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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.
The troll wants to increase military spending by 54 billion dollars a year, at the expense of things that benefit Americans and the US.
It wasn't easy to find the names of the "300 scientists" that signed a letter urging hte troll to increase use of fossil fuels. Perhaps that's because they have no pertinent expertise — they are in other fields.
Legalized marijuana has created a economic boom in Colorado with a consequent rise in population and a housing shortage. This has led to more homeless people. So some right-wingers are trying to blame marijuana use for the increase in numbers of homeless.
As other states legalize marijuana, the boom will spread itself around and Colorado won't draw as many people from other states.
Ethiopian journalist Anania Sorri has been imprisoned without trial.
Here's how the troll treats his real buddies, defined as those who paid at least 200 thousand dollars.
Pruitt announced his intention to sabotage the EPA in big ways quickly.
Vietnamese journalist Dang Xuan Dieu was sent into exile after five years in prison in cruel conditions.
US courts are starting to question whether thugs have the right to make people use fingerprints to unlock devices.
A bigot shot two Indian men in Kansas after demanding to know their visa status.
Right-wing hatred directed at foreigners stirs up acts like this. The killer seems to have been susceptible, but such a susceptibility does not always develop into actual violence. That depends on what ideas are being trump-eted in the social environment.
The troll has started hand-picking which media organizations are allowed into press-manipulation sessions.
This looks like a campaign to repress and destroy journalism.
What the troll and Spicer say is unimportant. The press should ignore these press-manipulation sessions and focus on what the troll actually does, and on the leaks that show his plans.
But that doesn't mean the campaign to repress and destroy journalism is harmless.
Republicans are winning the favor of companies that own broadcasting, with a plan to permit increased concentration of radio and TV stations.
Paul Ryan defines freedom as "the ability to buy what you want".
With that definition, wealthy people have and deserve more freedom than the rest of us. This reductio ad absurdam shows that that is the wrong definition of freedom.
Ryan is not alone in proposing this neoliberal definitoin of freedom. Many people I meet say that your freedom is defined as how many options you have. That definition is basically the same as Ryan's, and it has the same basic flaw.
My definition of freedom is "having control of your own life."
Sea Shepherd pursued an illegal fishing boat for four months; when the fishing crew gave up hope of escaping pursuit, they scuttled the fishing boat in deep water.
They knew that if they brought their illegal catch into port, they would be prosecuted based on the evidence Sea Shepherd would provide.
The catch was illegal because the boat was taking protected fish, fish in danger of being wiped out by fishing.
They may still be prosecuted, based on the evidence of fish that Sea Shepherd sailors collected from the fishing boat as it sank. But even if they are not prosecuted, the loss of their boat and their catch is a substantial punishment.
If Sea Shepherd can do this to many such fishing boats, or if navies help, it could do a lot to discourage illegal fishing.
SCROTUS, visiting their home districts, meet with wealthy donors while shunning the voters.
Mexico says it will not not let the US deport Central Americans to Mexico.
US citizens: stand for network neutrality.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to preserve the Dodd-Frank whistleblower protections,
which apply to people that report crimes of their employers.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support HR 975 to end the federal war on marijuana.
US citizens: call on Congress to preserve the Johnson amendment, which prohibits churches and tax-exempt charities (such as the FSF) from campaigning for or against political candidates.
To weaken this amendment would give rich people a way to donate any amount of money to political campaigns, and get a tax deduction for doing so.
The troll's aide, Stephen Miller, is an avowed racist. He made a "white power" hand gesture in a White House event.
An Anaheim thug attacked a teenage girl for walking on his lawn, and ended up shooting at a group of teenagers. Fortunately he did not hit them, but protesters demand his arrest.
White House Defers to "States' Rights" on Transgender Protections — But Not on Legalizing Marijuana.
Sessions has cancelled the plan to phase out federal use of private prisons, which are harsher than government-run prisons.
The troll was paid to do this job by the private prison companies.
Advances in face recognition threaten to track everyone around on the street, even using low-quality images.
Can we determine what victims can do to make this not work?
Kim Jong-un used a chemical weapon, VX nerve agent, to assassinate his brother.
It seems that two different people put two different chemicals on his face, where they came in contact and generated VX.
Technology designed to herd and control is increasingly frustrating to use. Even in the bathroom.
I find most sensor-operated faucets very difficult to activate. The fact that I can't see where the sensor is actually located limits me to trial and error. I have to hunt for a long time to put my hands where they will be detected by the sensor, and I can never do it reliably.
President Do-Dirty of the Philippines is prosecuting opposition leader, Senator De Lima, using absurd charges.
She called him a "serial killer", an accusation which he has admitted.
The troll has started to provoke a new nuclear arms race.
Obama had already arranged to spend a trillion dollars on new nuclear weapons, though without increasing the total number of missiles (limited by treaty).
There is a systematic pattern of US immigration harassing US citizens that have Muslim names.
The Long History of Deportation Scare Tactics at the U.S.-Mexico Border.
There is pressure to stop the tiny "flood" of Central American asylum seekers from the US to Canada.
I am suspicious of exaggerated citation of tiny "dangers". For instance, one MP says "it is not safe" for the refugees who trek across the border, but they are not in much danger and they think staying in the US is more dangerous. She also says it is "not safe" for the community, but what danger is there? All these refugees wish to do is find Canadian authorities to surrender to, away from the border. They are not going to hurt anyone.
But it would be a good thing for Canada to suspend the agreement with the US to return refugees to the US when they go through border crossings. Then they could seek asylum that way.
Leaked documents show how the Heatland Institute operates to promote denial of global heating, and that this is one of its priority missions.
The organization calls itself the "Heartland" Institute, but "Heatland" describes it more accurately. The organization describes itself as "libertarian", but I won't call it that. Global heating denialism has nothing to do with liberty, and little to do with the views of the people that call themselves "libertarians", since most of them are not denialists.
However, I have decided not to refer to them as "libertarians", since I reject their claim to support liberty more than I do. Their basic philosophy is that the state should not actively help people have better lives.
Since they call all state programs to help people "socialist", I am thinking of calling them "antisocialists".
More of the Raqqa diaries.
The author says that PISSI and the Assad regime practice similar cruelties. That may be true in terms of what they do to those they consider enemies. However, my understanding is that the regime defines people as enemies only for opposing it, not for religion.
The Democratic Party elected the establishment candidate, Tom Perez, as chair.
I fear he will rig the 2020 primaries against Sanders or whoever is the progressive candidate.
Scientists remind us that we could destroy half of all living species by 2100.
SCROTUS are wiping out state retirement laws that facilitate keeping a retirement account moving from one employer to another.
Montana Democrats Accuse Republicans of Voter Suppression Ahead of Special Election.
US border thugs harassed Muhammad Ali Jr for hours as he was returning to the US. Their first questions were, "Where did you get your name from? Are you a Muslim?"
I am puzzled by the idea that he needed to prove that he was the son of the famous boxer. They had seen by his passport that he is a US citizen and has an unconditional right to reenter the US.
How the plutocrats gradually replaced American democracy with their own rule.
The troll sabotaged the US treasury by cancelling a recently adopted rule that stopped fossil fuel companies from cheating when paying for taking fossil fuels out of public lands.
Thugs' unions have great political influence, and use it to protect them from punishment for tyrannizing people.
It should be a crime for a thug to turn off any cameras in a place where the thug has an interaction with the public, or to interfere with filming by bystanders. This should be punished by years in prison.
Starting the fight against budget cuts in important social programs involves fighting against increases in military spending.
A famous Australian author was interrogated for hours by US border thugs, evidently for no reason.
She had visited the US 116 times before, but says she will never do so again.
US border thugs were even nastier to Canadian writer Peter Watts.
South Korea's government is bowing to Japanese pressure, and pressuring local governments to remove statues that commemorate the Korean (and other) women that were forced into prostitution during Japanese occupation.
Wolves in Finland are so numerous that they endanger the dogs that rural people use to hunt moose. Finland is looking for a way to maintain a wolf stable population level that can coexist with the sparse human population of rural areas.
Everyone: call on Elon Musk to quit the troll's business council.
US citizens: tell the FBI to keep accepting FOIA requests by email.
US immigration thugs dragged refugee Sara Beltrán Hernández away from the hospital, tied to a wheelchair, as she was waiting for an operation to remove a brain tumor.
Since then, she has received no medical attention although the thugs pretend she does.
This may be because she is kept in a privatized prison. They tend to skimp on their duties towards prisoners, figuring that they can get away with lying about it.
Everyone: Tell the prosecutors to indict the Los Angeles thug who shot at a 13-year-old boy.
A man who publicly burned a copy of the Qur'an, in Denmark, is being prosecuted for blasphemy.
This prosecution is an injustice. In addition, it will lend support to the Islamists that are pressuring for a global ban on criticism of their religion. That is not merely wrong in principle, it is a big threat to our freedom. Denmark should repeal this law.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize, condemn, insult, or mock any person, group, thing, institution, belief, or practice. Censorship is an attack on human rights, and we must fight against campaigns for censorship.
SCROTUS are expected to kill a Democratic resolution demanding that Sessions hand over documents about the Troll.
Arizona, under Republican rule, wants to define organized protest as "organized crime" by defining it as "rioting" if any participant engages in violence.
It is very important for protest organizers to avoid violence. As long as we have enough democracy for a nonviolent protest to be effective, violence only weakens the effect.
But organizers can't guarantee that there is no violence in the vicinity of a protest. If the protesters are disciplined and refuse to engage in violence, anyone in the vicinity of the protest who commits an act of violence could provide an excuse for this prosecution. Even a thug dressed up as a protester.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to kick right-wing Democrat Manchin from his leadership team.
Manchin has repeatedly voted for the troll's saboteur cabinet nominees.
Democrats are not well organized for fighting Republican sabotage.
White House Asked FBI to Deny Reports Linking Russia and Trump Advisers.
I think the same rule requires that the FBI should not have publicly stated that it had found more emails exchanged with Clinton — emails which, a few days later, it admitted contained nothing important.
Israel has stated a formal policy of not giving visas to staff of Human Rights Watch.
That is to support the policy of trampling Arabs' human rights.
US citizens: Call on Sessions to disassociate himself from Operation Rescue.
The troll's men want to deport Herbert Carino to the Philippines, where President Do-Dirty's men are likely to murder him.
Turkish-supported Syrian rebels have captured al-Bab.
Next maybe they will fight PISSI elsewhere — but they would have to fight the Syrian Kurds first.
North Korea used the assassination of Kim Jong-nam as an opportunity to declare its chemical weapons capabilities.
Thugs arrested the last protesters blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline.
All of humanity will suffer the effects of burning the oil that pipeline will enable extraction of.
The troll wants to eliminate deportation hearings and ship people out of the US without time for second thoughts.
Human activity is messing up the ecology of the sea bottom, even deep down.
The defeated tyrannical ruler of Gambia has imposed a billion-dollar debt on the people.
Currently, when tyrannical or corrupt government imposes debts on the country, the people have to pay them even after that government has been kicked out. This is an injustice, and creates a moral hazard: it encourages banks to lend to dictators, knowing they can squeeze the money out of the people afterward.
For the sake of justice, we must enable countries to repudiate the debts of a corrupt or tyrannical regime. That would teach banks to think twice before lending to such a regime, and that would make it harder for such a regime to stay in power.
Poor people can't afford the fresh fruits and vegetables that make for a healthy diet.
Teenagers have blockaded high schools in Paris in protest against the thugs that raped a student and said it was an "accident".
It is wrong for protesters to destroy cars — they belong to people who have nothing to do with that crime.
I am glad that thugs face charges for the rape.
Amnesty International: The divisive rhetoric of the troll, and other right-wing politicians around the world, add up to a current of eliminating human rights world-wide.
Rep. Ryan is hiding from constituents and has deactivated his fax line.
Senator Daines of Nevada cancelled a talk at the state capitol to avoid protesters.
The troll discriminated against blacks in renting housing. He told a doorman to overstate the rent when blacks inquired.
SCROTUS are aiming to eliminate much more than Obama's medical insurance program. They want to replace medicaid with schemes of little help to any but wealthy Americas, and tell the rest, "You're on your own."
The loser displays several typical signs of incipient tyranny.
A journalist interviewed 100 supporters of the troll and reports on what reasons they give for supporting him.
Also what they disapprove of.
If the US starts demanding visitors give passwords to their internet accounts, this could crush the freedom of all international travelers.
The spooks won't tell us why, but they seem to think that what Flynn said to the Russian ambassador, together with what the troll said, suggests a serious wrong.
We can't assume they are telling the truth, because they had reasons to try to screw the troll and his men.
Still, it calls for an investigation.
I've read elsewhere that the NSA's supposed rules for not snooping on Americans are bullshit — because they can get other countries to collect the conversations and give the recordings to the NSA, and then it can do whatever it likes. So don't believe that part.
A US agent displayed irrational discrimination to British children on a school trip, by blocking their teacher from entering the US with them.
The school's principal says the students have learned the right lesson, to condemn bigotry, rather than the trumpish lesson of imitating bigotry.
The Raqqa Diaries were smuggled out of Raqqa to report on PISSI's violence and oppression. The author condemns PISSI for perverting Islam.
The more Muslims learn about what PISSI really means, the more PISSI will be weakened.
Malawi's forests are being cut down — for charcoal.
Unlike Brazil and Indonesia, where business interests are behind deforestation, the pressure in Malawi comes from ordinary people. They are not particularly greedy. The problem is only that they are living unsustainably. (Just as in the United States.)
I hope that the efficient stoves solve this problem. Solar-heated stoves might be even better. But ultimately we need to reduce human population growth before we destroy all forests in a final frenzy.
A right-wing bigot in North Carolina talks openly about exterminating Muslims.
The troll is substantially responsible for this, since he encouraged it.
On April 22, participate in the March for Science.
A BBC journalist is stuck in Thailand for two years as he faces prosecution for reporting on a swindler.
A power shortage in Australia was due mainly to problems in fossil fuel power plants. The planet-roaster Australian government tried to blame it on renewable energy and use that as an excuse to promote fossil fuel use.
The UK government is planning to increase pollution limits so that extending Heathrow airport will fit them.
The FBI has lured another weak-willed, feckless man into participating in a fantasy terrorist plot. He will spend much of his life in prison, and the FBI will present this as an example of "protecting us".
The FBI will claim that it sets these traps to catch capable and dangerous terrorists in the US, if there were any, and it just happens that confused fantasy terrorists keep falling into them. However, anybody mentally competent enough to be a real danger as a terrorist would be competent enough not to be caught.
After two years, Mexico's tax on sugar-sweetened drinks has led to a 15% drop in consumption of them.
It will take years to measure the effect on health.
Meanwhile, the higher tax in Berkeley, California, has decreased sugar-sweetened drink consumption by over 20%.
Women are taking the lead in British union organizing.
In the absence of government by a real Labor party, one that will stand for the non-rich against the rich, unions are what workers need.
Climate scientists in the US fear harassment from lunatic Republican denialists.
Pruitt, the saboteur head of the EPA, worked in close concert with fossil fuel companies to attack the EPA when he was attorney general of Oklahoma. He even repeated what they told him to say.
The troll knew this, of course, but he concealed this illegally from the public long enough to get confirmed by the senate. Here's more information about that.
US cities with many immigrants had bigger declines in crime rates than other cities.
A British teacher, leading a class trip to the US, was blocked from a flight to the US by US officials operating in Reykjavík airport. He can see no possible reason except that he is a Muslim and one of his names is "Mohamed".
Why does Iceland permit US officials to exercise such powers in Reykjavík?
Outside Coastal Bubbles, to Say "America is Already Great" Rings Hollow.
The author does not realize that the blacks that didn't vote in Mahoning County may have been disenfranchized by Republican voter-suppression.
People who hope that manufacturing jobs will return to the US don't realize that robots already mean manufacturing provides few jobs. The cause of their poverty, and of the lack of hope in their cities, is dooH niboR.
Gorsuch's rulings on rights of the disabled show a streak of cruelty.
No One Should Demand the Closure of Galleries — Even for Far-Right Artworks.
When a congresscritter won't meet with constituents, constituents hold a "town hall meeting" with a cardboard mockup of the congresscritter.
The troll wants to distort economic statistics by altering the definition of "exports".
The troll killed funds for electrification of California railroads.
The Israeli soldiers that run the checkpoint for Palestinians going into parts of Hebron harass them arbitrarily to make them move away.
Ethnic cleansing in the Jordan valley: Israel demolishes Palestinians' houses, steals their tractors, and declares their land a military firing zone.
Israel seized even the tents they were given as emergency aid.
The people of Bil'in have protested every week for 12 years against the Israeli wall that was built through their lands.
The only place Israel has the right to build a wall is on the border between Israel and Palestine — the Green Line.
Restricting people's use of their courts is, in effect, rationing justice.
At the same time, if the rich have an advantage in court because they can pay lawyers to make outrageous maneuvers (as the troll does). that's slanting justice.
How We Got Here: The Misuse of American Military Power and The Middle East in Chaos.
In the US: join a rally near you to preserve the US government's support for medical care, now threatened by Republicans.
Now that the US government's excessive surveillance power is in the hands of the troll, Democrats are starting to want to limit it.
If Republicans still want to limit it, maybe it can be done.
Some states are deregulating food produced and sold on a small scale direct from producers to consumers.
Republicans in Iowa proposed a law to impose an explicit political requirement for hiring professors.
Several congresscritters have asked the troll to replace Dubya's broad authorization for war against al Qa'ida, everywhere in the world, with a narrow one directed at PISSI.
One of the commissioners on the Federal Election Commission has resigned as a protest against how the Republicans have stopped it from doing its job.
If the US sends all Central American refugees into Mexico, Mexico will be overwhelmed.
In principle, Mexico does not have to accept them. But it may have no mechanism at the US border to keep them out.
I crossed the border from San Diego to Tijuana by car a few years ago. As far as I could see there was no border control. At some point I was surprised to see that the signs on the street were all in Spanish. "Could we be in Mexico," I asked myself. Indeed, we were. We arrived at our destination in Tijuana without being stopped anywhere.
Later, when I boarded a flight from Tijuana to Mexico City, I had to go through Mexican immigration formalities. That surprised me again, since I was already in Mexico. The agent explained to me that the area near the border has some sort of special status; leaving that area for the rest of Mexico is when immigration control occurs.
If Mexico doesn't check people at the border, it will have no way to stop the US from dumping Salvadoreans, Hondurans and Guatemalans across it.
Thugs are preparing to attack the remaining pipeline protesters at Standing Rock.
They have a silly pretense that it is for the protesters' own safety. If that were their concern, there would be no need for threats or demands; "We are here if you need us" would suffice.
It was right to release Jamal al-Harith from Guantanamo, because he was charged with no crime. The fact that he subsequently joined PISSI can't change that.
17 Britons were prisoners in Guantanamo and released. Here's what happened to them.
One of them joined PISSI. But if he hadn't been imprisoned, maybe he wouldn't have done that.
One of them simply lived peacefully, but the way prison had maimed him provoked his nephew to join al-Qa'ida. We can be pretty sure that, if the US hadn't imprisoned people without charges and tortured them, he would not have become an enemy of the US.
