.
Chinese journalist Jia Jia was, apparently, jailed for a few days for warning colleagues it might be dangerous to republish the anonymous open letter that called for strongman Xi Jinping to resign.
Clinton's fund raiser offers rich people access to her for $353,000 each.
This shows what sort of president she would be.
The Belgian state's attitude in 2013 was, "Let those radicals leave for Syria, and good riddance."
It turned out to be a mistake, but it wasn't obviously wrong at the time.
If you let a company sequence your DNA,
the
state will use that against you.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
PISSI made an explicit plan to spread terror around the world through underground suicide squads.
PISSI expects Europeans to panic and play into PISSI's hands with harsh security measures. Instead, people should learn to cope with the occasional occurrence of medium-scale terrorist attacks.
After all, they are rather small compared with the other dangers.
It would be a mistake to give up on trying to curb people's disproportionate, irrational responses to these attacks. If we even help a few people to avoid panic, that is good in itself; further, it can make the difference between passing or defeating a foolish unjust law.
The first step is to stop legitimizing and supporting the panic reaction.
A petition demanding the right to carry guns at the Republican Convention hoists gun nuts on their own petard.
How about a petition to allow people to carry petards (bombs) at the Republican Convention?
Bryan Sanders, who was punched by a Trump supporter at a Trump rally, says Trump is the one responsible.
A Colombian general is being prosecuted for killing civilians.
Erdoğan condemned a foreign diplomat for being photographed with one of the persecuted Turkish journalists.
Poor Turkey, saddled with a president that insults Turkishness.
Melting Arctic ice is an invitation for cargo and cruise ships to risk causing deaths and oil spills.
Georgia's governor says he will veto the pro-discrimination law just passed by the legislature.
I think it should be vetoed, but I find it disturbing that businesses exercise so much power to block laws. There are other laws that we need to adopt, to reduce businesses' power, that they also want to block.
Angolan protesters have been sentenced to years in prison for publicly reading from a book by Gene Sharp.
Ralph Nader: Why Bernie Sanders was Right to Run as a Democrat.
Gustavo Castro Soto, colleague of Berta Cáeres who witnessed her assassination, fears the US-backed Honduran state will frame him for killing her.
Clinton, I see you!
To be sure, I don't think that Clinton suggested framing him, or suggested killing her. The point is that she helped put in power the power-at-all-costs elites for whom this is typical practice.
The UK is about to criminalize a wide range of currently legal drugs.
A guide for identifying products made by Israeli companies in colonies in Palestine. They often try to hide this.
American meteorologists now firmly recognize that human activities cause global heating.
Israel has backed down on trying to make Brazil accept a prominent anti-peace politician as ambassador.
Netanhayu now plans to use him to foist a similar gesture of fealty on the US.
Microsoft and some other large companies decry North Carolina's new pro-discrimination law, but their repeated donations to Republicans are the cause of it.
Before the CIA handed prisoners to other countries that were considered likely to torture them, the CIA took nude photos of them to serve as proof that the torture wasn't done by the CIA itself.
Why it should matter whether the CIA maimed someone directly or through an subcontracted government is beyond me. Either way, the US is culpable.
Chomsky, Snowden, Greenwald on Privacy in the Age of Surveillance.
Snowden's remarks, as quoted here, seem to consider an omniscient state as a reasonable option, and objects only to failing to ask the public for consent. As I've shown in before, an omniscient state means no democracy.
Bosnia-Herzegovina needs to escape from the nationalist fragmentation that the peace arrangements of the 1990s have left it in.
Chinese expat journalist Zhang Ping says his brothers in China have been jailed as hostages; the Chinese government demands he withdraw an article he published.
Honduras has arrested a suspect in the murder of environmental activist Nelson García, who was killed shortly after Berta Cáeres.
Most British teachers have students who come to school hungry.
A large revolutionary mural in Cairo, part of the little that al-Sisi has not crushed, is being torn down by the American University as part of a construction plan.
If the FBI gets the power to order proprietary software developers to make changes, it will use that to do more than snoop on you. It will take over your digital devices' proprietary software and do to you whatever it wants.
The argument about a car directed to bomb the White House is invalid, because that car is no more or less dangerous than one driven by a suicide bomber. I presume the Secret Service has already arranged measures to stop either one.
Even if laws stop the FBI from turning all your devices against you, the software's developers could do it. So could rogue employees, blackmailed employees, and crackers that have broken the company's security.
There is only one real solution, and that is to shun nonfree software in these devices. You can never trust a nonfree program.
If "democratic" states cede power and responsibility to big tech firms, there may be no way to prise them back.
Protests are planned in May against the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which should stop rubber-stamping every request that the fossil fuel industry makes.
Some psychological studies suggest that most people want autonomy rather than control over others.
Sanders won landslide victories in caucuses in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii and has reduced the delegate gap from 300 to 200.
Apple designs its own servers, from concern that commercially available servers have been modified by the NSA to enable snooping.
I am also concerned about this threat.
The Federal Trade Commission warned app developers to inform users about snooping on them.
While this is well-intentioned, I don't think it goes far enough to solve the problem.
Lawrence Faulkenberry's security cameras proved that the thugs who beat him up and gave him permanent injuries also tried to frame him.
So where's the prosecution for perjury? We must not let these thugs get away with these lies.
The Challenge of Secularism and Human Rights in Africa.
Assad's forces say they have recaptured Palmyra.
Trump's supporters are people he despises as "losers".
Does it make sense to invest almost 400 million dollars in a train system for Miami?
For other cities, I'd say it is important to invest in reduced fossil fuel use. In the case of Miami, will people live there long enough for this system to be worth the cost? (The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can be counted as part of the repayment.) Even though the train line itself will be elevated, it won't be much use once flooding starts making people leave.
Perhaps it would be wiser to invest in moving people to higher ground — perhaps in Georgia.
The Briton charged with a crime for saying he asked a Muslim woman to "explain Brussels" has had charges dropped, for now.
It seems that the thugs bring such charges on their own; higher officials must approve it. So the charges have been dropped. It is conceivable that he will be charged again.
We must defend his right to say these things even if we don't agree with them.
A California city wants to make it a crime to be present at a loud party.
Indiana's new abortion law bans choosing to abort because the fetus has a medical problem. It is also calculated to expose doctors to terrorism.
How about aborting because the fetus has a different kind of problem? Can we detect fetuses that are likely to turn out to be religious fanatics?
Some US congresscritters call on the NSA to cease and desist from its plans to expand spying on the US.
A committee of experts as called for decriminalization of using recreational drugs, to avoid the deaths and sicknesses caused by the War on Drugs.
It's only barely the start of Spring, but there's already a record-breaking wildfire in Kansas.
The primaries in North Carolina and Arizona show that Republican voter suppression methods are effective enough to steal an election.
In the US nowadays, being poor means 13 or 14 years less life expectancy.
The UK government plans to turn all public schools into "academies", which means eliminating local control and for the most part privatizing them.
Teachers say that they expect less pay for more work under more pressure, so many of them plan to quit.
A strike is in the works.
When you meet someone with cancer, don't urge a quack remedy. It's at best condescending, at worst victim-blaming.
I have never had cancer, but I've faced similar annoyances over much lesser problems: for instance, people who insist on trying to be helpful by telling me background information I already know. They are not helping me at all, only creating an excuse to feel they are being helpful.
If you can't help someone, there's no good in pretending you can.
French anti-genocide investigative journalist Florence Hartmann revealed that the Bosnian war crimes tribunal had withheld information from the International Criminal Court. The war crimes tribunal has now jailed her and is subjecting her to 24-hour sleep deprivation.
Obama strongly condemned attempts to stigmatize Muslims in general. I agree completely. I just wish he would also avoid bombing Muslims in many countries.
Wen Yunchao says China has disappeared his parents and brother because someone claimed he was the author of a published letter that called on Chinese ruler Xi Jinping to quit. The Chinese state apparently suspects him of writing the letter. If true, it would be no excuse to arrest or disappear anyone.
Poland Approves Large-Scale Logging in Europe's Last Primeval Forest. It might be the right decision if it prevents beetles from causing even worse harm. But that sort of defense doesn't often work.
Many ways that the establishment has tried to block Sanders from a fair chance against Clinton.
Humanitarian Groups Refuse to Partake in 'Mass Expulsion' of Refugees (from Greece to Turkey).
'This Is a Coup': Brazil's Workers Party Faces Its Greatest Test.
Mass protests for democracy are planned for April in Washington DC.
North Carolina's law that requires toilets to be designated for people's biological sex may be unconstitutional.
US citizens: stop Arch Coal from building roads in the Sunset Roadless Area.
US citizens: call on Obama to end fracking on public lands.
US citizens: tell Clinton, release your speech texts.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to hold gun manufacturers responsible when their
negligence gets someone shot.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Simply making a gun does not constitute negligence, and the gun manufacturer should not automatically be liable when someone is shot, just as a car manufacturer should not automatically be liable when someone is hit with a car. However, the gun manufacturer should not get an automatic free pass which the car manufacturer doesn't get.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to impose sanctions on Democrats that support the TPP in a lame-duck session of Congress.
Massachusetts citizens: call on House Speaker DeLeo to raise the "net metering" limit, which limits selling solar-generated electricity to the grid.
News reporting should present the thousands of dead and mutilated victims of US-supported bombing the way it presents the dozens of dead and mutilated victims of PISSI's bombings.
After months of bombardment by Salafi Arabia (with US support), 80% of the people in Yemen need aid.
The bombardment and the blockade have caused shortages of food and medicine.
The UK spits on freedom of expression: a Briton actually faces criminal charges for tweeting that he asked Muslim to "explain Brussels".
That tweet expresses hostility towards Muslims in general, which I don't think is justified. But that's of no relevance — freedom of expression includes the right to express hostility, whether justified or not.
In Belgium, each month, around 60 people are killed by traffic accidents [1], around 15 by murderers [2], and around 150 by tobacco [3]. Heart attacks kill around 400 a month [4].
By comparison, a terrorist attack once in a while is simply not a big danger. Sure, it's worth some effort to investigate so as to prevent terrorism, because there's a good chance of having some success at it. But it's not something to freak out about, and not worth surrendering freedom for.
[1] WHO, Global Health Observatory data repository. Website. Table: Estimated number of road traffic deaths & Estimated road traffic death rate (per 100 000 population), 2013
URL for table: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.A997
[2] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Accessed through the 'UNdata' database. Source for figures: UNODC Homicide Statistics 2012 Table: Intentional homicide,number and rate per 100,000 population
URL for table: http://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=UNODC&f=tableCode%3a1
[3] WHO, "Global Report - Mortality Attributable to Tobacco", page 60. Report, published in 2012.
URL for Website: http://www.who.int/tobacco/publications/surveillance/rep_mortality_attributable/en/
URL for PDF (4.6 MiB) http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2012/9789241564434_eng.pdf
[4] WHO, "European Detailed Mortality Database". Database, last updated in Dec. 2015.
URL for website: http://data.euro.who.int/dmdb/
Turkish journalists will be prosecuted for their work in a secret trial.
Now that there is video proof of one cold-blooded murder by an Israeli soldier, we must not let it be dismissed as an isolated incident.
British Arms Sales to Saudi Arabia Are Immoral And Illegal.
The US arms sales to Salafi Arabia are just as immoral, whatever the law says.
British troops and Jordanian troops are fighting in Libya.
The UK government refused to discuss this with Parliament.
Egyptian thugs say they identified the people who killed Giulio Regeni and shot them dead, every one of them.
Sounds like a case of "Now shoot the usual suspects!"
How the World's Biggest Polluters are Two Trade Deals Away from Steamrolling Climate Protections.
Native Americans Are Taking the Fight for Voting Rights to Court.
Protesters at an Indian university were arrested and have been kept incommunicado.
A flight over a large part of the Great Barrier Reef found that 60% of the coral was bleached.
Coral that bleaches is likely to die, unless it gets an unstressed and cool period to recover.
Obama and Biden proudly announce they tried to choose a nonprogressive Supreme Court nominee to satisfy Republicans.
They chose someone not worth going to bat for.
Obama is no progressive, and this was always obvious. That's why I never voted for him.
Video proves that an Israeli soldier killed a wounded, helpless Palestinian suspect in cold blood.
The Palestinian was suspected of stabbing a soldier. Perhaps he did it, but that is no reason for summary execution.
Electing people who hate government gets you a government that does not do its job right.
They are happy with that result, because they can use it to get reelected. And the rich people they serve can buy their way out of the problems, more or less.
Singapore Court Sentences Online Editor for Sedition.
If "sedition" is a crime, the country stands convicted.
The head of the London thugs says he wants bank customers to be left with the losses due to online fraud.
I don't do online banking, and Professor Ross Anderson, a security expert, says you shouldn't.
The trial of Radovan Karadžić helped lead to a better understanding of the significance of such atrocities.
New pun: "Not signal processing".
In the US: call on employers to offer fossil-fuel-free 401k plan options.
US citizens: call for an end to money bail.
It discriminates heavily against the poor.
Most investment has moved from fossil fuels to clean energy.
We can call this the end of the beginning. Alas, the world has so much fossil fuel generating capacity already, pumping out so much CO2 each day, that we need to get rid of most of it in order to be safe.
Texas Mothers Jailed Five Days in Louisiana over Two Hot Dogs (which they say they didn't take).
Just because they pled not-guilty, they were going to be jailed for two months. The prosecutor defended this pointless harm by saying they do it all the time.
The International Labor Organisation is moving, slowly, against Qatar for encouraging enslavement of workers.
Radovan Karadžić Sentenced to 40 Years for Genocide at Srebrenica.
There's a plan to dredge the US's only barrier reef in order to improve access to the port of Fort Lauderdale.
Fort Lauderdale is less than 3 meters above sea level — about two feet higher than Miami, which already floods regularly. If James Hansen is right about projected sea level rise, Fort Lauderdale won't even be there for much longer. Any investment in it is folly.
Some buses in the US record passengers' conversations — all conversations.
If the state recorded everything everyone says and does, that would be perfect for catching all criminals, except those that the state doesn't want to catch. It would also be tyranny. Catching criminals is not as important as some other goals.
TSA "explosive" sniffers detect hand sanitizer.
Three Iranian artists face imprisonment for their work, after a joke of a trial where they were not allowed to talk with lawyers.
On Tuesday, Sanders won two of the three primaries.
More importantly, he got more delegates than Clinton did.
"Far from being a bridge to the future, natural gas turns out to have been a costly detour."
The US must entirely stop fracking to meet its greenhouse gas targets.
An appeals court ruled that thugs can't seize people's cash based on vague suspicions they are engaged in some sort of crime.
It is a step in the right direction, but not far enough. "Civil forfeiture" is an excuse for punishment without trial.
Legalizing all recreational drugs could solve a lot of problems, and would not necessarily mean much more abuse of them.
I am not sure I advocate unrestricted sales of physically addictive drugs. A half-way step would be to prescribe them only to addicts. But if legalization works — if the problems of use are not much bigger — it would be better.
The EU's proposed business tax reform is far too weak. It covers only payments to other companies based in the EU.
"To rescue capitalism from its own arrogance."
The Rockefeller family charity says it will divest from all fossil fuel companies.
NFL Finally Admits A Link Between Football And Traumatic Brain Disease.
Anti-privacy senators are pushing a bill to give the state power to order companies to break whatever encryption they provide for people to use.
If this bill passes, it would be great for free software, since no other software could offer encryption that can't be broken. Until, that is, the day that they ban free software.
Promoting secularism in African schools, to reduce religious war, disease and abandoned babies, and encourage practical problem-solving.
US citizens: call on the government to forbid using fracking wastewater to grow organic food.
If you have Javascript disabled, this page may appear not to work, but in fact it does work.
The TPP will not help farmers.
Politicians that hate our freedoms, in the US and Europe, are already using the Brussels bombs as an excuse.
Eliminating the nuclear family, presented here as a joke, might be a good idea.
PISSI intends its bombings in Europe to undermine international cooperation such as the Schengen agreement and to make European countries waste lots of money on "security" measures.
Reports from the modern city of Palmyra say Russian planes are bombing indiscriminately.
Ted Cruz proposes a sure plan way to make Muslims angry and resentful: to "patrol Muslim neighborhoods".
Croatia's government has cancelled a satirical TV show, calling it "hate speech."
Prohibiting "hate speech" leads straight to attacking free speech.
Arizona's voter suppression hit Latinos heavily.
When humans remove the top predators from an ecosystem, the result can be extinction of many other species.
What our greenhouse emissions are doing to the world would be scary enough in a computer game.
In Britain, the growing season for plants is now one month longer than it was in 1960-1990.
In a few more decades, there will effectively be no winter for plants, just a not-quite-summer.
Industrialised Nations Must Lead an Exit Strategy for Fossil Fuels.
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo condemn Obama for planning a speech in Buenos Aires on the date of their annual large march for justice.
Can the UN be held accountable for the failure to protect civilians?
It seems to me that the root of the failure in South Sudan is that only a much larger mission could have protected more than a small fraction of the civilians there. Basically, peacekeeping missions depend on the prestige of the name, "United Nations Peacekeeping Mission", which depends over the long term on the willingness of the Great Powers to use their might against those who disrespect those missions. The Great Powers had better do their job.
Everyone:
call
on President Zuma not to legalize trade in rhino horn in South
Africa.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone:
Tell
world leaders, 15000 nuclear weapons add up to no nuclear
security.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Congress to fight the practice of wage theft.
Bacteria living on the Greenland ice cap may be speeding up the melting.
Nearly all ash trees in Europe are likely to be killed by a fungus and a beetle. Many species that live on ash trees will go extinct.
Oxfam is now aiding poor people in the UK.
The Tories have cut billions for welfare funding since the election last year even though they have just been forced to back off from further cuts.
Since poor people in the UK are on the edge of destitution, many of them are going to be forced onto streets or into cemeteries.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
The UK thugs must come clean about their infiltration of dissident groups.
Courageous Vietnamese protested the trial of a blogger accused of publishing things that the government doesn't like.
The Australian government plans a big cut in spending on renewable energy.
Obama has quietly sent more US troops to Iraq, and it's not clear what they do. Are they running artillery?
Creepy Ad Company Says It Will Stop Eavesdropping With 'Audio Beacons' (to tell what TV shows or podcasts are playing nearby).
That's good, but how can we stop other companies from taking up the practice? We need to demand free software, so that the community can check for malicious functionalities, and the community can remove them.
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-important.html.
Making all UK schools into "academies" is privatization, disguised as "applying higher standards" by eliminating local democracy.
When we criticize Cuba for trampling human rights (which it does), we must not pretend that the US or other countries respect them properly.
The US respects human rights more than Cuba does. A person who rejects injustice really can run for president in the US and at least have a chance at winning. In Cuba, that is impossible. In the US, people campaign to influence government policy (see the Urgent Action notes on this site); in Cuba, though the constitution says that is allowed, in practice people are treated terribly for doing that.
Sarkozy will face trial for selling political influence.
It is no surprise to me that he would do this.
The "limited autonomy" of the Palestinian Authority is a fraud, as Israel breaks the rules of the Oslo Agreement whenever it wants.
Tim Canova is challenging Rep. Wasserman Schultz, a plutocratic Democrat, in the Democratic primary. The Florida Democratic Party has denied him access to the party's voter data base.
A group of economists say Sanders' tax on Wall Street speculation would bring in 300 billion dollars and would create millions of jobs.
His plan is a form of the "Robin Hood" tax, which was proposed originally by Tobin to stabilize the stock market.
Sanders Declines To Pander To Israel Lobby In Speech Prepared For AIPAC.
Sanders supports Israel, but does not support the occupation on Palestine.
Here is the text of Sander's statement.
"Islamic State can't win in Brussels — we are fighting hate with love."
Salafi Arabian bombardment of Yemen continues killing lots of civilians.
WHO says humanity needs to plan to cope with thousands of brain-damaged babies (due to Zika).
I think it would be smarter to plan to prevent the birth of those thousands of brain-damaged babies.
Bahraini dissident Zainab al-Khawaja has been imprisoned for tearing up a picture of the brutal, repressive king.
May all his pictures be torn up soon.
Hillary Clinton Goes Full Neocon at AIPAC, Demonizes Iran, Palestinians.
Clinton told AIPAC that criticism of Israel's occupation policy is antisemitism.
A US general apologized to the victims of the bombing of the Kunduz hospital.
Jewish anti-occupation activists respond to Clinton's insults.
13 years after conquering Iraq, the US has not learned much.
Climate scientists warnings that global heating would damage coral terribly were right on target.
Porn, often violent, is giving young people a warped idea of what sex is like.
They need to see the spectrum of what non-violent mutually pleasing real sex is like. The way you get information that is by having sex with various kind and compassionate people that know considerably more than you do.
UK policies that hurt the poor are making people physically sick.
New York's Millionaires to Governor Cuomo: 'Raise our Taxes, Please'.
Balinese protest a plan to convert a bay into artificial islands for tourists to visit.
The article errs in stating that the 1906 puputan occurred in the "final years of Dutch rule". On the contrary, that was when the Dutch took control of Bali: many rulers and their courtiers committed suicide-by-invading-army rather than surrender. The final years of Dutch rule occurred after World War II, when the Dutch tried to reclaim control.
Many students in Illinois were arbitrarily blocked from voting.
Using disenfranchised prisoners as an excuse for gerrymandering has been ruled unconstitutional.
In the US: phone the FCC to oppose the merger of Charter and Time Warner Cable.
Our Response to the Brussels Bombings Requires Patience And Restraint.
I fear that a frenzied and frustrated public will give some politicians an excuse to attack human rights in Belgium.
Obama in Cuba under Pressure to Criticise Human Rights Violations.
Cuba has repressed dissidents harshly. On the other hand, the Cuban revolution has spared Cubans the horrible experiences of plutocratic rule, that we can see in Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia. The multinationals that US plutocrats serve would like Cuba to go down that path.
Several species of butterflies in Britain are declining gravely in population for no obvious reason. Global heating is suspected as a cause.
Facebook is effectively racially profiling its useds, in an indirect and deniable way.
James Hansen predicts several meters of sea level rise within 50 to 150 years. This is a controversial result, since other reputable climate scientists forecast only one meter.
We don't really need to know the answer, because the implications in either case are the same: we need a crash program to cut CO2 emissions (and methane emissions), not the lackadaisical approach adopted so far.
Britons were unjustly arrested in 2003 to stop them from protesting against Dubya's invasion of Iraq. They fought in court for 10 years for compensation. Now it appears one of them was an undercover thug, who concealed evidence about their case.
Burglars in Flint City Hall pulled out the documents about lead poisoning and strew them around the room. It is impossible to tell whether they stole any documents, but surely they must have intended to.
Sanders Says 'Never' to Nuclear Power, Clinton Claims US Needs It.
The US deployed terrorism against Cuba for many years.
The "Cuban 5" were convicted of espionage in the US for spying on terrorists shielded by the US.
The Committee to Protect Journalists is carefully documenting how Erdoğan cracks down on freedom of the press in Turkey.
Cuts in UK funds for energy efficiency in homes have been 80% effective in reducing the number of such improvements.
The Tories intend to crush renewable energy, but they don't want to admit this is their goal, so they are changing the policies a step at a time.
Eat Less Meat to Avoid Dangerous Global [Heating], Scientists Say.
Gentrification in San Francisco may be part of the cause of Alex Nieto's killing by thugs, as he sat eating in a park.
Uncontrollable — Pentagon and Corporate Contractors Too Big to Audit.
Explaining the fallacies in economists' arguments for "free trade".
They have a rational argument that free trade tends to increase the overall efficiency of production; then they want us to presume that this will benefit everyone. That second step is false; as we know, the business supremacy treaties with which they implement free trade tend to shift wealth to the rich and impoverish the rest of us.
Amnesty International condemned Latin American governments for restricting contraception and for threatening women with violence for having abortions.
Now Clinton will only release her paid speeches if Republicans do.
In effect, she says, "Compare me with Republicans, not with Sanders."
Australia has inspired other countries to tow boats full of refugees out to sea.
A study tied thousands of coastal floods to the human activities that are causing global heating.
And sea level is faster than at any time we have records for.
This article makes it clear that we don't have records before 2800 years ago.
Snooping digital devices could enable insurance companies to control people's lives.
Just as we must forbid ISPs to offer cut-price access only to some sites, we must forbid insurance companies to offer cut-price insurance to people who accept such control.
Fatal kidney disease has become surprisingly common in a few regions, and Roundup might be responsible.
India's government is persistently attacking freedom of speech by arresting people for "sedition".
It appears Sanders praised Obama's plan to shift imprisonment without trial to US territory.
I hope that is not really the position he took. In any case, I still support him, because defeating plutocracy is crucial. He is the first chance we have had in many years to shift the "range of acceptable opinion" outside what plutocrats are willing to pay for.
Obama's Lethal Drone Policies Still Shrouded in Secrecy.
Some US congressional candidates are campaigning on the issue of surveillance.
Congressman Robert Smalls showed compassion to the aged, demented widow of the man who had formerly owned him — after his freedom was secure.
As Guber outsources its customer service reps, it also has them call drivers to propagandize against unionization.
Proposed European emissions cuts to curb global heating at 1.5C will require "profound lifestyle changes".
In the US, it will require smaller houses. I wonder if it will be possible to insulate some interior walls so that some rooms can be excluded from heating or cooling.
UK Parliament Report Rejects Encryption Backdoors, Other Parts of Sweeping Surveillance Bill.
Sanders Forges Ahead: 'No One Said a Political Revolution Would Be Easy'.
Our rate of greenhouse gas emissions is more than at any time since the extinction of the dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
The International Criminal Court has convicted the former vice president of the DR Congo (formerly Zaïre).
To End HIV in Drug Users, Stop Chasing the Dream of a Drug-Free World.
PISSI is committing genocide: we should recognize this now.
I don't think it changes much of the conclusions, because even without this, PISSI is clearly a great evil.
Amazon has another obnoxious computational idea patent on paying by identifying yourself with a photo.
On the one hand, this might have the good effect of discouraging use of that foolish practice. On the other hand, it might also help Amazon, which is bad.
Regardless of the specific consequences of this patent, it is one more example of why we should not allow patents to apply to software.
McConnell: No New Supreme Court Justice Until The NRA Approves Of The Nominee.
[Thugs] in Maryland Routinely Used Tasers When Suspects Posed No Threat to Their Safety.
The webmaster of a group for disabled Tories will join the Labour Party in response to the Tories' latest attack on disabled people.
The people that run Britain have no compassion for people who are not rich. Cameron probably cares about his disabled son, but non-rich disabled strangers mean no more to him that non-rich able strangers.
The tyrant of Chechnya is battling all-out against the Committee to Prevent Torture.
Cruz and Trump would just love Chechnya.
Some cities in Europe have appointed "night mayors" (what an unfortunate term!) to manage coexistence between nightime music/booze establishments and the other residents.
A Russian show trial found a captured Ukrainian solder guilty of war crimes, disregarding evidence that she was somewhere else at the time.
The way to understand Putin: think of Donald Trump, only clever.
Current Record-Shattering Temperatures Are Shocking to Even Climate Scientists.
When this El Niño ends, temperatures will go down somewhat. We can expect the planet roasters to say, "This shows we're safe!" That's because they are playing for time: time to sell more fossil fuels, time to lock more investment into future fossil fuels.
A foreign visitor in the US is struck by the stark and extreme poverty. It's the same feeling I got when I first visited India and saw the shanty towns in the middle of the city.
This is what plutocracy does.
Criticism from the UN made the extractionist government of Tasmania back down from an plan to log forests that are labeled as "world heritage".
A witness to the murder of a Palestinian family by Israeli extremists was the target of an arson attack.
Putin's regime is planning to make it a crime to post information about how to access blocked sites.
In a state that regularly tramples all sorts of human rights, this is nothing special. But the multinational companies that want this in Russia will try to impose it elsewhere.
Right-wing extremists in Ukraine forcibly shut down an LGBT festival.
US citizens: call on Obama to protect the Grand Canyon watershed.
A lobbying group is flouting US lobbying law by refusing to say what businesses it represents. SCROTUS allow this to continue because they are working for the same businesses.
Dallas now deals with homeless people that have other major problems by first giving them a place to live.
Too bad they don't do this for the homeless people who are not mentally ill.
The TTIP would give the US government a veto over EU legislative proposals.
Sanders Must Build a Progressive Movement All the Way to the Convention and Beyond.
Clinton Campaign Boosted By More Rumors And Dishonest Attacks Against Sanders.
50,000 Australians demonstrated for compassion for asylum seekers.
US citizens:
call
on Obama's task force to advocate full tracing of seafood for
commercial sale.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
New solar-powered street lamps provide surplus electricity as a side benefit.
Governments with a proper sense of urgency about coming climate mayhem would install these lamps in large quantities as a crash program.
Letting bars stay open later in the UK increased total alcohol consumption very little; but it led a significant fraction to occasionally go in for bigger binges.
Is there, I wonder, a way to discourage overdrinking?
Even some Tories have trouble stomaching the cuts that the UK government wants to make now.
Those who track patterns of sickness see a national water crisis in the US, developing over the timescale of decades.
The causes of the water problems are many, but the root cause is simple: plutocracy. Take Flint, for instance. Why did all the jobs in Flint disappear? Why did Flint go bankrupt? Why did Michigan Republicans impose the emergency manager law? Why did Snyder impose an emergency manager on Flint? Why did the emergency manager decide to use the unsafe water from the Flint river? Plutocracy is at work in each case.
Thousands of US government employees are subject to constant investigation to see if they might perhaps be whistleblowers.
The Tories have stirred up so much hatred towards people who get welfare payments that many carry out random hate crimes against them.
The UK government wants to promise it will pay an extra 30 billion dollars to the owners of its new nuclear plant if it shuts the plant before 2060.
A future British government will have to impose a life sentence on the employees of any company that tries to collect compensation for shutting down a power plant.
The plant is so expensive that makes no economic sense except as a giveaway from governments to their cronies.
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve food stamp support for people that are looking for jobs or training, even when they can't find those.
An unjust law in France prohibits calling for boycotting any country.
While the murder of Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists was more bloody, the biggest enemy of freedom of expression in France is the French state.
The US government has made companies hand over proprietary software source code so it can search for bugs to attack.
With proprietary software, you're forced to put your trust 100% in a company that couldn't protect you if it wanted to. And code-signing by the company won't do any good if the NSA forces some employee to hand over the signature key.
With free software, you are assured that the NSA can't get anything that you don't get.
The US (or rather part of it) Is Becoming a Terrifying Nation for Women.
Protesting against right-wing extremists and Trump sometimes plays into their hands. Sometimes it is better not to give them what they want.
Amazon closes customers' accounts, which implies confiscating their money, if they return too many defective products.
The company refuses even to discuss why.
The Pentagon does not have effective control of its contracts or its inventory.
WikiLeaks accused Facebook of blocking useds from following links to Clinton's email release.
It's not just insulting Erdoğan that can get you imprisoned in Turkey. Defaming women in general is also a crime.
I disapprove of statements that insult women, but they are covered by freedom of speech.
Facebook guesses the race of each used, and companies use this to show people different ads.
How Ladar Levison dragged his feet when the FBI ordered him to betray all Lavabit's customers.
The Apple encryption cases parallels the Lavabit case.
When the US government says, "Let us spy on everyone — we'll only look at that one target?" Whether the one target is a terrorist, or a hero like Snowden, we know from many examples that we can't trust the US government with such power. When you give those snoops an inch, they take a mile.
If applying the first amendment to Apple's encryption software gives a good result, it will be the exception to a long string of horrible decisions resulting from that bad practice.
China requires all digital maps to have pervasive random errors.
I suppose the US government has made accurate maps of China from satellite data, but they are not available to the Chinese. At least, not today. It would be a great propaganda coup for the US to publish them.
Is Open Street Map at work on China? Contributions would have to be made in secret, but they could be made.
The most disturbing statement in the article is that GPS devices have back doors so that China can order them to shut down or give erroneous answers. Of course, China would impose this on products sold in China; perhaps on all products made in China, such as iThings. And that would include most devices — but are there no exceptions?
The EU made a deal with Turkey about sending back Syrian refugees that arrive in Greece by sea.
The deal includes the absurd agreement to consider EU membership for Turkey just as it is being turned into an explicit tyranny. Why not Belarus, and Russia too?
Sheldon Adelson's Israeli Newspaper Has a Crush on Donald Trump.
"What price an Olympics that protects the rights of children and their families?"
Olympic games do harm in many ways. I am glad that the people of Boston pushed away the olympics bid that was planned, and I urge the people of every city to organize against such plans.
The main Brazilian political parties are full of corruption, and the elite-supported major media are using this to try to replace the corrupt Workers' Party with the corrupt elite-supported parties.
The judge investigating them is not acting very well either.
A lawyer that sues climate scientists to cause trouble for them was paid by a coal company very recently.
Americans are starting to grasp how dangerous global heating is.
Think Again Hillary Democrats: 10 Reasons Why She Could Lose this Fall.
US states are passing laws to try to stop participation in the Palestinians' Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.
US citizens: call on Senator Grassley to bring the CARERS Act, S.683, for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This would protect some state-legal medical marijuana activities from federal interference.
British citizens: oppose plans to track everyone's browsing history.
Everyone: call on Vanguard retirement fund to vote in favor of stockholder resolutions for companies to disclose political spending.
An opposition newspaper in Venezuela had to shut down because it could not buy paper.
In India, airlines and legislators are pressured to make public pledges of militaristic loyalty.
Because of landmines and murderous neighbors, the Yazidis cannot go home even though their home is no longer controlled by PISSI.
Uri Avnery: Hesbollah is not a terrorist organization, if you judge by its actions. It suits politicians to pretend about this.
Confirmed: the US attacked all the users of Lavabit specifically to get at Snowden's email.
The Pentagon says it has identified the soldiers responsible for the bombardment of the MSF hospital in Kunduz, and says it was only errors.
Human rights groups say they consider this a slap on the wrist.
If they really were errors, rather than intentional acts, it would not be right to treat those responsible as criminals. But it would be just like the US Army to diminish the seriousness of their responsibility. Without some external investigation, we don't know if there were crimes.
The drought in the eastern Mediterranean appears to be the worst in 900 years.
Tony B'liar is making lots of money from the houses he owns in the UK.
Clearly anyone that owns substantial property has a conflict of interest with anyone that wants a place to live.
Several US cities, and even states, have high levels of lead in the water and have had it for a long time.
The Clinton-installed post-coup government of Honduras has sentenced a journalist to prison for insulting a prosecutor.
Americans of Asian or African descent double their chances getting a job interview by disguising their ancestry, thus demonstrating that racism is operating.
Rich universities entrust endowments to speculative hedge funds whose managers make more money than they spend on education. They invest in companies that attack and drain society.
People ask me why I am motivated to keep fighting, for free software and other causes. This article presents the reasons clearly.
Increasing trade with China cost the US millions of jobs, and the workers who are not very highly skilled were hit especially hard.
Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court is no progressive. The best thing you can say about him is that he is better than Scalia.
Obama the plutocrat is telling big donors that Sanders has lost and they should support Clinton the plutocrat.
What else would you expect from a plutocrat?
A massive temporary expansion of stop-and-search in London had no measurable effect on the crime rate.
Why do blacks die at a higher rate than whites from heart attacks? Because the hospitals where the blacks live are overloaded and slow.
Systemic racism in US appeals courts: decisions by black judges are more likely to be overturned.
The US Senate rejected the DARK Act that Monsanto sought.
US citizens:
call
on Obama not to allow any new undersea oil drilling.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to cancel oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
Disappeared Hong Kong booksellers/publishers have been
charged
with illegally selling books in China. Reportedly the books they
supposedly sold were made by the Chinese state in order to frame them.
Unanswered
questions about the scope of NSA snooping.
As thousands starved during the Irish famine, plenty of food was
produced in Ireland but the farm owners
exported
it.
This is what happens when the rich dominate society. Similar things
are happening today, though not in Ireland.
US states are escalating the war on painkillers: states are passing
laws
making
it hard to prescribe them enough to treat some peoples' pain.
Millions of people are likely to face horrible suffering from this.
In effect, the law not only authorizes but requires torture.
A splinter group took responsibility for a
bombing
in Ankara that was aimed at civilians. This group split off from
the PKK, which does not attack civilians. Naturally, Erdoğan
used the bombing as an
excuse
to arrest supporters of the PKK.
In Turkey, no one is safe from prosecution for "supporting terrorism";
even those that call for a cease fire can be imprisoned. But that's
not broad enough.
A study suggests that certain gun control laws
could greatly reduce the
rate of killings with guns.
UN
experts' suggestions about dealing with North Korea.
Doubling global clean energy by 2030
would
save trillions of dollars and save millions of lives, as well as
curbing global heating.
However, I suspect it may be too small a target. With a real effort
we could do much more than double it, and we had better do so,
double-time.
Thugs in Dallas have been
arrested
for murdering fleeing suspects.
Maybe they deserved to be arrested, but not killed.
There is some evidence that FBI agents are
lying
about the killing of LaVoy Finicum.
They are thugs, so why wouldn't they lie?
A Russian human rights activist was
attacked
by an organized gang in Chechnya.
The Netherlands has imposed an
arms
export embargo on Salafi Arabia.
An expat professor was
deported
from Turkey for possessing leaflets inviting people to a Kurdish
new year celebration.
Mere friendship with Kurdish culture is intolerable for the repressive
regime.
North Carolina's voter suppression law is hitting
substantial
numbers of minority group members.
Clinton got the majority of the delegates in the
latest
Democratic primaries.
However, Sanders may win the large states that come next.
Professors are suing Southampton University because it
demands
they pay around 40,000 dollars for permission to hold their
conference on Israeli policies.
Naomi Klein
explains
why she does not trust Clinton.
The UK now
plans
to remove all public schools from local control, making them
effectively unaccountable.
Rising temperatures and associated drought have
caused
36 million people in Africa to be short of food.
Syrian liberal activist Bassel Khartabil was imprisoned in 2012. Now
the
Assad regime refuses to state his whereabouts, and he might be
killed.
In parts of India,
villages
don't allow Dalits to get water from the public well with the public
pump.
New pun: "Pour
l'émir, le chardonnay".
US citizens:
call
on Obama to prosecute Exxon for its climate fraud.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
US citizens:
tell the
Department of Education to come clean about the student loan
profit scandal.
US citizens:
call
on Obama and Congress to stop arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
demand that
Republicans allow a vote on the Voting Rights Amendments Act.
Kim Foxx
defeated
thug-protecting Anita Alvarez for DA of Chicago.
A smoothie is
not
as good for you as the fruit it is made from.
Humans' CO2 emissions
did
not increase in 2015, which is good, but evidently not good enough
since temperatures continue to rise dangerously.
Coal protesters in Australia
face
harsh punishments if their protests cause any inconvenience.
This is what it looks like what government is in the pocket of
business. You will see it in many places including the US.
News reporting in Malaysia is shutting down in response to
harsh
repression.
Towns That Jail People Because They're Poor Are
Put
On Notice.
Donald Trump's Volunteer Contract
Forbids
All Criticism of Trump for Life.
Tory Cruelty: Disability Cuts Threaten to
Destroy
Independent Living for Thousands.
US civil officials are too subservient to the military
on
questions of whether to fight wars.
Russian bombs in Syria have killed
2000
civilians in the 6-month period of intervention.
US schools sometimes
punish
students in cruel ways for the smallest defiance.
I am not surprised that this happens more often to black male
students. Unconscious racism would be enough to cause that.
In the Arctic,
2016
was the year without a winter.
Or, perhaps we should say, the first year without a winter.
Baltimore had no increase in crime after Michael Brown was shot in
Ferguson, Missouri, but did have a
spurt
in crimes after thugs in Baltimore killed Freddie Gray.
McGill graduates are returning their diplomas,
demanding
divestment from fossil fuels.
People arrested in the US for the smallest reasons may be
denied
bail if they are in the "terrorist watch list", which is compiled
in a slipshod manner.
A whistleblower says that Volkswagen
deleted
documents when the emissions test fraud was discovered.
Thugs in Washington DC
got
search warrants by citing "practice" as the reason.
With robot "carers", old people who can't leave the house
will
be able to survive for years without talking to another human
being.
Make
the whole Arctic region a marine reserve, then license specific
fisheries when they are safe.
Calling on the Labour Party to
firmly
reject antisemitism, while criticizing Israel's occupation
policies.
The Isle de Jean Charles, in Louisiana, is
vanishing
under rising seas, and the last 85 inhabitants are asking for a
place to move to.
When we have to move millions of people from Miami, it won't be so
easy.
The EU has
suspended
direct aid to Burundi's tyrannical government.
The Icelandic Pirate Party is now the
largest
in the country, with support from 38% of the voters.
Putin is
withdrawing
Russian troops and planes from Syria. It looks like the
intervention was always intended to be temporary.
Maybe Putin chose this moment in order to pressure Assad to be more
flexible in the peace talks. If the US and Russia have both decided
that the fighting among the non-Jihadi parties in Syria is bad for
everyone, maybe there is a path to a good outcome.
Environmental pollution contributes to
1/4
of human deaths.
The Pentagon is
trying
to stop soldiers from buying a book about the toxicity of the "burn
pits" in Iraq and Afghanistan where it burned all sorts of
rubbish.
With
"free
trade", the US is following a path that we can observe in Mexico.
People Are Going To Prison Thanks To DNA [Analysis] Software —
But
How
It Works Is Secret
A man who was sentenced to death, then exonerated, challenged
Clinton's
support of the death penalty.
Michigan's "emergency manager" law is being
challenged
on civil rights grounds.
Some areas of medicine are already
coping
with the absence of antibiotics.
A model suggests that
13
million Americans may be forced to move by rising seas during this
century.
Far larger numbers are likely to be affected world-wide, but the focus
on Americans is useful: when they realize what it will do to them,
they may take action to stop it.
Exploitative real estate developers continue
building
in places that will surely be flooded. Some of them are building
commercial establishments that might have a hope of repaying the
investment before they are wiped out. The rest must intend to sell to
suckers.
Advanced kinds of disguise systems for military vehicles would
violate
the laws of war if they make the vehicles appear to be civilian.
The "non-lethal" weapons that thugs use against protesters
cause
lots of injury, even death.
How
Bernie
Sanders' Solutions Would Dramatically Improve Wages, Poverty and
Inequality.
US citizens:
oppose
"campus carry" laws that allow guns in college campuses.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to end fracking in the US.
February was
1.35C
hotter than the usual temperature for February.
Tennessee's response to pregnant drug addicts is to put them
in
prison after they give birth.
To steer them towards abortions would give better results.
The World Bank's Weird Way of Helping the Poor —
Investing
in Luxury Hotels.
More
information.
It's a great
handout
for a few millionaires.
The Obama regime seems to be
planning
to order WhatsApp to decrypt messages that it can't decrypt.
Old-Fashioned Mechanical Systems, Plus Humans,
May
Help Avert Catastrophic Breaches.
Babar Ahmad never supported terrorism, but the Obama regime
effectively ordered the UK to jail him for years then hand him over
for
trial
for "terrorism" based on a technicality.
He still wants the UK thugs to
apologize
for torturing him. An apology would be more important than the
money they paid as compensation.
The US-UK extradition treaty is fundamentally unjust. The US Congress
was right to refuse to ratify it. The UK has a duty to repudiate it.
Sanders challenges Clinton to
commit
to killing the TPP.
Clinton's emails show
the
real motive for the intervention in Libya: not Qadhafi's tyranny,
but his strengthening of Libya.
Rachel Maddow: Donald Trump Chose to Visit
Cities
with Recent Racial Unrest.
The Tories' next target is
Britons
who need help to dress themselves or use the toilet.
This is one step in a series that has run many years already and is
surely intended run many years more. The overall goal is more
important than any one step, but the Tories don't admit what their
goal is, so we have to guess.
My guess is that disabled people's "care" will be in circumstances
that kills them pretty fast. Same with support for the unemployed.
Poor children will be sent to schools that are really prisons as a
path to putting them in real prisons. After all, they won't be needed
as workers any more.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
Everyone:
Call for
devestment in the Agua Zarca dam that Berta Cáceres was
killed for opposing.
Everyone:
call
on New York City Mayor de Blasio to fire the thugs that
participated in killing Richard Haste and/or in covering that up.
US citizens:
call
on presidential candidates to commit to appointing officials that
will get tough on Wall Street.
US citizens:
call
on Sanders to affirm that Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory are not Israel.
Legalizing carrying guns in college classes
tends
to intimidate professors. This might be exactly what Republicans
aim for.
Most Israelis want to exile the Arab citizens who constitute
20%
of the population.
The FBI is
already
searching at will through the NSA's giant data base of Americans'
communications.
Reportedly
Obama inwardly understands that Salafi Arabia is not America's
friend and should not get much US support.
If this is true, it doesn't seem to show in his actions, such as
supporting Salafi Arabia in bombarding Yemen.
27
Giant Profitable [US] Companies Paid No Taxes in 2015.
The
Koch-Fueled
Plot to Destroy the Veterans' Administration.
In the US,
toddlers
shoot and kill more people than terrorists.
The US should sign the
convention
against cluster bombs and stop making them.
Calling
for a Congressional investigation of how the FBI investigates
dissidents.
Near where Freddie Gray was arrested and killed,
1/3
of the people surveyed reported being mistreated by thugs.
Don't
assume that Senator Cruz is less bad than Trump. Cruz is a
religious extremist that has no respect for the human rights of people
that don't follow his religion.
Trump is the culmination of
decades
of Republican hatred which usually is presented in disguised form.
US citizens:
tell
Clinton (and Congress) that Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory are not Israel.
Clinton doesn't speak in favor of torture but she has
supported
it for many years.
US citizens:
call on Obama to
block Pfizer's "tax inversion" plans.
US citizens:
call
on the Department of Agriculture to drop the idea of speeding up
the production lines in pig slaughter factories.
US citizens:
call
on the FTC to ban "conversion therapy", which claims to make
homosexuals into heterosexuals, as a fraud.
Citizens of Massachusetts:
support
legal requirements to identify political donors.
Veterans
Urge Presidential Candidates to Say No to Militarism.
California is
considering
a bill to allow Guber drivers to unionize.
The FBI plans to demand Apple
hand
over its signature key to authorize software to run in an iThing.
This is Obama's last attack on our security.
Users of iThings can't decide on their own what operating system to
install: they are forced to trust Apple to do it, because Apple can
sign systems to run in the product. If the FBI prevails with that
argument, users of iThings will be forced to trust Big Brother too.
The
New
War on Poverty.
The state of Georgia will provide funding for phony "crisis pregnancy
centers" whose purpose is to
mislead
women about abortion.
PISSI
reportedly
attacked with poison gas in Iraq today.
How Trump's $50m Golf Club
Became
$1.4m When It Came Time to Pay Tax.
Why Does the Gun Lobby
Encourage
Small Children to Handle Guns?
The article offers an answer: it's part of a business campaign
to market guns to children.
The
Five
Foreign Policy Questions Every Candidate Should be Asked.
A computer has
defeated
the world champion Go player.
This means that the political issues raised by AI can't be put off.
Clinton
praised
Nancy Reagan's handling of AIDS, and was hit by lots of criticism.
Banking
for the Common Good, proposed to replace commercial big banks.
Obama is
arranging
for various government agencies to look through the NSA's data
collections to fish for opportunities to prosecute Americans.
The lesson is, "emergency" powers that the government takes to cope
with some mind-clouding threat will
tend
to be used for everything.
Sanders endorses a carbon tax
and
banning fracking.
A part of President Clinton's "welfare reform" is about to take
delayed effect,
cutting
off food stamps for at least half a million long-term-unemployed
Americans.
We have not yet seen the full damage that that law will eventually do,
but Hillary Clinton still supports it.
Thailand's dictatorship
plans
to restrict foreign journalists like China.
UK "academies", somewhat like US charter schools, tend to have the
same
problems as the ordinary state schools they replace.
In the US, the impetus for school privatization comes from those who
desire to
divert
public funding into their pockets. I suspect there is an ulterior
motive in the UK as well.
The FCC wants to make cable and phone companies ask customers'
permission
for some uses of data collected about their communications.
I am not impressed. The real danger here is that the data are
recorded at all, because they are
always
available to Big Brother.
Zoning laws are used to
keep
unrelated people from sharing housing.
The general effect of zoning laws is to make housing expensive.
Thus, I think they are harmful.
Kansas Republicans passed a law to
impeach
any judges that rule a law is unconstitutional. This is meant to
get rid of the last obstacle to eliminating public education and
public services.
Former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico state that the "war
on drugs" is an
"unmitigated
disaster".
When a war gets on drugs, it starts attacking everyone at random.
The US has 30 reactors that use the same design as those of Fukushima
and has
neglected
the danger for 5 years.
CPJ: Venezuelan editor sentenced to
4
years in prison for criminal defamation.
This is an injustice regardless of what he said, or whether it was true.
Sanders and Clinton After Michigan:
A
Look at the Map.
Oxfam and other organizations accuse
the
US and Russia, among others, of fueling the Syrian civil war.
Uri Avnery: Neither side of the debate about BDS calls for
peace
between Palestine and Israel, but that must be the goal.
Violence
erupted outside of a Trump rally.
Then a rally in Chicago was cancelled, because the
protesters
were so numerous that the supporters didn't dare attack them.
Trump's complaint, "Cancelling my event violates my freedom of
speech," is one I would usually agree with. When protesters bring
about cancellation of an event, their intimidation has succeeded.
In Trump's case, however, he's the one who has been using intimidation
against protesters, so the fault is his. He has
regularly
called on his supporters to be more violent.
Finally one of his violent supporters has been
charged,
but it's time to charge Trump too.
Clinton's role, in regard to Iran and later Syria, has been
to
encourage war.
A Danish children's rights activist faces charges for
giving
food and a lift to a family of Syrian refugees that she found
walking along the road.
This exemplifies a pattern we have often seen from states and bullies.
I think the best term for it is "conspicuous cruelty."
If we cease to have effective antibiotics, infections will kill
ten
million people a year. (In addition, many operations won't be
done because of the danger of infection.)
Newark public schools were found to have
high
levels of lead in the water.
The Israeli government
wants
to punish the relatives of Palestinian attackers by imprisoning
them in Gaza.
The latest, refined models say we are
on
track for a whole meter of sea-level rise by 2100. That in itself
will be disaster world-wide.
Libya repeats the lesson of Iraq: that overthrowing a tyrant is easy,
but you
don't
know what will pop up instead.
Trump faced criticism for calling the Tien An Men protests a "riot"
and
praising
the "strength" of the Chinese government.
I think that interview represented his real thoughts. He wasn't
running for president then.
Zero-hour contracts
continue
increasing in the UK even though supposedly employment has
"recovered".
New Zealand has
banned
zero-hour contracts.
This is a big step in the right direction, but I think there needs
to be protection against demanding people work at short notice.
Workers must be free to plan other activities and not be required
to cancel them at the last minute in order to work instead.
A Hong Kong film projecting future Chinese tyranny has
disappeared
from movie theaters. Chinese threats are suspected.
It is a shame that people who want to see it are obliged to be used by
Facebook.
Five years later, cleaning up the Fukushima meltdowns is
going
slowly, and it will take many decades to finish (using methods yet
to be developed).
If civilization collapses due to global heating, and the melted fuel
is still there, it could have a nuclear fizzle and spew a lot more
fallout than it did the first time.
The Fukushima reactors had known safety flaws that made it vulnerable
to an earthquake. Many other reactors have them too. These flaws
were
covered up for the
sake of the company's profits.
Israel is
investigating a video that appears to show that a thug shot
and killed a Palestinian that was lying wounded on the street.
Anti-coal activists in Bangladesh are
going
to march 400km (around 270 miles) to call attention to the harm
done by burning coal.
A fracking company will have to pay 4 million dollars to families
whose wells it polluted, but there is
no
way to restore the water to its former drinkable state.
Obama and Trudeau said that the US and Canada would
lead
the world towards lower greenhouse gas emissions.
I wish I could have confidence this is more than just talk.
Not long ago, Trudeau
called
for more pipelines to export tar sands oil.
Nowadays few wars ever end — most of them just
freeze over.
Trump, the political temper tantrum.
2015 saw the
largest annual CO2 increase
for as far as we have data for.
Republicans Against Human Rights calls for putting
more prisoners into Guantanamo.
The captured ISIS officer should be treated as a prisoner of war.
The UK has put many pitfalls into its welfare system, so that people
can become ineligible and
forced into destitution
on the street.
Increasingly, the homeless face repression.
For right-wingers, such as the Tories, homeless people are an
inconvenience
and the place to put them is the cemetery.
At a Trump rally, a supporter
punched a black man
as the local thugs were forcing him out of the hall. The thugs responded
by physically
attacking the victim and arresting him.
Nothing was done against the puncher, but it is not too late to
prosecute him if his identity can be determined. Trump incites such violence frequently. He should be charged
for this.
Austin, Texas, applied to Guber the same regulations that apply to
other transportation companies. Guber
funded a referendum
to exempt companies such as Guber from these regulations.
Then Republicans saw an opportunity to start a recall election against
the city council member that implemented the decision, piggybacking it
on Guber's campaign. Unlike her, I don't want to work with Guber. Unless it allows
passengers to be anonymous, and stops requiring nonfree software,
Guber should not be allowed to exist. For your own freedom's sake,
don't ever use Guber.
The UK's National Health System is so overwhelmed that patients could
die for lack of treatment.
Unable to provide children with psychotherapy,
it gives them drugs.
This results from lack of funds, and it was the Tories' plan all
along.
Next they will offer to put in some of the lacking funds, but only
through
privatization.
Tim Atkins was framed by thugs, and imprisoned for 31 years. Now
exonerated,
he is
denied
compensation for his wrongful imprisonment.
Have we made enough reform to assure that other people are no longer
being framed as Atkins was? I don't think so.
John Perkins, the confessed Economic Hit Man,
relates what he did
(and many others, including Obama and Clinton, still do) to Guantanamo
prison.
The US government has
used military drones
to spy on the US, but won't say where or when.
The
Break Free from Fossil Fuels
campaign plans a series of protests
and civil disobedience against the planet roasters.
US citizens: call for an
end to garnishment
of Social Security benefits to pay back loans.
US citizens: call on the Office of Management and Budget to
implement protection for workers.
US citizens: tell the Democrats, and Rep. Wasserman Schultz, to
defend the CFPB,
not payday loan companies.
Everyone: tell the World Wide Web Consortium
not to approve DRM.
Global heating is
destroying the pasture
for the herds of Mongolian nomads.
'Funny' Stories from the Frontlines of Dagestan's Gender War.
I think there should be no forgiveness or forgetting for the men
that carry out this violence. When the state does not give justice,
private revenge is not only legitimate, it is also necessary
to change the practices.
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject bills
to help companies
get away with cheating the public and their investors.
A
large
fraction of Americans killed by thugs had some sort of disability.
The US says it killed 150 Somalis and that they were all fighters for
al-Shabaab.
Can
we believe that?
If they really were al-Shabaab fighters, I would not criticize killing
them, but the sad thing is that we can't trust the US about that.
Honduras has forced Gustavo Castro, witness to the murder of Berta
Cáceres, to remain in Honduras, where he remains
in
danger.
A
trend of increasing energy use per person could get humanity in
hot water (and hot air) as soon as 2030.
Sanders said he will try to be
even-handed
between Israel and Palestine.
There has been a rash of
murders
of human rights activists and indigenous rights activists in
Colombia.
I suspect that the killers are the
paramilitares.
Turkish journalist sentenced to 21 months in prison
for
insulting Erdoğan.
By acting like a tyrant, Erdoğan insults himself worse than
anyone else could.
A UK activist went to Australia to confront the
undercover
thug who had pretended to love her as a front for infiltrating
environmental activist groups.
Now he is associated with a training program for thugs, which is
probably part of setting up in Australia to snoop on, sabotage and
provoke protests.
Hysteria about terrorism is so great in France that
students
are being encouraged to smoke tobacco inside schools because it is
considered too dangerous for them to stand and smoke in the street.
Thus, the very large danger (albeit one that takes decades to kill
people) of tobacco is being encouraged for fear of the very small
danger of terrorism.
Lula, the former Brazilian president, has been
charged
with hiding property from tax rolls.
I am disappointed in him over this, because I admire him for making
Brazil's policies better in various areas.
The TPP uses the weasel-term
"free
flow of information", which sounds like it refers to freedom of
expression for people, but really only defends businesses' data
collection.
Activists from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture tried to
escort journalists into Chechnya, but a gang
attacked
them with sticks.
Putin and Kadyrov are very proud of their torture practices. Trump
would love them.
William Perry says the US under Clinton and Dubya was responsible for
spoiling
the military cooperation with Russia that developed in the first
few years after the fall of the Soviet Union.
I agree that extending NATO up to the Russian border was a mistake.
It's wise to have a buffer zone.
Six
Pieces of a Real Democracy Movement We've Never Had Before.
Two Baltimore school thugs
face
charges for attacking a student.
There should not generally be thugs in the schools anyway, because
they direct students into the school-to-prison pipeline.
The Polish constitutional court
overturned
as unconstitutional a law that was designed to screw up its
functioning.
Google has been
ordered
to disclose the IP addresses of people who posted fake reviews of
a daycare facility, which wants to sue them.
Tories' method of giving young people better opportunity
is to
cut
the funds to help young people of deprived backgrounds.
Obama proposed reforms to make the government answer Freedom of
Information Act requests faster; then the Justice Department
secretly
pressured Congress to reject the reforms.
Was the Justice Department betraying Obama, or was it obeying Obama
and the two of them betraying us?
Frackers are
still
investing money in Clinton's campaign.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to enact Obama's proposed reforms for reporting on
civilian casualties of drone attacks.
Everyone:
sign
this petition against including DRM in the specs for the World
Wide Web.
Snowden says that the FBI's arguments for demanding Apple write code
to weaken iThing security are
based
on lies.
PEN Norway Awards Snowden,
Calls
on Government to Grant Safe Passage.
US citizens:
call
on the US government to remove lead from US drinking water (not
only in Flint).
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to nominate a
progressive who rejects the idea that corporations are necessarily
entitled to human rights.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
US citizens:
call
on Kerry to pressure the government of Honduras to protect union
organizers from assassination.
Hillary Clinton's State Department
Armed
Saudi Arabia to the Teeth.
Salafi Arabia (as I call it) is now using those weapons to bombard
Yemen. Obama is responsible, both for approving what Clinton did
and for supporting the attack on Yemen.
The EU has agreed to an
incoherent
refugee deal with Turkey: for each Syrian refugee returned from
Greece to Turkey, the EU will admit one Syrian refugee from Turkey.
This gives Syrian refugees in Turkey a gigantic incentive to make sure
lots of Syrian refugees arrive in Greece.
Meanwhile, European governments
won't
dare criticize Erdoğan's tyranny. It's a great deal for
him, a lousy deal for Turkey.
Burma's military is respecting democracy, but its
violence
and impunity are still there.
Sanders
won
the Michigan primary, which he was expected to lose.
Violence and abuse experienced by pregnant women tends to go with
bad
health for the resulting baby.
I think right-wingers will not care about this. Their concern for
fetuses only applies when it provides an excuse to repress women.
Al-Shabaab acknowledges that the latest US drone bombing
hit
its training camp.
I don't see anything to criticize about killing al-Shabaab fighters,
but many other US drone bombings are
not
so well targeted.
Al-Shabaab would not exist, if not for the Ethiopian intervention that
destroyed Somalia's previous effective government
under
US sponsorship.
Washington Post Ran
16
Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours.
The [Republican and Democratic] Parties Are
Ruining
the Primary Debates.
You
can't
survive as a poor person in the US by being lazy, but many
right-wing Americans think you're poor because you're lazy.
Tracing the poisoning of Flint to
right-wing
billionaires.
In Australia's refugee prison in Nauru,
66
prisoners are on suicide watch. Some are forcibly injected with
sedatives.
To commit suicide under such a situation is not an indication of
mental illness. It can be a rational response (depending on details
of one's situation).
Sanders knows that political decisions are a
matter
of life and death for the people affected.
An economy based on reputation has
all
the bad characteristics of an economy based on money, and worse:
once someone is rich in reputation, he can get more "likes" by
behaving like a jerk.
Daily showers are
wasteful
and bad for the skin.
How and why satellite temperature measurements required the
recalibration which now shows that
global
heating continued steadily since 2000.
E-books can contain Javascript code, and sometimes this code
snoops
on readers.
The UK government propagandizes the public with
ad
campaigns asking people to report welfare cheaters — so the
public is more worried about welfare cheaters (who are few) than about
disabled or unemployed people suffering terribly (who are many).
Everyone:
call
on Obama to tell the FBI to withdraw its demand for Apple to write
software to help break encryption.
Everyone:
call
on Turkey to drop charges against Can Dündar.
US citizens:
support
the Congressional Progressive Caucus climate resolution.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to rebuke Turkey for crushing the press.
US citizens:
support
the Seniors and Veterans Emergency Benefits Act.
Everyone:
call
on major food companies to get serious about preventing
deforestation caused by their palm oil purchases.
What we really need is for countries to pass laws banning import of
palm oil that doesn't follow strict strict standards. If any treaty
gets in the way, kick it aside.
Research suggests that roughly
1/3 of all the Americans
killed by strangers are in fact killed by thugs.
The Trump campaign apparently
ordered
some black students removed from its rally at Valdosta State
University, then lied about it.
Alternatively, the thugs might be lying (they have practice).
But I don't think they would lie to hurt Trump.
PISSI must be getting
big
donations from rich people in Salafi Arabia and other Gulf states.
A thug in Cincinnati showed his arrogance as well as his racism by
harassing,
then attacking, then framing Charles Harrell.
The way other thugs came to the defense of that thug illustrates the
reason why nearly all cops deserve to be called "thugs". The
exceptions, those who have the courage to denounce thugs' false
accusations, are police officers rather than thugs; but they are few.
Malaysian Internet Censorship is
Going
from Bad to Worse.
Clinton pushed for war
in
Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, and some months ago in Iran.
A
proposed
code of ethics for virtual reality.
The article insults Luddites by treating the word as an insult.
I, as a Luddite, denounce the insult.
The Luddites believed in judging technologies based on their effects
on people in general, rather than letting manufacturers decide
unilaterally which technologies to use. In the same way, I believe
that certain technologies should be banned — for instance,
fracking and DRM.
How the media machine supports Clinton:
cherry-picking
among interruptions and using that to distract from real issues.
EFF
Opposes
McCaul-Warner Encryption Commission.
In many American cities, evictions are running fast — poor
people
can't
afford any place to live.
It is clear that a lot of Eagle Moving's income comes from holding its
victims' property for ransom, and selling whatever they don't pay for.
Community organizers have an opportunity here. If they organize
people to help those evicted by storing their stuff, evictions would
get a lot more expensive.
Lots
of women in Africa will want contraceptives, if we can give them
access.
The CIA Torture Report
Belongs
to the Public.
Spoofing a fingerprint can be
easy.
Nancy Reagan's love for her husband did not excuse the
policies
she supported.
50 anti-fracking protesters were
arrested
at a gas storage site in New York.
Green Climate Fund Must Say No to
Partnerships
with HSBC, Crédit Agricole.
Clinton Benefits From US Media's
Misleading
Reporting Of Delegate Counts.
Most of the "superdelegates" are Clinton supporters, and they may well
vote for Clinton, but not necessarily. If Sanders is leading by the
time of the Democratic Convention, public pressure (which we have to
try to create) may oblige them to support Sanders.
The
Transformative
Power of Democratic Uprisings.
An independent turned Democrat writes about
going
to the Colorado caucus to support Sanders.
The Marshall Islands is suing nine nuclear powers for
failing
to carry out the obligation to promote nuclear disarmament.
The strategy of mutual deterrence worked during the Cold War, in that
neither the US nor the Soviet Union ever intentionally launched a
nuclear war. With the help of some lucky escapes, when nuclear bombs
almost
exploded by accident or retaliations were almost launched for
nonexistent
attacks, it was a success.
But it is not effective in a world where tiny countries and even
non-state groups could develop nuclear weapons. How would you carry
out massive nuclear retaliation against al-Qa'ida? Or North Korea?
Clinton, as Secretary of State,
promoted
fracking world wide. Now, confronting Sanders, she has to turn
around.
Clinton's
jobs program is designed to help the banksters, too.
The poverty-spreading consequences of President Clinton's "welfare
reform" law are still growing today, as states carry out the
"race
to the bottom" that people warned about in 1996.
In 1996, we called this law "welfare fraud", and it is why I did not
vote for Bill Clinton in 1996.
Hillary Clinton endorses the law now, as she did before. It is one of
many reasons I will not vote for her.
Europe's "bailout" package for Greece
has
only tightened the vice.
It was clear, that this would happen. The longer Greece waits
to exit the Euro, the weaker it will be. Have courage!
The UK has distorted researchers' findings to
fabricate
an excuse to claim that it is safe to send refugees back to
Eritria.
In India, British rule meant
high
taxes and deadly famines.
That's because the British wanted to export the wealth that Indians
produced, rather than keep it locally.
By 2100, many regions of Africa will be unable to grow their current
staple crops, because they
won't
get enough water.
European armies are
trying
"nation building" in Libya in order to exclude PISSI.
It would be a good thing, if they could do it, but this has almost
always failed. Is there any chance it will work in Libya?
Lead poisoning
harms
adults, too.
Protests against statues in Britain are a call to remember the injustice
of the British Empire's colonialism and Britain's
history
of slavery.
The
Religious
Roots of Shaming-as-Rehab Programs.
Republicans took control of the South Coast Air Quality Management
District in California, and
immediately
voted for more pollution.
One CREOSOTUS (*) is
single-handedly
blocking federal funds for water in Flint.
CREOSOTUS = Crazy, Right-Wing, Extremely Oppressive Senator Of The
United States
The head of Médecins Sans Frontières says that major
powers are becoming barbaric in
making
war on civilians.
Ironically, they say they are fighting "terrorism" — but
terrorism is making war on civilians.
Economic policies have
systematically
harmed the generation born from 1980 thru the 1990s, in many
countries.
The problem is that the brunt of dooH niboR policies fell on them.
But some are
trying
to blame old people for receiving adequate pensions and distract
criticism from the
rich
people and businesses that no longer pay enough tax.
With Europe desperate for Turkey's help in blocking Syrian refugees,
Erdoğan sees his
opportunity
to crush freedom in Turkey.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to stop new offshore drilling.
A
bus
ad for a meeting of a group for nonreligious people.
Some
schools use software to build a dossier of good or bad behavior
about all students, to show to their parents.
The school will probably keep the data forever, and so I suspect will
the company that developed the app (which is surely a nonfree
program).
The lack of an ethical compass we can see
facilitated
the rise of Donald Trump.
Sanders won the Maine caucuses with a large margin, after the
unusually high turnout caused
very
long lines.
An Australian "terrorist suspect",
accused
of possessing forbidden documents, is being held in solitary
confinement for not answering questions.
China's total greenhouse gas emissions
seem
to have stabilized, perhaps started decreasing.
Erdoğan's men have seized the newspaper Zaman and
turned
it into a propaganda sheet.
Egypt accuses the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas of together organizing
the
assassination
of a prosecutor who played a central role in Egypt's repression.
If it is true, we could hardly criticize them for killing someone
responsible for so much evil. Sure, it would have been better
to put him on trial, but there is no hope of that.
In prosecution of thugs for crimes such as murder and rape,
prosecutors
bend over backwards to praise all other thugs, describing the
defendants as exceptions.
Many
US cities cheat on their tests for lead in the water.
Virtual reality entertainment, when overused,
could
cut people off from reality.
On the other hand, so does TV.
Some of the Hong Kong publisher staff that were grabbed by China have
been
freed.
Imagine Obama's National Security Policies
in
Trump's Hands.
I am sure he will do bad things, but so would Clinton — and so
does Obama. I think Sanders would do less of these bad things. But
the real issue in this area is to reduce the president's power.
Chimps make piles of stones in hollow trees, and throw stones against
certain trees, for
no
evident practical reason.
NATO warns that Russia is running a
massive
trolling and disinformation campaign directed at political
influence in Europe.
The same analyst says that Russia is
funding
various sorts of extremists just to make trouble.
NATO might be inclined to exaggerate this, but I find it plausible.
The UK should not be
selling
protest-suppression weapons to repressive governments.
Behavioral targeting of advertisements can
reinforce
people's image of themselves, whatever that image may be.
I think we
should
not let them get such data about us.
A thug in Arizona
faces
prosecution for murder.
Syria's cease fire is holding, even to the point that people
have held
peaceful
protests against Assad.
US citizens:
tell
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack, and Congress, that QR codes are not
adequate labels for GMOs.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to close the pollution loopholes for oil and gas
operations.
US citizens:
tell
the Secret Service not to interfere with journalists.
Everyone:
call on Obama to end new
fossil fuel sales on public land.
Governor Walker told Wisconsin that being cruel to the poor would
reduce poverty. Naturally, the actual result is the
opposite.
The Turkish government
has
taken over an important anti-government newspaper, Zaman.
Here's a
copy
of article about this from the paper's English affiliate, Today's
Zaman.
The New York Thug Department
used
weapons against protesters that fire intense sound that can cause
bodily harm.
John King, nominated by Obama for Secretary of Education, supports the
centralized model of
harsh
testing and privatization.
It is noteworthy that Republicans have not vowed to refuse to vote on
his nomination. They see he is on their side — the side of the
corporations.
Fallout
and mutations are observed in many species of wildlife in the
Fukushima region.
Senator Warren rebuked the Department of Education for
bending
over backwards to protect student loan companies, rather than
students.
Tracking some British families from 200 years ago found
little
social mobility: the descendants of then petty criminals are
working-class and the descendants of the wealthy are still well off.
Japanese women pay
thousands
of dollars to be photographed in a wedding dress.
I don't criticize fantasies, though the fantasy of a perfect wedding
has never appealed to me, But surely you can enjoy your fantasy
without getting ripped off.
The FBI boasted of convicting a group accused of trafficking a minor,
but it appears
the
supposed victim was neither a minor nor trafficked, and that the
alleged crimes did not happen.
China has imposed very strict censorship about
sexual
relationships in TV shows.
This is what theocratic Christians aim to impose in the US.
Amazon's recent "upgrade" for its modified version of Android was
really a downgrade — it
removed
the data encryption feature from
tablets.
Amazon backed off from this change after it attracted
widespread
criticism.
This change was in Linux, which is the kernel used in
Android
(as well as in the
GNU/Linux system).
Amazon tries to prevent users from installing their own modified
versions of Linux, by
making
the (nonfree) bootloader check for Amazon's signature on the
kernel it loads. Users have so far been able to defeat that attack,
but they should not have to. If Linux had advanced to
GNU General
Public License version 3, Amazon would not be allowed to do this.
Surveillance of phone calls
makes
whistleblowers fear to call Patient Privacy Rights.
Peace Activist
Wrongfully
Becomes Subject of Investigation.
The people of Michigan voted to repeal the emergency manager law, so
Lead Poison Snyder and his Republican henchmen
imposed
another law almost identical.
Lead Poison Snyder then used the new law to impose an emergency
manager on Flint, which was responsible for poisoning Flint's
children.
Desperation Shows As Critics Argue That Nominated Librarian Of
Congress Is
'Pro
Obscenity'.
The basic wrongs are in a prudish approach towards sex and in the idea
that sharing is
"piracy".
Kanhaiya Kumar
says
he was falsely accused of calling for Kashmir's independence from
India.
If he had really advocated that, it would be part of his human right
to freedom of political expression. People have the right to advocate
separating Kashmir from India, just as they have the right to advocate
keeping Kashmir in India. It's the same right in both cases.
A woman who was born as a prisoner in Auschwitz, and almost died from
malnutrition, is
testifying
against a man accused of being one of the guards there.
I object to her claim that causing a hypothetical person not to be
born is equivalent to murder. It would imply that celibate priests,
monks and nuns are all murderers, along with anyone that decides not
to have sex with someone, not to mention anyone that uses birth
control.
The Nazis murdered 7 million real living helpless prisoners. Surely
that is sufficient evil to condemn — I don't think we need try
to stretch that figure by counting nonexistent potential people too.
There are three things I don't understand about this testimony:
Many poor countries were on the path to effective development,
including the poor, until US/UK/France
intervened
60 years ago to impose plutocracy and repression.
Jeremy Corbyn
has
the courage to stand up to prudes that want to prosecute
prostitutes or their customers.
The New York State Common Retirement Fund lost
$4,500
per member by investing in fossil fuels.
Trump
now
says he would not order torture, or assassination of relatives of
designated enemies.
This doesn't surprise me. He only advocated those things to appeal to
fleeting passions; he didn't really care about it as a policy.
I've seen articles comparing Trump's hate rhetoric with Hitler's, but
I think that is an error. Hitler was obsessed with hatred of Jews,
long before he got anywhere in politics. I don't think Trump really
hates Mexicans or Muslims. I think he is only using them as
scapegoats to get support, and if he won, he would not need these
scapegoats any more.
We can't tell much about what Trump would really do as president from
what he says, and likewise for Clinton. They would be lousy in
different ways, but we can't be sure who would be worse.
We can tell that neither of them deserves our support. The only
candidate now in the race that deserves support is Bernie Sanders.
Bernie
Sanders and the Future of Liberalism and Socialism.
Orangutans populations have been found in additional parts of Sumatra,
but that won't save them from
extinction.
Some orangutan cultures may be extinct even sooner.
Syed Adam Ahmed is
still
on Canada's no-fly list, despite reaching the advanced age of 6,
and the Canadian government refuses even to say why.
Reproductive justice and economic justice
go
together: for many women, pregnancy implies poverty, as they can't
afford the cost of an abortion, and can even less afford the cost of
having a baby.
Republican abortion sabotage measures are often designed to make
abortions prohibitively expensive.
"My friend was texting prayers. If this is
suspicious,
the terrorists have won."
The basic injustice here is kicking a passenger off a flight because
some other passenger is irrationally upset. If airlines made it clear
that they would not do this, and told the irrational passengers "You
can leave the plane if you like, but we see no reason to punish that
person," they would learn to control themselves and there would be no
problem.
I think it is also an injustice to set a standard that passengers
should show all their secrets in the vain hope of being allowed to
travel, or that a much-used bible can prove they are good people. In
the US, at least,
Christian
terrorists are right up there in violence with the Muslim
terrorists.
Hindu nationalists seek to
falsify
the history of India to make it support their ideology, and they
attack historians that don't cater to them.
It resembles US right-wing theocratic Christians.
US citizens:
call on the
Federal Election Commission to ban Super-PACs.
Everyone:
call on the
UK to change the visa policies that facilitate treating domestic
workers as slaves.
Everyone:
call on the
president of CBS News to stop boosting Trump for profit's sake.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to demand that Honduras properly investigate the
murder of Berta Cáceres.
Craig Murray says insiders have told him that intelligence agencies
can activate a portable phone's microphone
even
if its battery has been removed. He reports this, even though he
can't see how it can be true.
My guess is that this refers to the phones that have a large,
removable battery and another nonremovable battery.
Oregon has
almost
finished passing a law to phase out coal power by 2035.
The improvement in the environment and the added expense go hand in
hand. Either they will both be small, or both large. Either way,
this is a step in the right direction. I worry that it is too small,
too slow.
Human rights in Iran are
still
in a deplorable state.
It is not clear that President Rouhani has any control over most of
these injustices. Many government bodies are officially not under his
authority.
The UK has
imposed
censorship on universities, and a requirement to report on suspect
students, in the name of trying to block "terrorist" ideas such as
animal rights.
Now the US is doing the same, only more broadly,
asking
students and teachers to inform on each other.
January and February set
new
records for seasonally adjusted heat.
It's almost entirely due to global heating, not El Niño.
The Northern hemisphere is currently
2C
hotter than what used to be normal.
Increased world-scale digital interconnectedness
creates
unanticipated
vulnerabilities that can lead to disaster.
I recommend the book Normal Accidents, by Charles Perrow, for a
picture of how even much simpler systems can cause disasters because
they are too complex for their operators to understand.
Egyptian thugs arrested journalist Sabry Anwar, but
won't
say what they did with him. This raises suspicions that they
tortured him to death.
CNN is
trying
to legitimize the Ku Klux Klan.
Regarding
freedom of speech, Clinton and Trump are both lousy.
Canada's new Prime Minister Trudeau advocates the
absurd
idea of transitioning to a low-carbon economy through long-term
investments in tar sands pipelines.
If such a transition does occur, those investments will turn out to be
wasteful — so whoever owns them will fight like hell to prevent any
such transition.
Many progressive organizations are
trying
to pressure Republican senators to hold hearings for Obama's
possible Supreme Court nominee.
I supported this campaign until Obama's men started talking about
nominating a Republican. At that point, I realized we can't count on
Obama to nominate someone that we should want to have on the court.
If he nominates a progressive then I will support campaigns for that
nominee.
Clinton
has fought for business-supremacy treaties since the 1990s and will
surely go back to them if elected president.
George Lakoff
explains
Trump's success in terms of framing: he appeals to people that
want a strict father family and think only in terms of direct effects,
not system effects.
Dubya
taught
most Americans to consider stupidity and incompetence desirable in a
president. They prove he's an "ordinary guy".
Commercial web ad-blockers are proprietary software, and like many
other proprietary programs, they
snoop
on users.
I don't use an "ad blocker". I use IceCat, which is designed to block
surveillance. It has the effect of blocking most ads, but I don't
care about ads as such; if an ad is implemented in a way that doesn't
track people, I don't mind seeing it.
The US mainstream media refused to mention the
large
rallies for Sanders in cities across the US.
Trump's core supporters are the personality type known as
"authoritarian followers", but stirring up fear of "enemies" can
convince
frightened people to act like authoritarian followers.
US politicians in both parties have been doing this since 2001, which
is why the US has become so authoritarian already.
Retailers Experiment With
Surveillance
Tools Used by [state surveillance]
It should illegal for anyone to aim such a camera at a place where the
public is admitted, except under a court order that covers only a
specified place and period of time.
A woman had an
RFID
chip implanted in her; she said it was done by someone who
trafficked her.
If it was indeed implanted by a trafficker, I think its purpose was to
demoralize or intimidate her.
US citizens: on Monday March 7, phone your senators to
oppose
the DARK Act (which would stop states from requiring labeling of
GMOs in foods).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.
India denied visas to US government representatives that
wanted
to check on religious freedom in India.
Religious freedom includes freedom to adopt and to proclaim the
beliefs of one's choice in the area of religion. These freedoms are
increasingly threatened in India, as the
prosecution
of a comedian for imitating a preacher demonstrates.
Before that was the banning of
Sita
Sings the Blues and the prosecution that
drove
secularist leader Sanal Edamaruku into exile.
Meanwhile, the
repression
of Dalits that want to officially register as Buddhists has been
going on for a long time.
Reducing CO2 emissions from concrete is making great
progress at the research level, but
putting
into practice faces obstacles including "convincing clients and
contractors to use it."
A carbon tax, making emitters pay for the damage they do, would help
convince them.
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Close Ally of Hillary Clinton,
Is
Trying
to Gut Regulations on Loan Sharks.
Clinton is in the banksters' camp, which is one of the reasons
we should not vote for her.
I expect to be much worse as president than the way she is talking
now. Meanwhile, since Trump will say anything to shock people, I
think he won't even try to do all the bad things he says — only
some of them, Meanwhile, Clinton would do some of them too.
Thus, if it comes down to Clinton vs Trump, I will vote Green.
It is a mistake, in the long term, to vote for the "lesser evil"
because that ensures things get
more
and more evil.
An Argentine human rights champion calls on Obama not to visit there
on the anniversary of the US-backed military coup, which began years
of
repression,
murder and torture.
The US has not changed its ways very much. The 2009 coup in Honduras,
under the sponsorship of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State,
brought in a corrupt and murderous government. Anti-dam indigenous
activist Berta Cáceres
was
just murdered.
The reason for the coup was to keep the local rich people in power,
and that is what Clinton would do as president of the US.
UN's
Own Experts Chastise Ban Ki-moon Over Handling of Haiti Cholera
Outbreak.
An Australian kangaroo court
does
not allow witnesses to tell anyone they have been ordered to testify,
and imprisons them if they refuse to answer a question.
Melting is making Greenland's ice darker, as it concentrates soot on
the service. Being darker causes it to
absorb
more sunlight and melt faster.
Poland's right-wing government
plans
to squeeze out wind power the way Texas squeezes out abortions.
While Trump eagerly talks about killing suspected terrorists'
families, Obama actually does it, over and over, but
pretends
it isn't happening. The main difference is that Trump would drop
the pretense.
This difference would have a real effect: it would openly
commit the US to murder of innocents.
A bankster who has put lots of money into Clinton's campaign
wants
to be Secretary of the Treasury if she is elected.
Methane
Leaks Across US Pose a Much Greater Threat Than Aliso Canyon.
The Turkish army is
bombarding
the rubble of a Sur.
Reportedly 80% of the buildings have been destroyed, but that leaves
20% still to be blasted down.
This was
Erdoğan's
war of choice.
Planet-roasters have put a
hundred million dollars
into Republican candidates' campaigns.
An Atheist in Russia is
being prosecuted
for "offending the sentiments
of Orthodox believers". He said that some of the Bible is "bullshit".
He's right, and that's why it's called the "buy-bull": some people
will buy any sort of bull.
Calibrating satellite measurements of atmospheric temperature for the
time
of day of the measurement shows a
lot more global heating.
A big psychosocial trend is that younger generations show more
narcissistic behaviour traits — they become proud not to
care about other people.
Advances in sustainable energy will not end use of fossil fuels
without
making them pay for the costs
of global heating.
Note that fossil fuels are currently
highly subsidized.
Bill Clinton
broke Massachusetts election law
while campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
Volkswagen's CEO was
told about emissions cheating
a year before he admitted it.
Everyone: call on various companies to
refuse to sponsor the Republican Convention
if Trump is going to be nominated.
I think it is scandalous corruption for any political party to accept
sponsorship from businesses, but that is another issue.
A teacher was
pressured into resigning,
and faces possible
prosecution, because a student took her phone and copied her
nude selfies out of it.