There are surely hundreds more, if not thousands, who were inspired to fight the US by their disgust for Guantanamo.
The US Export-Import Bank financed mines in Africa which run on slave labor and environmental destruction.
It also finances fossil fuel use, so there was a campaign to get rid of it.
Floods in California are driving homeless people out of their tents.
US citizens: oppose union-weakening "right to work" laws at state and federal level.
US citizens: call on Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the administration's ties to Russia.
The troll plans to eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, so that poor people harmed by illegal acts of people, agencies and companies would be unable to get justice.
One former prisoner in Guantanamo joined PISSI and became a suicide bomber.
The enemies of human rights will use this to argue for imprisoning every suspect forever — an instance of their general strategy of exaggerating small dangers as distractions.
We have no way of counting the number of people that PISSI was able to recruit because of resentment of the Guantanamo prison, but it must have been in the hundreds at least.
English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of indigenous Americans, many of whom were sent to other English colonies far away.
How can scientists effectively fight the troll's anti-science politics.
The Watergate burglary was a small part of Nixon's broad attack on the US political system.
This offers a lesson about what the troll might do.
The UK scandalously trains Ethiopian officials involved in "security" (i.e., repression).
Women in Ireland will strike on March 8 demanding a referendum on changing the constitution to permit abortion.
Everyone: support the International Women's Strike.
With so many items in their program, naturally I don't agree with 100%. I disagree in principle with a right to unlimited reproduction, and with the goal of eliminating all limits on migration between countries.
I agree with the rest of their program, which means around 95% of it, so I support the action.
US citizens: oppose Iraq war architect John Bolton as National Security Adviser.
The UK is adopting a law to allow seizing property of people who violate human rights in other countries.
A Mexican woman has lived in the US since age 2, but is not a citizen. She is terrified to have any contact with thugs, even when her husband attacks her, lest they deport her.
A bizarre Utah law requires giving anesthetic to a fetus before an abortion after 20 weeks, but doctors don't know of any way to do that.
The law's purpose is to create an irrational way for anti-abortion activists to convince people that those fetuses can feel pain. First make smoke, then claim it proves there must be a fire.
The troll wants to give priority for deportation of immigrants that are merely suspected of a crime.
A subtle analysis of how the troll's campaign rallies functioned to build up stubborn support, wilfully blind to his mistakes and crimes.
The article errs in treating the loser's victory as legitimate. He did not win the election—it was stolen by Republican voter-suppression, just as in 2000.
China has ordered installation of GPS trackers in every car in a certain part of Xinjiang.
When we see China do this, we recognize it as a repressive act. The universal tracking of cars by camera in the UK is equally repressive, and so is similar tracking that is spreading (though unevenly) around the US.
Let's demand an end to tracking of cars and people on our streets!
Republicans in 21 states are using the troll's complaints about nonexistent voter fraud as an excuse for more voter-suppression.
Data collected via snooping devices such as the Fitbit could be used to deny you medical insurance or make you pay more.
"We charge less if you let a Fitbit track you" is just a nice way of saying, "We charge more if you don't let a Fitbit track you." If you're bit, you'll have a fit.
We Can't Let Silicon Valley Companies And Their Spin Undermine Workers' Rights.
The question for investigation: who told Flynn to phone the Russian ambassador?
Another question to think about: did someone choose a hothead with no diplomatic experience to do an unofficial diplomatic job?
Salafi Arabia's perverted Islam is spreading in Pakistan. Supporters of PISSI are killing the more traditional Sufis and attacking their festivals.
Starting a successful business is a road to wealth, for perhaps a few percent of people; but those who start out poor can't get on that road.
Sri Lanka has arrested officers in military intelligence and accused them of political assassinations.
The teenager who will have to register as a "violent sex offender" had a sexual meeting with a younger teenager.
Why do people think there is something wrong with a sexual relationship between people of ages 13 and 18? The principal activity of human adolescents is sex.
Buying a used "smart" car, house, TV, refrigerator, etc? Usually the previous owners can still remotely control it.
75 years ago, the US imprisoned all citizens and residents of Japanese descent.
Hardly anyone opposed this. The ACLU tried to fight it in court.
The troll's plan to trample the rights of people because they are Muslim is facing a lot more resistance. We have learned something from history.
Americans are pushing to meet with congresscritters on recess, even the ones that "can't make it".
To be progressive, politics must not adulate our focus on the successful entrepreneurs who present themselves as "smart".
To do so is to serve some of the rich.
New Yorkers must replace Senator Schumer with a real progressive champion.
Global heating is reducing the level of oxygen in the ocean, and some kinds of fish already have trouble getting enough.
There are local "dead zones" with very little oxygen, but this is a different issue. This is a decrease in the amount of oxygen in surface waters where no local phenomenon operates to reduce it.
When some US states legalized same-sex marriage, the suicide rate for high school students dropped 14% in those states.
Cryin'air shows its non-respect for people that need wheelchairs by saying, "Please walk up this stairway, or we will leave you behind."
California's rainy season is the wettest ever recorded, and while in some ways that will help make up for the drought, it was the occasion for the Oroville dam to start to break.
Paradoxically, global heating makes for bigger rains and for deeper droughts — just not at the same time and place.
The precarious service sweatshop platforms are platforms for racial discrimination.
This results from making users give their names, then allowing lots of people (most of them racist, at least unconsciously) to accept or reject each user.
Please don't use the word "sharing" to describe what these platforms do. What they do is a kind of business, and "sharing" means cooperation that isn't a sale.
"Gig economy" is not incorrect, but "precarious service sweatshop" explicitly states their principal wrong.
Supermarkets offer fresh fruit and vegetables all the time by importing them from other countries, even other continents. The extreme weather events that interrupt this are a foretaste of global heating disaster.
Scientists protested in Boston: Stand up for Science.
Here's what's wrong with Bannon.
In specialized high-tech manufacturing, foreign companies often out-compete US rivals by treating their workers better.
Those companies succeed even though they pay higher taxes than in the US, which enables everyone in those countries to live a better life.
This is interesting, but it doesn't make globalization ok overall. Specialized high-tech manufacturing employs only a small fraction of workers. It is the exception and will remain so. Most factory employees are in the race-to-the-bottom economy where globalization provides a force to knock down unions and workers' rights. For them, as for farm workers, globalization is a disaster.
"Trump's Lying Reveals That He Is Empty Inside."
It appears that the only way lying can get you fired as the troll's servitor is if spy agencies catch you and dislike you enough to use the evidence.
Montenegro claims it defeated a Russian-sponsored coup d'etat in October.
Old CRTs need to be recycled, but the materials are not valuable so the recycling companies are paid to take them. Closed Loop was paid to accept millions of them, then didn't recycle them, and went bust.
If the UK exits the European Union, it will cease to have laws to protect human rights.
An Israeli soldier who murdered an incapacitated Palestinian prisoner has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.
I think that is too little for cold-blooded murder.
Rosa Ortega, who has lived in the US since infancy, will be deported to Mexico because she voted in Texas without authorization. The normal penalty is probation.
She didn't try to hide her identity, she just didn't know that she wasn't allowed to vote, and the state didn't tell her.
Adults who have lived in the US since infancy should be entitled to citizenship even if they commit little crimes like this. (That doesn't mean they shouldn't be punished.)
US citizens: call for impeaching the troll now.
US citizens: sign up for meetings this week with your congresscritter and staff.
Extreme heat is bleaching coral again in the Great Barrier Reef.
This despite the fact that El Niño is not happening this year.
The only way to save coral is to cap CO2 in the atmosphere.
Right-wingers are the ultimate sensitive snowflakes,raging against anyone who violates their PC (populist correctness) rules for speech.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to legislate Bannon's removal from the National
Security Council.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on the Ladies Professional Golf Association not to hold its tournament in the troll's golf course.
UK universities are being flooded by antisemitism.
Exit from the EU creates the opportunity for the UK to raise money discouraging speculation and encouraging investment.
Most Republican congresscritters are hiding from their constituents during their week home from Washington.
Ramirez, in immigration prison, says that the immigration thugs altered his statement to make it appear to be a confession of gang involvement.
Should North Korea be on listed as a supporter of terrorism?
The assassination of Kim Jong-nam was a brazen crime, but equating murder with terrorism would undermine the meaning of the word "terrorism". And even if it were terrorism, one instance of it is not "repeated".
Now that coal plants are uneconomical to run, the planet-roaster government of Australia wants to change rules to give them "clean energy" funds.
Meanwhile, deadly heat continues to blanket parts of Australia.
None so blind as he who will not see.
Iraqi Shi'ites post bloodthirsty videos of killing PISSI prisoners.
As the FARC and the Colombian state make peace, assassination of activists is increasing.
The paramilitares are involved in this. They were the worst terrorist group in Colombia, even when the FARC was at war. For instance, they collaborated with the Coca Cola Company bottler to murder union organizers.
US employers increasingly track everything that employees do while at work. Even how often they speak to someone.
I think we need to limit this, by law if we can't find another way.
Apps and devices to monitor medical indicators can make people's health worse. They can lead to false alarms and pointless anxiety.
The saboteurs have changed the Department of Energy web site that used to teach kids about the environment.
The Same Republicans Who Pushed for Invasive Surveillance Are Complaining About It Now.
Zuckerberg wants to make Facebook a platform for world-wide democratic decisionmaking. In other words, to require people to be useds of Facebook if we want a say in political decisions.
That might be ok if that part of Facebook is pulled out and converted into a public utility. I say "might" because there are likely to be other pitfalls that would have to be avoided.
CETA would allow 40,000 US companies to demand changes in European laws, through their Canadian subsidiaries.
Germany has classified a doll with a built-in microphone as an illegal spy device. People who own them are required to disable the microphone.
Does this seem like an overreaction to you? I think action is required so as to teach people how dangerous these listening devices are. I disagree with punishing people who have bought them, but they ought to fix the devices.
The device is nasty in other ways too, It is full of proprietary software, and it communicates with other devices. To use it at all is a mistake. But the microphone allows it to snoop on people that don't use it.
"Ignore his insults and focus on his lies" is a step in the right direction. But you have to go further because his lies are mostly trolling too.
I'd say, ignore his insults, and ignore his lies except when attacking them is funny. Focus on the troll's actions and how they are unjust or damaging.
SCROTUS rushed to confirm saboteur Pruitt as head of the EPA before he obeyed the court order to release emails he exchanged with fossil fuel companies. I guess SCROTUS feared that the email would give them some reason they had to reject him.
Senator Manchin is officially a Democrat, but in deeds he is a Republican.
Obama's head of the Securities and Exchange Commission was working the whole time for the companies she was supposed to regulate. Now she has returned to working for them more directly.
The troll's appointee will probably act even worse because person won't be obligated to pretend to be doing the job right.
A Canadian court held the government legally responsible for the suffering and life impairments caused to indigenous children cause by forcibly taking them from their parents and putting them into assimilationist boarding schools.
It is amazing that this continued as late as 1984.
The US had a similar policy of coercing indigenous children to attend assimilationist boarding schools, and this was only finally eliminated in 1978.
Another technique for forced assimilation was taking indigenous
children away from their families and
giving
them to non-indigenous foster families.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The troll and his appointed White House staff use a private email server.
Remember the exaggerated attacks on Clinton for using a private email server.
Arresting and deporting people for participating in public safety activities makes the whole community less safe.
US thugs go to great lengths to hide their use of stingrays.
Two big coal-burning power plants in the US are expected to shut because they are no longer economical.
The article ignores the most important reason we need to turn off coal-burning power plants: as one step to avoid global disaster.
By the way, global heating disaster could eliminate a lot more jobs than are provided today by fossil fuels. Human society is taking a terrible and stupid risk by continuing the subsidies that keep fossil-fuel-burning power plants running. But that's plutocracy for you.
The troll punished California by refusing federal aid for the evacuation of areas threatened by the damage to the Oroville dam.
This could be retaliation for opposition to the troll's other cruelty. For example, California is moving ahead making the whole state a "sanctuary" for unauthorized immigrants.
The term "sanctuary" is misleading. No city or state can stop immigration thugs from operating — all it can do is deny the cooperation of its own agencies.
Sally Yates warned the troll in January that Flynn was covering up contacts with Russia.
The troll fired Yates but not Flynn. He continued to defend Flynn until the fact that Flynn was lying became public knowledge.
I wonder why the troll cared about public pressure about those lies. Was it that some SCROTUS demanded it?
The biggest danger to the US today is not the troll. It is SCROTUS, who we now see will support the troll's actions and overlook his dishonesty almost without limit.
The troll's executive orders have been mainly for show. (The article overlooks the fact that the executive order about the Dakota Access pipeline did cause construction to restart.)
Alas, his appointees are doing real harm, and so are SCROTUS.
This is why confronting SCROTUS now in their districts is so important.
Their intention is to bamboozle the public so as to serve the plutocrats, but the public can make that more difficult.
The Tories do not like the study which blames medical care cuts for 30,000 more deaths in 2015 than in previous years.
Britons, are you letting minor dangers such as terrorism distract you?
Americans, our medical system is much worse than Britain's NHS, even in its current degraded form. How many Americans die each year from this?
US volunteers try every two years to count all the homeless people, but they overlook a large fraction, maybe more than 1/3.
The US State Department is partly inoperative, since the troll makes all decisions without consulting or even informing anyone there.
The troll pretends to be good at hiring people, but we see now that he can't do that well.
Senate Democrats demand information about the troll's dealings with Russia and call on Sessions to recuse himself from the issue.
'Draconian' Trump Gag on Scientists Could Affect Legislation, Experts Warn.
US citizens: Support the bill to prohibit a US nuclear first strike.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate White House ethics violations.
US citizens: support the Global HER Act which would overturn the global gag rule.
This petition is run by Population Connection, which I am a member of.
Canada switched to a proprietary payroll system a year ago for paying government employees. Many employees have gone unpaid for months. The article was published in November but the situation is basically unchanged.
The loser is an extreme example of a common phenomenon: bosses that think they can demand anything.
That does not conflict with the conclusion that he is on the edge of insanity. There are many sorts of psychological problems which, in their extreme forms, can be called insanity, but have less severe forms that certainly aren't insanity.
"Smart city" often means massive surveillance. I've concluded that anything described as "smart" is very likely to be an injustice. There are exceptions, but be very suspicious of them.
Microsoft is converting LinkedIn into a system for tracking and profiling people as employees. This makes it highly dangerous.
New Jersey Governor Christie vetoed a bill to require thugs and prosecutors to report on the property they "seize" (i.e., steal) from people without charging them with crimes. His reasons are absurd.
I hope the legislature can and will ignore his no-op "compromise" and override the veto. They have the votes for it.
One month of "government" by the loser shows he doesn't know how to do anything well, except troll the media and keep his hard-core supporters fired up.
US warhawks want to send more US troops to Afghanistan "to train Afghan soldiers", and there is no political will in Congress to refuse. No amount of training will enable government soldiers to fight as well as religious fanatics. The only real decision for the US to make about the Afghan government is how long to prop it up.
US immigration thugs can label you as a "gang member" based on vaguely suggestive "evidence".
Empathy is not necessary for thinking about good and bad, and if we assume that it is, we may fail to try to do justice to those who (for other reasons) we cannot empathize with.
The UK has cut prison guards in half, firing the most experienced ones. The remaining ones have no training in how to deal with the prisoners that are being driven mad by prison conditions.
US citizens: Tell the US not to target survivors of domestic abuse for deportation.
The US immigration thugs held a meeting with congresscritters, but members of the House Hispanic Caucus were not allowed.
Paul Ryan's scheme for medical insurance would make it cheaper for healthy people (provided they don't have a problem) and impossibly expensive for everyone else.
Here are other Republican schemes to deny millions of Americans medical care.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports on 10 journalists who are being prosecuted for covering pipeline protests.
This is in addition to protesters. Federal thugs are arresting pipeline protesters away from the protests, and charging them with horrible "crimes".
This is a policy of systematic repression, intended to crush Americans' spirit so they won't resist. I hope it has the opposite effect.
Contrasting Bannon's theocratic agenda with the previous generation of "theocons".
The FBI is now pursuing right-wing fantasy terrorists as well as Islamist fantasy terrorists.
The loser's new nominee for Secretary of Labor did a bad job in the Justice Department (that's assuming it wasn't intentional).
US border thugs jailed a Mexican woman as she was in court asking for an order to protect her from a violent man.
This sort of thing will make unauthorized immigrants frightened of asking for protection.
Another immigrant faces deportation because of a tattoo which border thugs claim is suspicious. They don't think it is necessary to charge him with any crime, let alone to try him for it.
The death in French jail of Adama Traoré in July is still being investigated.
The troll is already planning ways to crush civil society in the US.
It appears Russia and Syria were behind an attack on an MSF hospital in Syria a year ago.
A giant coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon River is unlike all other known reefs because it thrives under light-blocking sediment. Scientists are just beginning to explore it and have found many new species.
It will be killed by ocean acidification if spilled oil from wells to be drilled nearby don't get it first.
Immigrants across the US went on strike, shutting many restaurants and some other businesses.
A Republican congresscritter (Chaffetz) has proposed two good bills, for a change. One would require a court order aimed at a specific person before the state can use a stingray to track cell phones. The other would ban all other use of stingrays.
Israeli leaders no longer have to pretend to want to make peace with Palestine or end the occupation of the West Bank. They can come out and admit their real goal—annexation of the West Bank.
SCROTUS have introduced a bill to weaken the CFPB so that it couldn't protect people much any more.
Teaching a lesson about solidarity, the 5th grade basketball team in a Catholic school voted to forfeit the season's competition rather than obey a rule that would have required kicking out the two girls on the team.
The head of the House Intelligence Committee insists there is nothing to investigate about Flynn's contacts with Russia.
On behalf of Wall Street, SCROTUS propose to eliminate California's new retirement savings plan.
Buyers of new houses in the UK get a sort of warranty, but they are being forced to sign nondisclosure agreements for the complaints they are compensated for.
The staff of UK "jobcenters" treat unemployed people as chiselers to be kept down, not as citizens to be helped. They arbitrarily punish anyone that is not subservient by making them go hungry or even homeless.
It can't be the case that everyone working in every "jobcenter" has spontaneously developed a cruel streak. The ethical tone of the organization comes from its leaders, and we know they have sometimes had quotas for punishments. They have done this, and I would guess they did it intentionally. Every penny less provided to the poor is one more penny for dooH niboR.
Thus they demonstrate, once again, that the Tories are lower than vermin.
SCROTUS refuse to investigate Flynn's links with Russia. They only want to investigate the leaks that told us about those links. In the same way, some Democrats attack the cracking of Democratic Party emails to distract attention from the anti-Sanders dishonesty of the party officials.
The loser's regime has arrested a Mexican who was brought to the US as a child, and who was employed pursuant to permission given him under Obama. That's the troll's cruelty at work—intended to reinforce the support of people who support him for his cruelty.
Everyone: tell Oklahoma legislators: don't let men veto abortion.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the troll's budget cuts.
Right-wing extremist judges such as Gorsuch hide their plans behind a fictional idea of "original intent" which systematically ends up meaning "right-wing".
Systematic repression and torture effectively treats all defense of human rights in China as crime.
Torture includes denying people treatment for diabetes and cancer.
SCROTUS eliminated a rule, made under Obama, that forbids demented old people from buying guns.
I don't know whether demented people will misuse guns very often, but they often mistake their relatives for burglars. Those who are well enough to grab and shoot a gun could shoot their relatives.
If there is no research on whether those people are likely to misuse guns, why is that? Because Republicans have prohibited federal funding for any research about gun violence. Step 1: ensure there is no research. Step 2: cite the lack of research as a reason to eliminate a rule.
In London, blacks and people of mixed black-white ancestry are disproportionately attacked with tasers, showing that the thugs are applying a double standard.
US thugs are disproportionately violent towards nonwhites, too.
In Cambodia, the big threat to the rain forest is cutting the trees for timber.
Instead of Truman's "The Buck Stops Here", the troll's motto is "The Buck Never Gets Here."
Global heating is affecting a worldwide oceanic current system. As a result, the ocean is absorbing more CO2 than was previously forecast.
This slows global heating somewhat but speeds up ocean acidification, which can wipe out coral, molluscs, and many other forms of life in the ocean.
Air pollution may cause millions of premature births.
The extent of Antarctic sea ice has hit a record low.
Before this year, Antarctic sea ice was growing, and this was cited by global heating denialists who erroneously presented it as evidence there was no heating.
SCROTUS and the troll have eliminated the requirement for US extraction companies to disclose their bribery of foreign governments.
The Office of Government Ethics called on the troll to investigate Kellyanne Conway's violation of ethics rules.
Fake news from the White House: an Arkansas case which found no voting by any ineligible voters is cited as proving there are lots of them.
UK citizens (and anyone else): Support Liberty's campaign against the snooper's charter by sending a donation to
Liberty The Royal Bank of Scotland Sort Code: 15-30-00 Account Number: 71186809or by mailing a check to
Liberty House 26-30 Strutton Ground London SW1P 2HR.They also accept donations digitally, but their web site requires nonfree software to do that, and you shouldn't run nonfree software.
US citizens: call on US prisons that implement virtual visits with prisoners not to use this as an excuse to ban real visits.
I am worried about these virtual visits. Does the visitor have to run a nonfree program? I suspect it does.
US citizens: call for continuing research about pollinators despite the troll's hiring freeze.
You will need to use the Salsalabs method to overcome a Javascript problem.
Natalya Sharina is being prosecuted in Russia for letting people read a banned Ukrainian nationalist book.
The staff of the Ukrainian library say that the copy that thugs reported finding there wasn't theirs — they planted it.
To carry out the Paris treaty pledges, the EU must close all coal-burning power plants by 2030.
To do its share of avoiding disaster surely requires more and sooner.
The famous "border wall" is the least of the nasty things in the troll's Jan 25 executive order.
It's easy to bribe the president of the US: just stay at one of his hotels and buy some thousand-dollar bottles of wine.
I once bribed Congressman Barnie Frank with a zero-dollar bill. I had the ambition of someday bribing the president that way, but I realized it was unlikely I'd ever meet the president of the US.
Now I see I could easily give the president a nonzero bribe, but I wouldn't want to.
SCROTUS are responsible for appointing Sessions, just as much as the troll is.
Yazidis from Iraq, accepted as refugees, were included in the troll's partial Muslim ban (although they are not Muslims).
A study found that UK parents give more mental stimulation to the first-born child, on the average, and it is reflected in their IQ.
Many kinds of human relationship jobs now appear vulnerable to replacement by robots.
13 million Syrians have trouble getting the necessities of life. 600,000 are in towns under siege. Most of them are besieged by Assad's army, but some are besieged by PISSI. 4 million more live in areas that are hard to reach, sometimes because of fighting. UN aid can't reach many of these people.
For curing bulimia, 20 weekly sessions of cognitive behaviour therapy was far more effective than 20 weekly sessions of psychoanalysis, or even 100 weekly sessions of psychoanalysis.
Australian gas-burning power companies are choosing to keep power plants off line so as to manipulate the market.
Australia's planet-roaster government is trying to use this to argue for burning more fossil fuels.
The loser is trying to bully the store Nordstrom for dropping his daughter's celebrity clothing line.
America's "paid protesters" were ripped off 181 million dollars of pay in just one day.
The troll wants to convert Medicaid into a block grant, for states to use as they wish. Many states would eliminate care for disabled people.
Furthermore, the block grant would not be increased to cover the need, so it will increasingly fall short, almost forcing each state to keep cutting this care.
The FBI says that new restrictions on FOIA requests will be lifted when its new web site becomes active.
If the FBI follows through on this, the matter won't be a real problem.
The president of Sri Lanka promised not to prosecute rejected refugees returned there.
The loser expresses contempt for people when shaking their hands.
Leaks have made the troll pull back from several nasty policies before officially ordering them. This demonstrates how democracy depends on leaks.
A Democratic representative has invoked a rule by which Congress can inspect officials' tax returns for conflicts of interest.
US intelligence officials say that the troll's campaign aids talked frequently with Russian officials.
The Tories propose to jail journalists that publish government leaks. The UK has been drifting steadily into tyranny, with increasing surveillance, censorship, and repression. It is logical that such a state would take this additional step into out-and-out repression of the press.
And natural that the Tories, when criticized for this proposal, pretend that the law's obvious consequences would not occur, for some magic reason they decline to explain.
Unions and climate defenders now have an opportunity to unite.
A girl sent Zachary photos of herself in underwear, so he will have to register as a "violent sex offender" for all his life.
Merely to possess a copy of anything should not be a crime.
Hamas in Gaza elected a hardline leader that opposes any reconciliation with Israel. In effect, a miror image of Netanyahu.
Michael Flynn has resigned as the troll's national security advisor because of his contacts with Russia.
Of all the troll's advisors, Bannon endangers national security the most, since he is attracted to the idea of starting a war.
A UK rapper was awakened by thugs breaking his door down. Someone saw him entering his house and assumed he was a burglar.
The article doesn't say, but I hazard a guess that he is black.
A similar thing happened to a black Harvard professor who was reported to the thugs for trying to get into his house in Cambridge, Massachusets.
The European Parliament voted to approve CETA, but national governments still have a chance to block it.
The ACLU is suing to destroy DNA samples taken by thugs after illegally harassing some teenagers (apparently because of their skin color).
A proposed federal law would require thugs get court orders before they collect people's geolocation data.
A survey of US community college students found that 13% of them are homeless and 20% don't get enough food.
Some US teenagers have to go hungry so their younger siblings can eat.
Part of the solution to this is providing reliable birth control to everyone at no charge. But once children are born, society must make sure they get everything they need to grow up well and capable.
SCROTUS are attacking the EPA in several ways at once.
It was over 100F in Oklahoma recently — an astounding sign of global heating.
The troll's management approach creates distrust and rivalry.
Israel systematically seizes land and houses belonging to Palestinians that live outside Israel — even when the reason for that is that Israel won't allow them to live inside Israel.
Nonviolent pro-Palestine activists in Spain are being prosecuted for urging a music festival to exclude a musician who campaigns against rights for Palestine.
Whatever you might think about the issue of the occupation of Palestine, it could not justify prosecuting people for taking a stand on the matter.
6 crucial questions about the troll and Flynn.
Ajit Pai as head of the FCC is systematically for big companies and against users of technology.
500 US Christian leaders have called for welcoming refugees, and rejected the troll's partial ban on Muslim visitors.
SCROTUS in a House committee blocked the demand for the troll to show the committee his tax returns.
In other words, they really really want him to get away with anything whatsoever.
Greece's leaders have refused to make more cuts, thus in effect causing a showdown with the euro-banksters that are crushing the country.
It is worrysome that the IMF seems to have gone back to the side of the banksters.
Has anyone tried to estimate the number of peopl in Greece that the euro-banksters have killed? If you see such an estimate, please send it to me.
Pence is putting allies into the US government to push his theocratic agenda.
A proposed law in Mexico would ban import of US corn.
This might help Mexican peasants support themselves.
Mines in Australia are covering up what it will cost to clean up the mines once they are exhausted.
Some Americans are refusing to pay federal taxes as a protest against the loser.
The really bad things that the US does with its money, such as spending more on the military than all its main rivals put together and bombing people around the world, while bailing out the big banks that are our country's worst enemies, did not start this year.
The White House "press corps" is shifting its membership, downgrading mainstream media and inviting trollish extremists.
Imagine calling the New York Times "liberal", and you see how extremist they are.
Apple proposes a fingerprint-scanning touch screen — which would make it difficult to use it at all without having your fingerprints taken.
There are still a few scientists, outside the climate field, that deny global heating. The troll has chosen one hard-core denialist to give him "science advice".
Selling water from exotic sources reflects and encourages a propensity for the rich to engage in frivolous waste.
One more reason why we need to transfer a lot of their money to poor people. Even if it won't lift everyone out of poverty, it will reduce the tendency that pushes society into increasing levels of frivolous waste.
The previous UK law to repress whistleblowers and journalists was covered up so Parliament would not realize what it was passing. The current attempt was also supposed to be covered up, but this time that failed.
Now Britons have a chance to fight to prevent repression.
The EU ban on neonicotinoids allows "emergency" exceptions, and some countries authorize these without real scrutiny.
The troll sets the ethical tone of the administration. By his constant lying and cheating, he inspires everyone to lie and cheat.
If you didn't want to lie and cheat, would you accept a job with
him?
Would he offer you one?
A former confidant of the troll, being investigated by the FBI over contacts with Russian intelligence, asks for an official investigation.
The EU parliament has voted for a tightening of the greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme. Emitters gamed it and made it totally ineffective.
The fact that even with the reforms it is still not tight enough to work very well shows that they still have far too much power.
The troll abolished the US policy of supporting in principle a Palestinian state.
Pudzer has been forced to withdraw, after criticism convinced some Republican senators to reject him.
His companies has now been sued for illegal wage-fixing conspiracy between the franchises that are (notionally) "independent" and competing businesses.
That's typical of how businesses today try to have it both ways.
Alas, this victory comes afer most of the saboteurs, including those in the crucial areas of climate and human rights, got through.
Seattle Judge Demands an Explanation after Undocumented 'Dreamer' Arrested.
He has been in the US since he was a child.
Saboteur nominee Pruitt is connected with 15 companies that have been disciplined many times by the EPA.
Republicans say it out loud: a pregnant woman is a "host". In effect, they consider women incubators.
Proposal: tax junk foods and subsidize healthful foods.
ALEC has made common cause with the troll to eliminate regulations that protect us from being poisoned or cheated by businesses.
It is hard to determine which side is responsible for the renwed fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Theresa May is trying to perpetuate the "special relationship" with the US by sucking up to the troll.
There is a name for this kind of relationship: "slavish subservience".
Plutocratic states are attacking the idea of retirement, by reducing pensions to the point where people can't really live on them.
There's no money for pensions because it's all needed for dooH niboR.
For over a billion people working poor, work is hell.
To a large extent this is because a rich few get too much of a share of the total.
The NAACP and other civil rights groups have been bought by major ISPs and now campaign against network neutrality regulations.
US citizens: Support preserving the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the troll to stand by the Paris climate agreement. It's insufficient to avoid disaster but it will reduce the disaster somewhat.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: thank the US football players that refuse to visit the troll.
US citizens: call on the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the troll's conflicts of interest and connections to the Russian government.
Voting rights defenders in Georgia have got a court order to block one Republican scheme for voter suppression. Alas, Republicans keep inventing new methods to do this, and for each election several schemes are in effect to rig the election.
Many young vaguely-progressives naively assume that the TPP must have been good because Obama supported it and the troll opposed it. This article explains what is dangerous about the TPP and other business-supremacy treaties. We also need to teach people that Obama was not much of a progressive, and Clinton even less so.
The founders of Mossack Fonseca, the wealth-hiding company, have been arrested for money laundering. Accusations stemming from Brazil's investigation are spreading around Latin America. The current president of Panama and a former president of Peru are involved, as is the current president of Brazil.
India is forcing nearly everyone into a system that tracks people through fingerprints and iris scans, and records all payments. It may also use a universal basic income to force people into total surveillance. Whether the Aadhar system's security can be broken is a side issue of minor importance. The principal danger is what the state will do with the data. The Modi government leans toward repression, and more power to track everyone means more power to repress both minorities and dissidents.
A UK MP says that the abusive attacks directed at women politicians are discouraging women from entering politics.
Freedom of speech means people have a right to say rather nasty things to anyone. They have a right to say things we consider disgusting.
But that doesn't mean we should not show our disgust for them and pressure them to stop.
In an Age of Robots, Schools Are Teaching Our Children to be Redundant.
Kim Jong-un's brother, who had criticized him and fled, died in an airport after saying someone had put a contact poison on his face.
A suspect has been arrested.
Feminism must not be depoliticized into self-pampering. It must fight to end the power that men usually have over women.
French thugs claimed that they anally raped a teenager "by accident".
I guess the resulting riots were an accident too.
Theocratic Republicans in Oklahoma are proposing anti-abortion laws that make no sense except to religious nuts. One would ban abortions based on genetic abnormality in the fetus.
Another would require a woman to get the fetus's father's approval for an abortion. If an abortion should require this, what about the more drastic act of having a baby?
US citizens: call for Keeping wolves in Alaska protected on wildlife refuges.
US citizens: phone your Democratic senators and urge them to stand firm against Gorsuch.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to support HR 608, which is designed to pressure Salafi Arabia about its war in Yemen since that makes it an ally of al Qa'ida.
The Tories' Digital Repression Bill proposes a ten-year prison term for sharing copies of almost anything, on or off the internet.
43% of American children live in families that are barely able to afford basic needs. This fraction has increased since 2009.
The US racial wealth gap between blacks and whites has built up through generations of discrimination, and personal efforts such as education, working hard, and marriage are insufficient to overcome the effects.
Exposing the Myths of Neoliberal Capitalism — and why the troll is not likely to change it in the way that would help Americans.
Insecure work, often involving forcing workers to be "self-employed", impoverishes the state as well as the individual workers.
Part of the remedy for this is to stop basing the taxation of businesses on how much they pay to employees. The practice gives businesses a perverse incentive to have fewer employees. Regardless of how they achieve that, it is not what we want to incentivize.
Gorsuch wants the Supreme Court to ban abortion and ban assisted suicide. Here is a suggestion for how Democrats could defeat his nomination: by showing that he argued that Merrick Garland should have been confirmed.
I didn't support the campaigns in favor of confirming Garland, partly because I was sure Republican senators would ignore them, and because he's a "centrist" and corporatist, too right-wing for me to support. I agree he is much less bad than Gorsuch.
The income of the bottom 50% of Americans in 1978 was 20%. As of 2015 it was 12%.
South Dakota legislators defended the rights of employers to refuse to make feasible accommodations for pregnant women.
This amounts to defending the profits or convenience of the powerful (bosses) against the needs of the weak (employees, female ones in this case). And telling these women, "just quit your job" means, for many, "just starve," due to other forms of cruelty that these same legislators support.
Spyware was installed into the phones of Mexicans that advocate a tax on soda with sugar.
Canada is looking at authorizing US border thugs to violate the rights of Canadians trying to enter the US.
Canadians, I hope you organize to stop this.
The People's March for Education Justice is planned for several US cities.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the nomination of Pruitt to head the EPA. Pruitt wants to eliminate the EPA, but sabotaging it would be the next best thing.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on journalists to skip the White House correspondents' dinner.
Americans, prepare yourselves now to oppose the power grab that the troll has already said he intends to make as soon as a terrorist or military attack gives him an opportunity.
NAFTA hurt Mexicans more than any wall could. NAFTA and the previous application of neoliberal policies starting in the 1980s ended income growth and poverty reduction in Mexico.
NAFTA has harmed workers in the US, too.
Calling NAFTA a "trade treaty" leads people to erroneously suppose that it is a compromise between conflicting interests of various countries — that each decision in NAFTA would pit the interests of Mexicans against the interests of Americans and the interests of Canadians.
In fact, NAFTA is a business-supremacy treaty, and it pit the interest of plutocrats in Canada, Mexico and the US against the interests of most people in Canada, Mexico and the US. That's why we need to get rid of it.
The prime minister of Australia knew that an electric blackout was due to a failure in a gas plant, but publicly blamed the extent of renewable electric generation.
This shows he is willing to lie to destroy civilization.
US policy towards Iran is based on three assumptions that are mostly false.
Iran is not expansionist, and is mostly rational about its foreign policy — perhaps more so than the US. However, it is a mistake to call Iran a democracy, since the principal political authority is the council of religious rulers and the people have no avenue to replace them except revolution. Iran's democracy is limited to lower levels; reformist presidents have been thwarted.
Iran is somewhat evil, since it represses non-Muslims (Zoroastrians and Bahais terribly, Christians less so) and dissidents. In this dimension it is considerably worse than what the troll tried to do to Muslims. It represses Muslims too, by imposing religious rules that many Iranian Muslims don't want to follow.
However, it is not as bad as Salafi Arabia in religious repression.
The troll says that he "hasn't got one call" to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline.
That's true, because he shut off the phone line to call the White House. He hasn't got one call about anything.
Four US Muslim schools and community organizations have rejected
federal
grants conditioned on turning into informers on the people
they serve.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
They feel it would corrupt them.
Many US universities have "bias response teams" which are effectively the speech police.
I might despise some of the bias that these teams try to stop; in other cases, I might agree with it, because their scope is wide. However, students have a right to state their views regardless of what I think of them.
A drug company will henceforth charge Americans $89000 for an old drug for treating muscular distrophy, available in most countries for under a dollar.
The company says that insurance will pay for most of it. Perhaps so, if you have insurance (tens of millions of Americans still don't). Even so, your deductible and your co-pay might bankrupt you.
This is the consequence of a bad artificial monopoly law that ought to be repealed. In addition, the US should have a National Health Service to drive the price down for everyone.
US citizens: call on Congress
to continue the methane leak limits.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on Rep. Chaffetz to do his job and investigate Kellyanne Conway's ethics violation.
The UK's National Health Service, after years of increasingly insufficient funding, is making doctors burn out before they are finished training.
The NHS worked very well, and cost much less than the US medical system, but the Tories didn't like that. Starving the NHS ever more of funds over a period of several years has brought it to the verge of cracking.
In reaction to the troll, the membership of the ACLU has doubled.
I first joined in a similar way. When Bush I called Dukakis a "card carrying member of the ACLU", in effect insinuating that defending the US Constitution was the equivalent of joining the Communist Party, I asked myself, "Why I am I not an ACLU member?" Before that, it had never occurred to me that this was a choice I could make.
If you reside in the US, are you an ACLU member? If not, why not?
Low incomes and rising rents have made the US a maelstrom of evictions. Millions of Americans are evicted each year.
I wish they could get their shit together to riot and stop the evictions.
Republicans in Congress are feeling lots of pressure from their constituents.
They don't really want to serve their constituents, only to use them. For the moment they are holding the line for their plutocratic masters. But they may have trouble doing that in October 2018.
Tens of millions of people face famine in Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia.
Thug unions hope for Sessions' support in eliminating court-ordered settlements that required thugs to change policies to protect people's lives from the thugs.
A bill proposed by SCROTUS would mess up the EPA badly for reasons that are subtle and not obvious. This explains them.