I wish she had refused to resign. In the US, anything relating to sex brings out the cruelty of
self-righteous prudes.
Despite a reduction in poaching, the elephant population in Africa is
still falling.
Proposed new coal mines in Australia would
directly wipe out
an endangered bird.
Then the CO2 would wipe out much, much more. Flooded Sidney?
Global inequality makes
lots of people homeless.
When the plutocratic state's policies impose a certain level of
homelessness, everyone competes avoid being a victim. Those who
become homeless are the ones that lose this competition, so typically
they have weaknesses and flaws. That doesn't excuse those policies.
Some investors are
divesting from factory farms.
The fact that we need to try to pressure companies to stop the massive
use of antibiotics is a symptom of the weakness of democracy. In a
democratic state, we would not allow food companies to choose whether
to stop a profitable practice that
endangers public health.
Clinton won more delegates than Sanders on Super Tuesday, but Sanders
is not giving up.
Sudanese Journalists Launch Historic Hunger Strike Against Free Press
Crackdown.
Podemos in Spain has rejected becoming part of a coalition supporting
right-wing economic policies. This means there will be
a new election.
Netanyahu threatens to
exile the families of Palestinians
that attack Israelis.
Is it legitimate to attack the relatives of those that attack you?
Israelis, think twice before you say yes to that: if Palestinians
apply the same principle, you may not like the conclusions.
By 2050, global heating is likely to
kill half a million people
a year just by making fruit and vegetables more expensive.
But that's small potatoes compared with what will happen when China's
rice crop fails — which is projected to happen 1/4 of the years,
by the end of this century.
Extreme inequality in South Africa means that most students can't
afford to attend even a public university. Debt pressure has led to
large protests.
The role of drought in increased poverty is global heating at work.
A thug in Montgomery, Alabama, has been charged with
murdering
Gregory Gunn, age 58.
Everyone:
call on Coca Cola Company
not to sponsor a Trump-led Republican Convention.
US conservatives can't admit that their abortion restrictions are
intended
to make abortion nearly impossible. They have to pretend there is
some medical purpose.
Trump is
allowing
closer associations with white supremacist hate groups.
The Turkish army has
turned
much of Cizre into rubble.
Erdoğan started this war hoping to get a better result from new
elections. It partly worked.
The UN security council
approved
new sanctions on North Korea calling for inspection of all its
shipping.
This has China's support, so maybe it can actually be enforced.
Maybe.
Based on data for 900 years, Syria's current drought is
probably
the worst in that whole period.
That's surely because of global heating.
Bruce Schneier endorses the idea of
regulating
what data businesses
can collect.
Almost
2000 people in Turkey have faced legal threats for "insulting"
President Erdoğan.
Engineers at the Mosul dam say it could break at any time. A gate in
the dam is jammed, so there is
no
way to release the water that will soon build up from snow melt.
However, there is no way for the population of Mosul to move 6km away
from the river, because there is no place there for them to live or
work. And then there's the question of whether PISSI would let them
go.
UK local governments are starting to recognize that outsourcing their
activities
makes
them bad and inefficient.
The contractors are in a great position to skip and overcharge.
Watch out for techniques of
altering
a campaign message for a specific voter.
For instance, when a canvasser shows up at your door with a tablet,
the tablet may be saying how to spin the candidate's message
specifically for you.
Why We Should Teach About the FBI's
War
on the Civil Rights Movement.
A New Wave of Climate Insurgents
Defines
Itself as Law-Enforcers.
Many
armies use rape as a weapon of war, but there are ways to
discourage this in most conflicts.
These solutions are no use against PISSI or Boko Haram.
Military force is needed to stop them.
Food workers in New York City are
making
things very uncomfortable for Hot and Crusty's union-busting. It
changed its name, disguising its owners, but that won't enable it to
hide.
I have occasionally bought things there, but I will never buy there
again until I get word that it has settled with the union.
Some US schools have
shut
off their drinking water because of high levels of lead.
The former director of Guantanamo prison did not appear in the trial in
France, where he is being
sued
by victims of torture.
The new UK snooper's charter, no better than the previous try,
is an
attack
on human rights for everyone in the UK.
It is done, of course, in the name of protecting people from secondary
dangers.
Vulture Paul Singer, fresh from a mostly-victory over Argentina, is
bankrolling
Marco Rubio to do the same to Puerto Rico.
Trump had local thugs remove some black students preemptively from a rally,
presuming
they might protest somehow.
This reminds us of the way that a repressive US law imposes long
prison sentence on peaceful protests at presidential campaign events,
driving protests far away to where the mainstream press can completely
ignore them.
San Francisco thugs forced prisoners to fight each other, for
gambling.
It seems they have done this for more than a year.
On-line sales have lead to
false
information about products' energy efficiency.
Basically, on-line selling makes it harder to hold sellers
accountable, so it is going to result in various kinds of mistreatment
unless governments put more funds into checking for fraud and
prosecuting it.
Elif Shafak: Turkey is
dominated
by "intimidation and paranoia". State-supported Islamic
fundamentalism has made it possible to force many teenage girls into
marriage, and created fertile ground for PISSI.
A thug in Raleigh
shot
a black man who was running away.
The man was wanted for arrest, but there is no indication he was
violent. He certainly didn't respond with violence.
New York thugs
often
illegally search homes, especially those of blacks.
In-N-Out Burger
Commits
to Eliminating Overuse of Antibiotics in Beef.
The TPP
threatens
indigenous people's rights.
In the US:
phone to oppose the
proposed merger between Charter and Time Warner Cable.
Walmart and Kraft are being sued for stretching "100% parmesan cheese"
with
wood.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Stop Corporate Inversions Act.
'Like Putting Lipstick on a Pig':
Changes
to CETA Make it More Corporate-Friendly Deal.
The proposed "data protection" deal between the EU and the US
over personal data of Europeans is bogus, since it
does
nothing to resist NSA bulk surveillance.
Press Release:
"Privacy
Shield" Is The Same Unsafe Harbour.
Activists and tech companies are deadlocked in a dispute about
proposed privacy protection schemes that
would
be woefully inadequate.
They would be a more codified form of today's "privacy policies",
which are hardly worth paying attention to.
Once data are collected, they will be misused — by
rogue staff, by criminal crackers (please don't call them
"hackers"), and by the US and
other governments, and probably by the company too, because its
"privacy policy" allows harmful use.
What we need is to
stop
systems from collecting the data.
A Hong Kong publisher, in Chinese hands,
says
he has renounced his UK citizenship.
I hope the UK has the guts to say he can't surrender his citizenship
while in under some other government's power.
A court quashed one subpoena against Apple that
would
have required it to develop software to weaken security.
It is good that Apple is defending people's privacy on this one front,
but Apple software
does plenty to
undermine and mistreat users.
Some Israeli artists
compare
the current situation with McCarthyism.
Urban women with children are
especially
likely to be evicted in the US. The record of the eviction can
make them struggle for many years.
Guatemalan officers have been convicted of
raping
indigenous women as part of the US-organized civil war.
The US was supporting the local plutocrats against people who were
fed up with being ruled by them.
Climate Activists
Threaten
to Shut Down World's Major Coal Sites.
Several
ambassadors warned China not to define dissent as "terrorism".
I agree completely. I wish the US would stop
investigating
dissidents and whistleblowers by accusing them of "terrorism".
Evidence
substantiates that Zika can cause Guillain-Barré paralysis.
It's a grave symptom, since 40% of them still can't walk three months
later.
Journalists in Chhattisgarh, India, face
harsh
state repression.
Sanders
opposes
the Sandpiper and Clipper pipelines.
The executives of TEPCO face criminal charges for
ignoring
the known danger of a higher tsunami than they admitted publicly
was possible.
The CEO of CBS says Trump is great, because his spewing hatred
enriches
media giants.
Everyone:
encourage
Nebraska legislators to vote to end gerrymandering in Nebraska.
Everyone:
Demand
an investigation into the killing of Hernan Jaramillo by thugs in
Oakland.
Billboards are
starting
to track people's mobile phones. Even nastier, some use cameras
to try to learn about who walks by.
Both of these practices should be illegal.
The brother of Colombia's former President Uribe has been arrested and
accused of leading a
murder
squad.
El President Horrible was associated while in office with the
paramilitares, the worst group of terrorists in that country. It
sounds like this murder squad was a part of the paramilitares.
Lack of sleep
makes
some people crave sugar and fat, activating natural chemicals with
marijuana-like effects.
Facebook
can
tell when its useds are asleep. Via Facebook, others can tell
that too.
In Papua New Guinea, men's violence towards their wives and daughters
is
so
common that women are very lucky if they don't suffer it.
The vultures that attacked Argentina
gained
75% of the money they demanded. I'd call this a 75% victory for
evil.
We need to change US law so that next time the vultures will get
nothing.
Trump insults anyone that comes within range, even
soldiers
and veterans.
When hawks say we should "support our troops", they mean we should
support whatever unjust wars the hawks send those troops to fight in.
The right way to support them is to bring them home.
We should not blame the soldiers just for fighting an unjust war.
(It's their commanders that should be imprisoned for that.)
However, we must not forgive them for war crimes.
Snyder told his aides he wanted to avoid declaring a disaster in
Flint, so they
falsely
claimed he was not authorized to do so.
The hands of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman had
no
traces of firing a gun, which is evidence he was killed by someone
else.
The prima facie hypothesis is that he was killed to stop him from
testifying the next day against then-president Fernández.
Iraq has
warned
people in Mosul to move away from the Tigris river because of the
danger that the Mosul dam might collapse.
The EU is
emitting
too much CO2 to keep its Paris climate pledge.
If Apple develops software for the FBI to guess the pin or password on
one iThing,
every
cracker and internet army in the world would try to get ahold of
it.
Funding better education for girls in Africa is a very
efficient
way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions there.
It's not enough, though — we also have to cut down in emissions
in other parts of the world.
Towns in the UK are
banning
activities such as sleeping or begging in public, just as critics
predicted they would.
US citizens:
Thank the FCC
for adopting network neutrality.
Many web sites
block
or harass visitors that use Tor.
What the article does not mention is that the CAPTCHAs typically
operate through nonfree Javascript code. We who refuse to run nonfree
Javascript code simply can't access these sites.
Around the world,
mining
is associated with violence. (And often pollution too.)
Thousands
May Have Died in Syria Sieges, UN Human Rights Chief Says.
Sanders proposes to
mobilize
the US economy for growth, so establishment-supporting economists
and media claim it won't work, without really studying it.
FBI Says Apple Court Order Is Narrow, But
Other
Law Enforcers Hungry to Exploit It.
What would thugs do, if not lie?
Indonesia is
imposing
harsh repression on prostitutes.
They will still work as prostitutes but it will be more dangerous for
them.
On watching one's father die in useless and terrible suffering;
doctors were
not
allowed to give him enough morphine to end the pain (and with it
his life) although he begged for that.
In 2000, Trump knew who David Duke was, enough to refuse to be
associated politically with him. Now he
pleads
ignorance of Duke as an excuse not to reject his support.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to approve contraceptive aid for regions affected by
Zika.
Scalia
did
grave damage to American workers and consumers by allowing
companies to impose arbitration requirements on them, thus denying
them the right to go to court when mistreated.
Charges
have been dropped against a UK student who was prosecuted for an
insult against Tories.
Bravo to anyone that insults Tories, but Aneurin Bevan expressed it
much more clearly. The Tories are lower than vermin.
Australia is allowing so much forest-cutting that it
will
bust its climate target.
Republicans in Georgia
want
to legalize religion-motivated discrimination against same-sex
couple.
The cease fire in Syria is mostly holding, but
Assad's
side carried out some air strikes. Perhaps they were directed at
al-Nusra or PISSI.
Some questions that
Trump's
tax returns would answer.
A UK MP visiting southeast Turkey was arrested by soldiers for
making
a recording of the sounds of Turkish tanks firing on Kurds.
Many US companies impose noncompete agreements on lots of employees
just because they can — so these employees,
if
laid off, can't work anywhere.
The fact that most of these contracts would not be enforced by a court
does not stop them from doing harm. If it were up to me, I would
penalize companies for asking employees to sign them, outside some
narrow cases.
Supposedly "left-leaning" economists are
supporting
the establishment in criticizing Sanders' economic plans.
The US
proposes
very light regulations for undersea fracking.
Do we have to risk learning the hard way?
The people of Nevada are organizing strongly to
reverse
the decision to remove support for individuals to install solar
power.
If we taxed carbon emissions enough, and eliminated subsidies for
fossil fuels, specific policies to encourage solar power would not be
needed. Simply avoiding the cost of fossil fuel would be enough
incentive for people to switch.
China's rulers admit that, now that they can't please the people with
fast growth, they depend more on
control
of the people through the media.
More Than Ever,
Science
Must Be Central to All Our Lives.
US citizens:
call
on Democratic superdelegates to follow the people's vote.
Clinton won the
South
Carolina primary.
However, Sanders leads nationwide and can still win the nomination.
People in the UK have reported around a million cases of alleged
benefit fraud, but only 15% of them were real fraud. The other
85%
of those accused were honest.
Putting surveillance cameras in nursing homes
would
violate the privacy of the people living there.
One possible trade-off is to install security cameras instead of
surveillance cameras. The difference is that a surveillance camera
can be watched remotely, while a security camera makes only a local
recording that is overwritten in a short time. The security camera
would deter abuses while not lending itself to watching everyone.
I believe that
only
security cameras, not surveillance cameras, should be allowed pointing
at places where the public is admitted, with exceptions allowed
only under court orders for a specific place and time period.
As for nursing homes, they could install security cameras in the rooms
of those patients that request them.
Everyone:
call for making
Nestle pay to use Lake Michigan water.
US citizens:
support
the Congressional Progressive Caucus climate resolution.
US citizens:
support
the US government stand that Israel's colonies in Palestine are
not part of Israel.
Anti-Government Protesters
Rally
for 'Free And Open Poland'.
In the UK,
protesters
must now damage property in order to get a fair trial.
Dalits worship a "demon" that in mythology was killed by the goddess
Durga. They believe he was a king that challenged the dominance of
the caste system. Jawaharlal Nehru University uses this feast day as
an occasion for political debates about caste, for which it
faces
prosecution for offending the religious feelings of higher caste
Indians that worship Durga.
I suppose they offend the religious feelings of Dalits, reciprocally,
but they won't be prosecuted for that.
Religious freedom means that people are free to hold any views in the
area of religion, and freedom of speech means they are free to
praise or condemn any religion.
Republicans in Illinois
want
to exclude children of single mothers permanently from school and
employment, as well as state aid, if the mother does not (or
cannot) name the father, or find some substitute.
I think the state should offer a gratis abortion to any woman
in that situation.
A right-wing think tank is demanding budget cuts
so
extreme that even Paul Ryan doesn't dare endorse them.
Joyce Curnell went to the emergency room, but the hospital informed
the local thugs that she was wanted for not paying debts. They took
her to debtor's prison, and the thugs
killed
her there by denying her water and medical care.
The film and TV industry in the US gets big subsidies, which is a
waste
of our money. The same companies then
turn
around and buy government support for unjust copyright laws such
as the DMCA.
Democratic debate moderators from PBS posed
questions
with right-wing presuppositions.
The US right wing is not grateful for this support; rather, it
continues to condemn PBS as "liberal" no matter how reactionary it
gets. This is part of its long-term strategy to fool Americans into
considering all views but the most extreme reactionarism as "leftist
extremism".
The support for Sanders shows that many Americans are starting to
recognize this lie.
Plutocrats in the US and the EU will try to get This Treaty Is
Plutocratic finished
in
time for Obama to sign it.
They realize that the next president may be Sanders.
Benjamin Todd Jealous, former president of the NAACP, says
why
he supports Sanders rather than Clinton.
U.S. House of Representatives Approves Bill
Slashing
Wildlife Protections. The victims of this SCROTUS initiative
would include wolves in the US and elephants in Africa.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
After finding no usable scandals in one batch of NOAA emails,
denialist Lamar Smith has
demanded
a lot more NOAA emails to try to manipulate.
Two of the computational idea patents Apple used to attack Samsung
have been
invalidated
by a court.
That's a victory for software freedom, but an limited and extremely
expensive one. We need to protect software from all patents on
computational ideas, all at once.
These patents are often called "software patents", but that term gives
the wrong idea of what such patents do. A patent is never associated
with any specific code. Rather, it is a
monopoly
on implementing some specific, stated idea & in these cases, a
computational idea. Any code which implements the patented idea, or
any hardware which does, can be the basis for a lawsuit.
Another solution I've proposed is to
legislate
that software is exempt from patent law.
This illustrates the error of focusing on "patent trolls" and ignoring
other patent aggressors. Apple is the biggest patent aggressor in the
software field, and we can hardly call it a patent troll. Its
products are
full
of proprietary software
with
malicious
functionalities, but they are certainly a real business.
AT&T gave
62
thousand dollars to Missouri state legislators to get a committee
to approve a bill to block municipal internet access in that state.
Even if they have to pay 10 times as much to get the whole legislature
to approve the bill, AT&T will get tremendous return on investment.
Two Florida schoolchildren face
felony
charges for putting red pepper in a teacher's soda.
The school should punish them, but taking it to court is incompetence
on the school's part.
I reject the practice of calling teenagers "children" merely because
they are minors, but these are 12 years old, not even teenagers.
They really are children.
"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was
worth
billions of dollars to corporate America," extrapolating from
evidence that his death has denied them the chance to make off with
billions more.
An
E.Coli's Last Message to President Obama.
Growing marijuana indoors
uses
up lots of electricity.
Why grow marijuana indoors? Because it's illegal. Even were it is
legal, they still grow it indoors because they invested so much effort
in learning to grow a good crop indoors. But legalization will change
that over time, even if not instantly.
Baltimore thugs shot Keith Davis, apparently having mistaken him for
the robber of a taxi, then
went
all-out to frame him for that robbery. They failed.
Will those involved in the frame-up be prosecuted for this abuse of
power?
Whistleblowers Challenge Candidates:
Stand
Against Wall Street Fraud.
Everyone:
call
on Obama to endorse world-wide action against the men that murder
their daughters or sisters.
Everyone:
call
on Indonesian President Widodo to protect the survivors of the
1966 massacre and give them justice.
US citizens:
call
on Kerry to block the Alberta Clipper pipeline.
So Which Clinton Is It Today:
Rebel
Girl or Super Predator?
How to Get Rich From Public Schools
(Without
Actually Educating).
For 70 years, a study has tracked the medical history of everyone born
in Britain during one week. It has uncovered a
series
of injustices that systematically caused avoidable illness, and some
were corrected, before the UK fell to the plutocrats.
I think the Tories will end this story before it shows any more about
what the state ought to
do.
A team of local women has had
great
success in reducing poaching in one region of South Africa.
More money and more political will would do a lot of good in inspiring
such teams. Pay alone won't do it, but these efforts cost money.
Seaworld sent an employee to infiltrate PETA, where he
tried
to provoke them into violence.
It seems to me that a fraudulent attempt to lead others into crime (so
as to prosecute them) should itself be a crime.
The wealthy countries
imposed
tax avoidance treaties decades ago, through which multinational
companies pay poor countries hardly any tax.
Since the FBI knows it can't ban or break encryption, it is now
trying
every possible method to break computer security in general.
Trump proposes to
quash
press criticism with expanded libel laws.
UAE
Beat
Foreign Prisoners And Gave Them Electric Shocks.
No wonder it is a US ally.
Some of Gov. Snyder's top advisers called for switching Flint's water
supply back to safer water in
October
2014.
If Snyder did not know about this, he was incompetent at his job.
New Mexico has
legalized
sexting for teenagers 14 and over.
I fear 13-year-olds are still in danger of punishment. You might
think it is wiser for them not to sext, or have sex, but some will do
it anyway and it is wrong to jail them when they do.
US citizens: call on Obama to nominate a progressive to the Supreme Court.
Israel has released Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq from imprisonment without trial. However, he is too sick to leave the hospital.
In Indonesia (and elsewhere), Islam stands for intolerance of queers.
Tradition in Java and Bali includes a lot of public cross-dressing.
The forms of Islam that were common in Java in the past did not go in
for repression. In the past few decades, repressive Islam has spread
there. I've heard this attributed to funding from Salafi Arabia.
One of Australia's prisoners in Manus Island was just granted refugee status,
after a long hunger strike. He can't walk or eat normal food.
The Papuan government wants to move him away from the only place he
can get medical care.
The US will start blocking imports of sea food from Thailand where there is suspicion forced labor was used.
In San Francisco, even employed people are homeless.
It is fine to insist that housing for people must meet certain
standards, but not as an excuse to push people around on the street.
San Francisco's first step should be to legalize sleeping in RVs. Its
next step should be to provide homeless people with RVs, if not better.
With all the wealth flowing into the city, it will have no trouble paying
for this, if it taxes that wealth properly.
Senator Cruz wants the US government to have the power to take away people's citizenship by administrative order (not even a trial).
What next, Mr Cruz? Round up people on the street and shoot them?
The UN working group's conclusion that Julian Assange has been
"arbitrarily detained" is based on the specific injustices of his
case: how Sweden is using an unjustly conducted investigation as
excuse to grab him and violate his rights. Here is its opinion.
This reasoning and conclusion would not apply if a war criminal
(Dubya, for instance) were hiding in an embassy to avoid honest, overt
and justly conducted prosecution.
They would also not apply if Sweden conducted its investigation of
these accusations against Assange in an honest and above-board way.
2015: When Global Governments Trampled Human Rights in Name of National Security.
Haneen Zoabi: Why Israel Is Fighting the Indigenous Palestinians.
Global heating resulted in fires in forests in Tasmania, that for at least a thousand years have been too wet for any fire. Their entire ecosystem is likely to burn away as heating continues.
TV Pundits Praise Hillary Clinton On Air, Fail to Disclose Financial Ties to Her Campaign.
Many heroin users are using it to blunt the permanent pain of their lives, which comes from a lack of love as children.
I don't know if there is a way to help those people,
but making reliable birth control and abortion easy to get
will avoid many of them.
People who were not killed by Ebola have long-lasting brain problems.
The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution to stop selling arms to Salafi Arabia.
Obama is considering the ultimate treachery: nominating a Republican for the Supreme Court. With "Democrats" like that, who needs Republicans?
Fortunately, the official Republicans rejected this nominee.
But that doesn't mean Obama, the great weakling, won't offer
them an even bigger compromise.
The US government hired CMU researchers to break Tor anonymity.
India's subsidy for installing solar power systems it applies only to solar cells made in India. The WTO called this a barrier to trade, apparently under prodding from the US.
Its logic makes sense, but its priorities are twisted.
Facebook's Five New Reaction Buttons: Data, Data, Data, Data, and Data.
A disabled British woman, and her husband that cares for her, may become homeless because of the "bedroom tax".
The Tories keep imposing cuts on the poor and sick, which they know
must push increasing numbers of people into penury. Precisely whom or
why, they don't care. The cuts must be applied rigidly, even
dishonestly, or they would not achieve the goal.
Sanders plans to solve two US problems at once: curbing speculation in the big casino and funding US infrastructure.
Incidentally, rebuilding the infrastructure will create lots of jobs.
The UK has treaties with many very poor countries, limiting what taxes they can charge to UK companies.
The TTIP could force privatization of national health systems, in the UK and (I presume) in the rest of Europe.
It could also stop the US from setting up a proper national health service, which it badly needs.
Foreign companies could the use TTIP and other such treaties to forbid states from imposing new taxes.
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to vote on whether the government can make companies
change their products to snoop on people, and debate and vote on what
power the state should have.
Post-war Iraq:
'Everybody
is corrupt, from top to bottom. Including me'.
Terrible news: to avoid 2C of heating,
we
can only emit 1,200 bn tons more CO2 (or equivalent)
from now on.
That is only half what scientists estimated before.
"If we don't start reducing our emissions immediately, we will blow
[the carbon budget] in a few decades."
A French drug trial
caused
grave brain damage, sometimes fatal. A previous test of the same
drug on dogs did similar damage, but it was covered up by trade
secrecy.
Drug companies should not be allowed to impose secrecy on any
information about drug trials. Any arrangements made by the company
that impede publication should land the executives responsible in
prison for a long time, and the company should be punished by
cancelling the patent on that drug.
However, this alone is not enough, because imposing secrecy is not the
only method these companies use to do corrupt medicine. For instance,
when drug companies finance or control drug testing, they ruin its
results. It is a fundamental conflict of interest. For a test to
kill subjects is rare, but lesser forms of harm happen
all
the time.
Drug companies should have nothing to do with tests on drugs. The
government should run them, and drug companies
should
pay through their taxes.
Drug companies have
many
ways of corrupting medicine.
Some members of US Congress have proposed to
end
the practice of requiring money bail for people accused of crimes.
The system keeps indigent people in jail for months or years, and many
plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because the sentence is
less jail time than they would spend waiting for a trial.
As Rivers Run Black in Peru,
Indigenous
Tribes Left Cleaning Big Oil's Disaster.
When an ice age ends, the Earth heats up — but
nearly
as fast as we are heating it now.
Bill Gates
says
there will be a "clean energy breakthrough" that will solve the global
heating problem.
Mr Bill's faith in future technology is touching, but it's lunacy.
Such a breakthrough may or may not happen. Our plans for avoiding
global heating disaster must not depend on it.
Fortunately, we can avoid disaster even without any
breakthrough — if we have the political will to make a forced
march to sustainable energy. If, that is, we do not justify laziness
by assuming that a "breakthrough" will make it easy.
Many web sites are
blocking
connection through Tor, or making users answer a CAPTCHA. The
CAPTCHA typically requires nonfree Javascript software. Thus, these
sites demand that you either (1) let them track your location or (2)
run a
nonfree
program. Either one means mistreating you. I refuse to do those
things — I would rather not access those sites.
I hope you will join me in rejecting them.
The European Parliament is voting on a
proposal
to ban arms sales to Salafi Arabia, which is using the arms to
impose horrible suffering on Yemen.
Salafi Arabia pretends that its enemies the Houthis are "terrorists"
that Europe needs to fight, but the Houthis are
only
interested in controlling Yemen. They are no friends of Sunni
terrorists such as al-Qa'ida.
Why the FBI's demand to Apple
should
be judged invalid under US law.
The article's arguments is entirely valid, but at the same time it
endorses "entrusting our digital lives" to companies such as Apple
that develop
proprietary
malware. No thanks!
Advocates to EPA: It's
Time
to Ban Organophosphate Pesticides.
SCROTUS have proposed bills to allow lots more mining and
cutting
down of national forests.
SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.
"Smart guns" that recognize fingerprints
could
reduce gun violence.
A Canadian court ruled that
medical
marijuana users have the right to grow their own marijuana.
Journalists
Should Stand Up for Whistleblowers.
Bolivia's voters
declined
to change the constitution to allow Evo Morales to run for
president again.
He was a big change for the better, but it is dangerous to let one
person be president on and on.
France has demanded
almost
two billion dollars in avoided taxes from Google.
After
Sweeping Nevada, Trump Declares: 'I Love the Poorly Educated'.
Pick any cruel and bigoted government action:
a
substantial fraction of Trump supporters are in favor of it.
His supporters want someone who will be "tough" on all sorts of
undesirables, but
will
Trump really do that?
I think Trump would be tough on the weak.
Clinton Campaign
Relies
On Rumors And Dishonesty To Attack Sanders.
Putting more CO2 in sea water, as an experiment,
slowed
growth in a real coral reef.
1/4
of US abortion clinics have closed in the past five years.
This is the Republicans' war on women.
Tories in the UK have suppressed
almost
800,000 voters.
Pressuring
restaurant chain In-N-Out Burger to stop using beef raised with
routine use of antibiotics.
Black
Thinkers Like Bernie Sanders. They've Studied the Clintons' True
Cost.
This is
good
news, but since real outcomes will come soon, I will wait and post
about them.
The Nissan Leaf
records
where it has traveled, tracking the driver's movements.
This article reports on how crackers have been able to extract that
information from the car. However, I think the worst thing is that
the car keeps these records at all. I am sure Nissan has a way to get
at them, and I suppose governments can make Nissan extract them too.
The Heathrow Airport climate protesters were given a
suspended
sentence.
This means they won't be imprisoned now, but they are effectively
blocked from further protest activity.
One of the protesters, expecting to be imprisoned, said she
has
no regrets.
I wish someone could tell her how to write her favorite music onto an
audio CD with GNU/Linux.
The UK should repeal its
"aggravated
trespass" law.
Calling on the US and Canada to
judge
projects such as pipelines based on their climate impact.
The US
spied
on the UN Secretary General as well as leaders of various allied
countries.
US musicians are afraid that if they criticize Israel's occupation of
Palestine,
their
careers will be crushed.
Israel
demolished
the school in a Bedouin village in Palestine.
Israel has
demolished 400
Palestinians' homes in 2016.
It's
Obama's
own fault that he has not closed the Guantanamo prison, because he
accepted nearly all of its injustices.
Bahraini dissident Ibrahim Sharif has been
sentenced
to a year in prison for condemning government repression of
peaceful protests.
In the twisted language of the Bahraini regime, criticizing injustice
constitutes "inciting hatred".
The repression in Bahrain was
imposed
by troops from Salafi Arabia *, with the implicit support of the
US.
* It's official name is "Saudi Arabia", but I think
"Salafi
Arabia" better describes the poison it spreads.
Arch Coal was secretly funding an organization that
harassed
climate scientists.
Regarding
"antisemitism"
in an Oxford student club.
Real antisemitism was widespread in the UK in the past, and it may
still exist today, but the criticism of Israel's occupation policies
as "antisemitism" is a falsehood.
Russia is convicting people of treason in secret trials, apparently
based
on no evidence.
I wish this practice were limited to Russia.
Organized crime now
finances
illegal unsustainable fishing of endangered species around the
world. A group of volunteers work to catch the criminals.
I do not approve of releasing tuna from a fish farm, which they did
once before, but that is a side issue.
Chinese
dissident
and whistleblower Li Xin has disappeared in Thailand.
At least one of the Hong Kong publishers was apparently taken from
Thailand. It appears that Thailand is basically unsafe for anyone
that China wants to grab.
This resembles what the US did,
kidnaping
a man in Italy and sending him to Egypt to be tortured. One
former CIA agent is going to be extradited to Italy for trial for
this.
US citizens:
phone
Senator Stabenow to oppose the DARK Act.
Everyone:
call
on the New York Times to admit US involvement in the war in Yemen.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject the DARK Act.
It would ban states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
Prison thugs
blocked
delivery of printouts of EFF articles to Chelsea Manning,
supposedly from concern that they violated the EFF's copyright. This
excuse is even more ludicrous than it seems, because printing a web
page to show a person who can't see it on the net is probably fair
use.
The US and Russia have
agreed
to a cease-fire in Syria applying to all sides except al-Nusra
(al-Qa'ida) and PISSI.
I hope this can work. But given the way the non-Islamist rebels are
closely allied with al-Nusra, I am not sure the distinction is
practical.
Whole Foods
systematically
lies to customers. Perhaps it should be called Whole Cloth, as in
"made up out of".
The EU's trade negotiator told Exxon that the TTIP would
protect
it from pesky regulations.
That's effectively a confession that the TTIP is a form of corruption.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Right-wing law professors adopted "safe space" censorship tactics to
claim
that other professors had no right to dissent from praise of
Scalia.
The article argues against the idea that we have to praise evil people
merely because they are dead.
Protesters
blocked
the doors of the meeting room where plutocratists were going to
meet to negotiate the TTIP.
Many Americans are
rebelling
against the establishment.
Those who blame the real culprits support Sanders. Those distracted
with scapegoats support Trump.
Jobs After Jail: Ending the
Prison
to Poverty Pipeline.
Pro-Palestinian activists put up posters in the London metro,
pretending to be advertisements, which
criticize
aspects of Israel's occupation of Palestine.
As described here, the posters seem to be factual and accurate.
Israel and its supporters take offense at this contradiction of the
one-sided official picture, so they describe the posters as
"vandalism" and even pretend that they threaten violence.
Reporters Without Borders
calls
on Egypt to release dozens of imprisoned journalists.
Natural gas is
not
a bridge to a sustainable future.
Africa's Forests 'Threatened by
Palm
Oil Rush'.
China has imprisoned a Tibetan blogger for
reporting
visible facts people were not supposed to talk about.
Privatization of probation officers in the UK
led
naturally to mistreating them and the people on probation.
Global warming has caused sea level to rise at the
fastest
rate in the last 2,800 years.
It is not clear whether sea level rose faster 2,800 years ago, or we
simply don't know how fast it rose then.
This study forecasts only 1.3 meters (4.3 feet) of sea level rise by
2100, but we don't know how much global heating will melt the
Greenland ice cap in this century.
In any case, sea level will continue rising, and over centuries the
rise could amount to
25
meters. Many of the world's major cities will be inundated.
Obama once again
proposes
to move imprisonment without trial from Guantanamo Bay to United
States territory.
The evil of the Guantanamo prison is imprisonment without trial.
Moving it to the US would not reduce the evil, only smash the last
barrier against making it standard US practice.
Justice requires that each prisoner be tried or released.
Sanders once
called
for abolishing the CIA. So did President Kennedy, President
Truman, and various other elected officials.
Sanders's opposition to the TPP exposes the bias of US mainstream
media. MSNBC was covering Sanders' press conference, but
stopped
when he brought up the TPP.
Egyptian
Army Court Sentences 4-year-old To Life in Prison For Committing
Multiple Murders.
The copyright industry finds Australia's "three strikes" system for
punishing people for sharing files
not
worth using unless they make it super cheap to run, and
unreliable.
The relatives of people shot dead in Sandy Hook
want
to sue the manufacturers of the rifle and ammunition that the
killer used.
I think this sort of unpredictable liability is the wrong way to
decide what kinds of guns may be sold. That policy should published
explicitly in advance, and companies that follow it should not be
liable.
Thus, I advocate prohibiting large magazines, but not suing the
companies that made them lawfully.
Maryland has
adopted
rules to encourage community solar electricity projects.
44 Years in Solitary Confinement Is
Even
Worse Than You Can Imagine. So says another person who spent
years in solitary confinement.
A poll finds that US Democratic voters are
more
favorable towards socialism than towards capitalism.
I advocate a mixture of capitalism (allow private businesses) and
socialism (regulate them tightly, tax them a lot, and keep them
small).
Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye was arrested again, reportedly
to
stop
him from gathering evidence of the rigged election before the
deadline to challenge it.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to appoint a
progressive to the Supreme Court.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the DARK act that would
prohibit states from requiring labeling of GMOs.
1-877-796-1949
US citizens:
call on Obama
to withdraw the demand for Apple to break security on iPhones.
US citizens:
Call
on state attorneys general to investigate Exxon's climate lies.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Greenhouse emissions often go with air pollution. Cutting emissions
to avoid global heating disaster could save almost
300,000
Americans from death from respiratory diseases by 2030.
At every stage, the winner of the war in Afghanistan has been …
opium.
The suggestion at the end to put US money into rural development is,
however, easier to say than to do. The US has scattered lots of cash
for this, and
often
it only fed corruption.
Clinton ought to recuse herself from the presidential race for
conflict
of interest: namely, her million-plus in pay from the big banks.
The Pope's small concession on birth control
does
nothing to help women facing Zika under prohibition of abortions.
The US
needs
democratic socialism to fix its public schools.
Leading
climate scientists call on the American Geophysical Union to
reject funding from Exxon.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
The Heatland institute* has published another report denying global
heating,
full
of falsehoods.
* Its official name is "Heartland", but "Heatland" describes it more
accurately.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to require thugs to register Stingrays and get warrants
to use them.
A Cairo art gallery was shut down by the government and will face
strict
censorship of what it shows.
Mexico's Missing Students:
International
Investigators Say They Are Being Obstructed.
Egyptian Anti-Torture Group
Vows
to Defy Government Move to Shut It Down.
The Australian government is subjecting democracy to a
"corrosive"
attack. It is promoting secrecy and reducing accountability to
the public.
Australia had a
series
of three springs with record-breaking heat, and global heating
seems to be responsible.
Right-wingers want to repress transsexuals with
laws
requiring them to use the toilets for the sex they were born with.
There is a real dispute here, between male-to-female transsexuals who
want to use toilets for females, and other females who feel
uncomfortable with people in their toilets that are rather similar to
males. Both of them have good reasons, and I don't see how to satisfy
them both. I don't have a solution to offer, but these laws clearly
only do harm.
Now that a public inquiry will be held into UK thugs' practice of
infiltrating dissident groups (often by getting sexually involved with
women in them),
the
thugs want the inquiry to be secret rather than public, to
"protect" these infiltrators.
Sanders
did
much better in Nevada than was expected a few weeks ago, and got
almost as many delegates as Clinton.
The mainstream media are spinning this as "Clinton won".
Michael Moore's latest film shows what's missing in the US political
establishment (including the mainstream media): the idea that
issues
matter, not only "winning".
The FBI
unwittingly
stopped Apple spyware from operating automatically in the shooting
suspect's iPhone.
Colombia's supreme court has
banned
mining and drilling in the high-altitude plains which provide most
of the country's water supply.
The "Success Academy", a group of charter schools, succeeds by
ejecting
students that aren't a big success.
There's a place for schools for gifted children. Just don't judge
ordinary public schools against them.
US citizens:
call on Congress not to privatize
air traffic control — reject HR 4441.
The latest excuse for imposing total surveillance on the internet is
the UK's
plan to make
all sites that have sexual material identify their visitors to check
their ages.
It would be wrong to do this even if it were easy.
US Army "burn pits" in Iraq and Afghanistan
seem
to have made lots of soldiers sick, some fatally. Toxins were
contributed by the garbage that they burned, as well as remains from
Saddam Hussein's former chemical weapons programs.
Criminalising Boycotts Will
Help
Unethical Businesses Thrive.
Snowden
explains why the FBI's demands to Apple are unnecessary.
Specifically,
If Apple makes a modified iThing decryption program to facilitate
trying more decryption keys, that
will
affect all users of iThings.
Apple's current defense of one aspect of user's privacy would be
admirable if it were the whole story. In fact, it is the exception
among a long string of abuses.
The article mentions one of the malicious functionalities of the
iPhone and the iBad: they are tyrant devices. This means
they do
not allow the user to run an operating system that wasn't signed by
Apple. This gives Apple total power over the user.
Schneier says that "either everyone gets security, or no one does."
For the iThings, it's the latter. No user of an iThing has security
against Apple, because Apple can do any nasty thing whatsoever in the
next "upgrade". It is infamous for
mistreating its own users.
In general, no user of proprietary software has any
security
against the program's developer.
A
Pentagon
report in 2012 predicted that support for the (mainly Islamist)
anti-Assad rebels in Syria was likely to result in a "Salafist
Principality", basically something like PISSI.
That's what Salafi Arabia and Turkey wanted, but why did the US
support them? Even in 2012, some in the Pentagon knew that the Syrian
rebels were mainly Islamists. That doesn't mean Obama and his
advisers knew this — but if not, they should have.
The US may have expected this "Salafist Principality" to be more like
Salafi Arabia rather than the actual PISSI. That is hardly an excuse.
Mèdecins Sans Frontiéres has decided to
stop
telling Assad and Russia where its medical facilities are located.
It believes that they attack these facilities intentionally.
In many cities, apparently public areas are private property and
people's
rights are restricted there. This article describes the UK.
New York City has done it too, for instance in
Zucotti
Park.
The UK's dooH niboR government is proposing a pension "reform" that
would
hurt 20 million low-paid workers when they retire.
What has Bernie Sanders actually
accomplished?
Thousands
of people in Sydney protested against laws that have made bars,
restaurants and music venues shut down.
These laws have avoided dozens of alcohol-related injuries each year,
but maybe it is possible to keep the venues open and reduce how much
alcohol people can drink in them.
Prolonged
imprisonment of young refugees is 'state-sanctioned child abuse',
says a leading Australian doctor.
The Australian law that
punishes
personnel who report this or other abuse of prisoners is a
state-sanctioned coverup of systematic crime.
US citizens:
call
on the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect sea floor
habitats.
US citizens:
call
on the National Marine Fisheries Service to protect forage fish.
US citizens:
tell the FCC to stop Charter
from merging with Time Warner Cable.
US citizens:
call
on your state governor to support a clean power plan for your
state.
The UK lobbied the UN, apparently with success, to tone down its
criticism of
repression
in Bahrain.
Many uncontacted indigenous tribes in the Amazon are making contact,
mainly because they have been
attacked
by murderous criminal gangs.
There is no vaccine against the common cold — or against the flu
in general.
How Clinton
enabled
the coup in Honduras. Honduras still suffers from the effects of
that coup.
Clinton's policy towards Latin America:
support
for the oligarchies against elected politicians that aimed to reduce
their power.
Judges Have No Idea What to Do About
Student
Speech on the Internet.
Thugs across the US
protested
the conviction of the thug who killed Akai Gurley.
The thug did not intend to shoot Gurley, but did nothing to save him.
The UK
plans
to gag government-funded scientists (even at universities) to stop
them from campaigning against harm that they have discovered.
An Egyptian novelist has been sentenced to
two
years in prison for publishing a book that mentions sex and drug
use.
French Constitutional Council
Rejects
Data Copy During House Raids.
Large
numbers of protesters surround the Australian hospital where a
refugee baby is being treated. They are concerned lest the state send
the baby back to the prison in Nauru, where the baby was burned.
Environmental Degradation Takes a
Heavy
Toll on Women and Children's Health.
Scalia was no "originalist". He turned the constitution upside down
to permit
Republican
voter suppression.
Most of the election issues in the US this year are really forms of
the issue of
plutocracy
vs democracy.
Erdoğan's move to tyranny, with the support of a substantial
part of the population,
compared
to fascism in Italy.
Studying the
relationship
between forced labor and business.
A
useful
infographic from the EFF explain the injustice of the TPP in the
area of copyright.
The article itself uses self-defeating terminology
such as
"digital
locks" and "digital rights management", but the infographic itself
does not use them.
Global heating hits the Arctic especially hard.
This
January set a record for the smallest amount of Arctic sea ice in
winter.
Global heating will
make
the groundwater shortage worse in parts of the US.
Florida is
passing a bill to make a list of organizations
that support
boycott, divestment or sanctions directed at the occupation of Palestine,
and specifically cut funding to them.
Similar bills have been proposed in Illinois and California. These are not local initiatives. It is an extension to the US
of the campaign to
prohibit dissent
in Israel.
Global climate mayhem
has happened before,
and it causes entire ecosystems
to collapse and disappear.
Trump stated his
admiration for an atrocity
(perhaps mythical) attributed to US General Pershing in the colonized
Philippines,
I've read (though not in detail) that the US's suppression of the
Philippines in 1900, when it had kicked out Spanish rule, was quite
brutal.
Sanders now
leads Clinton
in a national poll.
Clinton's strategy of trying to prevent voters from learning about
Sanders,
by having few debates and obscure ones, was cunning, and it almost
worked.
Maybe now it will fail.
A company
hires actors
to pretend to be "concerned citizens",
reading from scripts.
Documents show
additional Volkswagen lies
about the overpolluting cars.
Some US states long ago banned paying low wages to employees and telling
them
to
make it up with tips.
It works fine.
I tip waiters in restaurants, because I know they depend on it, but I
would rather get rid of the practice and require employers to pay them
an adequate wage.
Restaurants should not add a "service charge" to the price on the
menu. Hidden extra charges are dishonest business. The restaurant
should expect customers to pay what the menu says, no more, and
calculate those prices to allow for paying waiters a decent wage.
Five questions
to ask CIA Director Brennan.
US citizens: call for strong rules to
protect US wildlife refuges
from oil and gas drilling.
To reduce inequality, we need to
change the rules
that the super-rich
have set up to grab most of the wealth that we produce.
Exxon is still
lobbying and spreading misinformation
about global heating, trying to stop society from protecting itself from
the likes
of Exxon.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Prisoner Albert Woodfox, who has been in solitary confinement for 43
years after bogus trials, was
released from prison.
(The article was written before the release took place; I've heard
elsewhere that it did occur.)
Connecticut has
arranged housing
for all its homeless veterans.
All states should do this — but not just for veterans.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to
allow a vote
on sentence reduction.
US citizens:
call on the Senate
not to undermine the independence of financial oversight agencies.
Ocean heating is
harming
some marine species.
An experiment shows shoppers on Ebay
act in a sexist way.
For most products, they offer a higher bid if the seller is male.
For a few products, the effect goes the other way. Sexism has been demonstrated in other areas; for instance, evaluation
of the merit of scientific work is
affected by sexism.
My father's second wife was a painter. When she was young, she signed
her
paintings with a name that could be take for masculine, to avert sexism.
Her paintings sold better that way.
Increased CO2 in the water may not directly wipe out coral, but makes
coral
deformed and more more vulnerable to viruses.
Young coral organisms have special difficulty, so a reef might not
recover
after events that kill part of it.
If you want to stop Trump in November,
vote for Sanders now.
The
EPA will investigate
how pesticides, including Roundup, affect endangered species.
Uri Avnery: Israel is
planning a law
to provide an excuse to kick elected Arabs out of Parliament.
PISSI is using
children of 12
as suicide bombers, as well as teenagers.
Pope Francis Relaxes Catholic Prohibition Against Contraception.
This is a positive step, but a very limited one.
Evidence from Australia
substantiates the theory
that lead poisoning controls society's overall crime rate.
Uganda's main opposition presidential candidate
has been arrested.
It is a fitting end to an apparently rigged election.
The FBI boasts of "disrupting" lots of supposed terrorist threats or
plans, but
won't explain concretely
what "disrupting" means.
It also isn't clear whether these were real terrorist plans,
or
fantasy plans
that wont go anywhere unless facilitated by the FBI.
San Jose Police Officer Fired for Racist Tweets Back on Patrol
Nauru has tightened security against exposure of how it treats the
prisoners
it imprisons for Australia by
restricting visits
by Australians.
This is in case they might be journalists. Nauru basically does not
allow
journalists to enter. Nauru is Australia's equivalent of Guantanamo, except used for people
not even accused of terrorism and even less accountable.
The EU is proposing to
reduce regulations
on clinical trials of drugs.
The biggest problem with clinical trials today is that they are run by
the drug companies that make the drugs. This is a
form of corruption.
One specific aspect of this problem is that many
trials go unpublished.
"Lighter regulation" on clinical trials does not sound like it would
do anything to improve this. Indeed, it could make things worse.
What we need is specific additional regulation. This article gives too little information to judge the change,
and that itself is a cause for suspicion.
French free software groups are
suing
the government for signing a deal with Microsoft. They accuse
Microsoft of dumping.
The main wrong in the Microsoft deal is not an issue of competition,
but that it is
trying to impose
dependence on user-subjugating software on the country.
Five Places [in the US] Where Police Shooting Scandals Have
Altered
the Political Landscape.
US
policy in Syria is based on the fiction that a "moderate" armed
opposition exists which is separate from al-Nusra (al-Qa'ida).
Obama and his top staff must know this. What I don't see is what they
hope to achieve. Convert part of al-Qa'ida into a US ally? It might
not be a ridiculous idea, given that nearly all sides in Syria have
committed great crimes (the exception being the Kurds). But if we can
forgive al-Qa'ida its crimes, why not Assad too?
US 'Likely Culprit' of Global
Spike
in Methane Emissions Over Last Decade.
It's the result of
fracking.
US citizens:
call on the
FCC to stand up for network neutrality.
The UK Labour Party is
concerned
about anti-semitism in its student club at Oxford.
I agree with the opposition to anti-semitism; however, the claim that
comparing Israel's occupation with apartheid constitutes
"anti-semitism" makes me concerned that their definition of
"anti-semitism" is too broad and that this is being used as an excuse
to repress criticism of Israel.
The UK government has
banned
many entities from boycotting companies for several reasons,
including involvement in arms trade and involvement in tobacco.
Boycotts Are Vital to Democracy.
So
That's Why the Tories Will Ban Them.
The Tories are attacking democracy in the UK on a wide range of
fronts, including
voter
suppression,
gerrymandering,
and
attacks
on Labour party funding. This adds up to a plan to quash
democracy and seize permanent power while pretending not to.
The Tories are
lower than
vermin.
Israel's politicians
openly propose annexing part of
the West Bank.
The Israeli Labor party
proposes
permanent apartheid in the West Bank, and terror bombing of civilians
in Gaza.
Terrorism means making war on civilians. It doesn't become any more
legitimate when the bombs are fired from planes instead of carried by
suiciders.
Israel's parliament is
trying
to prevent "biased" (that is, critical) foreign press coverage.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,
says the
big
banks remain a danger to society.
We know that the US
has
not adopted the necessary reforms to prevent the banks from causing
another crisis. The banksters did not allow sufficient reforms.
It is interesting to see a member of the financial structure say so.
The fight to
keep
80% of fossil fuel reserves in the ground is making great
progress, but it's a race against the clock.
As part of this campaign,
protesters
disrupted a US auction of oil and gas leases.
The pragmatic case for voting for Sanders:
Clinton
is less electable, and her vaunted "experience" consists of
supporting hawks and plutocrats.
The practice of
tracking
voters through massive surveillance threatens further danger to
democracy as well.
Workers fired from a Lexmark factory in Mexico are
holding
a sit-in strike.
When NAFTA gave Lexmark the option of moving its factory to Mexico, it
gave Lexmark the option of treating workers like dirt. I have nothing
against hiring Mexicans; I object to mistreating workers in any
country or paying them so little.
A judge
ordered
Apple to change the software in a suspect's iThing so that
investigators can try more than 10 different passwords.
(I say "suspect", because legally that's what's pertinent; but there
is little doubt that this suspect, now deceased, was guilty of
murder.)
I do not object to this in principle, because it is part of
investigating one suspect and doesn't imply snooping on everyone.
US citizens:
call
on the US Army to tear down Yellowstone dam and save the Pallid
Sturgeon.
US citizens:
call on
the FCC to stop T-Mobile from violating Net Neutrality.
Lead in Chicago's water supply is the cause of a lawsuit.
Women in South America are begging for help to get abortions.
It appears that microcephaly can be detected at 22 weeks. That's not too late for an abortion a fetus with a grave birth defect.
The NSA's algorithm for detecting al Qa'ida couriers was an experiment, not a system used to choose targets.
The New York Times is suing the author and publisher of a book which shows how the Times' coverage of the US conquest of Iraq glorified that war.
Fair use in the US is not an explicit right, just a defense available
to those accused of copyright infringement. Thus, even if you are
pretty sure from precedents that you're going to win the case on
grounds of fair use, you're still in a perilous position.
Americans rallied at 800 public schools to oppose school budget cuts, violation of local democratic control of schools, and imposed standardized tests.
Patients are suing a US Catholic organization for its broad interpretation of the policy of not doing abortions, which it imposes on Catholic hospitals in the US.
The Catholic Church should remove itself from operating hospitals rather than impose its dogma on patients.
Clinton promises total support for Netanyahu and Israeli hawks.
The EPA will start making rules to prevent spills of toxic chemicals.
Russian censorship of childrens' books is so absurdly strict that it provides a wonderful tool for selective enforcement, and for squeezing publishers.
Some of the superdelegates that support Clinton are actually lobbyists.
France has extended its state of emergency for another three months. The emergency powers don't seem to have done much good so far, except for the fossil fuel companies by crushing rallies during the Paris climate meeting.
Why Stopping Killer Robots Is A Battle Worth Fighting.
The Tories' latest attack on poor people is to eliminate funding for refuges for women victims of domestic violence.
Israel's soldiers demolish Palestinians' houses, farms, even outhouses over and over.
"Every single child of these families who experienced the arrival of
the bulldozers and army jeep at dawn needs no social networks to hate
and hate more."
People who report sensitivity to electromagnetic waves may really be suffering from something, but it isn't caused by electromagnetic waves.
Runaway inequality in the US has extended from wealth to life span.
Venezuela has raised the price of gasoline — a very important measure.
Subsidizing fossil fuel puts the whole world in danger.
The UK's local medical care directors say the NHS is degrading under the impact of Tory funding cuts.
It has been clear for years that the Tories aimed to destroy the NHS but were unwilling to say so.
Kanhaiya Kumar, charged with "sedition" for criticizing India's trampling of human rights, was attacked in court by a Hindu-extremist fanatic.
Hindu fanaticism has been a dangerous force in India since before
India was founded. Shortly after that, a Hindu fanatic assassinated
Gandhi.
As for charges of "sedition", any state that charges a person with
"sedition" (under whatever name) convicts itself of oppression.
Burundi is crushing independent media, trying to hide the repression so as to pretend that the situation is normal.
Meanwhile, the country is plagued by hunger and disease.
As protesters in Berlin called Netanyahu a war criminal German thugs threatened to prosecute them for saying so.
Another instance of disrespect for freedom of speech.
The US government is selling student debt to collection agencies, which immediately pile on more debt, and send US marshals to arrest debtors.
A plutocratic state regards the people as its prey.
Big Pharma is trying to whitewash its image with a campaign directed only at 7000 elite policymakers.
This way, they avoid the embarrassment that would result if the rest of us saw their bullshit.
Each year, a thousand other women in Pakistan are murdered by their families. Sharmeen Obaid was shot by her father for choosing who to marry. By a freak accident, she survived to tell the tale.
The killer got off without punishment after she was pressured to "forgive" him.
Until state punishes these killers, private revenge is justified. Feminists in Pakistan would be justified in organizing to kill these killers.
The Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence tries to monitor torture in Egypt. The government, finding this embarrassing, is shutting it down.
While Lead Flowed Through the Pipes, Flint Residents Paid America's Most Expensive Water Bills.
John Kiriakou: The CIA officially tells agents to make false reports, which supposedly will be corrected by other reports. But sometimes the false reports are passed on to Congress and the corrections are not.
A particularly arrogant selfish jerk made the callous cruelty of San Francisco's wealthy people manifest.
After the "official" TPP text was posted, a sneaky one-word change was made that make the copyright provisions even nastier.
The tyrannical government of the Maldives imprisoned an opposition politician for "terrorism" because he led a protest against the
imprisonment of dissidents.
In most countries, "anti-terrorism" measures are a far bigger danger to the people than terrorism itself. Labeling of dissent as
"terrorism" is a world-wide tendency, found also in the US.
Strange that governments urge women not to get pregnant and do not urge men not to get women pregnant.
I think it is ridiculous to demand that either men or women go without sex for years, when a better solution is available.
There is no solid proof that Zika causes microencephaly, but evidence is accumulating. There's enough evidence to base practical decisions on the
likelihood. Life decisions cannot always wait for scientific
certainty, which can take many years to achieve.
It is plausible for an insecticide to cause birth defects, but
implausible that the insecticide alone could explain the big increase
in microencephaly between 2014 and 2015 in Brazil.
Perhaps the microencephaly results from the combination of Zika and a
pesticide. Or maybe this idea can be ruled out, if some of the cases
occurred in cities and the pesticide is used only on farms.
Sanders And Clinton Offer Different Solutions For Nevada's Sabotaged Solar Industry.
Seven Syrian towns are besieged and lack food and medicine.
In trying to cope with climate mayhem, we must admit that we can't save everything. As global heating advances and causes additional mayhem, we will
have to choose what to protect.
The only way we can save everything — at least, everything
that will only become threatened at later stages of heating — is to
keep the fossil fuels in the ground. This is why spending money
on mitigation instead of emissions reduction is total folly.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to cut military and nuclear weapons spending.
Everyone:
Thank
Kamala Harris for investigating Exxon's climate lies.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
US citizens:
call
for an end to clearcutting in the Tongass National Forest.
Climate activists protested the
US
government's sale of oil and gas leases.
Zika turns the spotlight on the failure of the Brazilian state
to
attend to the people's needs.
The European Commission's plan for "sustainable energy" is based on
the
natural
gas myth.
It formerly appeared that natural gas produced less greenhouse effect
than other fossil fuels, but that was based on failing to take account
of the
methane
leaks.
Privatization of public services, such as schools, hospitals and
prisons, leads to perverse incentives, so that the company
oppresses
people to profit.
New Rate Survey of 500 U.S. Water Systems Finds
Private
Water Providers Charge 58% More.
Of course — they need to make a profit somewhere.
To the Washington Post,
perpetuating
a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court is "preserving
balance".
A report says UK incomes have returned to the
pre-crash
level.
I suspect, however, that this does not take account of the way
house costs and rents have ballooned.
US citizens:
call
for repeal of the military draft.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to consider Supreme Court nominees promptly.
US citizens:
Call
on the Senate to pass the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.
Many indigenous women in Canada have been murdered or disappeared,
but there are signs it
could
be 4000 rather than 1000.
Part of Australia
wants
to require music venues to scan guests' IDs, not just to check
their ages.
This seems to imply a system of massive surveillance, far more
dangerous than occasional fights.
Indonesia is
planning
to attack human rights, following the bad examples of Australia
and Malaysia. People could be jailed for months on mere suspicion.
One part of the proposal is legitimate: to make it a crime to plan a
terrorist act.
Global
heating threatens Australian wine.
Vineyards will have to move to Tasmania, to the land where
the old growth forests are burning down.
100
million people are short of food due to El Niño.
17 US states have
agreed
to accelerate renewable energy efforts.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to restrain US support for the corrupt regime in
Honduras, by insisting on the non-corruption condition for US aid to
it.
Turkey arrested a journalist
for
interviewing possible PKK supporters.
The US has
banned
imports of products made with slave labor.
I expect that some companies or countries will try to use trade
treaties to make the US repeal this law,
as
they have done with other important laws to protect something
important.
UN human rights experts say Australia violated David Hicks's human
rights by
jailing
him as part of a deal with the US.
The deal was to get him out of Guantánamo, where the US was
violating his human rights. Is it right to agree to violate someone's
rights in order to get a worse violator to stop? And if you do,
should you break the deal? It is a difficult question.
US citizens:
Call
on your state legislature to pass a Shareholders United act to
limit corporations' political spending.
Everyone:
Call for the arrest
of Governor Snyder for recklessly poisoning the children of Flint,
Michigan.
US citizens:
call on
the Senate to vote on the replacement for Scalia.
Israel's campaign to make peaceful opposition to its occupation
policies a crime has
led
to oppressive policies in France and the UK, and they are trying
it in the US too.
Some twenty years ago, Massachusetts passed a law to boycott companies
that did business in Burma. At the time, the US had not yet adopted
strong trade sanctions against Burma. Other countries called this a
"non-tariff barrier to trade" and said it violated the World Trade
Organization rules. Congress passed, and President Clinton signed, a
law that prohibited states from adopting such boycotts: a victory for
plutocracy over democracy.
This is one of the many plutocratist actions I condemn Bill Clinton
for. Hillary Clinton appears to be basically the same in
her
support for plutocracy, which is why I will not vote for her for
president.
Turkey
proposes
to establish a safe zone in Syria, near the Turkish border, for
refugees.
I think the plan is a good idea, if it can be prevented from leading
to a war between Turkey and Russia.
Turkey
accuses
Russia of intentionally attacking civilians to send them fleeing.
I would not put this past Putin. That doesn't prove it is an
intentional plan. Maybe sending so many people fleeing is just a
byproduct. If so, Putin clearly does not mind.
Federal
Contractors with History of OSHA Violations Battle New Safety
Rules.
Women rescued from enslavement by Boko Haram are
rejected
by their own communities.
This is not only an injustice, it will help Boko Haram too. They can
tell their captives, "If you escape, your family will hate you. Your
only future now is with us."
Patriarchy is so cruel.
The Issue is Not Hillary Clinton's Wall St Links But
Her
Party's Core Dogmas.
No
one in Egypt is safe from the thugs. The torture-killing of
Giulio Regeni called attention to what Egyptians suffer every day.
Why we must defeat Facebook's
plans
to become a hub for publication.
Facebook
apologized
for deleting Viz magazine's page, but the point is that
publications should have to depend on Facebook to act responsibility.
US Shrugs Off Yet Another Report of
Cluster
Bombs Launched By Saudis In Yemen.
Beavers Blamed for Flash Floods in Scotland
May
Actually Control Problem.
The TTIP would give companies a
lever
to get rid of taxes.
Only companies — not people, of course. After the Corporations
United* decision said that corporations deserve
the same rights as humans, what businesses want is more rights than
humans.
However, German judges say that there is
no
legal basis for the TTIP's special courts.
* That group of corporations called itself "Citizens United", but I
call it what it was, not what it pretended to me.
Why
Not Being Friends With A War Criminal Like Henry Kissinger
Matters:
A review of Kissinger's
atrocities
and crimes against humanity. He's not the source from which the
president of the US should seek advice.
Clinton has done little to distance herself from Kissinger's crimes.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to support the Food Recovery Act, whose measures would
reduce waste of edible food.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to give proper consideration to Obama's Supreme
Court nominees.
In the US:
tell
Republican state governors not to legalize religious-based
discrimination.
US citizens:
support
clean energy in/for US cities.
US citizens:
call on
the FCC to stop T-Mobile from violating Net Neutrality.
Marks and Spencer was lauded for pledging to pay garment workers a
living wage. In practice, the effect of the pledge is nil. These
workers are paid so little they
can
hardly get by.
The low pay for these workers, and workers in general around the
world, is the intended result of "free trade" treaties. That's why we
must replace them with a different global system of trade, one that
keeps wages up.
Bangkok Bombing Suspect was
Tortured
into Confessing, Says Lawyer.
Chemical businesses fund research — even sheer fiction passing
as research — to give them
excuses
to defeat lawsuits and regulation to protect the public health.
Being bilingual
helps
the brain — so urge parents not to miss a chance to pass a
minority language on to their children.
Why Conservatives start
culture
wars, and why they usually lose.
One of the few Egyptian thugs who was
convicted
for killing protesters (while most thugs were acquitted) will has
been given a new trial.
I suppose the idea of convicting a thug was too shocking.
Matt Taibbi: banksters and their friends the Clintons have
contempt
for the little guys — how irrational of them to dislike
being pushed into poverty and losing their homes!
France ordered Facebook to stop
tracking
the browsing of people who are not usedsof Facebook. (Remember,
Facebook does not have users, it has
useds.)
Facebook does this through Like buttons. The GNU browser
IceCat already blocks
Facebook Like buttons so it cannot track you.
Efforts to prevent "radicalization" or "violent extremism"
must
not trample human rights.
The FBI
has ever more ways to snoop on everyone
even despite the use
of encryption.
Part of the blame
falls on companies that want to surveil people
through advertising.
"Smart" appliances are also
untrustworthy. This increasing
snooping is dangerous for democracy
.
Several Tory ministers
secretly agreed to give fracking priority over
protecting national parts and sites
of scientific interest.
They don't expect to get cushy gigs from nature lovers or scientists,
after all.
Saudi Arabia
has investigated its own war crimes
in Yemen and found
itself innocent.
US ISP Cox
is still fighting against being required to snoop
on its users.
Australian censorship, specifically the criminalization of "hate
speech",
interferes with the debate
about whether to legalize same-sex
marriage.
Stating opposition is likely to lead to prosecution.
I support same-sex marriage, but I also support freedom of speech,
and this includes the freedom to offend, insult, condemn or mock
any person, belief, practice, institution, or group. That includes
gays, and that includes straights.
The Conspiracy Theorists
Who Have Taken Over Poland.
The Mosul Dam
is in danger of collapsing
and killing up to half a
million people.
Can't they release the water downstream to lower the pressure?
European Leaders
Told to Keep Aid for Poor People
, Not Hosting Refugees.
Without taxing the rich properly, support for refugees will in the
short term fall on the poor. In a longer term, the refugees will
contribute to the economy if there are jobs for them; but there may
be no housing for them.
New York thugs
want the power (in effect) to declare anyone a felon
on their own say-so.
PISSI
is accused of using chemical weapons
against Kurds in Iraq.
Bahrain
arrested American journalists
who were covering a protest.
The government accuses them of participating in the protest, and of
doing journalism without permission. By doing so it confesses
disrespect for human rights. The US government can't object much, since it supports the repression
in Bahrain.
Overfishing
Is As Big a Threat
to Humanity As It Is to Our Oceans.
What the article does not mention is that human population growth is
the other jaw of the vice. To stabilize fish populations won't be enough
unless we stabilize the human population too.
Russian air power
is supporting
the Kurds to advance in Syria.
I suppose this is because Russia regards Turkey as the regional enemy,
and the Kurds are the enemy of Russia's enemy. Azaz is near to, but not part of, the strip by which PISSI trades
with Turkey. It would be a very good thing if the Kurds captured that
strip. However, Turkey's recent shelling of Kurdish fighters suggests that it
is on the verge of starting a broader war against Syrian Kurds. If
that happens, the Kurds might lose greatly unless they get more support.
A giant bank
bullied the UK government
into weakening regulations
by threatening to leave.
The courageous response, what the world needs, is to tell the banks to
jump in the lake. But I won't say that the Tories were cowardly. I
doubt they ever wished to deny such a powerful company what it wanted.
Tens of thousands
protested in North Carolina against voter
suppression laws.
Trump
Booed for Reminding
GOP of Bush's 9/11 Failure and Iraq War Lies.
Oh, the irony! Plain, unexaggerated truth from Trump! Right-wing
nuts
insisting on Dubya's lies instead! Dubya and Cheney repeated those lies over and over, even after the
facts were established; it was evil, but very effective at building a
movement disconnected from reality.
TTIP of the Iceberg: Consumer Concerns
Could Sink
the US-EU Trade Agreement.
If we are lucky, we will elect Sanders and he will pull the plug on
This Treaty Is Plutocratic (TTIP).
MSF
Condemns 'Deliberate' Attack
After Two Hospitals Bombed in Syria.
In Russia, official censorship
is surrounded
by a cloud of intimidation.
A few days before Uganda's presidential election, the state
has jailed
an opposition candidate.
All protests have been banned in
Kempala, in a Paris-style "state of
emergency".
India
arrested a student
at Jawaharlal Nehru University for
"sedition", leading to a strike which has received support from other
campuses.
5
Reasons
the Top Tax Rate Should Be 80 Percent.
Puerto Rico
is turning
itself into a tax shelter for billionaires to
parasitize the US.
Due to the failure of the US to rescue Puerto Rico from horrible debt,
I must admit that Puerto Rico is acting based on provocation.
Still, the competition to bow down to billionaires will hurt all of us,
except the billionaires. We must put an end to it.
Everyone:
Call
on Tennessee not to oppose settlement of refugees.
US citizens:
call
for implementation of the Dodd-Frank provisions for alternatives
to usurious payday lending companies.
The Union of Concerned Scientists reports on how lobbyists for the
chemical industry have
undermined
government efforts to protect the public, as well as research on
toxicity.
Many organizations have called on the FCC to ban ISPs from collecting
personal
data about customers and making them available to anyone else.
What they propose would be a step in the right direction, but it does
not go far enough. It would still permit massive general surveillance
by ISPs on behalf of Big Brother.
For democracy's sake, we must stop considering this kind of "solution"
as a real solution. Regardless of what entity collects the data, it
is Big Brother's use of the data that
threatens
democracy.
ISPs should be forbidden to keep any records of a user's internet
contacts, except when ordered by a specific warrant.
Some UK doctors paid to attend a meeting with the health minister Tory
liars
moved
the meeting and told them it had been cancelled.
What else would you expect from a Tory?
The Tories are lower than vermin.
As banks gentrify old black neighborhoods, the Koch brothers are
funding
efforts
to cover up the history of blacks in the US — of slavery,
and the civil rights movement.
The UAE tortured foreign businessmen into confessions, and they are
likely
to be sentenced to death.
Zahara Heckscher:
Why
I Faced Arrest, Even as I Battle Cancer, to Fight TPP.
Relating US poverty and inequality to the
systematic
corruption of plutocracy.
A
protest
in London against putting public spaces under private owners that
can impose private rules.
We have the
same
problem in the US.
Cornell West presents
why
American blacks should vote for Sanders.
The US has spent
almost
2 billion dollars on the useless "abstinence-only" substitute for
sex education.
It's effective for promoting pregnancy and diseases among teenagers,
but no one can point to any good results.
Why Does the US Government
Pursue
Student Debtors in Prison?
Poland's right-wing government plans to strip a historian of an award,
because he
acknowledges
the anti-semitism of Poles during World War II.
A plant disease is spreading around the world and
could
wipe out many kinds of trees and herbs.
Attacks on medical facilities and personnel are
becoming
common in today's wars.
Sorry, Corporate Media:
The
More Americans Hear Bernie Sanders, The More They Like Him.
Now that Justice Scalia can no longer spread injustice in the US,
SCROTUS
have declared the intention to reject whatever replacement Obama
proposes.
I fear Obama will propose someone "moderately" right wing in the hope
of gaining SCROTUS's approval. Obama has not much record of standing
firm, but this would be an outrageous surrender.
US citizens:
call on Obama
to cancel nuclear weapons upgrades.
Yazidi women, former sex slaves, have
formed
a brigade to fight PISSI.
Right on!
Beyond contributing to the possible defeat of PISSI, they will also
help the struggle against the general patriarchal cruelty of Arab
society.
An autopsy shows how Giulio Regeni was
tortured
in Egypt.
The US Senate passed a bill to
name
a square in Washington after imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu
Xiaobo.
China deserves this rebuke, and I hope it is adopted. Meanwhile, I
wish the US would cease its practices of
imprisonment
without trial,
extracting
false confessions through torture, and
imprisoning
whistleblowers, so that it could be in a good moral position to rebuke
other countries.
Forcing girls into marriage, often in their early teens,
continues
in many countries around the world.
It not only harms them economically and endangers their health, it
also increases the birth rate, which endangers everyone. It's also a
fundamental wrong.
The London "Garden Bridge" boondoggle, approved in a corrupt way,
would
drain the public treasury uselessly at a time when the government
is
cutting
public libraries,
squeezing
the NHS, and
driving
poor families onto the street.
Warner/Chappell has
agreed
that it has no copyright on "Happy Birthday to You", and will
compensate those that it made to pay royalties before.
The song is probably in the public domain, but there is no way to
prove that.
Turkey has
shelled
Kurds (or rather some Arab allies) that captured an air base in
Northern Syria.
According to Wikipedia, Azaz was held by al-Nusra (al-Qa'ida) together
with other Syrian rebels; the Kurds cooperated with Russia to take it.
I can't begin to figure out what this implies.
New elections are not enough to right the wrongs of Haiti's
rotten
political system.
US intervention is largely to blame for the rottenness, what with
forcibly
removing President Aristide and
imposing
the former president Martelly.
The UK is concealing
thousands
of injuries done to minors in private prisons. These injuries
range from suffocation to broken bones. The companies falsify records
and deny the victims medical treatment. But hey, they have to make
money, right?
To allow a privately run prison is to invite injustice. This practice
must be abolished. More generally, no government function should be
privatized unless that gives the public the benefit of a competitive
market.
Destroying
Democracy Under the Cloak of Defending It: surveillance in the UK.
Lexmark succeeded in using patents to
block
a company from refilling toner cartridges.
Yet another reason why we should
abolish
patents.
Hillary Clinton
Sugarcoating
Her Disastrous Record.
President Clinton's media law,
bought
by media companies' lobbyists, allowed them to merge and
concentrate, increasing their power. The biggest victim is democracy
itself.
No wonder they now support Clinton for president.
Kasich
played a central role in Bill Clinton's welfare "reform" bill.
US prisoners' phone calls are
often
recorded — even the calls with their lawyers, which are
supposed to be private.
Snyder's
top aides were informed about Flint's toxic water within weeks.
A data analysis company tracked
16,000
people at the Iowa caucuses.
I've read elsewhere that data brokers do reassociate these profiles
with people's names, by correlating data from various sources.
Judge Paul Cassell is
begging
Obama to give clemency to the man that Cassell was required to
sentence to 55 years in prison.
Congress has
prohibited
mitochondria replacement (to make a healthy embryo) in the US.
This appears to be SCROTUS at work.
I think that public funds should not be spent on fertility treatments.
Public policy should aim for a lower birthrate, as long as the human
population is too high and still rising.
The US birth rate is low enough for population stability, if it were
not for immigration; but since we do have immigration, and the US
population is still rising, we should aim to reduce both causes of
population increase.
Argentina's new government is offering vulture funds
75%
of the face value of the debt they bought for almost nothing.
Some vultures are holding out for more.
If they get as much as a cent, that will be a victory for evil. The
court should award those fund managers 10 years, not 10 dollars.
The poisoning of Flint's children resulted from Michigan Republicans'
denial of democracy: the
"emergency
manager" law must be repealed.
US citizens:
call on Obama to
update the salary limit for required overtime pay promptly, so SCROTUS
won't get a chance to cancel it.
US citizens: call for providing the needed resources to
protect
unaccompanied migrant minors from traffickers.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to bar fossil fuel extraction near Western national parks
and in Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
US citizens:
Support the Congressional
Progressive Caucus proposal for curbing global heating.
In a blow to the traditional rights of Englishpeople, a UK court
approved
of general warrants allowing the state to snoop on broad classes of
people.
An unusually high tide
nearly
flooded parts of London. The tide itself comes on top of
sea-level rise.
Tides are not likely to change much in the next few million years, but
our greenhouse gases are pushing sea-level rise. In a few centuries,
much
of London will be permanently inundated.
Egyptian thugs attacked two doctors; now doctors are
threatening
to strike.
Israel's parliament is working on a
plan
to kick out the elected Arab members of parliament.
Eradicating
rats on the Scilly Isles has allowed seabird populations to start
to recover.
It's really Scilly to introduce non-native species.
DeRay McKesson, a Black Lives Matter activist, is running for mayor of
Baltimore, and proposes to
abolish
many of the special privileges of thugs accused of violence.
Indonesia has
prohibited
messaging apps that permit use of LGBT symbols.
You can blame this on proprietary software. This prohibition is
effective because the apps are proprietary software and can restrict
what users can say. A state would find it a lot harder to restrict
people through making demands on free software.
Academics are defying copyright law to
share
copies of paywalled scientific articles.
Hooray, and may this lead to the elimination of copyright from
scientific publishing,
as I
called for 15 years ago.
When for-profit colleges
promise
graduates jobs which they generally can't get, are the colleges
guilty of fraud? Of false advertising? Or are they simply displaying
their grasping nature?
There is no need to investigate precisely how bad for-profit colleges
are, because there is no good reason for them to exist at all. The US
government should stop offering aid to study in them. That would more
or less get rid of them all. Traditional not-for-profit colleges
would pick up the load.
Clinton's Social Security Plan Is a Little Hazy. And
Sanders
Called Her Out on It.
That Brutal Charter School Video Shows That
Rich
People Love No-Excuses Discipline … for Other People's
Kids.
Erica Garner — daughter of Eric Garner, who was killed by thugs
—
has
endorsed Sanders.
Perfluorocarbons, used in waterproof clothing and on surfaces of pots,
can be
toxic
in minute quantities and persist essentially forever.
It's Not Just Flint. There's an Ugly
History
of Lead Poisoning and the Poor in the US.
Refugees in France, camped at Calais because they can't get into the
UK, are facing
increased
violence from French thugs and right-wing gangs.
They are not allowed to go to the UK, but France does not seem to be
trying to kick them out. If they can stay in France, isn't that good
enough to escape the persecution of whichever country they are fleeing
from?
Stop
relying on a navigation system, and get a map!
Kissinger was involved in
launching
wars and planning murders. With her hawkish views, it is no
surprise that Clinton is following his advice.
The Clintons have had a
close
personal relationship with Kissinger for years.
What this says to me is that if Clinton disapproves of anything
Kissinger did, she does not take the matter very much to heart.
Bernie Sanders Is
Changing
Hillary Clinton One Day (and One Debate) at a Time.
While Clinton has started saying things that are more progressive, I
don't believe she means them sincerely, and I expect she would revert
to plucratism if she got elected.
Political "compromise", nowadays, means
meeting
the banksters 90% of the way. We need a president and a congress
that will give the banksters the opposite of what they want.
2/3
of the world's people face a water shortage for part of the year.
We are
using
up groundwater as if there were an unlimited supply.
Let's
stop increasing
the world's population!
Assad has rejected a peace agreement and says he
intends
to retake all of Syria.
Treating
houses "as assets rather than homes" is a recipe for homelessness
and suffering.
"Dear
Americans, please stop dreaming of a better nation."
The Internet of Things: How Your TV, Car And Toys Could
Spy
On You.
UK
Counter-Terrorism
Laws 'Harming Aid Efforts of Islamic Charities'.
If poisoning children in Flint was not bad enough, Governor Snyder set
up a system that automatically accused thousands of people of fraud in
unemployment insurance. Only about
8%
of the accusations were valid.
US citizens:
call for strong
regulation of possibly toxic chemicals.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to stop private prisons from abusing immigrants.
Greek farmers and professionals are
having
large protests.
Michigan's senate
passed
a bill prohibiting oral and anal sex, in order to prohibit sex
with animals.
It is wrong to criminalize sex with animals if the animals are willing
and not injured. I've read about people that smear on their genitals
something that dogs find tasty, to get the dogs to lick them. That is
sex with an animal. The animal clearly chooses to do it. What part
of that deserves punishment?
Cleveland has
apologized
for trying to charge Tamir Rice's family for the ambulance.
AirBnB sanitized its New York City listings on one day in order to
make
false
claims about its usual practices.
I won't use AirBnB because I refuse to identify myself to
internet services.
Appeals
courts disagree on whether the state can set up a semipermanent
camera to watch someone, without a warrant.
I believe no one should be allowed to install a semipermanent remotely
viewable camera (a surveillance camera) looking at a public place
without
a court order. However, in this case, a security camera which
makes local recordings with no remote viewing could have done the same
job.
I think that that use of the security camera is legitimate. A
security camera serves to get information about any crimes visibly
committed in a place, and that's what was done here.
However, it wouldn't hurt to require the state to get a warrant to set
up an outdoor security camera to snoop on a particular person.
The former sheriff of Los Angeles County pled guilty to lying to the
FBI; he led and covered up
pervasive
systemic corruption including abuse of prisoners.
Honda
demands
that news site Jalopnik delete comments that report problems in a
Honda product, and demands information about the person who posted
them. Jalopnik stands firm.
This shows the importance of not keeping records about your users!
A Romanian Communist prison commander has been convicted of
crimes
against humanity.
However, other prison criminals are
not
being prosecuted.
Imperial Affluenza: The Pentagon as the
World's
Deadliest Spoiled Brat.
Snyder
ordered
Flint's lead tests kept secret while thinking about a smooth way
to break the news.
When thugs kill blacks, you can always find some excuse to say they
had it coming to them, if you look hard enough. But looking for flaws
in them is missing the point, because these flaws
don't
justify the killings.
In El Salvador, a miscarriage
can
put a woman in jail. And Zika may cause an increase in
miscarriages.
Dalits in India face
bigotry
that extends to basic aspects of life.
Sad news: a study demonstrates
sexism
in judging contributions to free programs.
When a patch is visibly offered by a woman, it has less chance of
being accepted by the developers. But when the developers don't know
she is a woman, women's patches have a higher chance of being
accepted.
Apparently the women are more competent, on the average, and face
prejudice.
The Tories are adopting gerrymandering from the US, creating an excuse
to
redraw
districts to their advantage.
Erdoğan is trying to blackmail Europe by
threatening
to send Syrian refugees to Greece and Bulgaria.
What he demands is a free hand abolishing human rights in Turkey, and
perhaps attacking Kurds in Syria too.
On the other hand, Turkey has a legitimate demand that other countries
share in the cost of caring for the millions of Syrian refugees there.
The UK opposition warns that jailing protesters would be a
blow
against human rights.
Of course, that's what the Tories are after. That's why they created
the crime of "aggravated trespass", i.e.,
protesting
in an inconvenient way. Now that they have
adopted
Republican voter suppression techniques so they can't lose, they
don't fear political opposition; an inconvenient protest is the only
effective response to their abuses of power.
The Tories are lower than vermin.
The Syrian factions have agreed on a cease fire
starting
in a week.
It is not clear Russia will stop bombing, and if it doesn't stop, the
cease fire won't really take effect.
The cease fire does not include PISSI and al-Nusra.
Bernie Sanders
helped
organize civil rights activities in Chicago for two or three
years.
We now know how lead causes permanent brain damage, making boys
less
intelligent and more impulsive (thus more likely to commit
crimes). When will we learn to keep American children, both poor and
not, safe from lead?
Sanders and Clinton said they
would
allow US funds to pay for abortions for women that have been raped or
when necessary for their health.
Sanders said he would entirely eliminate the restrictions on use of US
funds to pay for abortions, if we elect a Congress that will support
this.
The last occupiers of the Malheur wildlife refuge office have
surrendered.
Please do not endorse their claim to be a
"militia";
that gives them dignity they are not entitled to.
More about
how
the FBI approached the matter.
New York City thugs have used cell phone trackers
1000
times since 2008.
Georgia thugs regularly push a speeding pursued car into an
unpredictable
spin. When this kills people in the car, the thugs hold its
driver responsible.
The UK government says it will impose a contract on the junior doctors.
They say
they
will strike, and if that fails, quit.
Someone seems to have falsely signed NHS officials names to a
letter
backing the imposition of a contract. Half of them have said they
reject the letter; some say the text was altered after they agreed.
What else would you expect from Tories?
US schools do a
lousy
job of teaching about global heating. Most students are not
taught that human beings are causing it.
The teachers are
not
very well educated about the issue.
MySpace has been bought — to mine its
user
data.
Even if a company has a firm policy about not mistreating its users
(unlikely), that is unlikely to bind whatever company acquires it.
It also won't bind crackers that steal the data, or Big Brother armed
with a national security letter.
The best thing is not to let the company get any data about you.
I do my purchases anonymously.
If Martin Luther King Jr were alive,
he
would probably support Sanders.
The NSA
merged
the department for defending computer security with the department for
breaking security.
Ted Cruz used to understand that torture is wrong, and said so. But
when he felt pressured to compete with Trump to endorse torture, he
did so by
redefining
torture so narrowly that not much would qualify.
Trump and Cruz are
promoting
the false assumption that torture is an effective way to get
information from a suspect, as well as the immoral idea that it is
justified.
Investment advisers are
telling
the US government that requiring them to serve their clients' interest
would be disastrous, and telling their stockholders that they
would cope with it just fine.