Some fake news is starting to target right-wing authoritarians.
Even if that helps in some narrow sense to fight the troll and his saboteurs, it won't help us make truth great again. But it may give us a chance to do that, by organizing to reject fake news intended to appeal to us.
Ironically, the article encourages people to believe news articles without careful thought by endorsing the foolish concept idea that people "consume" news. You can't be thoughful about judging what you consume, but you can be thoughful about judging what you read or hear.
Ingrained poverty is not simply a matter of people's lacking certain resources. To lead a people out of ingrained poverty involves more than simply giving them certain specific things.
The article has some cheap shot arguments which are mistaken. Eliminating public defacation won't make people prosperous but it can reduce transmission of diseases and it can help the stigmatized caste that collects the waste.
School for today's 5-year-olds won't educate today's 25-year-olds, but will educate the 25-year-olds of 20 years from now, and it could be a lot easier to teach 5-year-olds than 25-year-olds. Even if learning to read won't assure children a future job, it will help them think about their world.
However, the overall point about creating prosperity seems valid.
Birth control and reduced birth rate is a crucial part of creating prosperity. A rapidly growing population has not got a chance for prosperity to get ahead of births.
Fake news is being used for character assassination against German politicians.
Many American right-wing extremists want another civil war. Some dream of bringing back slavery.
Almost every company involved in health care in the US is selling "anonymized" patient data, from which only the patient's name and address is missing. It is easy to correlate that data with other data to reidentify the patient.
My main medical provider invited me to communicate through a service I call "Tracking Your Health". When I saw that its "privacy" policy permitted selling my data provided it is "anonymized", I rejected it.
(I would have rejected it anyway, because communication with the web site requires running nonfree Javascript code. And because the terms say that they can change the terms at any time.)
The cheater wants to give people a tax deduction for supporting his future campaigns. They will only have to launder the money through a church.
Other candidates will be able to do more or less the same thing, but they won't get the support of the billionaires that could really win big.
Daniel Dennett puts fake news in the context of a world in which appreciation of truth and facts is being lost.
Microsoft is inviting that GNU/Linux distributors pay for "protection" from patents. It is the patent protection racket.
The human contribution to global heating: 1.7C per century (so far). The natural contribution: .01C per century.
The human contribution is increasing, since it is causing consequences that increase the rate of heating.
The loser is thinking of eliminating the EPA's enforcement division. That would be almost equivalent to doing away with those annoying antipollution regulations, since polluters could usuall simply ignore them.
Attorney General Sessions will display cruelty and inflict many kinds of suffering on Americans who are disadvantaged, including seeking opportunities to punish people who are not guilty.
About the refugee minors in France that now can't go to the UK.
They believe that staying in France would be horrible, and if thugs are patrolling to stop charities from giving them food and sleeping bags, perhaps they are right. On the other hand, conditions if they got to the UK might be even worse. For those that can be legally accepted in France, staying there is probably a good idea.
Uri Avnery summarizes the history of Israel's war of independence, and how expulsions of Arabs and Jews from their homes fit into it.
Representative Nadler has used a special kind of petition to force the House Judiciary Committee to vote on demanding information from the troll about his conflicts of interest and his dealings with Russia.
The Republicans can vote no and defeat it, but this will put them on record as defending his trashing the Constitution.
US citizens: oppose plans to make Milwaukee county thugs double as US immigration thugs.
US citizens: tell your senators to block Gorsuch.
US citizens: insist that designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a "terrorist organization" would hurt the US. It is a violation of human rights when government arbitrarily labels an organization as guilty of terrorism or of anything else. Each accused party must get a fair trial.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop Bannon's takeover of national security decisions.
US citizens: call on senators to oppose the partial ban on Muslims.
US citizens: oppose fast-tracking the Dakota Access Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: oppose plans to make the DMCA worse.
US citizens: call for full opposition to Gorsuch.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on US business leaders to quit the troll's "business advisory panel". The only advice he would follow is bad advice.
US citizens: oppose trying to use fighting between Houthis and Salafi Arabia as an excuse for war between the US and Iran. Since Salafi Arabia and the US started, and continue, a war against the Houthis, one can hardly blame the Houthis for firing back on a Salafi Arabian ship or a US ship.
US citizens: The Army Corps of Engineers is supposedly accepting comments about the Dakota Access Pipeline, but its comment page has shut off. So submit your comment via activists.
"We Fear Soldiers More Than Gangsters": El Salvador's "Iron Fist" Policy Turns Deadly. The US could fix most of this problem by ending the War on Drugs.
Proposing that women go on strike against male violence and for reproductive rights. I wish they wouldn't define this as for women only. I would support that campaign if I am welcome.
SCROTUS plan to deactivate climate protection by changing the Clean Air Act to exclude greenhouse gases.
For Americans in general, this policy is like waiting till you have a toothache to visit the dentist. However, the plutocrats that SCROTUS serve expect to buy their way out of the consequences. Will we let them?
The Tories are killing Sure Start, which successfully improved education for UK children in poverty. Everything suggests that the Tories want poor people to be badly educated and thus easy to swindle and confuse.
The troll's scientific censorship is comparable to Stalin's. We will depend on whistleblowers like Snowden to tell us what EPA scientists find out.
Blocking Yiannopoulos from speaking at Berkeley redounded to his advantage. It was foolish as well as wrong.
As the civil war in Afganistan moves closer to cities, the number of civilian casualties in 2016 was the highest since 2001.
The troll wants to allow financial advisors to knowingly give clients advice that goes against their interest. That fits his general alignment: for banksters, against everyone else.
Twitter favorizes raw emotion—not wisdom, logic, honesty, creativity or anything of independent value. The infant knows how to take advantage of that.
California is considering laws to reduce the range of personal data collected by its agencies, as well as refusing to give some of it to the federal government. Both prongs are good, but the first is especially heartening. To make democracy safe, we need to limit collection of personal data by all sorts of entities.
Der Spiegel cartoon: the troll has beheaded the Statue of Liberty. It is useful of Der Spiegel to warn Americans while we may be able to prevent this.
More Republicans face crowds of angry constituents for planning to eliminate Obama's medical insurance system.
Because the FBI uses "national security letters" without judicial supervision, and those who receive them are forbidden to talk about them, the FBI knowingly uses them to demand information such as people's email contents, which are supposedly exempt from them.
US immigration thugs, exceeding their authority in applying the partial ban on Muslims, coerced several people to "voluntarily" sign away their permanent residence visas. Now that the ban has been suspended, those people still cannot come.
Dr. Suha Abushamma was deported in that way. Some of these people are suing.
In Tory Britain, Disabled People Are Seen as Idle (as an excuse to cut their support money).
An Iranian refugee who smuggled himself from Manus Island to Fiji was sent back to Manus peremptorily while his legal case was still going on. He now faces prosecution there for leaving. What a succession of evil treatments he has lived through.
A former Israeli minister had to cancel a visit to Belgium because she would have been prosecuted there for war crimes.
Israeli thugs arrested 14-year-old Amir Othman Darweesh and beat him up in jail.
Israeli thugs murdered Israeli Arab Yaqoub Abu Al-Qiaan. They shot him while he was driving a car; he lost control of it due to his wounds, and it injured and killed some.
Instead of retaliating against those responsible (themselves), the thugs murdered Abu Al-Qiaan by denying him medical aid while he bled to death.
These events occurred during protests as the thugs were about to demolish the whole village where he lived.
Several African countries plan to withdraw from the International Criminal Court. Dubya's opposition weakened the ICC.
The FBI offers Muslims "temporary immigration relief" if they become informants. When the informants are no longer useful, the FBI helps deport them.
US Nazis planned a hate march in Whitefish, Montana, but no Nazis showed up on the appointed day, even though local Jews were offering handouts of matzo-ball soup. The article offers insight about how to defeat Nazi hate through a sort of aikido resistance.
The Arecibo radio telescope faces closure for lack of funds.
About the judge that the troll referred to as "so-called" for deciding against the troll.
China is slowly extending military domination over the Japanese Senkaku islands. For years it has used threats of force to stop Japanese fishing boats from going there.
Since oil seems to be part of the motivation for this dispute, as well as many other disputes in the sea near China, the best solution would be for all the countries involved to agree never to extract any fossil fuel from the sea bottom there. We need to leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, plus all other unknown fossil fuels. Why not start with fuels that there is a dispute over?
Due to business-dominated globalization, international clothing front companies use workers of age 14 that are paid under 20 cents an hour.
Making countries compete to permit the lowest wages and the worst abuses is what business-supremacy treaties were designed to do. We must abolish them so that workers in each country can organize.
The Tories are arranging to quietly impose further cuts in vital social support, hoping fools will blame the local councils (which will decide what crucial activities to cut) instead of the Tories (that will decide how much to cut).
An alleged Russian source for Steele's dossier about the troll and Russia died mysteriously in Moscow. This doesn't prove everything in the dossier is true, but does lend it some additional credibility.
Legalization of marijuana in some US states has hurt Mexican drug cartels through a big decrease in smuggling marijuana to the US. Ending the War on Drugs would be far more effective at this than any wall. And it would end the other evils caused by a war that is blitzed out of its mind on drugs.
Ready... Fire... Aim: How an Unhinged Trump Is Threatening US National Security. Of course, atrocities and precipitous injustice are worse than merely self-destructive—they are wrong.
South Dakota voters passed an initiative for campaign financing. The legislators spat in their faces by abolishing it.
Hawaii's republican legislators removed Minority Leader Beth Fukumoto because she supported the Women's March and rejects bullying.
Many federal judges have separately concluded that the partial ban on Muslims is almost sure to be rejected as unconstitutional, and thus issued temporary stays on its execution. Here are the reasons why it is unconstitutional.
The troll has cut off public access to USDA inspectors' reports about how animals are treated at sites ranging from circuses to research labs.
Paul Ryan hopes to attack non-rich Americans financially while we are paying attention to the troll's acts of gratuitous cruelty.
The FCC suspended investigations into ISPs that are violating the net neutrality rules. The troll will have it eliminate those rules.
The US continues rigging elections in Haiti and installing corrupt presidents of its own choice.
The imaginary "Bowling Green terrorist plot" was a plot concocted by the FBI to (in imagination) aid al Qa'ida in Iraq. If the plot had been real, it would have been wrongdoing, but it would have harmed no one in the US.
Terrorism Is Only a Real Threat If It Frightens Us into Destroying Our Liberties.
Uri Avnery: the boycott of products of Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory is wisest, because it can teach Israelis the importance of respecting the boundary between Israel and Palestine. I agree in principle, but I am starting to think that it will take sanctions on Israel to make the Israeli right wing stop establishing more colonies.
In an act of spectacular betrayal, the troll's recent deregulatory executive orders give Wall Street more power to cause an economic crisis. Wall Street wants the deregulation so as to cheat others, and likes economic crises too because they provide more opportunities to cheat others (for instance, the millions of fraudulent foreclosures that Obama forgave them for).
People don't want to hear that some mothers wish they weren't mothers. Those who talk about it face personal insults.
Women who have babies are pressured into adopting the narrow and suffocating social role and attitudes prescribed for mothers. They understand why other people find them dull, because they find it dull themselves.
I hear from people who are happy to have children. I can understand how it might make someone happy, in a world of plenty where raising children is not a crushing burden and where there is no anxiety that something might go wrong. But I can't imagine being happy with it in the world we are in.
More about Flynn's apparent hint to a Russian ambassador that the troll would drop sanctions if elected.
The troll has mostly succeeded in distracting the US press from the scandal of his involvement with Russia.
The troll's habit of speaking without thinking is providing useful help for lawyers challenging some of his policies in court.
As the extent of January Arctic sea ice hits a record low, a macroengineering plan to rebuild Arctic sea ice must now be considered.
This plan would not be treating a symptom. The loss of sea ice is a result of global heating, but also a cause of more global heating.
The 120,000 victims of Erdoğan's witch hunt find themselves blacklisted, unable to get any kind of work, and fearing that their bank accounts might be seized at any time.
Those who are arrested do not get a fair trial. They are told the only way to get out of jail is to name some "co-conspirators", which often means additional innocent targets for the witch-hunt.
UK house builders are holding back the supply of new houses to push up the price.
The diamond mining companies hold back the supply of diamonds to keep the price up, but we can disregard this because nobody really needs a diamond. Everyone needs a home to live in.
One district court ruled in favor of storing government regulations behind paywalls.
The case is not over.
Anti-abortion protests at Planned Parenthood offices were met by numerous supporters, in some cases greatly outnumbering the protesters.
It is very important to speak up visibly and publicly against the right-wing supporters of the troll.
Rosa María Ortega, a Mexican citizen who has lived in the US since infancy and thought she was allowed to vote, was sentenced to 8 years in prison for illegal voting.
I don't think the term "fraud" applies, since she did not lie about anything. She just registered and voted.
The unusual severity of her sentence was caused by talking about the troll's fictitious claims. It will probably cause her to deported to a country she has no memory of living in, and may not be able to survive in.
Increasing the belligerency of PISSI may serve Bannon's apocalyptic desires.
An unexploded 500-pound bomb dropped on Thessaloniki in World War II was just found, and before trying to defuse it, they are evacuating people over a mile away.
A bomb that size can demolish a building, but such a large evacuation seems hypercautious. The evacuation will do substantial economic harm and it too has a chance of causing harm to someone's health.
Excluding Iranian refugees — typically fleeing because they are opposed to the Islamist regime — is self-defeating for the US as well as cruel to them.
The troll may appear stupid to progressives when he talks about a "'so-called' judge", but he is dog-whistling to his supporters. Most of them think he should have the power to override judges.
The troll wants the US to adopt protectionist trade policies but wants Canada to do the opposite. Canadians would rather have a trade war.
In opposing the troll, we must not defend neoliberalism and its "free trade" agenda.
I am against "free trade" because that tends, in practice, to give big business power over the nation. "Free trade" treaties are really business-supremacy treaties.
I am not particularly concerned with tariffs, and not against buying things from other countries. What we must do is make it difficult to move production from one country to another in order to cut wages for workers of all countries.
In the UK, smart children from a background of poverty are years behind smart children from a rich background, in what they learn.
The Cyborg Bill of Rights v1.0.
I think another principle is required, that persons are entitled to control over all software implanted in them. This means that the software must be free, and each person must get a copy of the source code of that software, the power to install modified versions into perself, and the power to stop others from installing modified versions into per.
Time Warner Cable has been sued, accusing executives of knowingly swindling customers for years.
A tyrant or cruel strongman needs lots of underlings to exercise power. Nonviolent resistance operates by convincing many underlings not to carry out the orders.
Reportedly the troll spends his days in the White House isolated, lonely, and communicating with few other people. He gets his news from cable TV, which means he has a very biased picture including a reflection of himself. He could easily be fooled by his own propaganda.
He might decide after a few months of this that it is no fun, and resign.
Perhaps Bannon is taking advantage of the troll's habitual careless approach to give himself more power.
Coretta Scott King's letter opposing confirmation of Sessions as a US judge shows what an enemy of democracy he is.
Sessions tried to prosecute people for helping black voters fill out their absentee ballots, and aimed to get them sentenced to 200 years in prison.
Troll's 60-day delay on new regulations could wipe out the rusty patched bumblebee.
The appeals court's decision to keep the troll's partial ban on Muslims suspended is an example of judicial courage.
Every visit of the troll to Mar-a-Lago is a disaster for businesses in Palm Beach. Some will have to close.
The 2015 Republican smear campaign against Planned Parenthood failed to find any illegality but succeeded in stirring up right-wing extremist violence.
Most of those Britons who voted for leaving the EU aimed to reduce the number of immigrants. An economic projection suggests this will reduce the number little, if at all.
The troll is closer, so far, to Brave New World than to 1984.
However, considering how the troll threatens people, and uses the state to inflict suffering on many, 1984 is certainly part of it.
Flynn discussed US sanctions against Russia with the Russian ambassador in the month before the inauguration — meaning the denials of Pence and others were false.
Even when SCROTUS rebuke Republicans for ethics rule violations, they continue to protect those Republicans.
Call on the Senate to block the appointment of David Friedman as ambassador to Israel. He leads an organization that funds construction of colonies in Palestinian territory.
The troll threatened to "destroy the career" of a Texas legislator that proposed curtail "civil forfeiture", taking people's property without prosecuting them let alone convicting them. But the troll seems not to have understood what it means.
Ilana Hammerman: Why I, as a Proud Israeli, Want the World to Boycott Us.
US Army veterans have returned to the pipeline protest camp, pledging to defend protesters with their bodies.
US citizens: call on the EPA hold mining companies accountable for clean-up.
The wildfire danger in eastern Australia is now "off the scale". They had to extend the scale up from 100 to 150.
The immediate cause is due to conditions that vary. It probably won't be this bad next year, and even 30 years from now it won't be this bad every year.
However, many of these conditions will become gradually worse, on the average, due to global heating. It is expected to increase the frequency of droughts and the frequency of heavy rains. In 30 years, there will be occasional years that extend the scale to 200 or 300. Expect towns and villages to have no trees or bushes, and be surrounded by 50-meter firebreaks.
From desperation, apartments are now being made in London that have space only for a bed, a toilet and a shower.
The UN assistant secretary general compares Boko Haram to the IRA and says that Nigeria has learned it cannot get rid of Boko Haram.
I never felt any sympathy for the IRA's cause, and I still don't. But the IRA never tried to kidnap girls and turn them into slaves or suicide bombers, and one can at least understand its cause without having to be a fanatic. Does a large minority in a part of Nigeria really support Boko Haram including its violence, or does it support a less violent position from which the extremists go to Boko Haram?
Adults under 35 waste more food, apparently because they want to show off a large platefull on Instagram.
The study that found this was in the UK, but I expect the US is just the same.
How silly it is to show off the food on your plate! Unless it is a work of art. I've eaten a few times in my life in restaurants where that was the case, and I appreciated it — but what I particularly want from food is for it to be delicious when it has disappeared into my mouth.
And if there is food left over, how silly to throw it away!
8 countries have now joined forces to make up the cuts in aid to be caused by the troll's global gag rule against aid to organizations that mention "abortion".
Bravo! I hope American individuals who donate to global women's health provision can also redirect their aid to this fund rather than to funds which don't counter the anti-abortion extremism of the US.
Most Americans hold a sexist attitude towards married couples' names: they condemn women who don't change their last names, but strangely don't condemn men for doing the same thing. When you look into the reasons, you find broader sexism.
Kellyanne Conway directly broke US ethics rules by promoting Ivanka Trump's clothing line.
The troll's standard practice is to violate all ethics standards in the most blatant way, in effect saying "You can't stop me!" Conway must have felt she could and ought to do likewise. It will be interesting to see if Republicans allow her to be punished for this.
The US publishes a list of air attacks in Afghanistan, but it is bogus: thousands of attacks were left out of the list.
Successful protests against the Trump regime should look for a broad base and should demonstrate they are patriotic.
I agree with most of the article's points, but some of them betray the author's right-wing positions. We would be fools to limit ourselves to criticizing only things that Marco Rubio wouldn't do; he like all the Republican presidential candidates is a right-wing extremist and would do great wrong if given the chance.