Even if Sanders Wins the Popular Vote, Clinton
Could
Still Get the Nomination.
It is
up
to the US to stop its violence-provoking deadly violence against
Muslim countries.
The US now has a law to give "sex offenders"
special
passports that will expose them to harassment.
This lumps rapists together with teenagers that sext (which may be
foolish but should not be a crime at all).
Some states are thinking of converting sexting into a misdemeanor.
While that might reduce the harm done by prosecuting them, it is
not
a real solution.
It also occurs to me that if having a copy of your own nude photo
becomes a felony when you reach 18 years of age, many will become
felons without noticing.
Egypt's foreign minister, visiting the US,
defended
Egypt's practice of imprisoning people by the hundreds for
protesting, then torturing them in jail for years pending a farce of a
trial.
Isn't it a shame that such a person gets invited to meet the US
government?
Isn't it a bigger shame that the US's own conduct does not provide a
clear rebuke to Egypt?
Why
Bernie Sanders is Winning the Internet.
Wisconsin's corrupt supreme court has issued several
arbitrary
orders to block prosecutors from appealing its decision to the US
Supreme Court.
The decision they intend to appeal was to shut down a criminal
investigation that might inculpate plutocratist Governor Walker.
The UK government has
quietly
erased the policy that ministers have an "overarching duty" to carry
out international agreements.
I agree with this campaign as regards human rights. Ministers must
respect them. However, I think there are some international
agreements that every minister has a duty to stuff in the toilet
— the business supremacy agreements.
Google will omit search results based on the
"right
to be forgotten from searches" for any access from a machine
believed to be in Europe.
Biodiversity
Loss and the Doomsday Clock: An Invisible Disaster Almost No One
is Talking About.
Two prominent US blacks, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michelle Alexander, have
announced
support for Sanders.
Here's
the
article by Michelle Alexander.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to allow no new offshore drilling for gas or oil.
US citizens:
call
for the strongest possible rule to protect wildlife refuges from
oil drilling.
How
Corporate Bamboozlers Intend to Widen Inequality in America.
(Hint, it's a three-letter treaty.)
The only way they will let any wealth trickle down to the rest of us
is if we squeeze them.
Sanders won a
landslide
victory in New Hampshire, beating Clinton by 22 percent.
Sanders' conclusive victory
demonstrates
Clinton's electability problem.
IRS Gives Up, Grants Karl Rove's Dark Money Group
"Social
Welfare" Certification.
Delhi thugs beat up a journalist who was
covering
a protest of Dalits.
A thug chief in Pennsylvania is searching for all teenagers that have
made nude selfies, in order to
prosecute
them.
The Fiction That Drug Trafficking Is 'Inherently Violent' Could Harm
Sentencing
Reform.
Encryption is
not
stopping the US from monitoring anyone in particular, but it is
somewhat of an inconvenience for monitoring everyone at once.
Internet-connected
devices are already being used to snoop on people, by government
agencies and by others.
Bahrain has
imprisoned
a journalist for being present at a protest.
Bahrain has
repressed
protests cruelly.
Last Call:
The
Life and Death of an Ambulance Driver in Yemen.
China's kidnaping of people who publish books in Hong Kong has
succeeded in
intimidating
the whole population.
Feeding the
Military-Industrial
Complex.
Big
Campaign Cash for Clinton From Monsanto Lobbyist.
France wants Facebook to stop
sending
French users' data to the US.
Obama proposed a
big
cut in US funds to help localities such as Flint cope with water
infrastructure problems.
The UK's carbon emission targets will be difficult to meet without
carbon
capture and storage (CCS).
The problems are that (1) the Tories (who don't seriously intend to
meet those targets) have cancelled the funds for CCS and (2) it is
experimental and might not work practically anyway.
Distinguishing
between child labor and child slavery.
Some studies suggest that
sleep
deprivation encourages false confessions.
In fact, thugs use
many
methods to extract false confessions.
The article refers to a video on Netflix. Please
don't ever use
Netflix.
The NFL has
subtly
interfered in research about concussions and their effects on the
brain.
Canada will choose to
support
Syrian Kurds rather than adding to air attack against PISSI.
The US bent over backward to cater to business by weakening protection
of the Greater Sage-Grouse, but Utah is now
suing
to get the weakened plan cancelled.
US citizens: tell Congress to look at Transcanada's lawsuit and reject the TPP.
US citizens: call on Obama to use emergency powers to stop oil exports for one year.
US citizens: Support the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act.
US citizens: call on the non-primary Democratic Party delegates to heed what primary voters decide.
US citizens: state your support for Sanders' plan to confront the banksters.
Cleveland is trying to charge Tamir Rice's family $500 for "emergency medical services" as he was dying from the shots fired by a Cleveland thug.
A former guard at Auschwitz will be tried as an accessory to 170,000 murders.
With Tory success in keeping wages down and boosting rents, working people now need to get clothing for their children from "clothing banks".
The Tories are lower than vermin.
Repeating that slogan is vital to inform Britons that they should blame the Tories, not themselves, for their difficulties.
50 countries have citizenship laws that discriminate against women. In some countries, female citizens have children who can't get citizenship in any country.
George Soros claims that Putin is trying to make the EU disintegrate by sending lots of Syrians fleeing there.
In the long term, I think PISSI is more of a threat to Europe than Putin. For Putin, what approach to take towards Europe is purely a matter of expediency, and he might change it any day.
The Tories' "snooper's charter" is set up to collect all data about everyone, a recipe for tyranny.
Don't believe Governor Kasich when he claims to be a "moderate".
He wants to hurt women and the non-rich much like other Republicans, only he is a little less crazy about it.
The privatized prisons that hold families for deportation from the US are unacceptable places to put a child. The US government is scurrying to set up a licensing system that would eliminate the requirements these prisons fail to meet.
Checking Ted Cruz's Climate Science Denial Clangers.
Department of Justice Will Sue Ferguson to Force Criminal Justice Reforms.
Almost half of Syria's population is displaced, and 1 in 9 have been killed or injured by fighting.
Criticizing candidates for acknowledging that the US has serious problems.
Peace Action PAC has endorsed Sanders.
Should we engineer the extinction of the mosquitos that spread Zika, Dengue, Malaria and so on?
In principle, I am in favor of wiping out Aedes aegypti and other
mosquito species that transmit diseases to humans. They will be no
great ecological loss. In principle, the loss of any species is
a loss to the world, but sometimes it is justified.
However, we had better be very careful not to make a mistake that
would backfire.
Meanwhile, we are wiping out thousands of other species
unintentionally through carelessness and inattention. Let's put an
end to that!
Supreme Court Ruling on Obama's Clean Power Plan Just a 'Bump in the Road'.
Due to environmental racism, many mostly-black communities in the US have bad water supplies.
Fund managers that ignore the risk that global heating could affect their investments could be sued by their clients.
The UK government has effectively canceled a tidal lagoon energy storage plan by delaying the decision. This method is somewhat experimental, whereas burning oll is a time-tested method for frying our ecosphere.
A Tory MP can't afford to buy a house and had to move in with his parents. And it isn't even in London!
Obama wants to eliminate inconvenient legal obstacles to giving Egypt's tyrannical government tear gas and such.
Israel has sentenced Palestinian boys to
15
years in prison after wringing confessions out of them. They
confessed to throwing rocks.
Never mind that there is no evidence that any rocks were actually
thrown there and then, or that some of the boys were proved to be
elsewhere at the time.
The media
went
on strike for a day in Guinea to protest the killing of a
journalist there.
Israel is extending
collective
punishment of Palestinians that live near some who carried out a
violent attack against Israelis.
Israeli planes
sprayed
herbicide on farmland near the Gaza border, and even on some that
is not so near the border.
The Israeli Labor Party has gone
on
record for imposing permanent apartheid on Palestinians.
The Committee to Protect Journalists
rebuked
Israel's plan to deaccredit journalists based on the headlines of
their articles.
Haitians have made US-imposed President Martelly step down when his
term ended, and now oppose the new
US-controlled
election plan.
Here's how the US
imposed
Martelly on Haiti.
Here are
the articles in the recent
printed parody edition of the New York Times.
Palestinian journalist Muhammad al-Qiq rejected the meaningless court
decision to
suspend his
imprisonment without trial (but not free him), so he continues his
hunger strike.
An activist group trains people to
find
opportunities to meet presidential candidates and demand answers
about issues.
Forensic
Experts Reject Mexico's Claim That Criminals Burned Missing
Students.
Republican candidates compete to pledge the
gravest
war crimes.
US citizens:
call
for an end to US support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen.
US citizens:
call on Attorney General Lynch
to investigate the death in jail of Ahjah Dixon.
US citizens:
Tell
Clinton, stop lying about your vote for the war in Iraq.
Clapper acknowledged that it might use internet-connected "things" in
your home
to
snoop on you.
Chris Christie and the New Jersey legislature just
authorized
privatization of people's water without their approval.
New Hampshire
plans
to charge drug dealers with murder when someone dies from an
overdose or contamination.
This won't deter anyone from selling drugs, and
won't
avoid overdoses. It is just a way to look tough.
Dangerous drugs are used all around the world. Perhaps the laws and
medical systems of some other countries make overdoses less likely, or
less likely to be fatal.
Giving addicts a legal way to get a fix, with assured strength and no
toxic additives, could really prevent these problems from happening.
A better medical system might avoid deaths in some cases. Deaths from
guns, cars and drugs are significant causes of death for US males,
reducing life expectancy by a whole year, compared with some other
countries.
Ever since 2001, the US army has kept on fighting wars, and despite
its military power, it
has
never really won any of these wars.
I'd say this is because politicians have directed it into fights that
are unjustified and foolish.
Enacting Sanders Agenda Would
Catapult
Economy, Shatter Inequality.
The "wise", "realistic" people who say passionate movements can't
achieve
big
changes for the good have it 100% backwards.
Making things worse can be done working behind the scenes. That's the
way lobbyists work. But if you want to make things better, you can't
do it with their methods. You must rouse people. You must
demand
justice, and full solutions to big problems.
That doesn't mean it is easy to win. But at least that way you can
make it a real fight.
I think Clinton realizes this. She is not interested in changing very
much, so she can denigrate the methods by which that could be done.
Here are
7
groups of Americans who have been beaten down. Government policy
should be designed to help them.
Putin
invited
the Syrian Kurds to open an office in Moscow. I regard this as
good news. I hope this means Russian planes will not bomb them.
It's Not Just Water That's Poisoning Our Kids; It's Also Our
Collapsing
Democracy.
Ethiopian dissident expatriate Andy Tsege was
kidnaped
and taken to Ethiopia, and sentenced to death there. In the mean
time, he has been denied contact with his lawyer and his family.
RoseAnn DeMoro: I Will Vote for the Best Feminist for President:
Bernie
Sanders.
After chasing the Kurds out of their historic part of Diyarbakir, and
destroying archaeological sites there, Erdoğan
plans
to rebuild it as a boring modern city so they won't come back.
Mississippi thugs shot Ricky Ball dead, but they are
covering
up the circumstances and posting contradictory reports.
Obama is
sending
US troops back to Afghanistan. The Afghan Army can't hold out
alone.
I'm worried this indicates a US decision to prop up the Afghan
government ad infinitem.
Pakistan's
war on jihadis has greatly weakened them, and reduced terrorist
violence there.
4,600
academics outside Egypt demanded an investigation into the
apparent death by torture of visiting researcher Giulio Regeni.
Here's
their
letter.
The obvious suspects are the thugs and the army.
The US experiences
increased
inequality, without wage gains, since 1980, due to policies that
Sanders would change.
Former US presidents get a
pension
of $200,000 a year (plus office staff) so they won't feel a need
for a private income — but presidents since Reagan are accustomed
to so much luxury that they find this insufficient.
The proposed rules for more efficient airliners, starting with those
made in 2028, are
so
weak that they will be satisfied with no effort.
This ineffective initiative replaces the flight tax that the EU
imposed, which was shot down by
business-subservient
states such as the US.
Burma has kept foreigners in prison for
over
a year, using technicalities as an excuse to avoid charging them,
even though it is clear they could not have committed the crime they
were informally accused of.
5%
of deaths in the UK are due to air pollution.
Australians are
starting
to react with their consciences against the policy of disposing of
boat people incommunicado in inaccessible islands.
A UN panel accuses Assad of
massive
killing of civilians in Syria. It also condemns PISSI and
al-Nusra for war crimes.
India has rejected Facebook's
proposal
to trash network neutrality.
The European Union
wants
to criminalize all those who help refugees, falsely calling the
helpers "traffickers" or "people smugglers".
Maryland Attorney General: If You Don't Want To Be Tracked,
Turn
Off Your Phone.
Of course, we can do so. We can even refuse to have a mobile phone,
and that is what I do. But that is only a last recourse, and it
shouldn't be necessary.
Phoenix used to start its council meetings with a prayer; then the
Satanic Temple said it wanted a turn to lead the prayer. The council
voted
to cease starting meetings with prayers.
Bravo for the Satanic Temple. It is a clever
hack.
"Children are not little adults. The
trauma
of living in detention could last forever."
The NOAA set up temperature measuring stations in places in the US
with little human activity, to
calibrate
the temperature measurements from cities. It turns out that
adjustments to the latter, which compensate for changes in local
conditions, do a good job of it.
Georgia is
considering
a bill to make insulting religion a crime.
This is part of a worldwide push for more censorship. People are
entitled to the right to insult any person, any group, any practice,
any institution, and any belief.
US Representative Clark
proposed
a law against "swatting", a false report designed to send a SWAT team
to someone's home, and someone responded by swatting her.
I support this goal, but I have doubts about the proposed bill. First
of all, prosecuting false reports will only be possible when the
author of the report can be identified. Aren't most of these reports
anonymous?
Second, the bill is much broader, and makes any false emergency report
a crime.
Google plans to promote views opposed to Islamist extremism,
without
censoring the extremism itself.
That Time the Super Bowl
Secretly
Used Facial Recognition Software on Fans.
Electrocution,
Rape And Submersion: 'Gay Cures' And the Fight to End Them.
Just to show their bigotry, Republicans in the Michigan senate
passed
an unconstitutional bill to make sodomy a felony.
2015 set a record for
wildfires
in the US. This year will be worse.
The UN says humanity has made
insufficient
preparations to deal with a global pandemic.
This does not surprise me, because governments allocate to public
health the least they can get away with under normal circumstances.
By the time they see a need for more, it takes too long to ramp up.
Sea-level rise caused by global heating will continue for thousands of
years and ultimately go up
25
meters. New York, London, Cairo and Shanghai will all be
submerged.
Clinton is close to lobbyists who
worked
against Obama's medical care law and against reform of banking.
Public libraries offered poor children a calm place to study and a
place to learn to love reading. Now they are
in
danger.
The idea that talented people make the world a better place has no
traction among plutocrats. They care only about their own children's
future; most of the population is of no use to them any more and might
as well die young.
The UK's
campaign
to prevent radicalization in universities would ban discussion of
Plato.
There was a 90-day delay in signing the TPP, supposedly to permit
"debate" which
did
not occur at all.
Germans are
fiercely
resisting a proposal to limit the use of cash.
Maryland
Bill Would Protect Consumers' Free Speech from Bad Contracts.
It is too bad that the article uses the incoherent term "intellectual
property". As usual,
that term is a
gratuitous overgeneralization, since in fact the law they try to
do this with is copyright law. Writing "intellectual property"
instead of "copyright" drags in several irrelevant legal issues
including trademarks, patents, design patents, IC mask monopolies,
trade secrets and publicity rights.
Children should not be sent to immigration prison. It
can
damage them permanently.
The US
wants
to allow UK officials to order searches and wiretaps in the US.
This is too dangerous. A search in the US should always require
approval of a US court, and likewise for every other country.
It must be possible to speed up international assistance
without removing crucial safeguards.
Syrians fleeing Aleppo are
blocked
at the border of Turkey. They are getting some supplies there.
Everyone:
call
on Ohio Governor Kasich to veto the bill to defund Planned
Parenthood.
Everyone:
Call
on Governor Snyder to testify to Congress about Flint's water.
The World's Forests Will Collapse
if
we Don't Learn to Say 'No'.
The UK's tax collection office goes after 1000 alleged tax evaders per
year, a handful, and they
typically
choose working people rather than the rich.
HSBC was fined half a billion dollars for fraudulent foreclosures, but
that
does
not include sufficient compensation for all the victims. And
nobody was jailed for this.
Noise from motor boats makes
small
fish more vulnerable to predators.
An Israeli who supports two-state peace spoke in London; Palestinians
calling for the elimination of Israel
violently
shut down his speech.
I am disappointed that he endorses the idea that speech can be banned
because it is "hate speech".
The Super Bowl (football championship game) pretends to offer the host city
a lot of "economic benefits", but the are
systematically
overestimated. (And they go mainly to some businesses, not to the
people in general.)
Churches in Australia will offer sanctuary to
refugees
threatened with being sent to Nauru.
Younger women that support Sanders
take
offense at Gloria Steinem's claim that they are doing it to get
attention from men.
She should know better than to belittle women generally like that.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 877-852-4710
and say to
oppose
the TPP.
The Clintons were paid
over
$150 million dollars for their speeches, but Clinton said that
that Sanders was "smearing" her by talking about this.
India's government is opposing science and rationality, and
meddling
in university governance.
Clinton calls for
shaming
lobbyists. How about shaming candidates that accept campaign
contributions via lobbyists?
A poll finds Sanders and Clinton
tied
nationally.
Risking
World War III in Syria. The article says that Turkey is preparing
to invade Syria to fight the Kurds there.
Bernie
Sanders Lacks Foreign Policy Experience, But Also His Rivals'
Errors.
Voting for the Iraq war was not a mere error. It demonstrated either
grossly bad judgment or a lack of courage to resist the political
pressure.
Progressive elected leaders, who have no experience in military
policy, sometimes feel they don't dare say no to militarists. But
those militarists are part of the corporate machine that Sanders has
stood against for decades, and I think he can and will face down the
military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about.
Everyone:
call
on the US to drop its plans to prosecute Julian Assange.
The Israeli army is ordering Israeli bloggers to get
clearance
in advance for what they post. Yossi Gurvitz says he refuses.
Israel's unending, permanent emergency shows what
threatens in France.
US citizens:
tell
Congress to reject the bill that would endorse Israel's colonies
in Palestine.
Everyone:
call
on Florida to reject the law to imprison doctors for doing
abortions.
This law would violate Roe v Wade, and would presumably be rejected
by courts; but it is hard to have confidence in this nowadays.
US citizens:
call on
Democratic politicians to reject the "Third Way"'s campaign to cut
Social Security.
US cities
made
agreements with thug unions
promising to destroy records
on complaints against thugs and investigations of thugs.
They also impede investigations of complaints against thugs.
How
and why did the Nazis murder 6 million Jews? And what did the
German people know about it? A new book studies this in depth.
German Competition Watchdog
Wants
'Big Data' Hoards Considered in Merger Probes.
This can help limit the power companies get from their data hoards,
but we need to do more. We should make sure no company can accumulate
so much.
Amazon pays Mechanical Turk workers
as
little as 2 dollars an hour, making the excuse that they are
"independent contractors".
Hillary Clinton Turns Stand-Up Comic:
"I'm
a Progressive Who Gets Things Done".
Sure she gets things done, but are they progressive?
The
Conservative Playbook for Keeping 'Dark Money' Dark.
Studies show that organic farming's yields are
enough
to feed the world.
We would save a tremendous amount on pesticides.
PISSI's manpower in Syria and Iraq is
said
to be decreasing significantly, but maybe its supporters are going
to Libya instead.
Colin
Powell And Condoleezza Rice Used Private Accounts for Classified
Emails (as did Clinton afterward).
I think it was a bad practice, but the reason why I won't vote
for Clinton is
her
support for plutocracy. It took her until a few months ago to
oppose the TPP, and I am
not
confident she really means it.
Thai thugs raided a bridge club in Pattaya,
based
on false information.
The European Union's Court of Justice is
considering
a case about whether you have a right to make a link to a copyrighted
page.
Please don't refer to pages as
"content".
That term disparages the works that are posted on the web.
China arrested the leader of a Christian church because he
opposed commands to remove crosses.
I don't object to laws about how loudly churches can advertise
publicly, but enforcing those laws doesn't require or excuse
arresting someone for opposing the laws.
Trump promised to
reinstitute torture
if he is elected president —
waterboarding and worse.
After World War II, the US executed Japanese officers responsible for
using waterboarding American prisoners of war. Torture is wrong no
matter who does it. Even a subhuman monster like Trump does not deserve to be tortured.
Imprisoned, yes, if he does what he promises. The same for Cruz.
People continue to
publicly harass women
who don't hide their breasts well enough.
We would all be better off if women — all women, not just
attractive
women — felt no compulsion to cover their breasts. The taboo on
them
provokes exaggerated desire for them, this keeps men and women at
a
distance, and they understand each other less. To see the bad effects of such taboos, look at an example that has
more of them: Arab culture.
The Tories will
kick tens of thousands of working British families out
of state housing to make room for the poorest and disabled.
This responds to the shortage of housing which was created by Tory
policies such as
selling state apartments
to their occupants,
together with failing to
properly tax expensive properties
that nobody lives in.
Banning squatting
contributed too. Many of these families will end up on the street, or in a remote
place from which they reach their jobs any more.
Someone has
decided to elect a provisional president
in Haiti to run a new election.
It is not clear from this article whether the opposition agrees to
this plan.
Clinton has "no plan" to cut Social Security but
refuses to rule it out.
Marco Rubio is
trying to pretend
he was never a lobbyist.
The Public Health Impact of Domestic Violence.
A homeless people's charity had to
shut its WiFi network
because its ISP was going to fine it for forbidden file-sharing.
More casualties of the war on sharing.
A 9-year-old Dalit child was raped, and the surgeon at the local
hospital
refused to allow her to be admitted
and treated.
In the US, patients are denied treatment for money.
In India, it's for caste.
The Privatization of Terrorism Blacklists Will Damage Innocent
Lives.
A Tory official
planned a smear campaign
against organizations that help
women and victims of domestic violence. By accident he sent the plans
to his targets.
Meanwhile, the government has
eliminated the funds
for the main organization that helps LGBT victims of domestic violence.
The Tories are
lower than vermin.
A UN Human Rights panel has ruled that the UK and Sweden have
violated Julian Assange's human rights
by keeping him bottled up in the Ecuadorian embassy.
The UK
does not care,
though.
Tracking children with GPS is
bad for their mental development
(as well as their privacy).
It "protects" them against a danger of kidnaping by strangers
which is
so rare
it's not even worth thinking about.
Varoufakis: The EU
no longer serves the people
— democracy demands a new beginning.
I've said the same thing for
ten years.
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject the Republican bill
to make it harder to prosecute bank fraud.
Republicans feel emboldened to act more and more blatantly
to allow the rich to trample everyone else.
A wounded Kurdish journalist is
trapped
in Cizre by the Turkish curfew, and can't get out, since the
Turkish army shoots people almost at random.
The Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
threatens
our liberty.
Snyder concealed knowledge of legionnaires' disease in Flint for
nearly
a year, then lied about that.
Yet another dishonest conservative political organization:
"Millennials Rising" is
funded
almost entirely by old men.
Plutocrats feel no shame in lying to the masses.
Blood
transfusions can transmit Zika, not surprisingly.
China admits holding some
disappeared
Hong Kong book publishers captive.
The UK's "everything is for sale" attitude
occasionally
bites even the wealthy.
The Catholic Church continues unbendingly to impose
cruel
bans on abortion where it can.
From articles I've seen, it seems that microcephaly may only appear
late in pregnancy. Usually abortions are not done at that late stage,
but I think we should regard microcephalic fetuses as subhuman and
encourage abortion of them.
The US media opened an eye to the low-paid workers that deliver
newspapers when the Boston Globe switched to a distributor that
tried
to pay so little that it couldn't find workers, and papers went
undelivered.
McMindfulness: the commercialization of Buddhist techniques
perverts
their purpose.
Nader
challenges Clinton
to revel the text of the speeches she gave to
banksters Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley?
Progressive 3.0:
Beware the Latest Version
of Hillary Clinton.
The Worst Polluters
Are In The Most Vulnerable Neighborhoods
, Study
Finds.
Americans generally
buy far far more things than they need.
Those large houses are not found in the cities where most of my
acquaintances live, because rent is high.
A taser shock
can leave a person mentally disorganized
and with gaps
or errors in memory. People in this state may make false statements
that appear to incriminate them.
The US has a prison in New York City
which brainwashes
prisoners
into pleading guilty.
The brainwashing conditions are officially a secret, but we know they
include isolation and sleep deprivation, as well as painful hot and cold.
Hillary
Is the Candidate
of the War Machine.
A sex worker from Ulster
explains
how criminalizing her customers has
made her work more dangerous.
Ted Cruz's policy:
impose theocracy and mass poverty at home
while invading
other countries.
Apple's latest system upgrade for iThings
sabotages
them irreparably
if they were repaired by someone other than Apple.
The low price of oil
provides
a great opportunity to increase the tax on oil
and thus discourage its use.
Obama now
advocates
doing a little of that.
Sanders and Clinton
have agreed
to more debates.
Coverage
of coin-tosses
in the Iowa caucuses was misleading.
The US
will send
a Salvadoran officer to Spain for trial for killing
dissident priests.
How Big Oil
Spent $10m to Defeat
California [climate protection] Legislation.
The US
released around 200 photos
of mistreatment of prisoners, out of
2000. The ACLU believes they are the mildest and that the other 1800
are worse.
In modern society
people are increasingly too busy
to help a stranger
in distress.
Ban Ki-moon
said that the UK has a duty to stop supplying arms
to
Salafi Arabia.
Morally, the US does, too.
Isn't it foolish to
jail people who joined PISSI and learned how
foolish that was
"Taken at face value, Republican presidential candidate
Ted Cruz's latest
fund-raising pitch to supporters is either impossible
, illegal, or a scam."
Uri Avnery's long campaign for Israel to recognize a Palestinian state
has won
the support of just about every government on Earth,
except
Israel.
Many Democrats
are saying
they won't vote for Clinton for president
if she wins the nomination.
Sanders Campaign
Is a Genuine Progressive Social Movement
for Democracy.
Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq, on hunger strike against
his imprisonment without trial,
is close to death.
The Israeli Supreme Court says it has "suspended" his imprisonment,
but it is not clear what that means, since he is still not allowed to
leave the hospital.
Guber now
pays drivers
even fewer peanuts, and some former drivers are
planning to slow traffic during the Superbowl as a protest.
Since Guber
attacks the freedom and privacy
of its users as well,
we should close it down.
Former, Current Students
Sue Google
over University-Issued Gmail
Scanning.
Women's Rights Crackdown
Exposes Deepening Crisis
in Chinese Society.
Salafi Arabia wants to send troops
to fight against PISSI in Syria.
However, they might actually fight against Assad, which would put
Salafi Arabia directly into war with Russia. I fear they would also fight the revolutionary Kurds.
The US
deported
Angel Rosa to Guatemala, where he has no family. He
is ill from gangrene that he contracted in a US immigration prison,
and his children (US citizens who live in the US) cannot take care of
them there.
The US says it will investigate how he got gangrene, but will they go
to Guatemala to do it? Sometimes I wonder if the immigration police are trying to demonstrate
how coldly and callously they can implements the rules.
Ukraine's economics minister and his whole team
resigned and denounced
ingrained corruption.
Naomi Klein:
Let's make this
a real 'leap' year, and go fossil fuel-free.
A
long interview
with Naomi Klein.
It appears Australia
pays smugglers
to carry boat people back to
Indonesia, since the government refuses to deny this.
Now that the government tells the senate "just trust us", it is
totally out of democratic control. If I were a Senator I'd vote to
deny that department funding, just to make it accept accountability.
Australian climate research cuts
would wipe out programs
necessary
to measure how much and how global heating is changing the climate.
7-Eleven franchise owners in Australia
systematically beat up workers
to steal their pay.
Timbuktu
Marks Rebuilding
of Mausoleums Destroyed by Islamists.
350.org:
Energy
Bill Is A Big Oil Giveaway.
Sanders
Vows
To Kill TPP If Elected. Will Clinton?
US citizens:
Support
the Bureau of Land Management in regulating handling of methane.
US citizens:
call
on Rep. Wasserman Schultz to debate primary opponent Canova about
the TPP.
The US had a massive anti-war movement just
15
years ago. You'd never know that, looking at the US today.
The New Zealand government
preemptively harassed dissidents that might protest the TPP.
The European Court of Human Rights has reportedly forgotten about a
case accusing Ukraine of negligence in
failing to close the air
space over the battle in eastern Ukraine, in which MH17 was shot
down.
US citizens:
call on
Obama not to let Republicans block a raise in the limit salary for
mandatory overtime pay.
Former Attorney General Holder, known for letting corporations get
away with fraud, is now
making
commercials for Clinton.
Israelis who kidnaped and murdered a Palestinian have been given
long
prison sentences.
Israel barely holds on to fragments of justice, but
an
increasing right-wing current says to massacre Palestinians.
"Data-driven
policing" means watching everything everyone does, making
suppositions about who is a criminal, and putting them on lists of
suspects.
If you believe that the thugs can be trusted, and you value safety but
not freedom, you would rationally want this — provided you will
never be a protester, a dissident, a journalist, a source, or a member
of a low-privilege minority.
We ought to prohibit it.
Chris Christie is
suppressing
crucial emails about the bridge closure scandal.
Americans were supposed to fear that terrorists would poison our
water, but we see once again that
corrupt
and unjust government is a bigger threat than foreign terrorists.
This is why we must not give up our freedom or privacy for
security, even on the rare occasions when the security is real.
Taxing sugary drinks
would
reduce the problem of obesity, which leads to diabetes. There is
no excuse for failing to do this.
Funding cuts in Texas for Planned Parenthood
hit
poor women hardest, and women who used to get birth control from
Planned Parenthood had a substantial increase in pregnancy rate.
The Christian fanatics that attack abortion rights
really
want to attack contraception also. They consider pregnancy a
punishment for having sex.
People in San Francisco are
protesting
the ouster of homeless people for sponsors of the Superbowl.
Russian bombardment is
forcing
Syrian rebels out of Aleppo.
300,000
inhabitants may flee from Aleppo.
French supermarkets are now legally required to
donate
food when it isn't fit to to sell but is still good to eat.
Big banks would get a lot smaller if the US starts prosecuting their frauds.
A group of
bank
whistleblowers recommend how.
I am confident Sanders will do this if we elect him. It doesn't
require new laws, just serious efforts to carry out the existing ones.
Yes, Bernie Sanders Is
Questioning
Hillary Clinton's Integrity.
She deserves that.
I've
questioned it for a long time.
I don't believe Clinton adopted her positions because plutocrats
approached her and said, "We will give you money if you adopt these
positions." She would never do anything so crass. Rather, she knew
what plutocrats wanted (just as we all do). She could take a stand
for their side without ever having a discussion with them about it.
Israel has
banned
Palestinian prisoners from receiving books.
A few years ago,
the
UK banned prisoners from receiving books.
Human rights defenders in Israel
face
intimidation; Breaking the Silence meetings are cancelled, and
people are afraid to criticize the right-wing dominance.
One fanatic
wants
thugs to systematically kill Palestinians rather than arrest them.
The accusations made by a right-winger against a human rights defender
in the Tel Aviv City Council demonstrate the contempt for the truth
typical of the right-wing that now dominates Israel. Look at his
claim that Breaking the Silence is "silencing people" by publishing
what Israeli soldiers say about what they saw and did in the
occupation. The only adequate term is Orwell's term, "blackwhiting".
States and businesses are
increasingly
rejecting Israel's colonization of Palestinian territory. Even
the US is criticizing it more than before.
A lot more is needed, but it is good to see progress.
Israel has put Ramallah under siege, as a form of
collective
punishment.
Car companies
lobbied
the European Parliament into accepting misleading pollution tests.
Obama is
just
about to sign the TPP, which would be a climate disaster.
If he does not sign, he won't get his multimillion-dollar payoff.
"Golden rice" is held back by
practical
drawbacks, such as poor yield in real farms, and it's not clear
how much it would help those who are nutritionally deprived.
In the US, convicts are
proved
innocent at the rate of three a week.
Some of the false convictions were caused by dishonest thugs and
prosecutors.
Hong Kong publisher Li Xin was apparently
kidnaped
in Thailand and taken to China.
In the US, middle-wage jobs are disappearing:
new
technology creates only poverty-level jobs.
Michael Moore:
10
Things They Won't Tell You About the Flint Water Tragedy, But I
Will.
One of the FCC commissioners
proposes
that net-connected devices should permit the users to study the source
code.
This is not enough to make them
free software, or even
"open
source", but it would be a step towards that.
Unfortunately,
the
TPP would prohibit this.
Everyone: ask how Gynnya McMillen died in jail.
US citizens: tell the FTC to fight pharma mergers.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the DARK Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to expand Social Security benefits.
Everyone: tell Governor Snyder to resign.
US citizens: call on Congress to debate whether to fight in Libya again.
US citizens: tell Senate Democrats to stop the "Energy Policy Modernization Act".
Professor Marc Edwards, who helped expose the poisoned water in Flint, says that funding pressures on academics and government agencies have destroyed public interest science in the US.
Google censored installation of Samsung's ad-blocker, saying that blocking ads is "interference" with the sites that
advertise (and surveil users through ads).
The ad-blocker is proprietary software, just like the program (Google
Play) that Google used to deny access to install it. Using a nonfree program gives the owner power over you, and Google has exercised that power.
A French Catholic pressure group is pressuring France to restrict some well-known, controversial movies.
Michigan Republicans banned local governments and schools from giving information about ballot questions.
Professor Resat Baris Unlu was acquitted of charges based on the exam question in which he asked about comparing writings by the leader of a Kurdish rebel group.
I fear students might have been charged with crimes because of their answers, too.
Unprecedented fires in world heritage forests in Tasmania may now be the "new normal".
No one was prepared or equipped to fight the fires that are destroying
thousand-year-old trees. The whole ecosystem may be destroyed by them.
When I visited Lebanon, I saw some of the last remaining cedars. Those
trees can live a thousand years, too; but most of them were destroyed
in the civil war.
Pakistan blocks nearly all foreign journalists from Balochistan, and tells newspapers there what to publish.
Refugee children in Australia, who are now at risk to be sent to Nauru, have tried to kill themselves.
US coal use is declining a noticeable amount.
This is good because it reduces toxic pollution. Burning natural gas doesn't make much of that. However, natural gas implies methane leaks, so replacing coal with gas doesn't reduce global heating the way companies claim.
A proposed giant coal mine in Australia has been suspended because the export coal market has shrunk.
That is good for the Great Barrier Reef, but burning Indian coal in India will pump almost as much CO2 as burning Australian coal in India.
Australia is cutting hundreds of jobs in climate research in order to make its research organization "collaborate better with industry".
Apparently this refers to the global heating industry.
"Mitigation and adaptation" is the last ditch excuse of the planet roasters: the pretense that cleverness can prevent global heating from causing disasters, so we don't need to work expeditiously to curb it.
Undocumented immigrants in the UK skip prenatal care and give birth at home, because they can't afford to pay almost $10,000 in medical fees.
Zika can be transmitted sexually.
Walmart was sentenced to pay 31 million dollars for operating its pharmacy incompetently and firing a whistleblower.
Right-wing politicians in various EU countries are planning sweeping deregulation of business.
Iran has imprisoned a former BBC journalist, evidently about his writing.
People are being raised to see domesticated and wild animals as anthropomophic toys. It's as if they were considered imperfect approximations of
a funny animal cartoon.
US businesses, operating through ALEC, are taking aim at local democracy.
US prisons create excuses to keep prisoners in solitary for years, and do this over the tiniest excuses.
Michigan officials ignored EPA warnings about Flint's water. But the EPA did not treat the matter with sufficient urgency.
Jimmy Carter: Citizens United 'Gives Legal Bribery a Chance to Prevail'.
New Safe Harbor Data "Deal" May Be More Politicking Than Surveillance Reform.
'This is a Joke': Snowden, Others Slam New EU-US Data Sharing Deal.
North Carolina's voting law was intentionally designed to block various minorities from voting.
The
background
for "Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Extraordinary
Rendition."
Microcephaly results in babies
so
mentally crippled that they are hardly human.
I think they call for euthanasia, like a badly crippled dog.
China is now
repressing
the labor movement.
Social
movements in Argentina are reacting strongly against Monsanto's
GMOs.
The world is awash in oil and that the price has collapsed, but
plutocratic
states keep subsidizing the oil companies.
When It Comes to Public Schooling,
US
Gets a Failing Grade.
Mexico imprisoned Nestora Salgado for
running
a citizens' anti-narco organization that operated lawfully.
An Ankara University professor faces 7 years in prison
for
asking students to compare two articles written by Abdullah
Öcalan.
Australia's Supreme Court
ruled
that the government cannot keep refugees in foreign prisons
forever while making up its mind very slowly about their cases.
US citizens: phone your senators and say,
don't
use Flint to pass subsidies for fossil fuels.
Their "call tool" probably requires nonfree software, so skip that and
call your senators directly.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
for an investigation of Clayton Homes for racial bias in lending.
The FBI Says It Can't Disclose Its Records Because
Then
the Public Would Know How the Bureau Works.
It is spreading further. The former head of the Department of
Homeland Security has applied that organization's approach in
monitoring faculty and students at the University of California.
Professors
condemn this snooping.
She refuses even to discuss what kinds of monitoring are being done.
Supposedly our own safety forbids giving us any say in how much we are
monitored. That's a recipe for tyranny — in DHS or in UC.
Professors should set up their own local networks, and relay data in
and out of UC encrypted, to protect themselves and the students.
The article refers to security breakers as "hackers". To
avoid giving
us hackers a bad name, please use the term "crackers" for that.
The US and EU have
agreed
on a deal for sending European data to the US. The US will very
seriously promise not to have the NSA look at it.
If you believe that promise …
Do
not live-stream thugs' body cameras!
Here's
my
proposal for controlling them.
The
Internet
Of Things Will Be The World's Biggest Robot.
The article suffers from a confusion when it says "It will collect
data and do things in our interests; that's why we're building it."
Who is this "we"? The most he could validly claim is that each part
serves someone's interest.
In a just and democratic world, perhaps you could expect these devices
to be benign towards you. In fact, parts are already designed and
used to monitor and control people.
For
instance, since it is possible to spoof fitness data that
insurance companies use to monitor people, the article advocates
designing the devices to communicate with a company in a way that
totally bypasses the subject being monitored. This demonstrates that
they are a system of control imposed on a subject, not a product
offered to a user.
The use of such devices for any sort of monitoring should be
prohibited by law. All data they produce should be made available
directly to the user, and only in that way.
These devices can probably tell whether someone is having sex (though
Oral Roberts University says it isn't checking that
at
present).
I suppose that university permits only Oral sex.
Most of the refugees traveling to Europe by boat now are
women
and children.
Although David Koch is no longer on the WGBH-TV board, he
continues
to exert his baneful influence on the science program NOVA.
Committee to Protect Journalists
calls
for an independent investigation of the killing of journalists in
Yemen.
Go to New Hampshire this weekend to
volunteer for the Sanders
campaign. The New Hampshire primary is next Tuesday, and it is
important that he get an astonishing victory to influence other
states.
Demanding to remove the statue of an racist conqueror such as Cecil
Rhodes is a
substitute
for eliminating institutional racism and class bias.
Where a symbol of racism is actively adored by some political groups,
as for instance the confederate flag, it makes a real difference to
demand that institutions (especially governments) visibly reject that
symbol. However, nobody admires Rhodes today as a symbol of anything.
Canada has
set
up a large area of protected forest.
In retaliation for the US' barring of some Russian officials for the
killing of Sergey Magnitsky, Russia has barred some former US
officials,
accusing
them of involvement in torture.
I don't know whether these people were in fact associated with torture
by the US, but if they were, that is plenty of reason for any country
to refuse to let them in. Or to let them in and then prosecute them.
But it changes nothing about the killing of Magnitsky.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the TPP.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to resist plans to help business lobbyists block regulations of business.
US citizens: Phone the White House at 855-239-1424 to call on Obama to cancel the new nuclear cruise missile.
Israel is back to demolishing the homes of Palestinians.
India's Hindu nationalists are systematically persecuting dissidents, drumming teachers out of schools, and prosecuting writer Arundhati Roy for criticizing them.
The FBI is investigating possible crimes to prosecute in the delivery of poisoned water to Flint.
Facebook's natalist pressure.
How about pointing out some great non-mothers and great non-fathers?
People who took advantage of not having children to dedicate effort
to something more constructive than increasing the number of humans?
When ravens hide food, they can understand whether the surrounding make it possible that another raven could be watching.
Sanders and Clinton got roughly equal numbers of delegates out of the Iowa caucuses.
Clinton has backed off attacking Sanders' push for universal health care, and has returned to supporting the idea. I guess that attack was backfiring.
Several important primaries will be held this month and on March 1.
If you would like Sanders to win, please volunteer to help his
campaign — don't put it off.
Noise from ships seems to harm whales.
Our overfishing of their prey, which in some cases we are driving to extinction, hurts them too.
Monsanto paid a university for a professor to write articles condemning labeling of GMOs.
The US is heavily surveilling everyone in the vicinity of the Super Bowl, which might mean everyone in San Francisco and the peninsula.
Past experience suggests that augmentations of surveillance for a sports event remain permanently afterward.
There is a lot of political pressure in the EU to demand that Greece force migrants back to Turkey.
99,000 families were evicted last year in the UK, as rents keep rising and the Tories keep cutting welfare.
The Tories are lower than vermin.
Putin's bombing campaign in Syria, aimed mainly at groups opposed to both Assad and PISSI, has the main effect of strengthening PISSI.
Thousands of chemicals are put in products as "fragrance", and some can be toxic or cause allergic reactions. It's hard to find out which "fragrance" chemicals are found in products.
We have no obligation to cater to companies' wish to keep secrets when
any public interest is at stake. I think we should require
publication of the full list of possibly volatile substances in every
product.
Fires in California ruined a large part of the vineyards' harvest.
Study: DNA Test Agreements Disregard Consumer Privacy.
Like many articles about new abusive practices, this article legitimizes
the known, current abuses. I think that is a mistake. We should not
limit ourselves to opposing further changes for the worse. We must
campaign to get rid of the existing evils too.
An Australian boy faces being questioned in secret about his mother
and his brother, and faces imprisonment if he ever discusses it with them.
Trying to obey those strictures would ruin his life anyway, so it
makes sense for him to respond courageously: "You're going to imprison
me sooner or later, so I won't serve you now merely to postpone it. I
refuse to answer."
I don't know what they are suspected of, but it can't be as dangerous
as what the government is doing here.
The employees at e-waste scrapping facilities pick up lead on their skin and hands, and it's enough to give their children lead poisoning.
An ordinary shower does not wash it off.
How Denmark cares for old people.
Other arrangements might also work well, but it puts most other countries to shame.
Kansas took away a veteran's children as he was preparing to move to Colorado, because he lawfully used medical marijuana in Colorado.
"Internet assistants" have a secondary danger, beyond just snooping on their users and being SaaSS (Service as a Software Substitute).
It is amusing how someone can be blind to the dangers of these things
and worry only about a secondary danger. The secondary danger
is real, and the article makes a valid point — but don't forget
the primary dangers.
The UK has given permission to make genetically modified human embryos and experiment on each one for two weeks.
The two-week limit seems hypercautious to me; there would be nothing
wrong with keeping them for 5 months. However, implanting them into a
woman would require advance consent to a mandatory abortion. While
abortion is safer and less traumatic than giving birth, it is not
something to ask lightly.
The Myth of the ISIS Encrypted Messaging App.
Was it right to fine a bakery for refusing to make a cake with the message, "support gay marriage"?
I think individuals should be free to refuse to spread messages they
disagree with, and most other organizations too, but not publication
companies. Publication companies should be considered common
carriers, required to publish whatever customers will pay for, unless
there is so much competition that there is no difficulty finding one
to publish whatever you want to publish.
Cambodian women are trafficked to China as wives/slaves; when they
escape and get home, they are rejected by their communities, even parts of their families.
The root of this crime is treating women as things, as property.
The foxes and vultures are waiting to buy parts of Havana as resorts for rich foreigners.
I expect that politicians will profit from this wealth, and a few random Cubans, but I think most Cubans will not even get trickle-down.
Inequality is growing in South Korea. Those not privileged must work 14-hour days for low pay, and can barely get by.
It's what's happening in the US, only more so.
After a hypocritical "apology", Japan once again denies enslaving women as prostitutes during World War II.
WHO says, don't let children watch films in which characters smoke.
Most climate studies don't look at what will happen after 2100.
However, global heating won't stop then.
If high-tech civilization survives till 2100, it may be able to bring down
the levels of CO2 in the air.
Here's How Hard It Will Be to Unpoison Flint's Water.
It's not that the Flint river water itself contains lots of lead.
Rather, using that water involves so much chlorine that it corrodes
the lead pipes.
The Lead Pipes in Flint, Michigan, Are a Tiny Part of a Huge Problem (of lead poisoning in the US).
US citizens: call for an end to the investigation of Planned Parenthood.
We already know there is nothing to find.
US citizens: Call for transparency on how the Volcker rule is working.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reduce Diesel emissions from cargo shipping.
US citizens: phone your senators and say to oppose Orrin Hatch's amendment which would resume federal sale of coal leases.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to respect Obama's gun control executive orders.
Everyone: call on Governor Snyder to fix the Flint water supply, and meanwhile stop charging for the toxic water.
US citizens: Call on the state to stop deporting aliens in Flint for trying to buy water, and stop making them show government papers to get water.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the merger of Time Warner Cable with Charter.
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban neonicotinoid pesticides
The EPA has just recognized that neonicotinoids contribute to the death of bees.
It is possible that other causes contribute as well, such as the varroa mite. But we can't get rid of them, or prevent them from doing damage — and we need the bees.
Everyone: call on Congress and states to close the gender pay gap.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to support a law requiring shell
companies to disclose who they are hiding.
A German girl claimed to have been raped by immigrants. But then she said she had made it up.
The effects of her claim will probably not vanish away, alas.
Right-wing changes in an Israeli civics textbook have provoked protests from teachers, and from one of the authors of the book.
General forecast for the next five years: even hotter than 2015.
10,000 child refugees in Europe are missing, and maybe a large fraction have been enslaved.
Tories Lobbying to Protect Google's £30bn Island Tax Haven.
Uber is selling low and losing money to destroy its competitors.
If you are a short-term thinker, you will be delighted to take
advantage of this — until it controls the market and squeezes you
forever.
The article mentions a service called Kutsuplus as an alternative to
Guber's model. It might have been better in some ways, but could
people use it anonymously? Could they use it without running nonfree
software? If not, it shared Uber's basic injustice.
A comedian finds a way to do justice to the UK's plutocratic rulers.
France says it will sponsor one last effort for a diplomatic settlement between Israel and Palestine; if that fails, it will recognize Palestine as a state.
France might as well proceed directly to the second step; it will take more than this to get the Israeli right wing to seriously consider peace.
Many US black children suffer from lead poisoning which reduces their IQ.
Sometimes greedy landlords manage to skip tests for lead paint, and thus
continue poisoning them.
Mothers will tell their children not to eat the paint, unless they
have to work so many hours that they can't see what their kids are doing.
Lead and Race In Flint — And Everywhere Else.
Holding the Super Bowl in San Francisco is hurting the city: new surveillance, cruelty to the homeless, and burdens on citizens and workers.
A UN summit will provide an opportunity for the world to abandon the idiotic and destructive "war on drugs".
Europe's Immigration Bind: How to Act Morally While Heeding the Will of Its People.
David Petraeus to Receive No Further Punishment for Sharing Classified Files.
Harsh punishment is reserved for heroes like Snowden that tell the public
about government wrongdoing.
US businesses say the FDA is out of control — protecting people's privacy, at least to a minimal extent.
They expect to have control of government agencies, you see.
A cracker obtained and posted internal communications of a US thugs' union, some of which show right-wing extremism.
In general I do not approve of doxing, even of thugs, merely for being
thugs. There may be some specific cases where it is justified, such
as thugs that are infiltrating dissident organizations, but that does
not seem to be the case here.
Puerto Rico has proposed a plan for reducing its debt.
Flint demonstrates the erroneous way of making decisions that we must not repeat in regard to global heating.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress are corrupted by lobbyist money.
The US apparently planned to kidnap Snowden with the help of some subservient government, since it had a plane waiting in Denmark to take him away as he was travelling.
If the US had hoped a government would arrest him and then respect his
rights with an extradition hearing, there would have been no need for
that plane.
UN Experts Catalog Seemingly Endless List of Racial Discrimination in US.
I believe that the US owes reparations to the descendants of those who
suffered denial of equal rights, including both slavery and the racist laws from 1880 to the 1960s.
Just 3 years after horsemeat was passed off as "beef", the UK has cut the amount of tests of food, making cheating easier than ever.
We depend on the state to keep businesses honest, and for many other things.
In England, flowers that normally bloom in May are blooming in January, due to El Nino on top of global heating.
Since different species base their calendars on different cues, this
will cause ecological disruption, which will wipe out some species.
A cold snap in February could kill some organisms that have become active
early.
US citizens:
call
on members of Congress to take a stand on the TPP now and pledge
to stick with it after the election.
Southern Poverty Law Center accuses the US of
selectively
arresting women and children for deportation, for corrupt reasons.
Proposing
financial
reform measures going beyond Sanders' proposals.
AIG sold off a subsidiary because it is
no
longer allowed to mislead customers.
Sanders got paid speaking fees: almost $2000. He
donated
the money to charity.
Congress
should
show the public more of what it learns in its hearing about the
FISA court.
Mali's Irrepressible Musical Spirit Resounds after
Jihadi-Imposed
Silence.
Some Muslim fanatics have banned music since a thousand years ago.
The New York Times found one small category of campaign spending in
which Sanders gets more support than Clinton, and
covered
it misleadingly.
An extreme example of surveillance of students: asking them to
wear
a fitbit all the time.
Just because most schools' surveillance does not go this far does not
make it acceptable!
A US court once again has ordered the EPA to
make
rules to make mines and factories pay for their pollution.
While Flint Was Being Poisoned,
State
Workers "Quietly" Provided Water Coolers.
Twitter
doesn't apply
its rules to Donald Trump as it does to others.
The Marshall Islands, a small country in the Pacific with painful
experience with nuclear weapons, has sued Britain, India and Pakistan
for not complying with treaty obligations to move towards
nuclear
disarmament.
A basic income for all raises
many
questions about details.
Will companies that sell to consumers really have the power to make
governments keep most people's incomes from falling? They haven't
done this in the US in the last decade. The tendency is to shift to
selling luxury products for those who still have money to spend.
Google Deal Highlights
Need
for 'Radical Change' to International Tax Rules.
Here is
my
proposal.
Running states like corporations: a
poisonous
approach.
The Tories' spending cuts are
making
hospitals reduce staff.
Why
Bernie
Can Deliver on Promises of Change, While the Sensible Centrists
Can't.
"Sensible" middle-of-the-road Democrats such as Clinton won't even try
to change the things that are deeply wrong with the US, such as
plutocracy.
Burundi's dictatorship
arrested
two French journalists. Under pressure from France, it freed
them, but still keeps their recording equipment.
A US official
criticized
the EU for attacking tax-dodging by US companies.
That official is evidently on the side of the plutocrats. Vote for
Sanders and get him replaced with someone who will work for the people
(of the US and other countries).
The US is still funding "reconstruction" in Afghanistan, but due to
the Taliban's increasing activity, in many cases there is
no
way to check what work is really being done.
Could inspectors use little drones?
That's not a serious question, since we know this "reconstruction"
often just feeds corruption. Maybe it would be more effective to give
the equivalent of 10 dollars to every person in Afghanistan.
Senator Warren reports how the US government
lets
corporations escape punishment for giant crimes.
Do you support Clinton but agree more with Sanders? If so,
give
your support Sanders!
Obama showed that a black plutocratist president will not stop
plutocrats from forcing blacks into poverty. Clinton, if elected,
would show that a woman plutocratist president will not stop them from
pushing women into poverty.
Japan's head negotiator for the TPP has
resigned
over his corruption.
Any politician who supports the TPP is corrupt at a deep level,
whether or not he took a bribe.
Plutocratist Democrats are panicking about Sanders'
gaining
strength.
Sanders pointed out the
falsehoods
in the Washington Post's attack.
Uri Avnery: the campaign to end Israel's occupation of Palestine
needs
the support of people inside and outside Israel, working together.
The government knows this and plans to ban their cooperation.
We are wiping out
dozens
of species of insect every day.
Zika has made the issue of abortion rights
urgent
in Brazil.
Peace talks for Syria are
unlikely
to have good results. The Kurds are not even invited.
US citizens:
call on
candidates to state their positions on GMO labeling.
China imprisoned people for planning a civil disobedience movement,
calling this
"inciting
subversion of state power".
In the UK they might call the protests
"aggravated
trespass".
In the US they have
other
charges to press against those who commit civil disobedience.
This sort of repression is wrong no matter who does
it and no matter what the excuse.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to restore anti-lead-poisoning programs.
A Georgia state representative
defends
the Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan.
Sri
Lanka's Missing Thousands: One Woman's Six-Year Fight to Find Her
Husband.
The thousands may have been killed under direction of former tyrant
Rajapaksa.
Some European countries are labeling Morocco and Algeria as "safe"
countries,
rejecting
asylum applications from people from those countries.
For most people in Morocco and Algeria, those countries are safe, but
some minorities and some dissidents are persecuted.
Chicago thugs
sabotage
their car microphones; the car used by the thug that killed Laquan
McDonald had had its microphone destroyed.
Changing bad government and business policies that discourage
breastfeeding could avoid up to
800,000
child deaths each year.
Canada's snooping agency
sent
Canada's personal data to the US.
The management of the Chicago thug department allowed thugs to cover
up their misdeeds by
turning
off cameras and microphones in their cars.
Contracting out support activities, famous Silicon Valley companies
pay
many of their workers too little to live on, and exclude them from
the benefits of employees.
Such contracting out is an obstacle to unionization, and that alone
is a reason to adopt policies to discourage it.
Oxfam's report on increased inequality gives
recommendations
for how to fix it.
The report shows that it's not just that the rich are getting richer.
They are making the poor poorer, too. The poorest half of humanity
have lost around 40% of their wealth since 2010.
The UK government is privatizing the state,
selling
off large state activities cheap as well as the land on which they are
run.
The politicians that sell off the state cheap, and the cronies to whom
they sell it, are conspiring together to cheat the country. The
proper remedy, when the British people recognize the need, will be to
confiscate what was sold off, with no compensation.
That loss, for the "investors", will be right and proper. It will
teach future rich cronies not to be so eager to participate in such
conspiracies.
Some executives know that the best thing their business can do for the
environment, and the world, is to shut down. But they consider that
impossible, so they find ways to
reconcile
themselves to doing harm.
We can save them from this. We should shut those businesses down.
Louisiana
refuses
to disclose how many prisoners it keeps in solitary confinement,
or for how long.
Chicago thugs
extracted
false confessions using torture. Instead of punishment, they
received promotions.
The right-wing in Israel is now
calling
prominent writers and artists "leftwing moles" (i.e., traitors).
Everyone:
Support
Israeli human rights defender Ezra Nawi, arrested in Israel for no
stated reason.
The right-wing organization "Black Americans for a Better Future" is
funded
entirely by wealthy whites.
Big coal companies are selling coal mines to small operators that
won't
be able to afford to clean up the environmental damage.
This is fraud; the executives involved should be prosecuted and
jailed.
Republicans in Michigan
systematically
override democracy to maintain control of the state and its
people, even though most voters don't vote for them.
This led directly to
lead
poisoning in Flint.
What will it take to restore democracy in Michigan? How can Michigan
voters overthrow this tyranny?
Former Disney workers are suing Disney for
abusing
a special visa system to make them train visiting foreign workers
to replace them.
Workers, if your employer tries to do this to you, don't train your
replacement! Quit immediately! That way, the cheating employer
will suffer a loss from mistreating you.
US Republicans, led by the Koch brothers and ALEC, are
eliminating
state-level solar energy incentives where they can.
Safety conditions in some factories in Bangladesh are
just
like before the Rana Plaza factory fire.
In general, supposed commitments to reform the abuses of these front
companies' supply chains are
undermined
by corruption.
Ferguson thugs will be required to
record
all their actions with body cameras. They are also required not
to adopt policies for the sake of collecting more money as fines —
but I fear that thugs will negate that requirement by misrepresenting
their motives. Thugs are
trained
liars and feel entitled to lie to anyone,
even
in court.
Everyone:
attend
the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet event on March 19 and
20. The lead speaker will be Edward Snowden.
Citizens of TPP countries:
European Union citizens:
strengthen
the Parliament's resolve to reject data collection about airline
passengers.
Turkish journalists are
facing
life in prison for reporting on the government's practice of
arming Syrian jihadis.
Zika spreads where people are poor and don't have the time and money
needed to
limit
mosquito reproduction. That shows how to fight it.
Thousand of hydroelectric dams
may
be left without water due to global heating.
This reduces the attractiveness of building new dams, which could
in many cases destroy unique species.
Kenya's government is
repressing
press criticism.
Too
Afraid for School: Latin America is Losing New Generation to Gang
Violence.
The Loss of Libraries Is Another
Surefire
Way to Entrench Inequality.
Global heating is
likely
to wipe out the slow-growing trees of Tasmanian highlands.
Fires started by lightning are no longer natural, because the
lightning has a human cause.
At lower altitudes, partial logging has made other Tasmanian forests
more vulnerable to fires.
The FBI arrested some of the armed occupiers of the Malheur wildlife
refuge. There was a fight and
one
of the occupiers was killed.
I can't criticize thugs for shooting someone in a group that was known
to be armed and which had talked about shooting them.
"Probiotics" might be able to help human health, but
nobody
really knows which ones do.
There is now a second boycott of Coca Cola Company — this one to
demand that it label GMOs.
I guess they don't know about the worldwide boycott of Coca Cola
Company for
murdering union organizers.
I don't like Coca Cola itself, but that is not the company's only
product. It also sells fruit juices and bottled water. I almost
never use bottled water except in places such as India and Flint,
Michigan, where the tap water is unsafe — but when I am in those
places, I make sure that the water is not from Coca Cola Company.
The
motive
for switching Flint's water to the lead-poisoned Flint river was
not saving money. Another deal was available which would have saved
more money, with the same safe water.
Who Cares if Hillary is Warm? I Care About Her Wars.
I care even more about her plutocracy, since the military-industrial
complex
promotes the wars and does many other bad thing.
California
defeated the utility companies that wanted to put the brakes on home
solar power.
Britain Is At War With Yemen. So Why Does Nobody Know About It?
The same goes for the US.
An email company in Switzerland has
led a campaign
against massive surveillance laws.
Thugs in Texas don't pay money for their license plate readers.
Instead they
moonlight for the company "Vigilant"
that accumulates license plate sightings.
'Natural' Gas Not as Good as Solar — Despite the Gas Industry's
Best Efforts.
Profits Over Rights as UK Sells Spy Gear to Repressive Regimes.
US thugs tend to
use tasers more often
against blacks and Hispanics,
whereas with whites they tend to warn instead.
Neonicotinoids kill bees just fine, but bedbugs are
becoming resistant
to them.
There is
no shelter for civilians
when Salafi Arabia drops US-provided bombs in Yemen.
Yemeni-American Qarwash Mohsn Awad's passport was revoked because
of a
false statement
that his sister was bullied by US agents into signing.
It's part of a pattern of
self-contradictory injustice
against Yemeni-Americans.
France legalizes
keeping dying patients deeply sedated
(at their request) so that they feel no pain.
This is good for people who have a painful condition that will kill
them soon, but offers no escape to those who can't communicate and
experience years of boredom.
The Tories are
selling off UK state assets cheap.
Bad for the country, but good for their cronies.
More proof of racial profiling: blacks are more likely than whites
in Florida to be
ticketed for not wearing seatbelts.
Anaheim, a small city in California, bought a wide range of phone
surveillance
devices and
secretly let many neighboring cities use them.
Mayors from Florida have told Florida senator Mario Rubio:
take global heating seriously before we get inundated.
Investors in coal mines are
likely to lose lots of money.
I am glad, but humanity (and the earth's wildlife) deserves a system
of government which can protect us from man-made disasters even if
investors can profit from them.
Women can
measure their exposure
to some of the chemicals that promote breast cancer.
Michael Moore:
Do Not Send Us Bottles of Water [in Flint]. Instead,
Join Us in a Revolt.
The staff of Protonmail are
campaigning effectively
against new surveillance laws in Switzerland.
Everyone:
urge Delaware
to repeal the death penalty.
Northern right whales now have
more protected areas
on the US Atlantic coast.
Whether it is enough to save them is not clear.
The plutocratist Democratic establishment is
attacking Sanders
more and more.
Gandhi famously said: first they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, then you win. Sanders is moving from stage 2 to
stage 3.
Collection of Biometric Data Poses Serious Privacy and Personal
Security
Risks.
Not to mention that so much surveillance
threatens democracy
for everyone.
US citizens:
call for an
investigation of why the FBI helped Walmart silence its employees.
PBS Newshour spreads
falsehoods
about single-payer health care.
How Egypt's tyrant al-Sisi
represses
protests.
Americans who are poor have a
great
work ethic. If only SCROTUS would allow making jobs for them. As
for the children, disabled and old, SCROTUS calls them "moochers".
Here's
what
we need to keep in the ground, to limit global heating to 1.5C.
The hero who
informed
the press about Dubya's warrantless wiretapping now faces
punishment.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
condemned
Israeli colonization of occupied Palestine.
He said that this calls into question Israel's commitment to a
two-state resolution of the dispute. That's an understatement;
according to Uri Avnery, Netanyahu
never
seriously entertained the possibility of such an agreement, and
engaged in sham peace talks only to forestall international cognizance
of that fact.
Those peace talks collapsed a couple of years ago, and international
cognizance is taking hold.
MI5 and MI6: what was their
relationship
with US torture?
The stress of
a
million refugees is making the Schengen "free travel" zone
crumble.
In 20 or 30 years we will probably see tens of millions of people
fleeing for their lives from global heating disaster. In 50 years,
there may be hundreds of millions — but maybe we can avoid
reaching that point, if we cut back carbon emissions as hard as we
can.
Senators Markey and Sanders placed a hold on Obama's nomination of a
commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration, because he has been
tied
too much to Big Pharma.
Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream has endorsed Bernie Sanders with a
symbolic
dessert.
Everyone:
Call
on the New York Times to examine who knew Iraq WMD justifications
for war were bogus, when they knew it, and who should have known it.
US citizens:
call on
the DHS to focus on right-wing domestic terrorism.
Right-wing terrorists
kill
more Americans than Islamist terrorists do.
Sanders,
not Clinton, is the realist.
Clinton is going to raise more money this week from her
bankster
supporters.
New UK budget cuts
will make 50,000 vulnerable people homeless.
"Gene-Editing" Produces GMOs That
Must
Be Regulated.
Publishers use digital formats as an opportunity to
take
away the rights that we enjoy when we buy copies of a work. This
makes most commercial downloads (of books, music or video)
systematically unjust.
The CDT's characteristic weak recommendation is for slight regulatory
relaxation to eliminate just a few of the unjust consequences of that
shift. That is not enough. We must stop the injustice; we
must put an end to these unjust licenses.
Instead of the "authorized" copy that would oppress you, choose an
unauthorized copy that treats you ethically.
Denmark will deter refugees by
taking
most of their valuables.
Family Planning Is
'Critical
Link' in Eradicating Poverty.
Florida thugs
burned
Darren Rainey to death with very hot water. The state ruled this
was an accident.
Peace activists in Israel face
increasing
repression.
I expect that in 10 years Israel will have become so repressive that
all but right-wing extremists will flee.
The UK could effectively punish Putin's regime for the murder of
Alexander Litvinenko,
without
breaking diplomatic relations.
I don't think the Tories care all that much; they are not so different
from Putin, after all.
A secret US intelligence report expressing ignorance on the subject of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was
suppressed
in 2002, and apparently not shown to Colin Powell before he argued
for invading Iraq to destroy those unverified (and in fact
nonexistent) weapons.
A US-wide system of recording license plate recognition cameras,
called "Vigilant",
records
a million car spottings every day. Every car that drives past a
camera is recorded. These records could be kept for years.
Such a system should be outright illegal. License plate recognition
cameras
should
be required to record only invalid license plates or cars sought by
court order.
Ted Cruz says he puts
his
church above the United States. That makes him totally
unqualified to be president (or any sort of official).
When John F. Kennedy ran for president, some Protestant Americans
claimed that he would put his church above the United States and take
orders from the Pope. He promised that the US and its Constitution
would be his first loyalty, and people accepted this.
Some students in London have started a rent strike for their dorm
rooms, which have become
intolerably
expensive.
Pentagon
Asks Psychologists to Reconsider Torture Ban, Argues 'You Never
Know …'
Yes, we know. Just because enemies are vicious and cruel is no reason
we should imitate them. Torture is never justified.
Obama has
limited
who can be put in solitary confinement in federal prisons.
This is a change for the better but probably not enough. More than a
short period of solitary confinement is dangerous to mental health.
Jamie Love fights to save people's lives from
pharmaceutical
patents.
Medicine is one of the areas where patents do a special kind of harm,
but we would be
better
off eliminating patents entirely.
I am disappointed that the first article uses the term "protection" to
describe what patents do, because that is spin in favor of the
patentholders. Using that term gives them an endorsement that they
will use when lobbying for more strict patent laws. Please join me in
refusing ever to use that term in regard to patents.
The term "intellectual property rights" is worse than spin: it spreads
confusion. Patents and copyrights are totally different in practice.
If you lump them together, you will misunderstand what they do.
See https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
New Evidence Shows Milwaukee Police
Hide
Stingray Usage From Courts and Defense.
Fighting
against copyrighted laws in the US.
A half-billion-dollar "gift" to the premier of Malaysia was
"not
a bribe", says a court.
What a strange definition of corruption.
Citizens and residents of France:
protest on Jan 30 against the
tyrannical proposal for permanent "emergency", and phone or write your
deputies.
Information in
English.
Prosecutors
Say [thugs] Don't Need Warrants For Stingrays Because 'Everyone
Knows' Cell Phones Generate Location Data.
First they got people hooked on these devices, then they use them to
track people, then they argue people have no rights.
What it adds up to is that portable phones are malicious technology.
A grand jury was asked to charge Planned Parenthood based on the lies
in the fraudulent smear video. Instead it
indicted
people who made the video.
A thug in Canada has been
convicted
of attempted murder, though not of murder (although the victim was
killed).
Swedish human rights activist
Peter
Dahlin and his girlfriend have been freed by China.
Salafi Arabia is committing war crimes in Yemen with US support by
indiscriminately
killing civilians, and
repeatedly
bombing hospitals and medical facilities.
Chris Christie vetoed a New Jersey bill that
would
have prohibited convicted gang members from buying guns.
That is because he is seeking the Gun-Nut Party's nomination for
president.
Protocols for encryption of phone calls are
insecure
by design.
Products "for women" typically
cost
more than the same product "for men".
The root of this problem is that women are too easily manipulated by
the fashion industry; they are made to feel they must buy products
that are "feminine". But business is already working on trying to do
the same thing to men.
Heathrow Climate Protesters Found Guilty of
"Aggravated
Trespass".
That "crime" was invented as a way to jail protesters.
The UK government is
quashing
cases accusing soldiers of abuse of prisoners, arbitrarily
claiming that some of them are phony.
Beijing's renewed tyranny
crushes
not only leading human rights lawyers but their legal assistants.
The former leader of Australia's Green Party has been
arrested
for protesting logging of a wildlife area in Tasmania, his home.
Protesters face extremely harsh punishment.
Oklahoma legislators are
still
looking for ways to have dogma replace biology in science classes.
The recent very hot years could have happened by chance without global
heating, but the chance would be
1
in 10,000.
Want to bet the survival of civilization on that long shot?
2016 is expected to be hotter than 2015, because of El Niño.
If this El Niño ends, subsequent years will be a little cooler
for a while; however, 15 years from now,
the
current level of heat will be normal even without El Niño.
Some US states
punish technicians that
notice "child" pornography on a client's computer and don't report
it.
Keep in mind that "child" includes teenagers of age 16 or 17, who in
Massachusetts can legally have sex. It even includes women of 18 or
older, if they look younger or have
small
breasts.
It
includes
photos that teenagers take of themselves having sex (but "only"
10% of them get prosecuted).
A law against possessing a copy of some sort of publication, no matter
what kind that is, is tyranny and leads to more tyranny. It must be
repealed.
Some countries in Latin America are
advising
women to avoid pregnancy for the next year.
These governments must pay for reliable birth control for women that
can't afford it. And women should demand an extension of abortion
rights, which are very limited in most countries in Latin America.
Syriza was defeated by the banksters because it
never
seriously prepared to reject the Euro. Now it has surrendered
totally and become the banksters' local satrap.
Hungary's authoritarian rulers want to establish a "terror threat"
excuse for eliminating many basic human rights —
whenever
they wish. Perhaps all the time.
Overt
callous public bigotry has become normal in Britain again.
For those in London who can barely pay the rent and food, a new
expense will be
laundry
service, since most of the laundromats have closed.
This is a small example of how changes in society make it hard to
survive on a low income. In the past, people could live in boarding
houses that cooked efficiently. Now they have no cooking facilities,
and the food stores they can reach are not set up to sell food to be
cooked, so they are
stuck
with the expensive prepared foods.
A common thug tactic for "restraining" someone is
fatal
from time to time to people with medical problems. As they choke
and die, the thugs think they are fighting and won't release them.
Residents of Flint are
afraid
to shower with the toxic municipal water.
Does anyone know whether bathing in that water is actually dangerous?
The lead has affected adults as well as children. It doesn't sabotage
their brain development, since that has already finished, but it harms
their bones.
The latest attack on Sanders is for
daring
to aim for what the US actually needs. The only way to get even
"half a loaf" in politics is to inspire lots of people to demand a
big, whole loaf.
This is what the free software movement does, in the field of software
freedom. We demand what our freedom requires,
not less
Others, such as some supporters of the open source non-movement,
follow the ineffective "ask for only what you might possibly get
immediately" approach, which means
they
don't say anything that might inspire people to aim for more.
In the Free Software Foundation's approach to
eliminating DRM, to
reforming
the DMCA, or
software patents (trolls are just part of the problem),
rejecting
substitution of someone else's service for a program you run, and
opposing
digital surveillance, you will see this difference over and over:
We demand the whole loaf where others ask only for half.
If you want to defend nearly everyone against the depredations of the
62 billionaires that own half the world,
throw
away the cynicism that is an excuse for giving up.
Poles are protesting against Kaczynski's antidemocratic laws
and
proposed
surveillance law.
The demand for "safe spaces" in UK universities has reached the point
of absurdity where fundamentalist Islamists
can
physically prevent an Atheist from giving a talk criticizing Islam,
and claim that her criticisms constitute "intimidation" of them.
Insanely, the school's Feminist Society supported those religious
fanatics, who would deny women many human rights if they had the
chance.
Islamists are enemies of human rights,
especially
for women and also for men. While respecting their right to state
their views, we should never forget how repugnant those views are.
Google has a proposal for security based on
tracking
user behavior so completely that no one can pretend to be anyone
else.
A survey of the policies of many US thug departments found that many
have policies that
encourage
use of deadly force.
State Repression in Egypt Is
Worst
We've Ever Seen, Says Activist.
It is worse than Mubarak, worse than Nasser.
The UK's weak deal with Google threatens to set a
bad
precedent.
Syrian Kurds, with air support from the US and Russia, are making
progress on
cutting
off PISSI's trade route to Turkey.
Nanfu Wang made a film about a Chinese human rights defender and
experienced
repression directly.
The European Parliament
proposed
some reforms to copyright law but they fail to touch the great
injustices such as DRM, the war on sharing, and the insanely long
duration of copyright.
I can't feel much gratification from the support for "open source"
since it avoids raising the question as an ethical issue.
It appears the UK government
corrupted
a supposedly objective study about the feasibility of allowing
Chagossians to return to the Chagos Islands.
The UK
allows
severe punishment without conviction: a man has been ordered to
notify the thugs 24 hours before having sex with a woman, and must
give her full identification.
If a woman is attracted to him, those demands would surely put her
off. If he pays a prostitute, the prostitute won't want to give that
information. In effect, the man has been forbidden to have sex
(except underground).
Anthony Ruelas was suspended from school for
carrying
a sick student to the nurse's office. The other student was
having a severe asthma attack.
The management of that school needs to be replaced with someone
who realizes that obedience is not the highest priority in life.
Massive
opposition made Haiti's imposed president cancel the presidential
election, which the people believed would be rigged (again).
Haiti's opposition presidential candidate describes the
history
of rigged elections which convinced him to boycott the
just-cancelled vote.
Israeli repression of anti-land-grab activists is spreading. Two Jews
and a Palestinian are now
in
prison for no crime.
A four-year-old US child was so anxious about a math test that he
could
not sleep.
A Clinton operative who tried to smear Anita Hill is now
trying
to smear Bernie Sanders.
After a reporter wrote about the Koch brothers' web of influence, they
decided to attack her by
paying
people to try to smear her with false accusations of plagiarism.
Since the UK declines to prosecute soldiers for war crimes in Iraq,
some Iraqi victims are suing. So Cameron is
looking
for ways to make that impossible.
He's already done
basically
the same thing to non-wealthy Britons.
The UK sells the service of training soldiers for other countries,
including
some where the military carry out repression.
Compare with the US
School
of the Americas (or whatever name they call it now).
"Bill Gates should be ashamed: His back-room, charter-school power
play
hurts
kids, public education."
David Cameron Denounces Putin's Contempt for the Law — Yet He
Proposes
to Exempt British Troops from Legal Accountability.
The New York Times
called
Sanders a communist.
You have to expect dishonest attacks from the establishment.
The
Overwhelming
Consensus Against Citizens United.
US citizens: phone the White House at (202) 456-1111 and call on Obama to cancel the new nuclear cruise missile.
US citizens: call on Obama to end sales of all fossil fuels on federal lands.
Everyone: call on the New York Times to check the facts of Jake Sullivan's false accusations against Sanders.
US citizens: Delaware North, desist from trademark extortion against Yosemite.
A
law professor wants to make it a crime to read web sites posted by
PISSI.
He
cites as a precedent the prohibition of even looking at pornography
that includes minors (or adults that look like minors).
I think the argument goes the other way: this demonstrates that it is
an intolerable injustice to punish people for looking at (or having a
copy of) any published work whatsoever.
A voice from the Republican establishment wants the "donor class" (i.e., billionaires) to make someone other than Trump win the Republican nomination.
If they can do that, it would only prove that our elections are worthless and our government has no legitimacy.
Clinton laughs off questions about her speeches for Goldman Sachs.
She is a toady for the banksters, like most politicians, and equally unworthy of public office.
Let's Make Attending Davos as Shameful as Running a Sweatshop.
The former head of the UK civil service says that the Tories intend to eliminate public housing. They will replace it with "starter homes" that poor people can't afford at all.
Pakistan has arrested people who aided a terrorist attack on a university.
A superficially clever writer tries to equate Trump and Sanders.
They are similar in being "outsiders", but different in what matters:
what they stand for. Trump will say anything to provoke TV and the
masses, while Sanders sticks to what he has fought for since 1980.
Trump stands for directing Americans' justified anger at weak scapegoats,
whereas Sanders wants to end the plutocratic system that is really
responsible for the injustice.
The US plans to deport Angel Rosa to certain death from a gangrene infection that he contracted while in immigration prison. His children, who are US citizens, won't be able to take care of him in Guatemala.
A meeting with Faheem Qureshi, who was maimed by Obama's first drone attack. He was 14 at the time.
Google has agreed to pay the UK about 19 million dollars per year for the past 11 years of dodged taxes.
Compared with the income Google has siphoned out of the UK, that is a trifle.
Google extracts billions of dollars per year from the UK without tax, so $20 million in taxes or even $50 million is insignificant as compensation.
Morocco is cruel to women — here is how.
The women who get pregnant and work in bars get a raw deal, but the
origin of this wrong is not in the bars. It comes from their own
families and the state. If they were decent, the would help their
daughter get an abortion (because a baby would be a big burden) and
would see nothing wrong in it.
A UK judge is suing the UK Ministry of Justice, saying that cuts in legal aid have made courts dangerous even for judges.
Of course, the biggest danger is for defendants that get little or no chance for a defense.
Massive resistance by Haitians has blocked the Haitian presidential election.
The last president, Martelly, was imposed by the US, which brushed aside real elections.
Haitians probably expect the US to impose him again.
Arab intellectuals comment on the fifth anniversary of the Arab spring.
The US still has no legal procedure for dealing with a disputed election.
Ethiopia had exiled dissident Andargachew Tsege kidnapped and put him on death row. He has been denied access to a lawyer or his family.
Stopping home-grown US terrorism depends on convincing American Muslims to trust the thugs.
It won't be easy to convince thugs to start acting like police officers.
Deciding how to fix Bitcoin's scaling problem involves a political question: which of its goals are most important.
When the US government modifies web sites to identify the people that access them, it can identify 1000 bystanders to find 100 people who are sought.
It is no coincidence that this arose in the search for people
downloading illegal images. The making of those images, if it
involved real sexual abuse of real children, deserves to be
prosecuted, but prosecuting people for downloading something leads to
tyranny.
Perhaps these images were really images of children's being abused.
However, in practice "child pornography" includes 17-year-olds having
sex, or 20-year-olds that look younger and are getting paid.
Courts and legislatures in the US have stacked the rules in favor of companies that sue debtors. In some places, debtors face great obstacles to have a chance to present their cases.
The IMF sees immigrants in Europe as an opportunity to knock wages down.
As natives are replaced with lower-paid immigrants, it will give them a good
reason to be angry. Unfortunately, they will probably blame the immigrants
rather than the politicians that heeded the IMF's advice.
The Big Short Explains the Role of Top Bankers in the 2008 Crash, But Nothing Much Has Changed.
Due to deregulation of banks, the chief officers are no longer liable
for losses, so it is in their interest to close their eyes to the risks
subordinates are taking.
This is one of the bad changes we must reverse.
A town in South Africa is offering to pay for college education for girls if they "prove their virginity" repeatedly.
Of course, this sort of test for virginity is unreliable, but even if it were reliable, and even if it could be done for males as well, it would be unjust.
Salafi Arabia bombed MSF again.
Uri Averny's column: Extreme, Extremer, Extremest.
'Huge Victory': Walmart Illegally Fired Striking Workers, Judge Rules.
El Nino Rains Only Slightly Increased Historic Low Reservoir Levels in California.
Water utilities in the US fudge tests for lead pollution so as to underestimate the actual level.
The thug that shot Anthony Hill has been charged with murder.
Hill was not threatening anyone, he was only naked.
The defenders of slavery and racism carry out violence against those trying to remove monuments to the Confederacy.
How sad America, in which loyalty to bigotry inspires people to fight
those hired to do the work, more than the sight of the rich evicting
the poor does.
The governor of Illinois plans to take over the Chicago public school system so as to break the teacher's union.
An Oklahoma thug was sentenced to effectively life in prison for raping 8 different poor black women.
He thought he could get away with it because witnesses would believe a thug rather than a poor black woman.
I don't consider a thug a very credible witness about anything.
I would trust a police officer's word, but how do you tell the few police officers from the many thugs?
New York State's governor appointed a bankster to regulate Wall Street.
France
talks
about extending the state of emergency as long as PISSI continues
to exist.
This means, in effect, forever. If there is a repeat of the November
attacks, they will say, "See, it is still needed." When there is no
attack, they will say, "See, it works!"
60% of sales of alcoholic drinks in the UK are
to
people with a drinking problem.
When Clinton gets an endorsement from a union or an activist organization,
it's always decided by the group's leaders — and often the leaders are
business
executives that prefer Clinton for selfish reasons.
In New Orleans, when poor people are charged with crimes, public
defenders refuse to take their cases; so they remain
permanently
in jail.
Walmart bullied Washington DC into dropping a minimum wage bill by
threatening to cancel new stores in that city. Now it has
cancelled
some of them anyway.
It was foolish to trust Walmart — after all, it did not sign a
contract to build those stores and keep them open for at least 10
years. But there was a bigger folly in giving Walmart what it wanted:
the very idea of trying to keep Walmart in DC was foolish. Walmart
reduces jobs, compared with other stores. Walmart pays workers so
badly that they need public assistance.
I recommend that DC raise the minimum wage high enough to drive
Walmart out completely.
Overfishing of young bluefin tuna is
driving
them to extinction.
Sanders
should
take a clear and firm stand in favor of abortion rights and birth
control rights.
I am not "pro-choice", I am
pro-abortion-rights
and pro-abortion.
The Gates Foundation
promotes
plutocracy around the world, as well as privatizing education and
health care and seeds.
Simply by dominating the funding in a field, it corrupts the
organizations that are supposed to work for the public good.
The donations to the foundation are less than the taxes Microsoft
dodges.
People living along the Atlantic Coast are
fighting
against the pollution that offshore oil drilling will cause.
Given the falling price of oil, selling oil leases now would be a
foolish give-away, even if it weren't likely to cause global disaster.
Mexican-Americans in Texas faced prejudiced laws and
murder
by Texas Rangers.
Greek farmers and pensioners are protesting
bankster-imposed
laws that could spell destitution for them.
Religious colleges in the US have a special exemption
allowing
them to impose strict censorship, and regulate the lives of students
and faculty.
I don't believe they should be allowed to get any government funding.
Fires in Tasmania are
destroying
thousand-year-old slow-growing trees.
Europe
wants to be less ambitious in a new fuel efficiency standard for
planes.
A few years ago, the EU put a tax on airline flights based on distance
flown. The US
helped
the airlines pressure the EU to drop it.
I hope President Sanders will invite the EU to bring it back.
The copyright industry wants a new law to increase its power to
force
digital platforms to delete postings.