Defending abortion rights is a crucial issue, and we shouldn't seek more support by dropping that issue.
The troll has told the border patrol to give high priority to deporting unauthorized immigrants who were prosecuted in the past for working without permission.
They are now treated just like people who committed violent crimes.
The US appeals court upheld the restraining order that suspended the troll's partial ban on Muslim visitors.
The infant responded, "See you in court", as if he thought he would sue the judges.
The troll flipped out in a phone call when Putin proposed extending the most recent nuclear arms limitation treaty.
In the US: call on supermarkets to reject GMO apples that disguise when they have spoiled.
You can sign this petition with Javascript disabled using the salsalabs workaround.
The Democratic Party would be making a big mistake if it focuses on helping the white workers whose pay has gone down in the past 3 decades.
I agree with the article's conclusion, but we should not suppose that right-wing democrats abandoned white workers because they were focused on nondiscrimination. It's more the opposite: after Bill Clinton sold out to the rich in the 90s, mainstream Democrats would no longer offer a New Deal, so nondiscrimination was all they had left.
When dooH niboR is making the non-rich poor, if they are not wise enough to see this, they tend to break up into groups that compete with each other. Especially if right-wingers encourage this and nobody discourages it. But if Democrats offer everyone a chance to have comfortable a life, they can work together for that.
The troll has reversed himself in regard to supporting Taiwan's independence.
Too bad. I have long been disappointed with the US's timid bowing to China's demand; it looked like this was one of the few areas where the troll might make something better.
Overall, the troll is moving towards continuing the foreign policy of previous presidents.
The EU is offering a lot of aid to Gambia under its newly elected president.
I hope someone can check the deal for strings that might be bad for the country. Such strings in the fine print are common in foreign aid.
Democrats must stop blaming secondary causes of Clinton's defeat and recognize the fault is that the party has not tried to oppose dooH niboR.
The FBI is investigating pipeline protesters, by visiting activists and hoping to lead the activists into saying something about the movement.
Religious tolerance has deteriorated in India, as Sikhs, Christians and Muslims face persecution and even forced conversion. The theocratic BJP government has contributed to this.
Even in prestigious universities, some students and alumni are treated as criminals because their skin color inspires suspicion.
The troll approved the ground raid in Yemen without proper intelligence (in either sense of the word). Not a great surprise that it was a military failure as well as killing many civilians.
The troll's mouthpiece: we must all call the raid a success because one of the raiders died.
This attempt to manipulate people through their patriotism to supporting unjust wars is nothing new. Dubya called on Americans to support the occupation of Iraq because it was done by the US Army. My response to this was to say that he had hijacked the US Army and it was now the Bush forces. It was used during the Vietnam War, so people posted bumber stickers saying, "Support our troops in Vietnam — bring them home."
But the troll is taking it to an extreme that is almost risible.
US citizens: phone your senators to call on them to respect and
preserve regulations that protect Americans from harm from industry
and not override them.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
The UK had a policy of accepting unaccompanied child refugees that come to the EU, but the government quietly cancelled the policy hoping no one would notice.
The troll wants to put more prisoners in Guantanamo.
Anyone captured or arrested and accused of supporting PISSI could be put there.
PISSI fighters captured in Syria or Iraq should be held there as prisoners of war.
If teachers wear body cameras, it will destroy trust between teachers and students.
Recognition from a Christian that the troll is no Christian.
Melania Trump appears to have ignored her commitment to campaigning against cyberbullying, unless perhaps she's boycotting her husband.
Seattle has decided to move its account out of Wells Fargo bank.
Seattle moves billions of dollars through that account each year. If each dollar money remains there a month on the average, the account probably has a balance of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Unfortunately, Seattle can't actually change how it does this banking until late next year. But you can move your money out of the DAPL-funding banks next week. They are
Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi UFJ, BayernLB, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Crédit Agricole, DNB ASA, ICBC, ING, Intesa Sanpaolo, Mizuho Bank, Natixis, SMBC, Société Générale, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, TD Bank, Wells Fargo.
It is also important on general principles to stop doing business with the big banks that provoked the financial crisis of 2008. I moved money out of Bank of America several years ago for that reason.
It appears that the UK thug group that infiltrated political groups destroyed documents after being told to preserve them.
Hina Shamsi was harassed by US border thugs about working for the ACLU and travelling to other countries, while being a Pakistani citizen.
She being a lawyer responded to them with a lecture about the laws they were ignoring.
A Canadian Muslim was harassed trying to visit the US with her family.
I am trying to think of a good way to respond to thugs' questions which try to put one on the defensive by putting some nasty construction on innocent activities. Perhaps, "Why do you wear glasses and black shoes?"
Intel Gives [Troll] credit for $7bn US Factory it Announced under Obama.
What this says is that Intel is willing to support the troll by repeating his lies.
Apple iCloud Hoards 'Deleted' Browser History.
Dependence on future bots and agents could be debilitating, especially if they contain nonfree software.
Doctors, students and patients condemn Dana-Farber for holding a fund-raising event at the troll's hotel.
Sooner or later an Islamist terrorist attack will kill a few Americans. The troll more or less ignores right-wing terrorist attacks, but an Islamist attack will give him a welcome opportunity for repression and massive snooping.
Americans had better prepare now to defend our freedom from the troll if and when that happens.
Sad to say, the events in Boston a few years ago show that killing even three people can lead to a nationwide media frenzy, and to irrational self-destructive responsess such as shutting down a whole large city.
The refugees dumped on Manus Island have to wait weeks for medical attention for serious problems, and are denied treatment rather than sending them to Australia. Then the state lies to cover it up.
It seems pretty clear that the officials in charge of this have dehumanized the refugees. I'd guess that by now most of the people employed now to deal with them dehumanize them — because the decent ones have left by now. The doctors are to some extent an exception, because they have medical ethics to strengthen them.
Temperatures in Australia are reaching 48C, which creates various dangers to lives and property.
The planet-roaster ruling coalition is not satisfied and hopes to achieve 53C in a few decades.
Send thousands more troops to Afghanistan???
The corrupt Afghan government can't inspire people to fight for it and win the war. The US can prop up the Afghan government for as long as it wants to keep spending lots of money on continuing the war, but the only way the war can end is to let the Taliban win.
It's not clear whether Kellyanne Conway is working for the White House or for Trump Inc. Maybe there is no difference any more.
Everyone: oppose the Rhode Island bill to jail parents that leave a child in a car.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit a nuclear first strike without a prior declaration of war.
US citizens: support removing dams on the Snake River so that salmon and orcas can survive.
US citizens: call on congress not to legalize discrimination based on religion as an excuse.
The Salafi Arabian bombardment of Yemen is causing famine.
While the nation writhes in agony, Obama ignores that and gives a tycoon a great PR opportunity.
This disappoints many Americans who have for 8 years invested in Obama more hope than he should rationally inspire.
Israeli fanatics cut down 700 olive and almond trees near Nablus, part of their unremitting efforts to drive Palestinians away from places where they are taking Palestinian land.
Admiral Mullen, formerly head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rebuked the troll for putting Bannon on the National Security Council.
Melania Trump intended to use her presence in the White House to market fashion products.
Influenced perhaps by her husband?
A landfill company sued activists that opposed plans to put coal ash in a landfill. The ACLU defended them and won.
SCROTUS is planning to abolish the federal agency that helps states maintain the security of voting machines.
Maybe Republicans want to rig elections digitally, as well as stopping hundreds of thousands of marginalized Americans from voting.
Atalya Ben-Abba and other Israelis are about to refuse to be drafted and go to prison instead.
Israel is considering a law to refuse entry to anyone that supports a boycott of Israeli products.
Thousands of Jews And Arabs Attend a Protest against the Treatment of the Arab Community.
Israel prosecuted and jailed a 12-year-old Palestinian boy.
In Breaking the Silence, former Israeli soldiers report on the repressive practices they were ordered to carry out.
Republicans claim that the protests against them are full of "paid protesters".
How much money would it have cost to pay a million people to protest? We progressives are not backed by billionaires — we can't afford to do that. Only Republicans can.
It is standard Republican practice to accuse the opposition, falsely, of using the methods that they themselves use.
The Army Corps of Engineers is rushing to complete the Dakota Access pipeline, skipping the steps that are normally required.
This is to make sure that the environmental impacts are never studied and that no court can rule on the legality of the project before it is too late.
Since the pipeline will contribute to mass murder, I think that sabotaging it with violence so that it cannot be used would be justified on the principle of necessity for preventing a greater crime.
Sherry Turkle: campaigning to reestablish direct conversation between people in a world of people who are addicted to portable phones.
She doesn't put this together with the fact that the technology, being proprietary, is designed to be addictive. The users generally don't have control over this or any other aspect of it, so they can't make it less addictive.
Ajit Pal, the troll's head of the FCC, supports charging prisoners $14 an hour for phone calls.
This panders to those who want to grind the heel on prisoners, and will please many supporters of the troll. It will have the byproduct of increasing crime in the future, as prisoners who have limited communication with their families and friends will be less likely to fit back into society after they are released. (Most prisoners are released, you know.) So they will be led back to a life of crime.
But the main effect will be to enrich some companies, whose owners Pai seems to consider his cronies.
The troll approved a ground raid in Yemen, disregarding uncertainty about who was there. It killed lots of civilians.
How to organize resistance to the loser so it can go beyond protests and have long-term effects.
Canadians Form 'Rings of Peace' Around Mosques After Quebec Shooting.
The troll's executive order for the partial ban on Muslims disregarded the executive order about the procedure for checking executive orders, which was designed to avoid gratuitous mistakes.
The troll is aiming for the sort of misery that other presidents tried to avoid.
Travis County in Texas stands firm as a sanctuary, resisting Governor Abbott's threats to cut unrelated funding as a punishment.
Such threats are probably unconstitutional, but Republicans don't care. Any threat will do, to intimidate.
The responses from Travis County are good for retaining support from the people there, but I think it is crucial to publicly attack Abbott in ways that will hurt him state-wide. I would think of showing how he is dishonest, cruel, false to the Constitution, and un-American.
California is passing laws to resist the troll's cruelest plans.
[The troll's] belligerence towards Iran plays into the hands of Tehran's hardliners.
If the UK leaves the EU, Tories will be able to mistreat disabled people to their heart's content.
The corrupt head of the UK branch of ALEC has been appointed to design a trade treaty with the US that would subjugate the UK permanently to the US.
Since the senate rules don't allow a committee to vote with no Democrats present, the Republicans in the Finance Committee decided to ignore the rules.
Is it valid to suspend the rules without a quorum? It sounds like cheating to me — which fits the Republican political philosophy of "by hook or by crook."
US citizens: support State Department dissenters that criticized the partial ban on Muslims.
Iran's theocratic supreme leader thanked the troll for demonstrating that the US leaders cannot be trusted, revealing "the real face of the US."
This will harm Iran; it will strengthen the extremists in domestic politics.
Lawsuit Filed Against Trump Nominee Scott Pruitt for Denying Public Access to Polluter Emails.
Ordinary Americans Carried Out Inhumane Acts for Trump.
Perhaps there were immigration thugs that imprisoned travelers merely because they thought they had orders to do so. But those orders could not require handcuffing people who were not dangerous, denying them food, or denying them a wheelchair. The people who do that went beyond obeying orders. They were eager to mistreat someone, and their orders gave them license to do so.
"How dare Trump use my daughter's death to further his brutal agenda."
The TSA's "behavioral" inspection has no scientific base, it is just an excuse for racial profiling.
The troll is giving Erdoğan support and encouragement.
This is probably partly because Turkey is fighting PISSI, but it will support Erdoğan's repression too. I fear for the Kurds. Their support for secularity and human rights will not win any support from the the troll.
The danger of terrorism in the US is minuscule compared with the danger of other people with guns. Babies with guns kill a lot more Americans than terrorists do.
Microbead Ban Should Include All Products Washed Down the Drain, Say Campaigners.
An orphanage worker condemns the whole idea of orphanages, saying we must enable children to stay with their families.
With some funds it would be possible to enable many of these children to live with families. But it is not going to be easy for a single parent to care for five children, even with money, if the parent has to work as well.
We must give poor people help in having fewer children.
Local participatory activities, even if initially shallow, have the possibility to lead to creation of real communities.
Nigerian hunters try to free captives from Boko Haram, but their funding has been cut and they don't get the help they need from the army.
The FBI will discourage FOIA requests by ceasing to accept them by email.
To get people to accept intrusive biometrics, UK railroads propose to use this to enable people to pay fares faster.
The same could be achieved by making more entry gates, but that would not teach people to accept surveillance.
The UK is considering a law to require social networks to verify users' ages (and thus their identifies) or else impose censorship on them for their "protection".
40% of Americans are in favor of impeaching the troll, and 12% are not sure.
SCROTUS are proposing various bills to hamstring the EPA, or even abolish it.
Bermuda objects to being required to correct some of the openings for tax evasion and cheating and argues that other countries also have policies that facilitate this. What a non-sequitur.
Every country change the laws that help the rich and businesses to hide profits, and each step forward in any country will focus pressure on the countries that fail to do so.
Keeping fake news out of the coming French elections. Suspicions are that Putin will direct efforts to elect the right-wing extremist Le Pen.
The troll upholds and continues Obama's practice of rigging elections in Haiti.
A judge sentenced racist teenage vandals to read 35 books that could help them recognize the humanity of people they blindly hate.
A city in Australia has placed hundreds of microphones in public places to record people's conversations.
There are also microphones in taxis in Canberra, and buses in San Francisco. No matter what supposed justification there is, the danger of listening to people is more important. We must get rid of them.
A Russian dissident was poisoned last week with a substance not yet identified. It was the second such attack.
We failed to convince a third Republican to reject miseducator DeVos as Secretary of Education. She was confirmed on Tuesday.
The latest reshuffle of the UK's welfare system requires people to wait 6 weeks before benefits begin. During this time they often can't afford rent or food.
We are supposed to think of this as a minor detail or side effect of a large change, but I think it is the opposite. They make "reforms" that change many things, but the overall effect is less money for the poor. Since less money for the poor is exactly the Tories' general aim, I think that the "reforms" are meant as excuses for this.
Russia has greatly reduced the penalties for beating a spouse or children so badly that it causes bruises. In effect, the state is now encouraging domestic violence.
Has the troll already advocated such laws? If not, I expect he will.
The mainstream media tend to give the impression that Islamist terrorism is directed mainly at non-Muslims. Actually nearly all the targets are Muslims.
Hungary plans to imprison all asylum seekers.
The idea of calling these prisons "shelters" reminds me of what the British did when they put all the Boer civilians in prisons, which they called "concentration camps".
Palestinians ask other countries to punish Israel with sanctions for the newly adopted law that legitimizes theft of Palestinians' land by fanatical colonists.
Other kinds of thoughts can suppress the fast racist response.
To shield his lies from refutation, the troll wants to destroy the institutions that protect the truth.
Refugees in the US are walking across the Canadian border so they can apply for asylum there.
Global heating effects, including heavy rains, have damaged many historic places and sites of natural beauty in Britain.
The Statue of Liberty and other US historic sites are vulnerable to damage from global heating effects.
We won't have to worry about the Statue of Liberty if the troll succeeds in making liberty obsolete for everyone but him.
Australia's planet-roaster government has recognized that coal is now so uneconomic that the way to get new coal mines started is to subsidize them.
In other words, the coal barons have taken control of the country with their denialist lies, and now like a virus will direct the country's machinery to enriching them while endangering everyone else.
Amnesty International says that Assad's men killed thousands of prisoners by hanging, and thousands more by torture and starvation.
The available information stops in 2015; there is no information on whether the executions continued then.
Every US TV network gave far more coverage to a Canadian murderer who was a Muslim than to a Canadian murderer who was a right-wing extremist and killed Muslims.
Your average bank is far more likely to ruin Americans' lives than your average immigrant. That's why the troll wants "extreme vetting" for immigrants and not for banks.
The troll acts as if he were seeking regime change in the US.
Bernie Sanders: Trump 'Is a Fraud' Sending Nation in 'Authoritarian Direction'.
US citizens: call on the Senate to block Gorsuch.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to block the troll's Supreme Court nominee by all means possible.
US citizens: Call the Senate Committee on Homeland Security at 202-224-4751 and say that no individual whose primary responsibility is political in nature (such as Bannon) should be allowed on the NSC or authorized to attend its meetings.
US citizens: phone your senators to defend pollution regulations.
US citizens: call on Congress to invoke War Powers on the intervention in Yemen before any military escalation against Iran.
Massachusetts citizens: call your state legislator and state senator to oppose a bill designed to punish supporters of the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Here's an explanation of the bill.
Canadian journalists face threats of imprisonment, much as US journalists do.
We must study and maintain nonviolent discipline in our protests against the troll's real and threatened violence.
Gorsuch as an undergraduate joked about founding a "Fascism Forever" club and repeatedly quoted Kissinger to countenance doing the unconstitutional.
Such jokes indicate something about the person who makes them.
If Gorsuch in the years since then had persistently demonstrated the rejection of what those jokes imply, I'd say we should overlook them. But there is no sign of that.
Romanian protesters have made the prime minister back down from pardoning the politicians convicted of corruption.
The troll reportedly wants to permit churches to endorse political candidates and to permit various kinds of religiously-motivated bigotry.
The troll's partial ban on Muslims included automatically denying their applications for citizenship and permanent residency. The ACLU sued stop this.
Now it seems that the troll cancelled this.
Perhaps he found out he was going to lose the case.
Pipeline protester Ken Ward, facing decades in prison for shutting off a pipeline by turning a valve, got a mistrial.
Some jurors must have been convinced by his arguments that he was acting to protect our world.
The troll is a salesman more than a businessman. His approach to
"creating jobs", like his approach to "creating casinos", is to borrow a lot of money.
A court temporarily suspended the troll's partial ban on Muslims, so the troll said this was done by a "'so-called' judge".
I think the troll is trying to build up mob support for defying the
judiciary so he can in effect rule by decree.
Large protests against releasing imprisoned corrupt politicians continue all around Romania.
Umberto Eco analyzes fascism.
Antisemitism is rising in the US: 50 bomb threats since the start of the year.
We can't trace these directly to the troll, but we know he is partly
responsible in general ways, such as his association with Bannon who
has encouraged antisemitic extremism, and his "holocaust remembrance"
announcement which avoided mention of Jews.
Antisemitism was once normal and accepted in the US, just like bigotry
against blacks. However, awareness of the holocaust mostly suppressed
antisemitism starting when I was a child; thus, I have escaped that
bigotry, though my mother told me about encountering it when she was
young. I never expected to see it come back in the US.
It's one more item for the list of the troll's injustices to humanity.
Annual giant forest fires in Indonesia produce pollutinn that kills
many thousands, perhaps a hundred thousand, and release tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases.
Stopping them is difficult because giant companies set the fires.
The Netroots, progressive resistance against Dubya, was bought out and
undermined by Obama and other nonprogressive Democrats.
It failed because it couldn't replace the nonprogressive Democrats.
This time we must do better.
[The cheater] Retains Direct Tie to Businesses, Documents Show.
Impeachment is called for.
The cheater tried to cheat customers of a golf course he bought; a
court ruled he owes them 6 million dollars.