DMCA takedown notices are
already
too powerful, because it is easy to use a
bogus
complaint to get someone's material removed.
The second-largest lake in Bolivia has dried up due to
global
heating and use of water for mining.
Lake Poopó formerly covered 1000 square kilometers.
Robert Reich:
Why
the White Working Class Abandoned the Democratic Party.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to adopt a constitutional amendment to overturn the
Corporations United decision.
Those corporations called themselves "Citizens United", but I call
them what they were rather than what they pretended to be.
Why propagate their misrepresentation?
Electric companies in Australia gouge so much that it is now
economical
to install solar cells and a battery and disconnect entirely from
the power grid.
This is great for reducing fossil fuel use.
Michigan Governor Snyder "released is emails", but with omissions, and
not
covering the time when the decision to use lead-contaminated water was
made. And not those of the staff with whom he discussed the
question.
It's more of a distraction than an answer.
Instead of recovering, the world economy has blown
bubbles.
David
Koch is gone from the board of directors of the American Museum of
Natural History.
I wish we could place confidence in the Smithsonian's claim that its
donors do not influence its exhibits.
The Linux Foundation
eliminated
community-elected directors from its board, apparently because
free software activist Karen Sandler was going to run.
Karen Sandler works for the Software Freedom Conservancy, which does
various noble things including enforcing the GNU GPL on Linux.
One of the violators is a donor to the Linux Consortium.
Feinstein and other senators are working on a bill to
ban
digital products with real encryption. How far this will go, we
don't know. Will it ban GnuPG?
Human Rights Watch asserts that firms which do business with companies
operating in Israeli colonies in Palestine are
violating international
law.
California
has joined New York in investigating Exxon's climate lies.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
2015
was 1.6F hotter than any year in the 20th century.
The last time Earth was this hot was
130,000
years ago, and sea level was 6 meters higher (20 feet).
Although the rate of killing rhinos in South Africa has stopped
increasing, it is already
high
enough to wipe them out.
Egypt's military government is
launching
the repression in advance as the anniversary of the freedom
movement approaches.
Stores are using portable phones' WiFi devices to
track
people in the store.
Reporters Without Borders
calls
for legal sanctions against Chinese broadcaster CCTV, which
presented Peter Dahlin's forced confession.
Let us not forget that the US has been
active
in the forced confession field, and that its system of plea
bargaining tends to pressure accused people into false confessions.
An investigation in the UK
concluded
that Alexander Litvinenko was murdered by Russian agents, and that
Putin must have personally approved the murder.
However, the UK government is
unable
to retaliate.
Today's atomizing society has
left
many people short of values. It's not just that they don't share
my values — it's that they can't name any values.
The hard wheels of Tory bureaucracy killed a mentally disabled man by
requiring
him to do things he could not cope with, such as work.
They have killed
thousands
How many have a life of nothing but suffering due to these cuts and
punishments? Surely tens of thousands, if not hundreds.
And all to enrich banksters.
The amount of fish humans have been taking from the sea is
50%
more than statistics reported. This explains why the total amount
caught annually has been going down for 20 years.
We will have to catch less, or lose all.
Then again, due to ocean acidification, the fish we want to catch
may
be wiped out anyway in a few decades.
Haiti is
trying
again to hold the rigged "election" that was
blocked
by popular resistance before.
The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash:
Corbyn/Sanders
Edition.
How Governor Snyder's general approach was
directly
responsible for Flint's poisoned water.
In Salafi Arabia,
chess
is now forbidden.
Yaseen Kadura has got off the US no-fly list, but is
still
subject to an interrogation at the airport.
US citizens should not have to answer questions about what they are
doing in order to travel around the US, when there is no probable
cause to suspect them of a crime.
Privatization of bus service in the UK is even more of a
disaster
than privatization of trains.
How about replacing the War on Drugs with a
War
on Hunger?
A model estimates secondary damage from the TPP:
almost
half a million US jobs lost.
The main harms the TPP will do are the intentional ones: elimination
of regulations to protect the environment, public health, human
rights, and standard of living; more strict copyright rules;
damage
to democracy.
Michigan Governor Snyder knew about the poisonous water in Flint in
February
2015.
In South Korea, it is a
crime
to speak positively about North Korea.
North Korea is hell on Earth, but this law tramples freedom in South
Korea.
US cities are increasingly segregated into
rich
and poor neighborhoods. Mixed neighborhoods are dwindling.
Trump plays the part of a successful businessman, but actually
he
was a failure.
Please donate to the
fsf.org and help us work for your freedom.
If we defeat the next attempt to extend copyright in the US, it's not
just the first Mickey Mouse cartoons that we will eventually have in
the public domain. It's
all
sorts of admired works.
100,000
NYC School Children Face Airport-Style Security Screening Every
Day.
The DEA is so greedy for money it can steal (officially, confiscate)
that it
hired
a TSA agent to look for and report large amounts of cash as it
could seize.
When Prison Guards Are Violent, Blame Culture —
Not
"Bad Apples".
A Turkish teacher has been jailed for a year because Erdoğan
saw
her give him the finger (or something equivalent).
Erdoğan is the open enemy of freedom in Turkey, and the
secret
friend of PISSI.
Skeletons of casualties demonstrate war between human tribes,
10,000
years ago.
US politicians' talk about "cooperation to put in back doors"
may be
political preparation for a tyrannical law to require them.
And
they
are proposing a commission to "search for a way" to do this while
"protecting our privacy".
They hope to "find" a way which damages our privacy,
and pretend that it doesn't.
Tasmania (part of Australia) is
heavily
repressing protesters against clear-cutting forests.
Trump got approval for a big casino/hotel by making
boastful
promises he was unable to keep. When the business went broke,
lots of investors lost money.
The US government is
much
more likely to prosecute an individual than a corporation.
China presented Peter Dahlin on TV
making
an absurd "confession" and saying that he's having a lovely time in
jail.
China is becoming a shameless tyranny again.
CISA, which
pretends
to serve the goal of better cybersecurity, would not have
prevented the massive data breach about US government employees. Its
purpose is snooping, and security is just the excuse.
2015 was the
hottest
year ever recorded. The second hottest was 2014.
2016 is expected to set a new record.
Pressure to Resolve Migration Crisis
Could
Tear EU Apart.
If that occurs, I think the flaw will be the weakness of central
democracy in the EU. The parliament is weak, the commission is not
democratic at all, and the countries' governments consider only their
narrow interests.
A
glaringly
inadequate recommendation for security on the "internet of
things".
What it says is true enough, but it only considers security
against third parties, and totally ignores the issue of security
against the manufacturer. That's a glaring omission, because the
software in these devices is nearly always proprietary. Nowadays it
is not merely conceivable that a proprietary program is
malware; it is
standard industry practice.
World business "leaders"
did
not recognize climate mayhem as the biggest "threat to business".
They are thinking short term, and their definition of "threat" means
"obstacle to their plans". So they said the biggest threat was
"over-regulation" — which means, stopping them from screwing and
cheating us as they would wish.
The UK does not make homeless people sleep on the street, but its alternative
nowadays is
really
crappy.
The US "assassination tsar", Torture Brennan, has been
meeting
with Egyptian officials.
I presume he encouraged them to
torture
suspected enemies of the regime, such as Islamists and
supporters
of democracy.
Verizon is directly violating network neutrality
in
the most flagrant way, demonstrating why network neutrality is so
important.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Hungary's surveillance
law
violated
human rights guidelines. It did not require an individual
decision about each person to be surveilled.
I was the first person to vote this year in Cambridge Massachusetts.
I voted for Bernie Sanders, of course.
Why vote for a Republican in Democrat's clothing?
Any algorithm designed to detect terrorist planning on social media
would raise so many false alarms that it would be
no
use for finding any real terrorists.
The low price of oil may not slow
adoption
of renewable electric generation.
However, to avoid disaster, we must decarbonize more than just
electric generation. We need to reduce the emissions of cars, trucks,
trains, ships, and planes, too, as well as heating of homes and
buildings. The low price of oil reduces one of the incentives.
The low price
encourages
some oil exporters to put in renewable energy, but the fraction of
oil that they use is tiny.
We should make sure the use of oil keeps decreasing, by putting a
bigger tax on it.
Anti-Slavery Activists in Mauritania Face
Violent
Clampdown, Rights Groups Warn.
Why outsourcing production of tools
tends
to produce inferior tools.
Apps that include Symphony surveillance software
snoop
on what radio and TV programs are playing nearby. Also on what
users post on various sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter.
A BBC journalist, Iranian-British, was blocked from visiting her
brother in the US because of the
new
discriminatory immigration rules.
She also cannot go to Iran, because Iran does not like the BBC.
Science faces a crisis of
published
results that are not reproducible. Perhaps more than half of
published papers are mistaken.
It is nice to have one Journal of Irreproducible Results, but it's bad
to have thousands of them.
If we don't prevent it,
by
2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.
On the
violent
radical Judaist extremists that are trying to kick the Arabs out
of Palestine.
The right-wing extremists that
praised
the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin are now
in charge of Israel.
They are
restricting human
rights for Arab citizens of Israel.
The UK uses its unjust questioning power on tens of thousands of
travelers each year, each of whom is compelled to answer
questions
that would otherwise be forbidden to ask.
Universities plan to track
everything
students do, and everywhere they go.
If this is really for the student's benefit, they should leave all the
data on the student's own computer, to be collected and then used by
free software on that computer. There is no need to be concerned with
possible "cheating", since the student would cheat only perself.(*)
* Since use of "they" in singular offends my sense of correct English,
I sometimes use Marge Piercy's nongendered third-person pronouns,
"person", "per" and "pers". They work like "she", "her" and "hers"
but specify nothing about the referent's gender. See the novel, Woman
on the Edge of Time.
Rep. Wasserman Schultz, plutocratist and reactionary "Democrat", has a
progressive
primary challenger.
Honduras plans an international anti-corruption body, in imitation of
the one in neighboring Guatemala, but it has been
designed
to lack the same authority. Perhaps designed to fail.
90%
of the heat that greenhouse gases have collected has gone into the
oceans.
New pun:
« L'ail en chemise »
New pun: "Realist or optimist?"
US citizens:
call on the
Justice Department to investigate Governor Snyder's role in
subjecting Flint to lead poisoning.
More useless "nation-building": the US
tried to
develop mining and fossil fuels in Afghanistan, and achieved
nothing.
Of course, if it had managed to develop fossil fuels there,
we would all be worse off.
The richest 1% of humanity owns
more
wealth than all the rest.
The Florida legislature
may
bar cities and counties from regulating fracking. This would make
it harder to stop fracking.
Fracking should be entirely stopped, because it endangers health of
humans and wildlife. Since we need to keep 80% of known fossil fuel
reserves in the ground, we should include in that 80% all the reserves
that would require fracking.
If we don't do that, the Everglades will become part of the Atlantic
Ocean and we will be worrying about whether coral can live there.
Wearable computers will oppress people if companies can get their
hands on the data. And most of them are
designed
to give the data directly to companies.
Officially telling people they have the right to say no is not enough
to prevent it, because some companies will charge a hefty penalty for
doing so. We must make it illegal for companies to ask for this data
except in very special circumstances.
A thug
told
drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters, thus
demonstrating why we need Black Lives Matter protests.
China's coal use
dropped
2 to 4 percent in 2015.
That's not bad enough news for the global coal industry. We need to
knock it into the grave, as fast as we can!
World-wide fish catches are falling fast due to
overfishing.
Turkey
demands
to exclude Syria's Kurds from Syria's peace talks. This would be
a great boost for PISSI, as well as making success impossible.
The TTIP
could
destroy Europe's small farms, or force them to use use GMOs and
lower their quality standards.
The Democratic candidates'
statements
on encryption: O'Malley is bad, and Sanders is so-so, while
Clinton is like a Republican (yech).
Turkish editor Can Dündar, imprisoned for writing about Turkey's
arming Syrian jihadis,
rebukes
the EU for its deal with Erdoğan.
His lawyers are not allowed to see the charges against him, which
means his trial will be unfair. That's because he didn't do anything
wrong.
Robert Reich:
Six
Responses to Bernie Skeptics.
Non-gays should have the right to a civil partnership
instead
of marriage.
Star
of Anti-Dolphin Killing Film, The Cove, Held by Japanese
Immigration.
To require special visas for journalism is an attack on the truth, and
must occasion the strong suspicion that the government knows it is
doing something wrong. This policy is wrong no matter which country
practices it, whether that be Japan,
Nauru,
China,
or the
United
States.
Peru's chief official
in
charge of ending illegal logging has been fired, apparently for
doing a good job.
Bombing hospitals and schools
must
not be tolerated.
Are you listening, Obama?
US politicians must stop trying to repeat the useless approach of
invasion in the Middle East — it only
makes
things worse.
I disagree partly with the article. It is legitimate to provide close
air support to armies fighting PISSI, because that can be a big help
to them and civilians will usually have fled the immediate area. But
nothing more than that.
Islamic
State Holding Estimated 3,500 Slaves in Iraq, Says UN.
These crimes are part of the reason why we should fight PISSI, but
only in ways that are likely to succeed, rather than aid its
recruiting.
An appeals court ruled that the UK's terrorism law, which was used as
an excuse to confiscate David Miranda's computer memories,
violates
human rights. It has no protections against labeling journalist
as "terrorism".
The court does not appear to have addressed the worst aspect of that
evil law: that it punishes people with years of imprisonment for not
answering questions. Which questions are they required to answer?
They can't ask a lawyer, so really they are not allowed to know. This
means the thugs can bluff as they like.
Laws like this are a bigger threat to Britons than terrorists are, and
the same is true in all countries, except a few in North Africa and
the Middle East.
How flight attendants
recognize
trafficking of girls.
A British woman is suing the thug department, because an undercover
thug
proposed
marriage to her in order to spy on her union activist friends.
She wants the list of undercover spies published so other victims can
get an explanation (and perhaps compensation) for their mysterious
losses.
Google has agreed to perform special censorship of Youtube for the
government of Pakistan,
deleting
views that the state opposes.
This will help the illiberal Pakistani state
suppress
dissent.
We've been
conned
by the rich predators of Davos.
Of 3000 "moderate" would-be candidates for Iran's parliament,
only
30 have been permitted to run.
Iran remains a theocratic tyranny, notwithstanding its limited layer
of democracy, but that would be no reason to continue sanctions
against Iran. The sanctions were never going to make Iran respect
human rights.
US citizens:
call on Obama
to drop the Hyde amendment from his proposed budget.
The Hyde amendment forbids use of US government funds to pay for
"abortion as a method of family planning" — for instance, avoiding
having a baby because you know that would be a very bad idea.
SCROTUS may insist on putting it back, but Obama need not propose it.
(SCROTUS = Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States.)
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject immigration policies that target people by
race or religion.
US citizens:
call on the
USDA to stop burying Jonathan Lundgren's research on dangers of
neonics.
Acupuncture is equivalent, for treating symptoms of menopause, to
fake
needles that only press the skin.
This does not conclusively prove there is absolutely no validity in
acupuncture. Conceivably mere pressure has some unknown effect.
Or it could be the well-known placebo effect.
Doctors in Australia's outsourced immigration prisons say they are
designed
to damage (even kill) the imprisoned refugees, and to cover it up.
Putin's satrap in Chechnia, who makes Putin look kindly and liberal by
comparison,
terrorizes
Russians that criticize him.
An Oligarchy Has Broken Our [US] Democracy.
It
Must Be Dislodged.
On old-fashioned "national trade interests", the TTIP would be
bad
for Europe's small companies and good for US multinationals.
Of course, national trade interests are a secondary issue compared to
the far-reaching
direct
injustices of business-supremacy treaties such as the TTIP (This
Treaty Is Plutocratic)
No wonder the think tanks that support the TTIP are
funded
by plutocrats as a form of policy laundering.
High doses of cocaine, in mice, cause brain cells to
digest
essential organelles and die.
Whether this happens in humans has not yet been established.
EU
Adopts Resolution Criticising Israeli Settlement Activity.
The word "criticising" seems like an understatement. The resolution
roundly condemns the Israeli colonies in occupied territory, and some
other wrongs of the occupation.
The
Era of Sanctions is Over in Iran. So Why No Celebrations?
The purpose of the nuclear deal was to establish that Iran won't
develop nuclear weapons, thus to eliminate the excuse being used to
pressure the US into war with Iran. I think that is something to
celebrate, even though Iran remains an unjust theocratic regime.
Denmark produced
over
40% of its electricity from wind in 2015.
World's Oceans Warming at
Increasingly
Faster Rate, New Study Finds.
Denialists grasp at satellite straws to as an excuse to
disregard
the best evidence about past temperatures on Earth.
The ethical problem with big banks is that
banksters
are amoral. The only question they ask at work is, "How can we
profit through the loopholes that our lobbyists put in the law for
us?"
A 12-year-old girl in New Jersey saw offered the use of her asthma
inhaler to another girl who was choking. She is being
punished
for this act of altruism.
Why
nuclear power can't avoid global heating — though renewable
energy can.
Women's rights activists
disagree
with Sanders' position that schools should report all "sexual
assault" cases to the thugs.
I don't know what "sexual assault" includes, so I won't use that term.
In regard to rape, I agree with the women's rights activists that the
victim should have a choice about how to pursue it.
We can't demand that our candidates be perfect and never mistaken.
The Oligarchy is
Using
Our Lizard Brain to Enable a Silent Coup.
Uganda's President
Epitomises
Africa's Perceived Democratic Deficit.
Imprisoning children that are seeking asylum causes them
progressively
increasing mental damage.
The forum-of-the-billionaires at Davos now
proposes
to replace diplomacy of states with "multi-stakeholder governance"
in which businesses will lead the negotiations about how to rule us.
We have seen that in the negotiations for proposed business-supremacy
treaties such as TPP and TTIP (Treacherous Plutocratic Poison and
This Treaty Is Plutocratic).
Disappeared Hong Kong publisher Gui Minhai appeared on Chinese TV to
confess
to a supposed crime that no one had heard of before.
This eliminates any doubt that China has imprisoned him and several
of his coworkers. It seems likely they have been kidnaped.
The Netherlands has
arrested
a man for joining the Kurdish forces and killing a PISSI fighter.
He may be charged with murder.
This is nuts. Fighting on the battlefield is not murder, no matter
what side the person is fighting for.
Some schools propose to use finger-vein scanners to
check
students' identities.
I pose a deeper question: what justification exists for this?
Is there a real problem for which this is a legitimate solution?
Bangladesh's government plans to label dissent as "cybercrime", with
sentences of
up
to 14 years in prison.
The UK
threatens
to require cafes and libraries to record users' communication
data.
I suppose this includes requiring them to identify themselves, which
is in itself an injustice of a sort that I always refuse.
Everyone:
call on
Attorney General Lynch to investigate Sandra Bland's death and
press charges against those responsible.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to stop targeting Central American families for
deportation.
US citizens:
call on the
Senate to repeal the sale (and destruction) of Oak Flat.
Baltimore thugs shot Keith Davis, then accused him of various crimes.
Apparently the culprit was someone else. Prosecutors are
trying
to undermine his defense to vindicate the thugs.
62
People Own the Same as Half the World, Reveals Oxfam Davos Report.
Global heating has
helped
spread the ticks that carry Lyme disease.
Australia
told
many government agencies they must get a warrant to access a
person's stored personal data. The agencies don't like this.
The limit is a step in the right direction, but we need to
reduce
the amount of personal data that gets collected.
An artist/hacker was arrested for stripping nude in a Paris museum and
taking
the same pose as the nude in the famous painting on the wall behind
her.
Sanders has published
the
outline of his single-payer medical coverage for all.
It won't save as much money as an NHS would, but it would
put
an end to the gouging of the
noninsured.
The new car emissions tests that the EU proposes in response to the Volkswagen cheating scandal are too weak,
arguably
illegal.
A corner of Alabama has the tuberculosis rate of a poor country,
because
people
don't trust medicine. Partly it is due to official wrongdoing.
But not entirely.
Gui Minhai's daughter says his "confession" was bogus and that he
must have been
kidnaped
by China.
Colombian thugs have a pattern of
snooping
on and tracking journalists that investigate them.
The specific corruption this article focuses on might have been
avoided if prostitution were legal and thus did not need to pay
protection to the thugs, but not all official corruption is so easy to
eliminate.
In general, too much surveillance
threatens
democracy.
Everyone:
call
for release of full information about Flint's poisoned water.
US citizens:
call
on the Federal government to give Flint the resources to cope with
poisoned water.
The WHO says that air pollution is a public health emergency, causing
over
3 million premature deaths each year.
This is a lot more than terrorist kill.
The IAEA says that Iran has carried out its part of the nuclear deal,
so
international
sanctions against Iran will be lifted.
However,
the
US will impose some sanctions related to the testing of a
long-range missile.
The Kurds
need
heavy weapons and ammunition to keep fighting PISSI, and they
deserve our support.
Especially the fighting women.
An Oxford University official says that religious extremists
must
be allowed to speak in public, and that this helps students
develop arguments against them.
The UK will investigate where Muslim extremists get their funding, but
will
it dare to admit the answer?
Studies of effects of various nutrients rest on evidence that is
inherently
unreliable.
The FBI published special rules for subpoenas to journalists, but the
rules are
worthless
as protection for journalists because they have a universal escape
clause: the FBI can use a PAT RIOT Act "national security letter"
instead of a subpoena.
The rules for that are secret.
We must repeal the PAT RIOT Act,
for our
freedom's sake.
The "Cube" 3D printer was designed with DRM: it won't accept
third-party printing materials. It is the Keurig of printers. Now it
is being discontinued, which means that eventually
authorized
materials won't be available and the printers may become unusable.
With a printer that gets the
Respects
Your Freedom, this problem would not even be a remote possibility.
How pitiful that the author of that article says that there was
"nothing wrong" with designing the device to restrict users in the
first place. This is like putting a "cheat me and mistreat me" sign
on your chest. We should know better: we should condemn all companies
that take advantage of people like him. Indeed, it is the acceptance
of their unjust practice that teaches people to be doormats.
The proper response to DRM is:
Aaron Swartz: for rich people to mess with the US school system is
nothing
new.
I think it is going too far to claim that the main or only purpose of
the school system is to make people obedient. Parents around the
world make sacrifices so their children can study, and if this were
nothing but a way to keep them down, parents would have learned that
by now and stopped.
Arguing that the motive for DRM is not about illegal copying, but
really about
control
of legal markets.
Billionaire philanthropy can't make up for
bad
things they did to get the money in the first place, so don't let
it buy your good opinion.
Flint, Michigan, is cutting off water to families that have not paid
for
the
water that poisoned them.
There are many levels of irony here.
The CFAA puts a man under
threat
of 5 years in prison for a prank that lasted 40 minutes.
The US
traded
Iranian prisoners for Jason Rezaian and some other Americans who
were imprisoned in Iran.
Rubio and Christie has a valid point to some extent; the danger they
point to can really happen under some circumstances. When President
Reagan traded arms for the release of Americans held hostage in
Lebanon, the hostage takers simply kidnaped more Americans to get more
ransom.
However, trading prisoners is different from demanding a ransom.
There is no sign that that exploitative pattern is happening here, or
that Iran imprisoned those people in order to trade them. As long as
Iran does not start to practice that abuse, we should continue trading
prisoners.
Exxon's charter
should
be revoked for its global heating lies.
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
Clinton
endorsed
single-payer medical care, until Sanders started seriously
campaigning for it.
The Baltimore thugs that shot Shaun Mouzon claimed he was trying to
run them over. A video
proves
they lied.
The also appear to have lied when they said he was carrying a gun.
Comparing charter schools with the
subprime
mortgage bubble.
A woman is
threatened
with life imprisonment in Northern Ireland for taking abortion
pills.
US citizens: presidential candidates,
commit to reinterpret the Helms amendment
more literally, to allow US funding for abortions in cases
of rape and medical need.
Tens of thousands of women
from Central America are fleeing to the US
because gangs threaten violence against them or their children.
They are not economic migrants; they have a real claim for asylum.
Moreover, the US's "war on drugs" is partly responsible for their
plight.
Bernie Sanders showed in the 1980s that
cities can prevent gentrification.
It is not a law of nature, it is the outcome of choices made by
governments.
Cheap gasoline is
encouraging Americans to drive more
and produce more CO2.
To avoid backsliding on efforts to avoid future disaster,
we need an increase in the gasoline tax.
The
giant methane leak
illustrates the point that natural gas is cleaner than coal.
This false claim was put over by the money and PR of fossil fuel
companies, that want us to make the bad investment of replacing coal
with natural gas, rather than the good investment of replacing fossil
fuels with renewable energy.
The founder of Netflix gave millions to a fund "for education", but
his choice to head that fund has a history of working "
for privatizing public education".
Privatized "charter" schools in the US are worse for teachers, worse
for the community, and not better for students; but they are great for
privatizing federal funds.
Refugee Benham Satah is a prisoner on Manus Island. He testified in
the trial over the murder of his fellow prisoner Reza Barati, and is
afraid the
guards will kill him
for that.
He testified seeing foreign guards as well as Manus islanders beat
Barati to death. However, only the islanders have been charged with
the killing; foreign guards enjoy effective impunity — one of the
injustices of the way Australia set up its proxy prison in Manus. I've read two books about Manus Island: Manus Religion, by Reo
Fortune, and New Lives for Old, by Margaret Meade. They describe a
society that chose revolutionary change between the 1920s and the
1950s, inspired by the American soldiers that were stationed there
temporarily, who treated them as acquaintances rather than as colonial
subjects. That society existed in one corner of the island, alongside other
societies that may have been quite different. I suppose that they
have all been assimilated together, by now, and I wonder whether the
nature of things in Manus Island today relates in any way to the
culture of those people, 90 years ago.
A school in the UK has
refused to allow birthday cakes
in school,
for fear of being held responsible if some child has an allergic
reaction.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to repeal the recently introduced discrimination
in the US visa waiver program.
Bitcoin is becoming unreliable because of a
refusal to change a protocol
to increase the capacity for transactions.
Some US states have made it possible to
buy birth control pills
without visiting a doctor. This will make a big difference to women who
can't afford
to see a doctor for the prescription.
If we had a civilized medical system, and a proper minimum wage, etc.,
no women would be in that situation. But this change would still be
good,
even though not quite as urgently needed.
Americans exaggerate the danger of terrorism in the US
by roughly 1,000,000 times,
and this reaction creates a self-fulfilling prophecy,
without which terrorism would occur even less.
Two hurricanes
have formed in January, one in the Atlantic Ocean and
one in the Central Pacific.
To have a hurricane in January in either place is a rarity. We are
seeing an effect of global heating.
The way to deal with the crisis of student debt in the US is to
make college gratis.
The government should pay for it. Going to college can increase a person's income (though this does not
happen in every case), and it is fair that those who gain in this way
should pay to support the system. With a proper progressive income
tax, this would happen automatically.
Everyone: call on TransCanada to
drop its NAFTA lawsuit,
which demands billions of dollars in "compensation" for
the cancellation of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Economists consider that the
biggest threat to the global economy
this year is a regional disaster caused by global heating.
That's with 1C of global heating. With 2C of heating, such disasters
would happen all the time, and the uncertainty would be in the precise
details.
One of the Oregon anti-wildlife occupation protesters drove a
government vehicle to a town, and was quite properly
arrested for car theft.
Neonicotinoid pesticides appear to be
pointless
on soybeans.
The judge
yanked the necessity defense
of the five protesters on trial
for blocking an oil train. He said they had not presented any evidence
that this particular protest was the only way to stop a bigger harm:
the risk of an explosion in that city.
They were
convicted on one charge,
but not jailed.
I think that what's necessary to prevent global heating disaster is
far more than they could possibly do.
Mary Anne Grady Flores will be jailed for six months for violating a
"protection order". Her violation consisted of
taking photos of a protest
against the use of armed drones.
This is an indirect excuse for trashing people's constitutional
rights.
Obama has
stopped the issuance
of new coal leases on US public land.
This is a step in the right direction.
A former CIA agent will face justice in Italy for
kidnapping an Egyptian
there and sending him to Egypt to be tortured.
US and UK officers are
closely involved
in directing the intervention in Yemen.
Goldman Sachs got a 5 billion dollar
slap on the wrist
for its role in taking the houses of millions of Americans. Part of it
is
tax-deductible.
EPA scientists have
criticized
the EPA's determination that fracking is not
a big threat to water supplies.
The US and other powers, which didn't help the Haitian people rebuild
after the earthquake, are once again
imposing a president
through a rigged election.
Release of Clinton's emails show how the US government
told lies about Gaddafi
as an excuse for intervention in Libya, and the pliant US
major media eagerly spread them without investigating them.
Officials were also aware of al-Qa'ida's presence among the
rebels. The article does not go into depth about "special ops trainers inside
Libya", so I cannot judge whether this ought to be a scandal or not.
The EPA
let months go by
after it found out that the water in Flint was poisoning children.
Global heating plays a role in a
rash of mass deaths
of many kinds of
wild animals around the globe.
The die-offs include plants, too. Millions of pine trees in the US
west have been killed as global heating
enabled a parasitic insect
to spread there.
The company that formerly managed Yosemite National Park applied for
trademarks on the names of the old hotels and restaurants it was
running, and is using those to
force them to change their names.
This seems like extortion from the state. If it isn't a crime, it
should be. Confusion appears in the article where it uses the term "intellectual
property". That term causes nothing but confusion. Trademark law is nothing like copyright law or patent law. If you
think you "understand" a statement about "intellectual property", it is
a false understanding that will lead you astray.
Switzerland and Denmark require refugees to
surrender their property.
This is a way to select the poorest refugees. Switzerland's special tax on refugees who start to work
is not quite as bad, but I think it is better to tax people
based on wealth and income, not based on being refugees.
India has set up a
new system of crop insurance
to help save farmers
from being pushed into failure and suicide by the cost of commercially
produced seeds.
I hope it works better than the previous systems.
Do you have the right to stop a drone from
hovering over your yard?
Research needs steadily increasing funding,
not flashy "moonshots".
The disastrous results of the Arab Spring show that civil resistance
can force out dictators but
building
democracy takes more.
In Tunisia I was told that the free software movement there was a big
help, because people in it had learned how to work together
effectively without having a boss to give them orders.
Everyone:
call
on Baltimore to fire housing chief Graziano, who looked he other
way as his staff compelled women to have sex in exchange for legally
mandated repair of their dwellings.
US citizens:
Call
on Obama to require federal contractors to disclose their political
spending.
The only treatment for the lead in children's bodies in Flint is
special
educational care for a long time.
Everyone:
call on your
government not to require backdoors in your computers.
In Germany, it is now
illegal
for a web site to vacuum up a users' list of contacts.
In Amsterdam, a plan to "redevelop" the sex-work district has caused
trouble for many prostitutes, but
found
very little trafficking of women.
Integrating segregated schools in the US
faces
opposition.
In Burundi, reports say the president/tyrant's forces have
attacked
civilians as reprisal for armed resistance.
The Internet of Things?
Up
your ass!
Americans of Iranian ancestry
fear
they will be blocked from visiting Europe in "retaliation" for the
discriminatory US policy.
For other countries to "retaliate" by restricting US citizens of
Iranian origin (and Iraqi, Syrian or Sudanese) would be ridiculous,
like "retaliating" against Nazi Germany by punishing German Jews. A
meaningful retaliation should infuriate those responsible for the US
policy. That's why I suggest imposing a visa requirement on US
citizens whose family names start with "Ry".
US citizens:
call on
Senate Democrats to defend nuclear diplomacy with Iran.
When families of a dead person
veto
organ transplants, they deny several people a chance to keep their
lives, and deny their deceased relative the chance to save lives.
My words for those families and their absurd obsession with parts of
corpses: "Grow up!" They should not have the power to veto
transplants.
Please sign up as an organ donor.
The TPP, with annotations
explaining
many ways it will do harm.
Using
copyright for political censorship: this time, in Australia
against an organization for humane treatment of animals.
Turkey has
arrested
academics for signing a petition calling on Erdoğan to stop
repression in Kurdish areas. Over a thousand signatories face
possible prosecution for this.
Chomsky signed the same petition; in response Erdoğan invited
him to visit Turkey. He refused. Apparently that refusal was very
wise.
Vlad Kolesnikov
protested
Russia's conquest of Crimea by wearing a t-shirt. His community
and his family ostracized him, and he committed suicide.
Can
We [Britons] Really Trust Judges to Protect Reporters' Confidential
Sources?
Britons certainly should not trust them to protect
dissidents
and union organizers.
Who Can Prevent British [and other] Women Joining [PISSI]?
Those
Who Have Returned.
A study suggests that moderate use of marijuana
does
not harm teenagers' brains — rather, use of marijuana tends to
accompany other factors, or other practices such as use of tobacco and
alcohol, which explain their low grades and IQ scores.
A terrorist attack in Jakarta puts Indonesia's wobbly human rights
in
great danger.
Everyone who loves Indonesia must help it to avoid attacking itself
now.
The Obama regime has speeded up release of some prisoners from
Guantanamo, but
still
holds 49 prisoners there whom it has no intention to try or
release.
Imprisonment without trial is an injustice which the US should
condemn. It must cease this practice, to stop setting a bad example
that other regimes cite as an excuse.
10
more have had, or are supposed to have, "trials" — but not
fair trials.
Unfair
trials are an injustice too.
Giant global front companies "audit" their supply chains with lots of
loopholes. The abuses continue, but the companies can
pretend
to have stopped them.
The UK's recent record floods were statistically the
result
of global heating.
A Hong Kong publisher cancelled a book from
fear
of Chinese repression.
Don't give way to
anthropomorphism
when thinking about non-human animals.
It's possible for other animals to have feelings, but don't assume
they are similar to what you would feel.
Pollution
with PCBs is killing the orcas and dolphins of western europe.
Campbell's Soup Company agreed to label all products that contain GMO
foods, saying that the
cost
of this labeling would be insignificant.
This demonstrates that the opposition to a labeling requirement is
bullshit.
I do not believe that GMOs are invariably or inherently bad. But
there are many ways that they can do harm, and without a firm
and strong regulatory system, the companies that develop them will
choose to
ignore
the risks.
Gambia has
backed
off from ordering female state employees to cover their hair while
at work.
This is a small but significant defeat for religious fanaticism.
China's leading human rights lawyers
face
years in prison for "subversion" for trying to implement China's
human rights law.
Writers
Join Worldwide Action to Protest Palestinian Poet's Death Sentence
in [Salafi Arabia].
I call that country Salafi Arabia to remind people that it has been
spending millions of dollars a year for decades to impose its
cruel,
strict and vicious version of Islam on the Muslim world. One of
the consequences is the existence of PISSI and other Islamic
fundamentalist organizations.
France
may
prohibit strong encryption.
If that happens, I may be unable ever to go to France again.
A bill being considered in New York State
would
require portable phones to have spy back doors built in.
More income inequality in a country leads to
less
happiness for the whole population — not only for the poor.
Look at the US: right-wing politicians use the generally shared
difficulties to divide people and lead them to blame scapegoats.
A
Primer
on the Damaging Movement to Privatize Public Schools.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to sabotage the Iran deal.
Fighting between the Turkish state and the Kurdish independence
movement PKK
continues.
They had a truce, but Erdoğan
broke
the truce in 2015 in order to get a better election result.
Ted Cruz
used
unreported funds in his 2012 Senate campaign.
India has demonstrated its contempt for freedom of speech
by
arresting
a comedian for mocking a religious leader.
Proposing a campaign for
"transparency"
about the algorithms that make decisions about people based on
their digital dossiers.
This campaign is right, but misguided: it starts by presuming we
surrender the fight against collecting
digital
dossiers about all of us. That's what we ought to fight against.
The
UNHCR
will interview people in Central America that hope to ask for
asylum in the US.
The Venezuelan opposition
yielded
to the Supreme Court, so the opposition does not have a 2/3
majority.
In Europe, employers have been
given
the right to read all messages sent by employees at work.
I am not sure whether this applies only to use of the company's
systems, or also to the employee's own computers.
A
possible
answer to that and other related questions.
One worker says his messaging was
investigated for
months due to misunderstandings. He was eventually found "innocent",
but the process made it intolerable to remain in that company.
Some religious fanatics in Pakistan
still
fight against polio vaccination. The CIA's hunt for Osama bin
Laden was partly responsible.
To have captured bin Laden and put him on trial would have been a good
thing. Killing him instead was
wrong,
and made little progress against
religious
fanaticism. Tarring the good name of polio vaccinators was a
grave
wrong.
Flint's Water Crisis
Flows
From A Much Bigger Problem.
St Louis is experiencing the burden of
stupidly
financing a new stadium for an NFL team.
From
Google Payroll to Government and Back Again.
Of course, this "revolving door" is not limited to Google or to
digital technology. It is standard practice in Washington,
and it is harmful across the board.
Senator Kay Hagan Promised to Take On Special Interests,
Now
She Works for Them.
UK Prime Minister Cameron
says
he did not "backslide" in his environmental policies.
That's true. His campaign to use up and pollute the environment has
only got stronger.
Social Media Companies
Should
Decline the Government's Invitation to Join the National Security
State.
The Oregon ranchers' difficulty is not that the government regulates
use of land, but that it
allowed
four big companies to take over the beef-packing business.
Turkish journalists and opposition protested about the
arrest
of over 150 journalists in Turkey.
Corbyn, who rejects Tony B'liar's right-wing politics, has
boosted
the support for the Labour Party.
Christians Flee Growing Persecution
in
Africa and Middle East.
Pakistan has arrested members of the
extremist
group that the state formerly supported to attack India.
In poor countries, the internet has not spread equality; it
provides
more benefit to the wealthy.
This is a secondary issue. More importantly, the internet as most
people use it is a system of oppression.
US libraries are
starting
to purge information on books borrowed, to protect readers'
privacy.
Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that causes human fetuses to grow
without most of the brain, is
likely
to reach the southern US.
Think of all the women in South America that will be forced by cruel
laws to carry these fetuses to term. Will Christian fanatics in Texas
try to do the same thing?
Sweden's foreign minister
called
for an investigation of Israel's "disproportionate" deadly
response to attacks by Palestinians; Israel has said she is not
welcome there.
Israel does not allow
its
actions to be
investigated.
Donald Trump has
praised
a long string of dictators, in countries such as China, Egypt,
Libya, Iraq, Russia and North Korea.
Since PISSI captured the Mosul dam, the dam has not received its
necessary maintenance. It is
starting
to crumble and might collapse.
The water would inundate Mosul, and could kill a million people or
two.
The US government
wants
hotel workers to report hotel guests for various non-criminal
activities, because supposedly indicates "sex trafficking".
Some of them might suggest prostitution is going on, but prostitution
does not equal trafficking. The US has enacted dishonest laws which
pretend that all sex workers under a certain age are being raped, but
that is
not
for laws to decide.
Some of these so-called signs don't relate to prostitution at all. I
do several of them every time I stay in a hotel by myself, even though
I'm no sex worker. (I'd never get anywhere in that profession with my
age and weight.)
Protesters that blocked an oil train are using the "necessity
defense", arguing that
their
action was needed to keep the community safe from an explosion.
Does
Obama's Nuclear Modernization Make the Unthinkable 'Thinkable'?
US citizens:
call
on presidential candidates to pledge to reject fossil fuel money.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to explain just how the TPP would (he claims) block
Transcanada's NAFTA suit against the US for disapproving the Keystone
XL pipeline.
Kenya is run by mafia-style cartels,
reports
its chief justice. He says that they have corrupted the branches
of government that are supposed to curb them.
The Koch brothers' father, Fred Koch,
worked
closely with the fascist countries before World War II, and in
1938 said he admired them.
Clinton's
dishonest attack against Sanders' universal health care proposal.
McDonald's is accused of
unfair
competition in Europe.
In India, the ancient superstition that considers menstruating women
"impure"
still
oppresses women today.
200
prisoners died in Russia in 2015. Were some of them killed by
thugs?
Around the world, religious fanatics' attacks on abortion rights have
caused a substantial decrease in safe, legal abortions, matched by an
equal
increase
in unsafe illegal abortions.
Obama proposes to
make
oil and coal extractors pay for their environmental costs.
This would drive the price way up and encourage conservation.
However, it needs to apply to imported coal and oil, not solely
to the coal and oil extracted in the US.
The IMF endorsed a
carbon
tax on ships and planes.
It should cover everything, but that would be a good start.
A
virus
that infects only carp may provide a way to reduce the carp that
infest a major Australian river.
It probably won't eradicate them, though; probably some are resistant.
By releasing several such species-specific viruses at once, and spread
them carefully, we might be able to eradicate the species from a
region.
Chicago allegedly installed lots of red light cameras due to
bribes
paid by the manufacturer.
We must establish a principle that it is an injustice to use computers
to monitor and punish human beings.
Kaddie Abdul attended a Trump rally and
gave
his supporters a chance to meet and talk with a Muslim woman.
Through her conversations, she came to understand their point of view.
Basically, they have suffered real hurt and offense, and blame it on
scapegoats.
China has
arrested
Swedish human rights campaigner Peter Dahlin on typical absurd
charges.
Dahlin's campaign tried to defend Chinese human rights campaigners
who were arrested or disappeared by the state. China has arrested
many Chinese lawyers who have done that.
Canadians are
organizing
to oppose the proposed attack on human rights.
Obama told us he would end US wars, but somehow
forgot
this commitment. Aside from Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul, the
current presidential candidates propose increasing US interventions.
These interventions typically (1) cause terrible harm, (2) create
failed states, (3) spread militarism, (4) boost the
military-industrial complex, and (5) undermine human rights in the US.
I am not a pacifist. Some situations require war. But if the
president is predisposed to war, we will do it far too much.
Hong Kong has
agreed
to ban import and export of ivory.
This may help save elephants.
The UK's highest judge says that cuts in legal aid have made for
injustice
in trials.
Directors of UK schools warn that pressuring them to snoop on Muslim
students
will
backfire.
Salafi Arabia has arrested Samar Badawi, sister of imprisoned Raif
Badawi,
for
advocating release of her former husband from prison.
Obama's men are
demanding
total snooping again.
It is absurd to claim that "security" requires that nobody be able to
have a private conversation any more. That's tyranny, not safety.
Our best chance, perhaps our only chance ever, to convert the US
back into a democracy is Sanders' "political revolution".
Please give him your energetic support.
Acidification Affects the
Ability
of Bacteria to Clean Our Oceans.
Indonesia
denied
a visa to journalist Cyril Payen, apparently because he made a
documentary about Indonesia's response to the independence movement in
West Papua.
The natural extension of monitoring people through "their" phones is
proprietary
software to make sure they can't "fool" the monitoring.
Cutting benefits for people with injuries who might be able to work
will
make it harder
for them to find work.
MoveOn's members voted by almost 80% to
endorse Bernie Sanders
for president.
I hope this helps him win. I would be so glad to be able to vote for
a major party candidate for president again.
Personnel from one of the Gaza aid ships, which flew the US flag, are
suing Israel
in the US for attacking their ship.
The arrest (yet again) of El Chapo will
have no effect
on the harm done by the "war on drugs".
Note that the War on Painkillers does collateral damage to people who
suffer from pain. I worry, when I think about it, that some day after
another operation I will once again be sent home and told to rely on
percoset
to treat the pain, and once again it won't be enough to do the job.
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to regulate methane leaks from existing sources.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to expand social security, not cut it.
Bayer has given up on
trying to deny
the EPA's finding that imidacloprid harms bees.
If it is really possible to use these pesticides without harming
honeybees or other pollinators, that would be nice. But we must be
careful of believing that too easily because Bayer pushes us to close
our eyes to facts.
Compare
these protesters
who aim to protect people and nature against
fracking with the armed Oregon protesters who demand to be allowed to
overgraze and destroy wild forests.
The anti-frackers have "fortified" the site with a moat ad tunnels
— but no weapons.
The "energy budget" approach to measuring Earth's climate sensitivity
gave anomalously low results
— due to an error which has now been corrected.
This particular straw is no longer available for denialists to grasp
at
when arguing we should not hasten to decarbonize.
Researchers Say Additional Children Increase Risk of Educational,
Behavioral Problems.
Bernie Sanders is a sincere liberal who
cares more about what's right
than about what other people think.
I disagree with one thing he says, however. If I woke up and
discovered I had been transformed into a hedge fund manager, I'd quit
— and vote for Sanders. I won't vote for Clinton, though. Of all the Democratic (and
Republican) presidential candidates, Sanders is the only one I would
vote for. If not him, then the Greens.
It appears the reason Putin's men poisoned Alexander Litvinenko
was to
stop
him from testifying about Putin's links with Russian mafias, which
were linked to Spanish mafias.
Superstitious fear of vaccines
kills
people, even in the US.
Iran
Arrests
Journalists, Bans Newspaper Ahead of Elections.
Why did Juniper Networks add the NSA-sabotaged key generation code,
which was already suspect, when it
already
had a safe method?
US thugs now examine all sorts of records associated with a person's
name or address, to
estimate
how "dangerous" the person is and whether to send a military-style
team to break down per door.
(I used Marge Piercy's third-person singular possessive form "per",
which is a gender-neutral alternative to "her". I absolutely refuse
to use "they" in singular.)
In the UK, old and disabled people are now essentially
isolated
in their homes, never seeing anyone. The activities where they
used to talk with other people have been eliminated, along with the
transport that would have brought them there.
People who have few social contacts tend to die sooner,
so I guess this is a way of getting rid of them.
The Entrepreneurial State: states such as the US, Germany and UK have
made a big difference by actively promoting long-term innovation;
today's strip-the-state corporations
prevent
such long-term activity by evading taxes.
We should not make the mistake of making innovation as such our
highest goal. When the richest get to direct which innovations we
use, they will do so for their good, not ours.
When we do need progress, the effects of illegitimate plutocratic
governance can be seen when people
foolishly
wish that billionaires would invest in the research.
In the 1960s, when the US still made the rich pay substantial taxes,
the state funded important research.
Sanders is
First
to Sign 'Fix Democracy' Pledge Rejecting Fossil Fuel Cash.
The EU says that special Belgian tax breaks for some large companies
were
illegal.
Three
MSF hospitals have been bombed in Yemen since October, all by the
Salafi Arabia with US support.
The totoaba fish, and the vaquita porpoise, are
headed
for extinction because of selfish and callous rich Chinese who
don't care what they destroy in proving how important they are.
Curiously, the eating of fish swim bladder (from non-endangered fish)
is a common practice in Chinese food. Try crabmeat and fish maw soup
if you ever get a chance.
"Money
is speech" turns the First Amendment into a requirement for
plutocrats' money to rule all.
SCROTUS are
trying
to stop states from regulating toxic chemicals. The bill would
ban states from regulating chemicals that the EPA has started to test.
Because the EPA is constrained to be very slow and cautious, and has
little funds to do this, protecting Americans from toxic chemicals
depends on states that have more courage. That's inconvenient for the
businesses that use the chemicals, so naturally their subservient
legislators are trying to stop the states.
SCROTUS: Sleazy Congressional Republicans Of The United States
The UK's immigration law converts foreign domestic workers into
slaves
of their employers.
The employers go as far as
maiming
them. If they run away, the government punishes them and denies
them medical care.
Africa's population growth rate is not declining. If it doesn't
decline, it will cause a
disaster
of overpopulation that will spill over to the rest of the world.
We should give Africa all the aid necessary to bring its population
under control.
A carbon tax can encourage cuts in emissions
while having
little
overall effect on prices of goods.
Tropical forests are
effective
methods of pulling carbon out of the air, as long as we don't
convert them into plantations.
Russian bombers
killed
more children in Syria.
They are matching the US-supported bombings carried out by
Salafi
Arabia in Yemen.
My Junior Doctor Colleagues Are Striking for the Wrong Reasons:
"Everyone in the [UK] NHS should rise up against
privatisation."
Americans are
eager
to bomb other countries; they feel little empathy with the people
who are killed, or made homeless.
Republican
Election Rigging Tactics
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to reduce diesel exhaust near ports, trains and truck
routes.
Why do Americans work such long hours? One cause is that
ordinary
workers wages have not kept up with their productivity.
Polish journalists protested the new media law that
gives
the state direct political control over public broadcasting.
Good News: The Fed Is Finally
Going
After Leverage in the Shadow Banking Sector.
How special bureaucracy
slows
down release of prisoners from Guantanamo.
Uganda is
attacking
journalists and dissidents.
Melting icebergs create
negative
feedback on global heating.
Good news, but that won't save us by itself.
The UK Conservative party is trying to
rig
future elections in its favor by cutting union funding for the
Labour Party.
Cutting plutocrats' support for the Conservative Party is not on the
agenda.
Media
Blackout on Bernie Sanders Continues even though he leads Trump in
Polls.
If you are uncomfortable trusting another woman to measure your bra
size, now you can use a company's proprietary software, which entails
trusting
the company and Big Brother.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to reject the TPP.
The US has been
sponsoring,
teaching and carrying out political violence in countries across
the globe for more than a century now.
US citizens:
call for
restoration of funds for preventing lead poisoning.
US citizens:
call on the
Justice Department to investigate killer thugs.
US citizens:
support
Sanders' plan to break up the big banks and put a leash on
banksters' power.
UNICEF estimates that
at
least a million children are imprisoned for various reasons.
The Pentagon has
imposed
pervasive digital surveillance on over 100,000 staff, even outside
of work.
This is, I presume, to make sure they don't give information to the
Pentagon's enemies, which include the American public.
A basic income for citizens has in several cases encouraged
social
cohesion.
De-bullshitifying
the libertopian Legend of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
It is an exaggeration to call the occupiers
"terrorists",
but I expect that Doctorow is correct about the facts.
PISSI
'Ran Sophisticated Immigration Operation' on Turkey-Syria Border.
Turkey could seal the border if it tried. It has supported PISSI for
reasons
financial
and ideological.
PISSI is the
Pseudo-Islamic
State in Syria and Iraq.
A long-range forecast for the next decade:
increased
conflict and economic difficulty.
The US is
drifting
into a surveillance-and-punishment social score system like what
China's government has explicitly imposed.
This is a side effect of something that is bad for other reasons:
massive
surveillance. Instead of trying to treat the symptom, let's cure
the disease.
Proper regulations can prevent fracking wastewater from causing
earthquakes, but Oklahoma's legislature is
too
corrupted to bother.
Argentina's right-wing president claims to have appointed new judges to the
Supreme Court
without
asking for the required Senate approval.
A
new
snooping device is meant for watching pets.
Whose pet are you?
Beware Spooks
Stringing
Along Security Reporters.
Pope Francis has put a softer glove on the same old Catholic sexual
rigidity, but
has
not made the underlying stance more flexible.
Forbes.com demanded readers turn off ad-blockers — then sent
them
malware.
In fact, ordinary ads in web pages are all malware because they
track visitors. Surveillance is a malicious functionality;
hence, malware.
The Internet of Things That
Talk
About You Behind Your Back.
Some are
planning
to foist this on everything in your life.
Wall Street
Taking
Over Nonprofit Sector. Increasingly, the boards of directors of
charities include representatives of Wall Street who will insure that
the charities never rock a boat.
The US government wants to
collect data about thousands of students.
Then, adding stupidity to injustice, it wants to entrust this data
to a private company.
Planning for More Surveillance? US Officials Hold 'Shady Meeting' With
Tech Firms.
An Israeli expat high school student posted tweets that criticized
Israel. School officials accused her of "bullying" someone (who was
never named), and
threatened her with prosecution.
Bands of men, perhaps refugees,
marauded around Cologne
groping and raping women, with the effect of fueling German hostility
towards
refugees.
The left must
face this issue seriously.
The FBI is
investigating
the shooting of Esau Castellanos by Chicago thugs.
A woman reports on how she
escaped from Raqqa
after converting to
Islam and moving there to be a slave of PISSI.
I hope she can teach others to resist this madness.
How Corporate Greed Caused the Massive California Methane Leak.
Two years after marijuana became legal in Colorado, the
results
are clear:
a big drop in arrests and a big increase in state revenue.
The FBI will start tracking instances of cruelty to animals,
except in factory farms.
An individual can
still make a difference
to the world, through firm and thoughtful effort.
Even if you make only 1% of the difference that those people made,
it will still be an important contribution to humanity.
China demonstrates that trying to stop unsnoopable conversation leads
straight to
absolute censorship of software
that people install on their computers.
Citizens of the US, UK and France, your freedom is directly
threatened. I suggest you join a strong and firm privacy defense
organization, without delay.
Various proprietary appliances and systems are competing to get you
to
give voice commands
to them.
They are designed to sucker you, not serve you. If you don't want
to be a sucker, you had better reject them all.
In Venezuela, purchasing food in a grocery store
requires biometric ID and fingerprints.
Purchases there have long required giving a national ID number, and
that itself is oppressive. When in Venezuela I have refused to do
this.
The US government is pushing to turn drivers' licenses into national
ID cards, but some states have resisted. Sad to say, some of them
seem to be
on the verge of caving in.
Facebook thinks that Copenhagen's famous mermaid statue
needs a bathing suit.
The statue is also afflicted by today's harsh and insanely long
copyright.
US citizens: call on DNC chair Wasserman Schultz to
resign.
Guber (*) will encrypt user location data to
protect
users' privacy from some forms of malicious access.
Don't feel safe with Guber yet! If Guber retains the ability to
decrypt that data, the possibility of accessing the data will still
exist. Perhaps when Big Brother wants to see it.
Meanwhile, Guber
demands to know who you are, and demands you run
nonfree software.
* Its official name is "Uber", but I call it "Guber" since it pays
drivers peanuts. Which is another reason to refuse to use Guber.
South Africa is
planning
to punish journalism as espionage, following Obama's evil example.
How
artists look for the cracks in increasing Chinese censorship.
Asking Silicon Valley to 'Disrupt' Terrorists Is Tech Talk for
'Surveillance'.
Pressure from Hindu extremist political organizations in India has
influenced Hyderabad University to punish Dalits that
protested
mistreatment by bigoted students.
Internal emails show that Rahm Emanuel's team worked hard to suppress
the video of Laquan McDonald's murder secret,
for
his re-election's sake.
This is one reason why Rahm Emanuel ought to resign as mayor.
Mr and Ms Hypes left their children in a car in a parking lot while
buying snacks for them. For this, they face criminal charges and
their children
may
be taken away from them.
The Hypes did do one thing that was very wrong: they had a second
child which they could not afford without public assistance. (I don't
know whether they were already poor when they had their first child.)
Many people do that; it is unfair to those children and to the rest of
us.
We should take steps to prevent it from happening. However, arresting
the parents subsequently as they struggle to cope does no good at all.
The right-wing anarchists that occupied Malheur's wildlife management
center are
judged
with prejudice by many Americans because they are "rednecks".
We should not misrepresent the situation by calling them "terrorists".
However, there are fundamental differences between them and Black
Lives Matter.
Black Lives Matter demands that thugs stop unjustified killing of
black people. The occupiers of the Oregon wildlife refuge demand to
be allowed to destroy wildlife for their profit.
There is also a fundamental difference in their methods. Black Lives
Matter does peaceful (though occasionally inconvenient) protests. The
armed occupiers in Oregon threaten violence.
Thus, I support Black Lives Matter, while I hope to see the occupiers
sentenced and jailed.
We should not misrepresent the situation by calling the occupiers a
"militia". Under the US Constitution, they aren't one. If they were
one, they
would
be under the president's orders.
Of 1021 chemicals injected by frackers, researchers found data about
240. Of those,
150
(over half) are associated with reproductive or developmental
damage.
These problems can affect humans and wildlife.
For the other 781 chemicals, no experimental results have been
published, but we can expect that a large fraction of them cause
similar problems.
The
Planet Will Lose Every Time That Business Calls the Shots.
Guns in Texas Psychiatric Hospitals
Could
Harm Patients, Advocates Say.
Football exposes players of all ages to the
danger
of brain damage.
Players at certain ages may be specially vulnerable because certain
parts of their brains are still developing.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is
not
doing its job to protect college football players from this danger.
UK "junior doctors" will go on strike
against
government plans to gradually cut their pay.
The New York Thug Department has
settled
a lawsuit by adopting measures to prevent it from surveilling
people because they are Muslims.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pressure Israel not to label human rights NGOs (but
not right-wing ethnic cleansers) as "foreign agents".
US citizens:
call on
Obama to create the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National
Monument, which would protect the Grand Canyon area from uranium
mining.
The UK spends
more money testing disabled workers
to see who
supposedly could work than it saves by denying disability benefits to
them.
That's despite the fact that the testing system errs in favor of
finding
disabled people "fit to work".
Jenny Jones, Green Party politician, thanks the heroic, whistleblowing
police officer
who revealed how thugs destroyed files about her, and
pretended the files had never existed.
Apparently the surveillance continues, treating her as a terrorist
suspect
along with an unknown number of British dissidents.
Should "US" companies
pay the taxes
they owe? They are lobbying to
get out of it.
We should
tax them on progressive rates, to put economic pressure
on large companies to split up.
Proposed dams
could destroy
1/3 of the world's fresh-water fish species.
The dams
would ruin the seasonal flooding cycle
of Cambodia's lake, Tonle Sap,
source of fish for the Mekong river. Millions of people's food supplies
could be destroyed.
A PISSI fanatic '
Killed His Own Mother
in Syria'.
This story may be of use in convincing people not to join PISSI.
For his sake — as well as ours — I hope a bomb gets him soon.
Where Were the Post-Hebdo Free Speech Crusaders as France
Spent
the Last
Year Crushing Free Speech?
I was there, for whatever little good I can do.
Businesses
must take precautions
against
staff's bringing "internet of snoopers" devices to the office.
They could be snooping on anything or everything.
Of course, individuals should take the same precautions
in their own homes. Don't trust a device that talks to the internet
if it has nonfree software in it.
Some scientific evidence
that the rate of melting of Greenland's ice
is more than was projected.
Haitians angry at the plan
to rig the election
again
forced a postponement.
The French government
wants to make
"emergency" powers permanent,
which would be a blow to freedom in France.
North Korea's [Claimed] H-Bomb Test Points
to Need
for Global Ban on Nukes.
What a $14.44 minimum wage
has done
in Emeryville.
California
now requires
the dishonest "Crisis Pregnancy Centers" to tell the
women they "advise" where to get honest advice about abortion.
Nuclear Weapons Risk
Greater Than in Cold War, Says [Former Head of Pentagon].
Wild bison living around Yellowstone National Park
have received
increased protection.
There is a hardware product that
strips the digital shackles
from
HDCP-encrypted video between a computer and its monitor.
These devices will probably become impossible to get in the US, in a
few weeks. Thus, they will not be able to free all users from this
kind of DRM, nor from the DRM on the media themselves (typically
BluRay or Netfux). Nonetheless, even hundreds of these devices could make HDCP fail to
achieve what the copyright lords want, and that would be a victory
to celebrate. Our ultimate goal is to abolish DRM. DefectiveByDesign.org
Two CIA agents
haves
reportedly been arrested smuggling half a ton of cocaine from
Mexico in a CIA van. They say it was a CIA operation; the CIA says it
wasn't.
We can't take the word of anyone involved.
Nebraska puts teenagers in solitary confinement for months, effectively throwing away the key.
The Pillars of Poland's Democracy Are Being Destroyed. And nobody sees any way to stop it.
The thug that arrested Sandra Bland is being prosecuted for perjury.
Hooray!
Only a tiny fraction of thugs actually kill people, but lots of them
make false accusations or lie to support them. Prosecuting only the
few killers will not change the behavior of thugs in general.
Prosecuting perjury could make all of them fear they will pay for
their crimes.
Former officials in Guatemala are being prosecuted for crimes committed during the civil war.
Reducing the sugar levels in sweetened drinks could prevent lots of disease.
SCROTUS propose North Korea's nuclear weapons as an excuse for expensive anti-missile systems that probably would not work.
In Venezuela, Congress and the Supreme Court disagree about whether certain opposition legislators were elected honestly or by fraud.
Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor promoted a recall petition for the mayor. Officials accused him of a possibly imaginary crime, a white
jury convicted him based on no evidence whatsoever, and he was sentenced to prison for years. But even that did not silence him.
They have mistreated him in prison, too.
The company that was going to build the Keystone XL pipeline
is suing, claiming that under NAFTA the US has no right to reject the pipeline.
I don't know that it will win, but the mere fact that it can try demonstrates the essential injustice of NAFTA and other
business-supremacy treaties.
Let's put an end to NAFTA! And let's defeat the TPP!
Mexico's tax on sugary drinks has substantially reduced consumption of them.
Suzanne Lee dares Northern Ireland to prosecute her for her abortion.
Sarah Ewart needed an abortion because her fetus had a fatal defect, but doctors in Northern Ireland were terrified of life imprisonment if they did it. It cost her 3000 dollars to go to England for the operation.
Women in nearly all countries in Latin America face similar oppressive laws, but there is no nearby place they can go for an abortion.
Michael Moore: Michigan Governor Snyder should be jailed for recklessly poisoning all the children of Flint.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to use an executive order clarifying that US funds can be
used for abortions in cases of rape or incest, or when a woman's life
is in danger.
A
wave
of self-censorship hits Hong Kong bookstores.
Organized global heating denialism
has
not stopped.
Those rich would-be planet roasters know they will lose eventually,
but they are carrying out a real guard action to hold us back from
averting disaster.
They are
planning
to kill your grandchildren.
Oral contraceptives taken before or during pregnancy are
safe.
Specifically, they do not cause any increase in birth defects.
Clinton shows that she will work for the wealthy, by
meeting
with wealthy donors.
We can expect her to kowtow to the MPAA's attacks on our freedom and
to tech companies' attacks on our privacy.
Twitter is
considering
encouraging users to post articles on Twitter. Twitter could
control access to these articles, or delete them.
The overprotecting attitude towards teenagers is a
great
excuse for some companies to gouge.
Bernie Sanders presents a
long
list of reforms for banks, and presents the facts to demonstrate
that fraud is their standard practice.
The
effects
of traumatic events on children's bodies can now be measured from
the level of cortisol in their hair.
Global heating is slowing the
overall
water circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean. One effect is
increased sea-level rise for the northeast US.
Some worry that this circulation pattern could slow so much that it
causes
drastic
changes in the Arctic Ocean.
The Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes some parameters of
global heating to
resemble
a staircase more than an even ramp.
For a while, the increased heat goes into the ocean, then for a while
it goes into the atmosphere. The denial campaign focused on the last
period when heat went into the ocean and
claimed
that global heating has "paused".
A Turkish journalist who was arrested for filming a fight between
state thugs and PKK supporters was jailed "for protective reasons".
Now he has been released on bail, but
still
faces charges.
What could this sort of thing
"protect"
Turkey from? From the truth about
its
government?
The gun lobby has cut the funding of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms to the point where
it can't enforce
existing gun laws.
The head of the Federal Trade Commission
refuses
to use a Fitbit
because she doesn't want to be snooped on.
Bravo to the government official who presents a real example. You won't recover your privacy with weak moans, "It's a shame how much
this device snoops on me, but I can't resist." But if you start
saying, "You snooping jerks, get out of my life!" you will start to
change things, first for yourself.
Local area residents and local Paiute tribe both
want
the anarchists
occupying a wildlife management building to go home.
One in Five Insured Americans Still
Struggle
to Pay Medical Bills.
What's Being Fined? Not
Corporate
Crime.
Medical personnel in Northern Ireland
fear
they will be jailed if they tell women where to get abortions.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to pressure Salafi Arabia to respect human rights and
refrain from militarism.
Burundi's thugs are
killing
dissidents that impose the rule of president-turned-dictator
Nkurunziza.
All the sides involved in the armed seizure of a wildlife refuge
have done
substantial
wrongs.
The President of Drexel University says why that school has no
football team: prestigious football teams
cost
schools a lot of money, and drive up the cost of education.
The same problem with football exists for
college
students and younger students.
Climate mayhem is
harming
farmers' mental health.
Coping with the stress of swimming against the US's racist current
makes
many black college students sick.
Something similar can happen to students from low-income backgrounds,
but
school
policies can prevent it.
Sri Lanka's new president
vowed to end torture
and official kidnapings,
but has not succeeded in ending them.
Clinton
was paid almost 12 million dollars
for 51 speeches.
What could make her speeches worth so much to those with lots of
money?
Saudi Game-Changing Head-Chopping.
America's Food System
Could Be More Vulnerable
to Climate Change Than We Thought.
Convincing the Young to Blame the Old, Not the Rich.
Why
It's Scary That the Mall of America Can Crush Dissent.
Sanders
plans to reduce
the political power of Wall Street.
Clinton's proposals simply don't go far enough.
Bernie Sanders and 'The Big Short'.
The EPA
found
that imidacloprid (a neonicotinoid pesticide) harms
honeybees.
It
has not investigate
how that chemical affects other pollinators,
but if the danger to honeybees is enough reason to restrict its use,
maybe the other studies won't be needed.
I suppose that Salafi Arabia
did not intentionally bomb
the al Noor
Center for Care and Rehabilitation of the Blind, in Yemen. It's just
part of the hell that war is. Which is why Salafi Arabia and the US
are so wrong to pursue this unjustified war.
The NFL
wants to ruin
a local children's soccer field by turning it into
a press center.
Australia
saw reason and allowed
Hassan Asif's mother and brother
to visit and be with him as he died of cancer.
Bravo Charlie Hebdo
for a cover
showing "god" as an armed extremist.
Pope Francis lost a few points in my esteem for trying to claim such
statements
should be off limits.
Soaring expenses for living in Brazil's cities, along with demolition
of favelas,
have given rise
to the Homeless Workers' Movement.
Thanks to SCROTUS, the US
does not even keep track
of the greenhouse
gas emissions from meat production.
SCROTUS
have proposed a bill
to shield companies such as Volkswagen from
lawsuits by victims of their fraud.
The plutocratist politician wants the government to take the side of
the rich in every kind of question.
Violent right-wing anarchists
hate the federal government, but they don't
mind accepting subsidized loans from it.
This shows one of many reasons
I disagree
with anarchism.
New York City thug
started groping a woman
in a restaurant.
When a friend started making a video, another thug attacked him
and arrested him. The thugs threw the cell phone out the window
and made false charges against him.
One of the thugs has been indicted. Why not both?
The UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Palestine
has resigned
after 18 months of being blocked by Israel
from entering occupied
Palestine.
Putin's men
have shut down
a children's theater in Crimea; it is accused
of spreading pro-western propaganda.
Insurance companies
are increasingly giving
drivers an "offer" to track their
driving, an offer which most people effectively can't refuse.
I don't think it an injustice for insurance companies to track
how
you drive, safely or not. I also don't see anything wrong in making the
car
inform you if you do anything that seems risky (though there are some
occasions
when slamming on the brakes, or the accelerator, is important for
safety).
What I object to is anything that allows anyone to track where you
go. The article ends with the obligatory "Give up trying to fight this"
message.
Why Is the Largest Earth Science Conference
Still Sponsored
by Exxon?
On the correct pronunciation of
"Exxon".
NSA whistleblower William Binney
told
Parliament that the UK's massive
listening plans will be useless for preventing terrorism.
They will be much more effective for spreading terror among
dissidents.
Family planning advisors in Northern Ireland, who in general are
forbidden to do abortions,
are nonetheless harassed
at their homes and
in stores by religious fanatics that oppose birth control.
Some women there
get abortion pills
in the mail from where they are
legal.
A twisted form of Christianity
says
that true believers are rewarded
with riches.
Are they worshiping Mammon?
The
diplomatic rupture
that Salafi Arabia has provoked with Iran
is likely to block efforts to negotiate peace in Syria.
Iran is an evil theocracy, and Salafi Arabia is an evil theocratic
absolute monarchy. There is no legitimate room in the human world for
either one, but Salafi Arabia is worse. Both of them execute lots of
people, but Salafi Arabia executes people simply for criticizing state
policy. And it has spread a cruel form if Islam around the world. In this conflict with Iran, nearly all the wrong seems to be on Salafi
Arabia's side. Turning Salafi Arabia into a pariah and blockading its sales of oil
would do the world a lot of good.
Organic farmers
won a victory
when a court upheld a ban on genetically
engineered crops in part of Oregon.
Calling on European countries
to carry out their legal obligation to reject
products made by the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Global heating effects
can make
many power plants (fossil and nuclear and
hydroelectric) cease to function.
Publisher Lee Bo, before his disappearance,
said
that his disappeared partner
was planning to publish a book that the Chinese government wanted to
suppress.
Women in the US
face
many sorts of discrimination.
I think that it's foolish to vote for Clinton just because she's a
woman.
I don't think she wants to make real change in any area.
PISSI
is minor league terror
campaigned with the really big dangers,
including nuclear weapons and burning carbon.
North Korea
claims
to have tested a hydrogen bomb, defying both the US
and China.
PISSI is important enough that we should make efforts to stamp it out,
and take care not to create more places it can spread to; but we
should not obsess over PISSI and get distracted by it from bigger
threats.
Large
And Increasing Methane Emissions from Northern Lakes.
Nevada increased fees imposed on home solar power,
during
the holiday hoping people would not notice.
I suspect that money from the power utilities was used to corrupt the
officials.
Thailand is fighting a war against
wood
poachers.
Pacific bluefin tuna are
being
hunted to extinction for sushi.
A small victory for freedom of speech in the UK: a Christian who was
prosecuted for saying insulting things about Islam was
acquitted.
Since there is no Satan and there is no Hell, all two of his
criticisms are clearly mistaken. As for "heathen", whether that
applies to Islam depends on the definition, but is that word an
insult? Not to me. I am proud to be a heathen.
But those details are all side issues. Freedom of speech includes the
right to criticize, offend, insult, or even mock any person, any idea,
any practice, any belief, and any institution. That includes any
religion — even the
Church of Emacs.
US officials say they plan to besiege the armed anarchists that took
over a wildlife refuge,
cutting
off food, power and phone service.
It is wise to try to avoid shooting, but the gang must be prosecuted
for this.
Europe's
inability
to unify its handling of refugees is making the Schengen
free-travel zone start to crumble.
The UK government is
wiping
out social housing in a giant act of
dooH
niboR.
A US bookstore named after the Egyptian goddess Isis was
forced
to change its name by ignorant American vandals.
The giant methane leak in California was partly due to
removal
of the blowout preventer decades ago.
Some
Canadian CEOs
have already made as much money in 2016 as the
average worker will make in a whole year.
Children that often play with electronic toys that sound bells and
whistles
advance more slowly
in language learning.
More about
Nimr Al-Nimr,
dissident executed by Salafi Arabia.
Salafi Arabia's well-funded PR campaign
pays pundits
to excuse the murder of dissident Nimr al-Nimr or to distract attention
to secondary issues.
Canada ludicrously put
6-year-old Syed Adam Ahmed
on its "no fly" list.
Across the US, some 70,000 rape evidence kits have been
left unanalyzed.
Laws That Restrict Teenagers' Access to Abortion Services Make No
Logical Sense.
If the Oregon Militiamen Were Muslim Or Black, They'd Probably Be Dead
By Now.
The US surprise-cancelled a Muslim grandparent's US visa,
stopping her from visiting her newborn grandchild
in the US.
Economists who have climate expertise say that global heating will be
painfully expensive, an
economic
drain.
It will be far worse than a drain, of course. It is likely to kill
hundreds of millions of people. But people who think in narrow
economic terms may be persuaded more by the drain.
The War on Women Is
About
to Get a Whole Lot Worse.
The civil war in Yemen has
allowed
al-Qaida to operate unchecked, and PISSI is worming in their too.
There is no legitimate reason for Salafi Arabia to fight the Houthis,
and
no
legitimate reason for the US to help.
American football
damages
the players' brains and causes them to die young. We should put
an end to it.
The first step is not to buy, or wear, football fan merchandise. Get
GNU merchandise instead, since that supports a cause that deserves
support.
How the mayor of Mogadishu
won
popular support away from al-Shabaab.
This may be why al-Shabaab has found it necessary to sink to
using
Trump for publicity.
Redditt Hudson quit the thug department in a suburb of St Louis
because its racist brutality was
incompatible
with his wish to be a police officer and to serve and protect.
Many video game consoles
snoop
on their users and report to the internet — even what their
users weigh. A game console is a computer, and you can't trust a
computer with a nonfree operating system.
Correcting
ignorant
anglophone criticism of Charlie Hebdo.
The
2016
presidential election gives the US a chance to defeat the vicious
cycle of plutocracy.
We need to stop being nice to plutocrats. They are trying to
impoverish everyone else. They deserve to be crushed.
An anti-state militia has
occupied
a building at a wildlife refuge in Oregon as a protest.
Setting fire to your grass, with the aim of burning only your grass,
may be good or bad, but it is not ethically comparable to setting fire
to a building.
On the other hand, occupying a government building with guns is not
ethically comparable to a peaceful sit-in.
Michael McFeat, expat working at a mine in Kyrgyzstan,
faces
years in prison for defaming a local food delicacy.
It is impossible to defame Kyrgyzstan's human rights record, which is
worse even than
Thailand's.
Even "free" countries in Europe are not free of the practice of
criminalizing insults.
The state sensibly
deported
him rather than imprisoning him, but that doesn't reduce the
injustice of having a law that prohibits such statements.
Russian censorship almost killed a series of
detective
stories for children.
Salafi Arabia's
execution
of a Shi'ite leader of peaceful protests has aroused threats of
violence from Iran.
I hope that we won't let issues of international rivalries bury the
really issue here: a repressive regime has murdered a nonviolent
dissident. Iran has done likewise. We don't have to choose a side
between them. We can demand they both respect dissent.
Record-breaking floods have
hit
many US states. They are especially unusual because of happening
in winter, which is not when floods typically occur. This suggests
that global heating was part of the cause, which suggests that worse
floods are coming.
The UK government
cut
spending on flood defenses, knowing that this would double the
vulnerability over time.
What use is there in provoking rising seas and
unusual
heavy rains but then preventing them from actually flooding
people's homes?
Poland saved the wolves, but the right-wing government probably wants
to
wipe
them out, as happens also
in
the US.
The article gives a clear explanation of why the absence of wolves
causes big problems with other ecosystems. (But it might make sense
to have more hunting of wild boars, whose meat is in demand from
European gourmets.)
Facebook and Guber can be seen as
cults,
with the ability to mobilize millions of members to condemn any
regulations that protect people from those businesses.
President Kagame rigs the elections in Rwanda, even including a
prearranged small fraction of votes for opposition, and there is
no
independent press to report on it.
US citizens:
call
on MoveOn to ask its supporters which Democrat to endorse for
president.
US citizens:
call for repeal
of the Hyde amendment — allow US government to fund abortions.
US citizens:
call
on the Justice Department to file charges against Tamir Rice's
killers.
A study estimates that the US's wars since 2001 have killed
over
a million people.
Yet another employee of a Hong Kong publishing company has apparently
been
disappeared
by China.
People who have more money than work really love getting
personalized
ads as they pass the door of a store.
The Gates Foundation and USAID are
planning
together how to impose commercial seeds monopolies in Africa.
Salafi Arabia
executed
the leader of a peaceful protest movement.
New Years Eve demonstrated that, yet again, Islamist terrorists are
such
a small threat to Americans that we need not worry about them, and
that we don't need to continue security theater.
But we have plenty of feckless fantasy terrorists;
the
FBI keeps generating them. The latest one has been mentally ill
and easily manipulated all his life.
The ACLU is suing a Catholic hospital to
demand
permission to give Rebecca Chamorro a tubal ligation as part of
her expected birth by cesarean section.
Creeping control of medicine by religion has gone so far that there
are no hospitals near her which would do it.
She could get the tubal ligation separately, but that means an added
risk to her health.
If a church insists on limiting medicine, it should not be allowed
to operate hospitals.
Al-Shabaab, the Islamist terror group in Somalia, has made a
recruiting video
featuring
Donald Trump.
Trump is not responsible for their decision to do this.
He is responsible for stirring up sectarian hatred of the sort
that helps every sort of fanatic.
Protesters are
picketing
the home of the prosecutor whose underwhelming efforts led to no
charges against Tamir Rice's killers.
The secret back door in Juniper Networks firewalls took advantage of a
weakness
introduced intentionally by the NSA in an encryption standard.
Thus, the argument that "If we let the NSA break it, others will take
it" is not mere theory. (People usually state this as, "The bad guys
will use it too", but I reject the presumption that the NSA is always
a good guy.)
Since the weakness has been publicly known for years, this fact does
not prove that the NSA introduced this particular back door. That
might have done by various attackers. It's also possible that the
back door was inserted by Juniper Networks, or by some of its staff,
perhaps in collaboration with the NSA.
Juniper Networks has fixed only part of the known problem. Because
the software is proprietary, users are compelled to wait and see if
Juniper Networks inserts the presumed one-line fix for the rest of the
problem.
If it were free software, these users would be free to insert this
change on their own.
The next step in privatization of all aspects of life is
privatizing
play for children. The promotion campaign says that parents who
don't pay the high fees for this are short-changing their children.
I am sure the idea that children should never be left unsupervised
contributes to this tendency.
China's
new
"snooper's charter" does not include the power to demand a
backdoor. It stops at demanding companies decrypt messages on demand.
Even this may be impossible if it covers messages encrypted by the
users with their own software.
Injection
of oil and gas well wastewater is causing a lot of earthquakes in
Oklahoma, and some of them are strong enough to do real damage.
Israeli schools have banned a
book
about a mixed-ethnicity couple.
Reportedly
100
Britons have gone to fight for the Peshmerga against PISSI.
Artificial ocean reefs, made of used tires, were intended to provide
shelters for marine life. They backfired: the metal clips that held
them together have rusted, loosing the tires to drift across the sea
bottom,
destroying
life there.
Copyright started in England as a system of censorship, and through
the end of 2015 it was used in Germany to
prohibit
publication of Hitler's hate tract, Mein Kampf.
The world would be better off if nobody had ever thought of Hitler's
form of hatred, but we can't get rid of it through censorship.
Unjust extension of copyright in the US has denied us the use of many
books and works published in 1959. Here's a
list
of some.
We should shorten copyright to last 10 years, for old works and new
works.
Some states have strict laws about students' privacy, which schools
violate by
handing
students' data to Google. Schools try to defeat these laws by
designating Google as a "school official".
One part of the solution is that schools should not accumulate so much
data about their students. Personal data, once collected,
will
be misused.
US
Planning
New Iran Sanctions over Ballistic Missile Programme.
Comparing
Facebook's
grab for internet control with Monsanto's control over seeds.
The article gets confused in one point by the incoherent term
"intellectual
property". The sense of understanding that you get from that term
represents a false understanding.
Due to advances in medicine, it is possible to save a fraction of
fetuses born prematurely after
as
little as 22 weeks.
A 22-week fetus, whether inside of a womb or outside, is not a human
being. It is only a potential future human being.
If you give birth to one, you can try to keep it alive until it
becomes a human being. But unless we were in a space colony with an
urgent need to increase the population, I will not drop anything to
help you, and I don't think it's a good use of our tax money. There
is a superfluity of babies that are born without such extraordinary
efforts — and there are millions of real, existing, human beings
that already exist and need help. I think real existing human beings
should have priority over potential future human beings.
Writers have envisioned artificial wombs in which a zygote can develop
into a fetus and eventually into a human being. Perhaps some day we
will build them. That won't create an obligation to use them for
every zygote.
"American
Exceptionalism" allows Americans to believe that the US is so
fundamentally morally right that it is still in the right no matter
what evils it commits.
Everyone:
call
for a new grand jury to consider charges against the killers of
Tamir Rice.
Vincent Emanuele, formerly of the Bush forces in Iraq, reports on how
he and his fellow occupier
created
hatred that manifests in PISSI.
The Bush forces were parts of the US military that were used by Bush
to carry out his private war. They
signed
up to serve their country, but they ended up serving evil instead.
The TPP's rules about trade secrets would
require
inventors and competitors to treat them as secrets, even after they
have leaked.
This reminds me of how the Obama regime treats the Snowden
revelations,
ordering
government employees not to look at them.
Thailand's military is holding people accused of various crimes
in
a military base, where they are often kept shackled and
blindfolded.
This treatment of prisoners is not quite as bad as the US has done in
Guantanamo,
but the wrong is broader in the sense that anyone in Thailand could be
treated this way. but the wrong is broader in the sense that anyone
in Thailand could be treated this way.
China
almost completely blocks
foreign press from Tibet and Xinjiang.
Tech Companies [will]
Face Criminal Charges
If They Notify Users of UK
Government Spying.
The US
committed a similar injustice
with Ladar Levison.
Poland's right-wing governing party
is moving to impose direct
political control
of public broadcasting.
Berlusconi did something similar.
The FBI has protected us from
another fantasy
terrorist.
Marco Rubio
doesn't mind how the US government snoops
on all of us,
but he condemns US snooping on Israeli officials.
Boston thugs
have aggressively investigated
political dissent groups
for many years.
This
continued
with Occupy Boston.
Trying to spot terrorists through supposed "behavioral indicators" of
terrorists
has never had a success, and the evidence that they are
useless keeps increasing.
El Niño rains
will not suffice
to refill California's depleted aquifers.
The responsibility of prosecuting killer thugs in the US typically
falls on their colleagues, the local prosecutors. No wonder it
is so
hard to do this.
Thugs accused of killing, or making false accusations, should be
prosecuted by others.
Students
have been convicted
in Bangladesh of killing secular blogger
Ahmed Rajib Haider.
I disapprove of the death penalty on principle, but aside from that
I welcome this ruling.
When India's government launched an inquiry about Facebook's
drastically unneutral internet access scheme (gratis access to the
poor, limited to a specific set of sites), Facebook
started a DDOS
campaign asking
its useds to send nonresponsive answers. Worse, Facebook's proprietary apps made useds' computers send
expressions of support for this campaign, even when the useds did not
want to.
Never trust these cr…apps. They
are as dangerous
as any other
proprietary software.
Super-rich Americans
avoid millions of dollars in taxes
through dodges
such as moving money through tax heavens.
How plutocracy took over America, starting with the fiscal power of
private banks.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-29 because the old link was broken.]
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[Reference updated on 2022-07-15 because the old link was broken.]
Call on your trade minister
not to sign the TPP.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-28 because the old link was broken.]
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