The infant never accepts defeat, so he will appeal the decision. He
figures that if he makes them go through enough steps he will win by
intimidation sooner or later.
Everyone:
call
on the CEO of Uber to leave the troll's Business Council.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the troll's bigoted policies against
Muslims.
In the US:
call on TV
networks to stop broadcasting Kellyanne Conway and the troll's
press manipulation rallies.
Executives of Tepco face prosecution for failing to take action to keep the Fukushima reactors safe in the event of a tsunami.
India has forbidden Compassion International, a Christian charity for children, from bringing 60 million dollars of foreign funds into India.
Most Greeks now believe it was a mistake to have joined the euro. Greece needs to get out of the Euro zone so that it can throw off the power of the Euro-banksters, whose demands for Greece to pay of its debt have pushed Greece into ever-increasing debt.
Sweden will aim to be carbon neutral by 2045. Whether this is fast enough to avoid disaster (if the whole world did it), I am not sure. Perhaps if the emissions are reduced enough in the next 10 years, it would be ok to take 20 more years to reduce them to zero.
What is clear is that Sweden can't avoid disaster by itself no matter how good a job it does.
Drawing lessons about men and masculinity from the success of the troll—a parody of all the worst aspects of traditional masculinity.
As the FARC soldiers lay down arms, crime rackets that they used to operate are being taken over by others, including Colombia's worst terrorists, the paramilitares. Those are right-wing terrorists connected with the army.
Increasing CO2 makes some algae produce poisons and kill coral.
As the troll drives away allies, China is winning more.
Vanuatu has banned import of junk food.
Australia's "climate and energy adviser" was a coal industry lobbyist. One must suppose that his advice will be to burn more coal and destroy civilization.
Trump’s CIA Chief Selects Major Torture Operative to be Agency’s Deputy Director. The troll seems to be seriously gung ho about torture.
I suspect he wants his supporters to get vicariously high on violence, whether it happens or not. This would enable him to use them to approve other violence.
SCROTUS in the House of Representatives voted to allow mentally incompetent people to own guns. Next will be toddlers: don't they deserve to be able to keep guns in their cribs?
A small relaxation of US sanctions on Russia is not corruption.
A peaceful but illegal sit-in protest in 1960 sparked a wave of protests that ended segregation in stores across the American south.
The cheater said he would make drug companies lower their prices. But now it seems he wants to deregulate them instead. Depending on which regulations he gets rid of, that would allow them either to charge even more, or to sell drugs which are totally unsafe.
A bill in Congress would reduce the scope of the DMCA's prohibition on breaking all sorts of digital handcuffs. This would reduce the injustice, but that part of the DMCA is entirely unjust and should be repealed entirely. DRM is an injustice and the government should help us get rid of it. This is pertinent again because this bill has been reintroduced in the
new congress.
Rumors say that the troll wants the US anti-terrorist educational activity to focus exclusively on Islamist violence, thus giving clear sailing to the violent right-wing extremists that the troll encourages.
SCROTUS have backed off the plan to sell large amounts of federal land, due to public opposition.
The UK admits refugees from persecution, then makes them go hungry.
Comparing the troll with the book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that predicted some of what digital mass media do to people. I'm more or less immune to the direct effects because I stay away from those technologies.
Bangladesh proposes to force Rohingya refugees to an island that floods every high tide. This would be effectively to kill them. If Bangladesh does not stabilize its population, it will turn into a game of musical land lots with lives eliminated at each turn.
The French right-wing party violently pushed a reporter out of a press conference, for asking an inconvenient question. Then the party officials claimed that thugs had ordered the expulsion, which if true would mean that the thugs were intervening politically and ought to be fired.
Facebook has taken a positive step to avoid boosting fake news. Despite this, many reasons remain to refuse to be used by Facebook. Sad to say, research is advancing on generating fake audio in someone's voice, and fake video using someone's face.
Federal Reserve heads mocked unemployed Americans in a meeting, in effect blaming them for suffering from macroeconomic circumstances. It's convenient for plutocrats to have high unemployment, since that makes workers desperate and easy to abuse and easy to cheat.
We need a government that will be on our side against the banksters (and other rich and powerful individuals and businesses).
Israel is one of the last states to maintain a colonial empire. Others include Indonesia, in West Papua, and Morocco, in Western Sahara.
SCROTUS want to destroy unions all across the US with so-called "right to work" laws.
They want the rich to be united, as in "Citizens" United, while the non-rich are set against each other.
A systematic phishing campaign targets human rights defenders in Egypt. Presumably it is run by the Egyptian military dictatorship or some state friendly to it.
Central American refugees from violence there have been excluded by the troll.
Reddit has banned two right-wing extremist subreddits associated with the groups sponsored by Bannon.
In South Africa, pregnant women using meth are creating many mentally handicapped, aggressive children.
This harms society, but especially harms those children. To save more children from being victims of that incurable lifelong damage, we should give those women long-term birth control so they will not make and harm any more children.
Obama made an agreement to accept many of the refugees that Australia has imprisoned on Nauru and Manus Island. The troll doesn't like refugees and this has created hostility between the two countries.
The Australian government is a planet-roaster government, like the troll. Anything that creates conflict between them has a tendency to make for good.
Under pressure from drought, nomads in Kenya have invaded the most important wildlife conservancy.
In an overpopulated world, it may be possible in theory for people to coexist with wild areas—as long as all goes well. But we can't suppose expect everything will go well all the time. Overpopulating humanity will wipe out natural ecosystems, as the last step of trying to survive—a few years before masses of humans begin dying.
To avoid this future requires we do all we can to encourage use of birth control and reduction of birth rate.
Building a million more separate houses in the UK will increase flooding. The solution is to build more densely—near mass transit lines.
Some companies aim to make all their plastic packaging sustainably disposable. This is a big step towards eliminating plastic waste, but the concomitant requirement is to get all purchasers to dispose of the packaging properly.
Can garment workers in Kenya escape the race-to-the-bottom of globalized production? Changes in some treaties might help.
Since the infant seems to be putting Bannon in charge of national security issues, the fact that he expected war with China should be of some concern.
The Netherlands will count ballots by hand to protect the security of their elections. All countries should adopt this wise policy.
The troll reportedly threatened to invade Mexico, while talking on the phone with the president of Mexico.
I hope the president of Mexico ended the phone call at that point, because to continue it would have been servile.
Theresa May, when minister for surveillance and repression, tried to make the NHS hand over patient data to the state, looking for unauthorized immigrants.
Now the UK has a new plan for denying medical care to unauthorized immigrants: demanding two kinds of ID before people can get treatment.
We must stop letting companies pay fines to protect their executives from prosecution.
The US is heading for a shortage of potable water in 25 years or so. The price of water is rising so fast that many of US households may be unable to afford water in a few years.
Contrasting the troll's lies with most politicians' and diplomat's deception: the troll uses lies to get underlings that will obey with no scruples, while intimidating everyone else into obeying from fear. And it's a strategy aimed at the short term only.
New York Senator Schumer, the leader of Senate Democrats, is weak in opposing the troll's saboteur cabinet nominees.
Thousands protested at his apartment calling on him to "wake up".
The right to repair should include motorcycles. Of course, what we really need to do is repeal that part of the DMCA.
Homeless refugees in France face continual harassment by thugs, and people that help them (for instance, with food or transportation) face prosecution, sometimes on false or patently illegal charges.
City policies to harass unauthorized immigrants have in some cases been rolled back by courts.
The troll has discarded Obama's ethics rule that somewhat impeded the president's appointed officials from acting corruptly for their own profit.
Some US thug departments are refusing to say whether they used stingrays to snoop on the participants in the Women's Marches.
The Department of Labor has assisted Wells Fargo in getting away with mistreatment of workers, by deleting a web site for whistleblowers there.
Windows 10 forced software changes can sabotage the user terribly if Microsoft chooses an inconvenient time to do them. Since the article is in the mainstream media, it suggests only to buy another computer that serves a master that doesn't do this particular form of nastiness. It completely ignores the possibility of installing a free operating system in the PC—which doesn't even require buying a new computer.
Driverless cars will have trouble participating in social interactions with pedestrians and other drivers.
This article is perceptive—however, not surprisingly someone in the tech industry, it ignores the danger of massive surveillance through cars, which can lead to giant disasters.
Google has made Chrome automatically install the DRM module. This makes it dangerous for security researchers in the US to investigate possible insecurity in Chrome. More information.
To preserve the US Constitution, members of Congress must act like adults and be loyal to the Constitution. Unfortunately, most of them are Republicans and their goal is to win power for their plutocratic masters by hook or by crook.
The leaked intelligence dossier says that Putin promised the troll 19% of a principal Russian oil company if the troll drops sanctions. It looks like this gift is already being carried out.
The troll's actions could indicate either strength and decisiveness, or weakness and confusion.
A US citizen was held for hours in an airport because he was entering with his mother who is Iranian. The citizen, 5 years old, was handcuffed because he was considered a "security threat"—or so the troll's press manipulator said.
Superstitious Burmese endanger various species for the sake of "natural remedies".
PISSI has applauded the troll's entry cutoff for Iraqis and Syrians. The government of Iraq responded with hostility.
The loser could get Iraq, Syria and Turkey to be aligned with Russia. Hmm, perhaps that's one of the missions he was given.
How did the troll choose the seven target countries for the partisan Muslim ban?
The article's title seems to suggest that extending the ban by adding countries to it would make it better, but that not the central point.
The European Union wants to get rid of cash, but some countries and many people are opposed to this.
If you live in the European Union (especially Sweden), you can oppose this by using a button company to make a batch of buttons saying "DON'T BE TRACKED PAY CASH", then selling them to others? Use a translation in your local language if that will be more effective.
A new surveillance app will monitor people's actions and communications to check for depression. The information will be available to "counselors".
I suspect that later versions will be made mandatory for employees of various companies, and that they will inform Human Resources.
People in Manchester, England, took direct action against spikes designed to stop people from sleeping—by putting cushions on them.
One million Britons have signed a petition not to allow the loser to make a state visit there.
A journalist was investigated by the Secret Service after posting jokes on Twitter that referred to hypothetical assassination of the troll. This infringed his freedom of speech, as understood under US law.
Here's How We Know Trump's Cabinet Picks Are Wrong on Human-Caused Global Warming.
Pipeline protesters in Washington State, and journalists that covered the protest, face up to 30 years in prison from the repressive state.
A Burmese Muslim who was one of Aung San Suu Kyi's advisors was assassinated. Political motives are presumed.
Americans should organize to carry out general strikes. Disruption and inconvenience are a necessary price for effective protest.
The author is unaware of the injustice that both Uber and Lyft commit against their passengers. Do delete your Uber account if you have one, but don't replace it with another nonfree surveillance app such as Lyft.
Statisticians fear the troll will manipulate future economic statistics, or simply end the making of measurements that would show harm that is occurring.
A unique coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon is likely to be destroyed soon by oil drilling.
Turkey, Hungary and Romania drive 23% rise in appeals to the European Court of Human Rights.
Bernie Sanders: How Corporate Media Threatens Our Democracy.
Many large tech companies condemn or criticize the troll's partial Muslim ban, but Uber took the opportunity to undercut the taxi drivers' protest strike.
Now many users are boycotting Uber demanding that it stop helping the loser. This would be a good reason to boycott Guber, and it adds to the other reasons, such as mistreatment of its workers.
But even without a boycott, customers should reject Guber (and other such services including Lyft and Bridj) because they are surveillance systems and require running a nonfree app.
The troll's demolition derby is meant to wreck US government agencies.
Then Republicans will point to the wreckage and say, "See, this proves the government can't help anyone." They've been playing that game since Reagan's days.
The troll will exclude the chief military and intelligence officers from National Security Council meetings, and invite Bannon instead.
Banks in the UK are distracting attention from their crimes and misdeeds by threatening to leave the country.
There's only one valid reason for the UK to leave the EU and that is to get rid of the EU laws that give the rich (such as banksters) too much power. But Tories don't want to do that—on the contrary, they will let themselves be "forced" to give the rich more power.
The troll has decided that most permanent residents (green card holders) will be allowed to return to the US, but not necessarily all, and it is not automatic for anyone. Thus, they face being grilled and threatened on return to the US.
They could be compelled to surrender the passwords to their phones, or pressured to become informants.
Many students in US universities are covered by the troll's incomplete Muslim ban, and some were caught outside the US and are unable to return to their studies.
How US Indian reservations can resist right-wing oppression coming from state and federal levels.
A warehouse in the UK is such a dangerous place to work that ambulances take 35 people per year to hospitals from there.
Violent right-wing fanatics attacked a squat in London where homeless people live, throwing bricks and poles through the windows.
Many large tech companies are bringing staff back to the US in a hurry, who originate from countries that the troll might ban next.
Deutsche Bank will
cease funding new coal power plants and some coal
mines.
It is a substantial part of what every bank must do, to protect
humanity and other living species from disaster.
The
leader of Zimbabwean protests against Mugabe has been arrested and
accused
of "subversion".
Immigration thugs continued to jail US permanent residents
of Iraqi origin, trying to return to the US, after the order saying
they were allowed to return.
SCROTUS are
preparing to abolish recent regulations to make extractors
limit methane leaks and limit harm done by mountaintop removal coal
mining.
They are seriously embarking on a course of mass murder and the
possible collapse of civiliation.
It would be interesting to make an order of magnitude estimate of how
many people are likely to be killed by removing one mountaintop and
extracting the coal. Each one kills people both by pollution that
makes them sick, and in long term by global heating.
Trump's
Copying the Bush Censorship Playbook. Scientists Aren't
Standing for It.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine is
getting hotter.
The article says it isn't clear which side is escalating, but the fact
that the fight is going against Ukraine suggests that Russia is doing
so.
"Steve Bannon is
calling the shots in the White House. That's
terrifying."
"America First in pugilism, parochialism and misplaced
protectionism."
What We're Witnessing Is a
Stress Test of the US Constitution.
The troll's executive
order to eliminate two regulations for each new
one
is totally irrational.
Its superficial purpose is to prevent necessary regulations. Its
deeper purpose is to convince people irrationally that regulations
that
protect the public are all bad.
A Dutch hacker and Tor admin
recounts how state agents tried to
recruit
him for underground activities.
How Scientists Can Protect Their Data From the Trump Administration.
Don't Give In To Coup Fantasies;
Power Is More Straightforward.
The Tories have reduced claims for mistreatment of workers by 70%
by imposing a fee on such claims. The result is that lots
of poor women can't defend their rights.
How Do We Stop Trump and Win Gains in Justice and Equality?
Peaceful protesters in Cameroon
face execution.
US citizens:
rebuke the democrats that voted to advance Tillerson's
nomination.
White supremacists and other right-wing
extremists are present in many
US thug departments.
Tying Honduran politicians and plutocrats to the murder of over 120
environmental activists since the military coup that installed an
oppressive government.
Clinton seems to have endorsed the coup.
US citizens:
call on Congress to overturn the troll's partial ban on
visiting Muslims.
US citizens: Phone your senators to
resist and delay the troll's
cabinet nominees.
US citizens: support Senator Warren's bill to require president and
vice president to divest from
conflicts of interest.
Everyone:
call on mayors of sanctuary cities not to yield to the
troll's
pressure.
US citizens:
call on the Army Corps of Engineers not to approve the
Dakota Access Pipeline.
Here's the comment I submitted.
Democratic Senator Whitehouse encountered anger from hundreds of
voters who showed up to criticize him for
approving
some of the loser's saboteur cabinet nominees.
Protester Ken Ward has been
prohibited
from arguing a necessity defense as he goes on trial for shutting
the valve on a pipeline. He could be imprisoned for 30 years.
The troll wants to
risk
another financial crisis by overriding the Dodd-Frank financial
reform bill that was designed to try to prevent one.
The Dodd-Frank law does not go far enough — what we really need
is to bring back the Glass-Steagal act. However, getting rid of
Dodd-Frank would make things much worse.
Washington
State will sue to cancel the troll's partial Muslim ban.
The troll is causing disasters that reflect his temperament and character,
and this is likely to get worse, as he
makes
more enemies and gets more angry. This could end in calamity.
Women are protesting Texas's absurd miscarriage-harassment law by
mailing
their used tampons to the state governor.
In the heart of the loser:
despite
all the advantages that were handed to him, he feels no gratitude,
only anger that he wasn't given even more.
SCROTUS
want
to privatize gigantic areas of US government land.
Alcohol Industry
Subverting
Science to Prevent Greater Regulation, Study Finds.
Between
overfishing
and sewage effluent, fish stocks in the Bay of Bengal are
crashing.
Only massive contraception can save the people of that overpopulating
region.
The FBI has rules about infiltrating political and religious
organizations, rather weak rules though they are, but agents are
allowed
to ignore them essentially at will.
The FBI has
ignored
Obama's orders to stop racial profiling.
The FBI makes
standard
practice of seizing journalists phone records without a court
order.
This is exactly the threat to democracy which is why we must stop
systems from keeping records of who people talk with.
The moral lesson of the holocaust is
being
forgotten.
To defeat the troll, we need to
replace
right-wing establishment Democratic officials that resemble
Clinton.
US Funding Cuts to UN Agencies
Would
Be Costly for Peace And Security.
Protesters in Romania Denounce Plan to Decriminalise Misconduct Offences.
This could enable many convicted corrupt politicians to get out of prison.
Two young children were effectively arrested in their British school
because they had a toy gun. Based on their skin color, they were
treated as terrorists. Now they are terrified in school and out.
This treatment was part of official government "terrorism prevention"
policy, part of the fear-tyranny-industrial complex.
How various people are suffering due to the troll's partial ban on Muslims,
which was implemented in terms of seven specific countries.
Do-dirty has ordered the Philippine thugs to stop their anti-drug
operations (targeted killings).
Will the Philippines return to rule of law?
Only the state can enable everyone to have a good life, but
plutocratist policies and propaganda have convinced many people to give up on the idea of using the state for that purpose.
As the wealthy take more and more of the world's wealth, they are
crushing people slowly to death. Only reestablished democracy can
save us.
Homosexual Iranian refugees who were excluded precipitously from the US
fear Turkey will send them back to Iran to face persecution.
Canada: "Islamophobia has killed innocent Canadians".
Faux News eagerly claimed that the Québec shooting was done by a
Muslim (actually one of the worshippers at the mosque, who fled when
the bigot started shooting), and didn't withdraw the false claim until
Prime Minister Trudeau demanded it.
Why Democrats Should Hold the Line And Filibuster against Neil Gorsuch.
Homeless people have refused to be forced away from the main train
station in Melbourne, where they have camped.
I would like to know more about the "social housing" that the city
wants to move them to, and why they don't want to go.
Israel represses Palestinian nonviolent protesters with false accusations. A prominent example is Issa Amro, who received a UN
award as a human rights defender.
Even worse, it shows contempt for freedom of speech. Supposing that
the protester had indeed called a soldier "stupid", what kind of
state makes that a crime? A tyrannical state.
Also a dishonest state, which systematically denies the facts of the occupation.
The Israeli Law to Legalize Land Theft (only from Palestinians): it
would declare Israel a criminal state and call for sanctions.
The Council of Europe adopted a report rebuking Israel for "systematic
killing" in Gaza, as well as the siege and its consequences.
The report calls for an investigation by the International Criminal
Court, which I hope will take place.
Gaza's infrastructure is on the verge of collapse, and the blame falls mainly on Israel.
A robot is being developed to replace food warehouse workers.
The total number of jobs lost in the US could be in the hundreds of
thousands.
Deutsche Bank has been fined over half a billion dollars for not trying to avoid laundering money from Russia.
Four states have sued to overturn the troll's partial ban on Muslim visitors.
The troll's nominee for the Supreme Court is a right-wing extremist and might swing the decision on those cases.
Israel is going all out to extend its colonies in Palestinian territory.
A repair company for Macintoshes is sending threatening lawyer letters to
customers that published complaints.
If the victims say "so sue me", they would win in court. But many of them
are likely to panic and pay what was demanded.
Note that it is possible to install GNU/Linux in a Mac.
When Sally Yates was appointed as acting head of the Justice
Department, Senator Sessions asked her to commit to defend the
Constitution by rejecting unconstitutional orders from the president.
She did exactly that, and the troll fired her for it.
Tesla is producing electric storage facilities to help meet peak electric demand using renewable sources.
Wise governments would announce plans to buy lots of batteries over
many years, to create an incentive for R&D and production volume that
would drive the cost of production down.
Democratic senators blocked two of the troll's saboteur nominees by
refusing to attend the committee meeting which had to vote on them.
This tactic could be used against all the nominees if the Democrats
are united.
Naturally, Republicans called this shocking and unheard-of, although
they did the same thing a few years ago. That's the standard
Republican dishonesty, to demand that Democrats follow the bipartisan
comity which they themselves have completely rejected.
Extreme right-wing advances in the UK have stimulated hatred against
Jews as well as against Muslims.
A right-wing extremist in Québec murdered six Muslims in a mosque.
He seems to have been inspired by the French right-wing polician Le Pen.
Other right-wing politicians inspire murderers, too.
The troll has shut down the phone number to call the White House and
leave a message for the president. So Sanders has set up
WhiteHouseInc.org, where you can
send
him a message via one of his businesses.
The troll does not seem to understand
what's
required in responding to emergencies.
Republicans since Reagan have claimed that the government can't do a
good job of helping people, to build support for eliminating the
effective
programs that do so. They find it inconvenient when the facts to
undercut that claim. Thus, they have every reason to stop government
programs such as FEMA, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, food
stamps and welfare from working well. And they don't have enough
civic virtue to override their political interest.
Many Iranians that live in the US have been
separated
from their families because they were temporarily out of the
country.
They are being forced to give the passwords to their phones, which
means the US gets to know everything about them.
Philippine President Do-dirty admits to being "embarrassed" that thugs
killed
a South Korean businessman, assuming he was a drug dealer.
Even with its laws for trials, the US still gets mistaken convictions.
With no trial, just a gunshot, mistakes are far more likely.
The troll's precipitous prohibition on entering the US was not well
thought out, partly because the troll didn't consult very many people
about it. Even some Republicans recognize it
will
strengthen jihadis and terrorists.
Some immigration agents are
deporting
people in defiance of the court decision.
US border thugs who surprised visitors and returning students with the
news that their US visas had been canceled also
charged
them with attempting to enter the US illegally.
Are they imitating the troll's vicious dishonesty, or is this merely
the natural tendency of a thug when the opportunity arises?
Peter Watts, Canadian, was also banned from entering the US for a
period of many years after he was
convicted
of a bogus crime against the border thug that beat him up.
Bad
forest management contributed to the monster fire in Chile, which
threatens the city of Constitución.
Greece and the Euro-banksters are heading for the showdown, after a
secret IMF report says that
traveling
the path the banksters impose would make Greece's debt snowball.
Republicans still can't find a way to repeal Obama's medical insurance
system without
making
lots of their constituents very very mad.
If those constituents were aware of how Republicans' other changes
will hurt them, they would make those stop too.
The UN Human Rights Committee ruled that
denial
of abortion rights violated a woman's human rights.
The UK Labour Party
needs
to listen to white working class Britons' concerns rather than
dismiss them out of hand as "racist". Even though some of what they
say is racist.
The same applies to the US Democratic Party. We need to find common
cause with downtrodden people who do racist scapegoating, without
endorsing their racism.
Most of the necessary change consists to ceasing to treat plutocratic
bankster rule as inevitable and start fighting to eliminate it.
North Carolina's Republicans have threatened to eliminate the city
government of Charlotte if it continues to
stand
against bigotry.
The European Union
formally
called on China to investigate its arrest and torture of human
rights lawyers.
The troll has, apparently, brought back the practice of
sending
soldiers on ground raids in Yemen.
In this raid there were substantial casualties on both sides, as well
as many civilians. At least the target was a real al-Qa'ida base.
Killing 14 members of al-Qa'ida and an officer is insignificant as a
blow against that organization. What determines its strength is how
well it can recruit. The troll's ban against visits from Yemen and
other countries is sure to strengthen al-Qa'ida recruiting, generally
and especially in Yemen.
White supremacists and other right-wing extremists are present in many
US thug departments.
Amnesty International accuses the Philippines thugs of paying for
murder, planting evidence, and extorting money from the families of
the people they kill.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose Pudzer as Secretary of
Labor.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose DeVos as Secretary
of Education.
Two Republican senators have already said they won't vote for her.
With one more Republican, and if no Democrats defect, DeVos will lose.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose Tim Price.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call on
Democratic senators to oppose the troll's Supreme Court nominees.
US citizens:
sign
this White House petition calling on the troll to release tax
returns and conflict of interest data.
Everyone:
Help
NASA save data from the troll's men.
US citizens:
call on
Democrats to do all possible to resist the troll's budget cuts.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to require the troll to show he is no longer
financially involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A former US official who resigned in disgust under Bush I urges
officials to
"kick
sand in the gears" until they are fired, rather than quitting
immediately.
That is a drastic response, and would be a harmful overreaction under
ordinary circumstances, but these are not ordinary and I think it is
justified against the troll and the saboteur cabinet.
Kurdish forces are accused of
torturing
prisoners accused of supporting PISSI.
The article talks about "children", but it really means "minors".
Given the age range of 11 to 17, it is clear that some (most?) of the
prisoners are teenagers, but some are really children.
I point this out to avoid a frequent kind of error, but it makes no
important difference in this case. Torturing teenagers is just as
wrong as torturing children. Likewise for torturing adults.
The infant's abrupt
dismissal
of the State Department's second-level management will leave the
department on blind autopilot for weeks or months.
The Iraqi army presented a captured
PISSI
poison gas lab facility.
A court cancelled the troll's exclusion order, but
only
for those that were en route with a valid visa when the order was
issued.
This deals with the most acute part of the problem, but everyone with
a valid visa or a green card should be allowed in, unless there is
some specific personal reason which should be examined in a personal
hearing.
Pointlessly
excluding
the Iranian cast and director of an oscar-nominated film is going
to make the troll look bad.
Some in India
still
blame inexplicable mishaps on witches, and kill the witches.
This happens in
parts
of Africa, too.
The troll has done something I think is good:
long-period
bans on many federal officials from lobbying.
This doesn't cover members of Congress, since that requires a law.
Such a law is called for.
A broad and large movement to protect America from the troll
is taking shape, and got a big boost from the initial Muslim ban.
The troll's repression of Muslims
tracks the start of Hitler's
repression of Jews.
It is fair to call the troll's precipitous immigration restrictions a
partial Muslim ban because that's how he intended it. Giuliani says
that the troll asked for advice on he could make such a ban fit
legal requirements.
Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals sued scientist Pieter Cohen for a scientific
paper
reporting an illegal and possibly dangerous chemical was present in
various
Hi-Tech "nutritional supplements".
The company lost, but its head hopes that the expense of defending it
will scare off any scientists that think of criticizing in the future.
The loser's partial Muslim ban is playing into PISSI's hands: PISSI
stated its intention to
use terrorism to provoke stupid reactions like
this.
More Than 100 Natural World Heritage Sites
Degraded by Human Activity.
Mnuchin Again Denies Robo-Signing,
Despite Yet More Evidence He Is
Lying.
Salafi Arabia has had to start taxing residents, but did it in the
worst possible way: with a value-added tax (effectively a sales tax)
that falls hardest on the poor and spares the rich.
An
Indonesian Islamist who pushed for the prosecution of Jakarta's
mayor for blasphemy is being prosecuted for defamation.
Making defamation a crime is the same wrong as making blasphemy a
crime. Freedom of speech includes the right to speak ill of any
person and any religion.
Washington DC thugs
dropped charges against some of the journalists
arrested covering a protest. But not all.
The UN warns that the troll's ban on admitting refugees
will put
20,000 refugees in danger.
Steve Bannon NSC Seat Risks Politicizing National Security, Former
Officials
Warn.
The troll politicizes all decisions — he lacks the concept that some
issues are more important in their own right than his political
tactics.
Several US Christian leaders denounced the idea of giving Christian
refugees
priority because of their religion.
Supposedly American multinationals said they would "create lots of
jobs" if given a big tax cut. But now that they think they can
actually get it, they are saying they
will
give the money to their stockholders instead.
Letting businesses abuse workers and the public treasury in your
country can sometimes convince businesses to move jobs there from
other coutries. If only one country do this, it gets an economic
boost (though probably little trickles down to the now increasingly
mistreated workers).
But when countries in general join this competition, it becomes a
policy of
"beggar
thy neighbor" which ultimately benefits businesses at the expense
of all countries.
Bill McKibben: the troll has reduced our slim chances of avoiding
global heating disaster, but they are not zero. We
must
not give up.
In addition, our efforts now might reduce somewhat the scope of the
disaster even if it is too late to avoid it. Maybe half a billion
humans could survive this century instead of a hundred million. Maybe
we could keep technological civilization going.
American plutocrats hope to survive that
disaster
in New Zealand. They think they can condemn the world to disaster
and protect their own families from the consequences.
If they knew today that they could not succeed at this, because the
dying masses would drag them back to share in those consequences, they
might change their plans and prevent the disaster.
Angela Sutton: "I am
the
woman you don't see when you walk down the street sipping your
Starbucks coffee."
Torture seen as a
system
for producing fake news.
The troll's new immigration restrictions will be a
big
boost to jihadis and Muslim terrorists around the world.
One effect of the screwy US medical insurance system is that you
can't
find out what anything will cost.
Temporarily unemployed people in the UK are more likely to be obese,
because they are rejected by many employers. However, long-term
unemployed people are more likely to be very thin, because they
don't
have enough access to food.
Americals of all political camps love the national parks. Maybe
the
troll's attack on them, and threat to eliminate them, will teach some
Americans a lesson about him.
If the UK wants a trade deal with the US, it will have to accept the
possibly dangerous products of
US
farm practices.
Citizens of Massachusetts: support the
ACLU's Freedom Agenda.
Here's the
description of it.
US citizens:
thank two senators for blocking a senate resolution
to condemn the UN for defending Palestinians' rights.
Robots in the near term will
wipe
out many of the better-paid jobs that still exist, leaving only
low-paid service jobs to repay the student loans of many graduates.
Most of the ruling class have no plan to avoid mass descent into poverty.
Now that the US has withdrawn from the TPP, what about other business-supremacy treaties?
Americans are unrealistically optimistic about their chances of getting rich. That makes them sitting ducks for right-wingers that promise them lower taxes, supposing they do someday get rich.
Most Israeli reporters repeat the lies thugs tell about Palestinians they kill.
Israeli extremists have organized a campaign to harass Arabs that drive buses.
The Women's March a week ago was a powerful act of defiance, but in order for it to lead to victory people must form and join organizations.
5000 Israeli Jews and Arabs protested Israel's demolitions of Palestinians' homes.
US left-oriented movements should unite, as the troll and his hate group attack all the areas of resistance together.
Democrats' tepid resistance to the troll's nominees reflects a mistaken strategy that will fail to inspire Americans for the struggle to come.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Appears 'The World Is Preparing for War'.
Here are some suggested rules for evaluating news stories that refer to anonymous sources like an intelligence analyst.
The Kuwaiti ambassador claims he was not pressured to move the event to the troll's hotel, but I am not sure I believe him. He argues that it is ridiculous to think that Kuwait would need to influence the US government by its choice of where to hold a reception—and that's a valid point, except that it's not a matter of influencing the US government, it's a matter of the troll's personal desire for money, which seems to be more important to him that any sense of US interest.
Another element, for me, is that I think the troll would not try very hard to conceal such things, so it is plausible to me that quite a few people could have leaked the information.
Black teenager Emmett Till was lynched in 1955 because Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, said he had grabbed her and insulted her. Much later she admitted that she had lied.
The cheater put a coal lobbyist in charge of prosecution of some environmental crimes.
The troll's executive order blocking entry to everyone from 7 Muslim countries was done in a gratuitously cruel way.
It is basically irrelevant to protection from terrorism, but will be very effective at provoking some, playing into the hands of jihadis.
The ban has stranded Iraqi refugees already granted visas, who are in danger at home because they worked for the US there.
Permanent residents who came from those countries don't dare leave the US as they might not be allowed back in.
Protesters at Kennedy Airport have brought about release into the US of one of the blocked Iraqis.
The UK has rewarded Erdogan's tyranny with a big sale of fighter planes.
Several leaders of Labour, and I think not the Blairite sellout wing, refuse to vote for leaving the UK.
Arkansas has passed a law banning the usual method of abortions in the second trimester.
Abortions in the second trimester are done only based on specific justifications, usually medical.
Sonny Purdue as Secretary of Agriculture would support "farmers" that are big corporations, and endanger the health of humans.
A nun rebukes the hypocrisy of theocratic anti-abortionists.
Public opinion is slowly turning against Big Agriculture's practices of mistreatment of animals.
The ag-gag censorship bills have been unable to stop it.
Ending these practices is important for humans' health in two ways. One is that if meat costs more we will eat less of it and live longer. The other is that keeping the animals alive in such harmful conditions requires lots of antibiotics, and using the antibiotics on them breeds resistant bacteria that already kill people.
US citizens:
call
on Senate democrats to resist the troll's saboteur cabinet.
US citizens:
call
on the troll to cancel the Dakota Access Pipeline and respect the
right to protest.
US citizens:
call
on TV networks not to show the troll's press-manipulation rallies
live.
Here's
more
information.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to oppose
the troll's saboteur cabinet as hard as they can.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to reject H.R. 490, the bill to ban nearly all abortions.
US border thugs have
demanded
that US citizens turn over their social media names, and passwords for
their phones.
This is illegal and unconstitutional, but hey, would thugs care?
I am disappointed that the article uses the terms
"content"
and
"cloud".
California is planning to thwart the troll by
collecting
and storing less data about people.
Finally, politicians are tackling dangerous surveillance in the only
way that is really effective.
70%
of users (from a set of volunteers) could be reidentified in
"anonymized" browsing data by correlating it with their tweets.
Some Israeli officials admitted torturing Palestinian prisoners, and
we have some
details
about the practices they use.
The head Khmer Rouge torturer admitted in court that torture was
ineffective
at getting information from suspects. That was inevitable, since
most of them had no real information to give — just like most of
the prisoners in Guantanamo.
Scientists
are planning a protest in Washington against ignorantism.
The troll said he
supports
Paul Ryan's plan to destroy Social Security and Medicare.
A high school student threw a paper airplane at a teacher's head and
was arrested by the school thug. He
faces
30 days in jail.
It is dangerous to have thugs in a school.
Repealing Obama's medical insurance system would hit people from one
side while
global
heating effects hit them from the other side.
Workers File More Than Thirty
Wage
Theft, Harassment, Intimidation Complaints Against Brands Owned by
[the troll's] Embattled Labor Secretary Nominee.
Kathy Kelly was
convicted
of protesting the murder of Jamar Clark. The man's name was
hardly mentioned in the trial.
The troll inspires other deranged people to attack Muslims in the US.
Ayyadurai, the self-styled "inventor of email", sent a threatening
letter
demanding deletion of posts from Diaspora.
The letter also attempts to bully the recipient and journalists not to
publish the letter — though publishing it would surely be fair use.
The troll's statement in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day
peculiarly
avoided mentioning Jews or antisemitism.
Zuckerberg cancelled the lawsuits that were intended to force hundreds
of
Hawaiians to sell land to him.
A special tax loophole
applies to some appointed federal officials.
I can see the reason for having an exception like this. Since they
are
required by law to sell their assets, that could impose a big tax
liability
on them, which would be somewhat unfair. But perhaps the duration of
the tax deferral should be limited to a year after they leave the
appointed
office.
The cheater, his appointees and other Republicans are
preparing
a massive attack on Americans' voting rights.
The Republicans' attacks on abortion rights are
just
beginning.
They do not seek to reduce the number of abortions; they use abortion
as an excuse to harm and repress women.
Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab is on trial for
writing
that journalists and international NGOs are banned from Bahrain.
He could be imprisoned for 17 years for a true statement.
UK: "Theresa May's visit to Turkey
betrays
our liberal values."
Opposition to coal is
organizing
in South Africa.
The troll is undermining the Justice Department by
meeting
directly with companies that want to merge.
The Obama administration was too weak in stopping mergers. If the
troll strengthens the barriers to mergers, I will applaud that. But I
think he is more likely to do the exact opposite.
The troll's saboteur nominee for Secretary of the Interior
wants
to roast Earth's ecosphere with coal.
Another
pipeline
leak reminds us that all oil pipelines leak sooner or later.
They leak more often than necessary because the companies
skimp
on testing for flaws.
CETA, the Canadian version of TTIP (This Treaty Is Plutocratic), is
not
necessarily dead yet. It may yet undermine democracy in the
European Union.
Britons with a working-class background are
paid
7% less (on the average) than equally qualified workers in the
same job that have a privileged class background.
The troll
threatens
to cut off federal aid to cities that offer sanctuary to
unauthorized immigrants.
This would exceed his constitutional authority, and
cities
plan to resist.
Trading with other countries does not require "free trade" treaties.
Instead of "free trade", every country needs
trade
it can regulate so that business don't gain
supremacy over
democracy.
One thing we should put into international treaties is more
tax-enforcement
cooperation.
Unusual high temperatures are fueling
unusual
large wildfires in Chile.
Whatever may be the immediate cause of the fires, it is clear that
their underlying cause is global heating. That is not a matter of
negligence;
Exxon's
funded
and knowingly dishonest denialism is a form of sabotage.
Citizens of Minnesota:
oppose
the proposed state law to bankrupt protesters.
Everyone else, please tell people you know in Minnesota.
US citizens: phone senators to
oppose
confirmation of Tom Price.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The troll's plan to resume torturing prisoners in secret prisons is
facing
opposition in Congress.
His official press manipulator claims that the draft executive order
didn't come from the White House, and
suggests
that the loser has nothing to do with it. However, the troll has
spoken in favor of these actions.
Why bother looking for ways to reconcile these claims. The statement
comes from someone of no credibility. The simplest explanation is
that it's another "alternate fact" (i.e., lie).
The scenarios where torture is purportedly necessary are so
strained
and unrealistic that they will probably never occur in real life.
Chelsea Manning was punished for revealing US war crimes. Obama and
his men
never
took action about them.
The troll plans to stop issuing visas to citizens of
seven
Muslim countries where the US has made hostile interventions. But
not Salafi Arabia, which is the root of Islamism world-wide.
I've proposed that requiring immigrants and non-tourist visitors to
publish a video statement in favor of human rights. They could make
the statement, reading a provided standard text in their own language,
to the immigration officials, who would publish it on a web site.
By making this statement they will publicly declare their rejection of
Islamism.
Since the troll persists in claiming that torture "works" to get
information, here's an
explanation
of why torture does not "work".
A specific example of its failure: when US agents tortured Ibn
as-Sheikh al-Libi, he
said
what he knew Dubya wanted to hear. This helped Dubya start a war
of aggression whose harmful consequences continue to ramify in Iraq,
Syria, and elsewhere.
But even if torture did "work" in a narrow sense, it would be a
vicious crime, and the harm it does would spread.
Practicing torture implants an inhumane attitude, which then manifests
itself in a range of inhumanity: general cruelty to all prisoners,
imprisonment without trial, collateral murder, and other atrocities.
These atrocities cause great suffering directly. They also provoke
hatred. How many jihadis have been provoked by Guantanamo and US
torture? Surely thousands.
The cheater said his businesses would make "no new deals", as an
inadequate substitute for selling them off; but
that
was a lie.
Betsy DeVos is
connected
with companies that collect student debts.
The troll has
declared
war on our environment and our health.
The Netherlands is
organizing
an international fund for abortion aid to compensate for the harm
done by the US global gag rule.
A medical charity doesn't need to give referrals about abortion if
there is a separate organization next door that provides abortion
information.
Judging the troll's firehose of lies against
1984.
Let's not forget that each one of the troll's lies is an implicit
threat to punish those who won't publicly support the lie.
Republicans in Minnesota
want
to impose huge liability on protesters convicted of even minor
"crimes."
Since those "crimes" mean basically whatever a thug says, civil
disobedience (and maybe all mass protest) would be crushed.
This reminds me of the
Israeli
repression method of imposing unlimited liability on anyone who
advocates any sort of political boycott against Israeli colonization
of Palestinian territory.
The loser
wants
to launch a massive investigation of the millions of imaginary
"illegal voters" that he claims gave Clinton a majority of votes.
False accusations standard Republican practice —
they
destroyed ACORN this way, and used them against
climate
scientists and
Planned
Parenthood.
I think the loser's plan is to create a lot of smoke so he can claim
it proves there was a fire. It will also be useful for deflecting
attention from
the
real election-rigging that the Republicans did last year.
Advances in production efficiency do not lead to decrease of demand for material resources.
Eventually, scarcity of the resources will raise the price for them, and that may lead to use of less resources. The problem is that if pollution and other harmful side effects are not charged to whoever extracts the resources, they will "cure" the scarcity by extracting more and more.
This is where we need a democratic state to impose taxes high enough to discourage use of the resources.
UK prosecutors are reluctant to prosecute domestic violence. Even after a man blinded Akorede Odutayo in one eye, they didn't charge him.
Several parameters that measure society's well-being.
Rumors say the troll might pull the US out of the UN.
The UN might actually become more capable of useful action without the US dragging it in the wrong direction. But it will have less influence and funds.
When Bannon told the press to "keep its mouth shut", he revealed the intention to abolish journalism, leaving the media with nothing to do but respew the sewage the troll pumps through the White Hose.
UK schools teach gender stereotypes such as "girls can't do physics" and "boys can't become writers". Children learn these stereotypes by age 6.
Right-wing governments around the world will try to match the cheater's tax cuts for the rich.
It is vital to give all children serious sex and relationship education.
The risk of getting sexually involved over the internet is one of the smaller of the problems these classes can prevent. Children and teenagers don't generally meet up with adults over the net unless their families have already caused them some damage. It's good to help those children, but it would be better to help them avoid that damage.
The biggest dangers these classes can help avoid are that of catching pregnancy or disease through consensual sex, and that of getting stuck in a violent relationship.
The troll is promising US unions to create lots of jobs.
He might actually be sincere about this, but it seems unlikely to succeed, especially if AI eliminates a large fraction of today's good jobs.
Meanwhile, state-level Republicans are doing quite a lot to undermine unions. If he is serious about cooperating with unions, he had better get make those Republicans stop that.
Eliminating the business supremacy treaties will be good for workers, simply because making it hard to move production between countries will help workers in each country organize and demand better pay, more rights, and higher minimum wage.
Australia's planet roasters plan to spend 60 billion building advanced coal plants to reduce emissions, but they could achieve the same reduction with renewable energy for half the cost.
It's clear that their highest priority goal is to burn as much coal as possible.
The troll pressured the National Park Service director for photos that would "prove" the falsehood that he attracted more people to the inauguration than Obama did.
This suggests that the troll is worse than a liar—he is going crazy.
Denver kicked out the inhabitants of a large camp of homeless people. Previously, the thugs stole homeless people's blankets.
The UK's NHS plans to limit hip and knee replacements to those patients whose need is greatest—purely to save money.
The Tories simply cannot give the NHS enough funds because catering to rich tax-dodgers is so expensive ;-{.
British children should go outdoors and play the game "Chicken, Catch a Tory", to learn what you do with a Tory when you catch one.
The Tohono O’odham tribe, whose reservation crosses the US-Mexico border, intends to block construction of the troll's wall on its land.
An Australian company decided to ignore natural gas leaks for years, and pay fines, rather than fix them.
It's obvious what to do here:
The question is, why doesn't the government do this obvious thing? Because it's been corrupted by these companies, I suppose.
The Greek Supreme Court refused Erdogan's request to extradite eight Turkish soldiers that sought asylum in Greece.
They were sent to rescue troops that participated in the coup, but they themselves were not part of the coup. For Erdogan, however, association implies guilt.
The Economic Intelligence Unit, which rates democracy of countries in general, has downgraded its rating of the US to "flawed democracy".
This is based on recognition of the flaws that existed before the last election, such as the fact that the people no longer get to decide anything much.
The troll proposes to impose a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico.
If Mexico retaliates with a tariff on US grain, Mexican peasants might be able to prosper in Mexico. A side benefit for the US would be a big drop in immigration of Mexicans.
The US grain that won't be shipped to Mexico is grown by corporations, not by family farms. (The Republicans, under Reagan, destroyed nearly all of those.) So to hell with them.
By the troll's executive order, all asylum seekers crossing the US southern border will be imprisoned.
Conditions in America's privatized immigration prisons are already cruel and dangerous, especially for children.
With many more people put in them, they will be overloaded and even more dangerous.
Executive Orders Are Normal; [the troll's] Are Only Appalling Because of What They Say.
Some of them don't actually say much in substantive terms.
Marc Short: Koch Dark-Money Operative Is Trump's Liaison to Congress.
Journalists in Germany face jail for reporting on leaked information.
SCROTUS now want to eliminate the inheritance tax, boosting the growth of inherited capital.
As Piketty pointed out, this tendency is already devastating democracy. Naturally, the plutocrats' lackeys want to make it worse.
France used torture against the independence movement in Algeria, and paid a great price for it in the long term.
The troll has imposed censorship on scientists at the EPA and some other agencies: they are forbidden to speak to the public about the results of their research without getting political approval.
Scientists met to discuss how to cope with this censorship.
The troll's wife worked illegally while in the US on a tourist visa. If you want to crack down on immigrants that break laws, why not start with her?
She will be just fine back in Slovenia—it's a safe, democratic country with a decent standard of living.
The ACLU asked the Senate to hold another hearing on Sessions before voting about his nomination.
The CIA altered the movie adaptations of Animal Farm and 1984.
It also funded exhibits of abstract expressionist art so as to decrease the popularity of socialist realism.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject Sonny Perdue as head of the USDA.
Everyone:
call on Betagro
to put an end to slavery in its farms.
Naomi Klein: the troll and Republicans are planning to provoke disasters
and
use
them as opportunities for knocking people down.
Charter schools can be cheaper to run than public schools, but
the
way they do so shows why they are not a solution for society.
This chain skims the cream by not dealing with the students that need
special help. That apparently includes the increasing fraction of
students whose families are food-insecure, because these charter
schools have no cafeteria to give them meals with. With no sports,
they appear to lead students to be obese couch potatoes. The absence
of an auditorium rules out many kinds of programs.
Hell, it's easy to cut costs by doing only part of the job.
The cheater
continues
to repeat the lie that millions of illegal voters gave Clinton a
higher popular vote total than he got.
This lie is a sharp knife in the belly of US democracy. It is meant
to provide an excuse for more voter suppression, to be cited by
Republican state officials for whom truth means nothing and democracy
is to be destroyed.
Portable phones with
iris
scanners? Make sure to taoe them over!
14
Democrats voted for pro-torture Pompeo as CIA director.
Contraceptive
programs in Africa are threatened by the reinstated US global gag
rule.
"Inoculating" people about
fact-denial
campaigns can be effective at blunting their effects.
We the people saved the US from the TPP, and we will now have to save
the US from the troll's
unjust
policies.
"What if we gave
universal
income to people in biodiversity hotpots?"
Since we need to keep population growth down, perhaps the universal
income should be limited to those who have no children or use reliable
birth control (which we should provide at no charge).
US journalists should unite to
defend
each other from the troll.
Comparing the loser with the worst Roman emperors.
The American hegemony is often compared with Rome's conquest of the
Mediterranean world. History does not repeat itself, but the gradual
decay of the Roman Republic which led to its becoming a tyranny shows
it can in principle happen here too.
The Keystone Pipeline [would] Create
Just 35 Permanent Jobs.
"We cannot pollute our way to prosperity."
Germany has arrested suspected right-wing terrorist plotters.
Mnuchin told the Senate committee that his bank had not done
fraudulent
robo-signing,
but in fact it did.
The UK is
using the National Health Service to find illegal
immigrants.
The result of this is that illegal immigrants — and others who are
afraid for vague reasons — will forego treatment and die.
The troll plans to
control his Senate-approved cabinet secretaries
by means of unofficial Trumpery Party commisars.
The
IRS has demanded Coinbase surrender records of millions of
peoples' transactions en masse.
Wyoming Republicans
want to ban utilities from using renewable energy.
Israel killed Ahmad Hassan Shubeir by blocking him from leaving Gaza
for treatment for a heart problem.
He was offered permission to travel if only he became an informer.
An Israeli Jew criticized Israel's expulsion of Arabs from the Jordan
valley
and was accused of "antisemitism".
The
latest expulsion technique: seizing Palestinians' tractors.
The cheater
may provoke war with China as a distraction technique.
Everyone:
call on Citibank to stop funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.
US citizens:
tell Spicer to quit lying.
US citizens:
call for restricting use of "stingray" devices that
track all cell phones in a given area.
US media are
starting to call the cheater's lies "lies".
Juvenile prisoners in Wisconsin get
permanently messed up by solitary
confinement.
Even adults have trouble standing up to that.
The troll's infrastructure plan would construct toll roads chosen
based on how much profit the private owners hope to get from tolls.
Senate Democrats have proposed an alternate infrastructure plan
which doesn't give businesses a big handout.
Proposals for a transition to the post-scarcity society in which work
is not needed.
One problem not touched on is that resources humans need — such as
food, and potable water — are likely to be scarce later this century.
SCROTUS are
planning to prohibit Obamacare insurance from covering
abortions.
This could cause many medical plans to eliminate abortion coverage.
Governments pledged over 15 billion dollars for education of Syrian
refugee children,
then paid only 1/3 of that.
Global Public Sector Corruption Fuels Rise of Populist Politicians,
report
says.
George Monbiot's
proposals to make a democratic system that makes
thoughtful decisions.
Scientists of the US National Parks Service have set up an unofficial
Twitter account
to refute the troll's lies.
In England, women who were unable to care for their children are
offered
help for a fresh start, with the requirement that they use
contraception.
Not having more children turns out to enable many of them to learn
to make
a success of their lives.
I think that people who predictably won't be able to take care of
children have a responsibility to society not to make more of them.
Having children who will be condemned to a life of stress and want is
very bad.
The troll is considering
three potential saboteurs to put on the
Supreme Court.
Each of them could be worse than Scalia.
Don't be taken in by the myth of the suppressed cancer cure.
These so-called "cures" are quackery.
What is true is that the big pharma companies spend a lot
more on sleazy marketing (including "gifts" for doctors) than on
research, and that they direct the research more at chronic conditions
of the wealthy part of the world than at curing diseases common
mainly among poor people.
Washington DC thugs encircled a large group of protesters, then
attacked them indiscriminately with teargas, grenades and sticks, then
arrested them all and charged them with the felony of "rioting".
I saw reports that some people were breaking windows that night.
But that can't justify indiscriminately charging everyone who was
in the vicinity. Nor, perhaps, such serious charges even against
those
who broke windows.
The
targets of repression include six journalists.
"For people sick of high deductibles,
Republicans offer
high-deductible
[medical] plans as replacements for [Obama's medical insurance
program]."
Mattel is making a device to
monitor children all the time
and report on what they say and what they do.
The troll's choice for the civil rights office at the Justice
Department
is a saboteur. He has worked in favor Republican gerrymandering
and voter suppression.
This is part of the "grab power by hook or by crook" attitude
of US Republicans.
Data brokers sell
all sorts of information about nearly everyone.
Never post any information about anyone else to an internet site
without first consulting that other person. This includes Facebook
(though in principle you
shouldn't let Facebook use you at all).
However, there's a lot of information they get from companies and
services
that you use in a non-anonymous way. Most of those companies and
services
should be required to allow anonymous use.
The few that we need to use, and that need to know who we are, should
not be allowed to give any piece of personal information to anyone.
Not even "anonymized". And that should include government agencies,
except when there is a subpoena for specific people's data.
The troll is adopting
propaganda
practices of North Korea.
Until we get the troll out of office, every day calls for patriotic
devotion. This political note is just one of my acts of patriotic
devotion for today.
The cheater resigned as director of some golf companies but is
still
the owner of them.
This is not enough to make them cease to be a conflict of interest and
a violation of the constitution. It's a mere sham.
Washington DC thugs
arrested
two TV journalists and charged them with "rioting".
The journalists were covering the riot, not rioting, but thugs don't
care about such distinctions.
The US is safe from the TPP, but
other
governments still relish the possibility of subjugating their
countries to foreign companies.
The Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
would
put dooH niboR in charge of any countries that sign it.
The
Center for Disease Control cancelled a summit on global heating
and public health, which was scheduled for February.
The troll has
frozen EPA grants and contracts.
Although the troll opposes the TPP, that doesn't mean he won't
establish harmful trade treaties. Certain
transparency principles in
the negotiation would help avoid that.
When the cheater visited the CIA, he brought along an audience
supporters, apparently not connected with the CIA, to cheer for him
and
give a false impression of support.
The troll's nominee to head the FCC is a Verizon lawyer.
Everything he does will help ISPs against the public.
Tillerson's record of pushing damaging fossil fuels.
Sad to say, he was confirmed by the Senate to head the State
Department.
A bad surveillance bill in Connecticut has a bad purpose:
repression of customers of prostitutes.
This bill would not help those women who consider practicing
prostitution, and would violate the rights of everyone who uses a
hotel in Connecticut.
The troll intends to
revive the blocked Keystone XL and Dakota Access
pipelines.
The article does not make it clear what effect today's executive
orders actually have.
The troll claims to be an "environmentalist".
Self-contradiction is
all in a day's work.
Now if only he would claim to eliminate abortions by opening 1000 new
abortion clinics.
A new tech product
offers parents the chance to impose total
monitoring and
regimentation on their children.
Some progress towards a cease-fire in Syria.
Putin seems to be serious about pushing for a settlement, and has a
chance to achieve it.
The troll may will prevent the neocons from interfering. That would
be good
for Syria.
Protesters are setting up camps to stop the Sabal pipeline in Florida.
They focus on the danger of polluting the area's rivers and lakes, but
that's the least of the worries. If we burn the gas that will be
shipped through that pipeline, those rivers and lakes won't exist,
because the land will become part of the Atlantic Ocean.
Teaching girls they are inferior
starts very young.
A prisoner in Texas was on the verge of dying of malnutrition,
before someone attacked and killed him.
Israel is
massively accelerating colonization of Palestinian
territory.
I have for years supported boycott of products of these colonies, but
these developments are making me consider taking a stronger position.
In states where judges are elected directly,
billionaires can stack
the courts.
This avenue for corruption has
existed for a long time.
It doesn't take billions to sway a judgeship election.
Facebook buys personal data from various data brokers, and correlates
that with what it figures out directly about its useds.
Facebook advises useds that they can tell the data brokers to stop
collecting data about them, but it doesn't ensure that this really
works. After all, no one will punish Facebook for false claims of
that
sort.
US citizens: call on members of Congress to
sign the Lieu-Conyers
letter, which Obama to stop refueling Salafi Arabian planes involved
in the bombardment of Yemen.
US citizens:
Call
on state legislators to oppose a constitutional convention.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to impeach the loser now.
US workers held a strike on Friday to condemn the cheater, who wants to "bring back jobs" but doesn't want the employees to get good working conditions or fair treatment.
Giving homeless people in Australia a chance to speak, while they face the threat of a crackdown.
One way or another, Republican plans to "reform" Medicare and Social Security will screw Americans that aren't rich.
The troll has officially pulled the US out of the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
Well, I can't say that the troll never did anything that was good. But our resistance made it possible.
Transcripts describe the torture of Xie Yang, Chinese human rights lawyer.
Jeffrey Beall used to maintain a blog that identified bogus "scientific journals", but he has erased it all, apparently facing legal threats from those predators.
A court decision in Australia narrowed the definition of "personal information" to the point where privacy laws are nearly ineffective.
True protection of privacy requires limiting the accumulation of data about people, not merely limiting how it is used once accumulated.
Tom Price helped a drug company by pressuring the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to downplay a study that reported problems with the company's product.
Clearly the wrong sort of person to be allowed any say in US health care. In other words, just the sort of swamp creature that the troll would put in charge of it.
Families arriving at the US border without a visa are put immediately in immigration prison, where children get shoddy medical care that can kill them.
Obama didn't help non-rich Americans wield political power, but he made them feel (mistakenly) that they were psychologically "empowered".
Alexey Kovalev gives advice to the press about how to cover the cheater, based on experience covering Putin.
One thing we should not do is ponder in kremlinological fashion every hint about what the cheater is thinking, as in this article.
That's a recipe for getting distracted by every little gesture.
Zuckerberg is suing hundreds of people in Hawaii to force them to sell him their land that's in the middle of his large estate.
At the current rate of deforestation, rainforests will all be gone in a century.
They are also in danger of drying out and burning up.
A state in Australia proposes laws to require nightclubs to track and record everyone who enters.
That is an injustice.
If the system checked only for certain known individuals, and did not record anyone else, it would be acceptable.
The end of China's one-child policy raised the birth rate by 8%.
These results show that the one-child policy was making a significant contribution to reducing population growth. Eliminating it was a mistake.
The low birth rate will cause short term inconvenience, but not a disaster. China's population is still increasing, and that is likely to lead to disaster.
This article proposes ways to convince the troll to support activities to help people cope with the short-term effects of global heating.
There's just one giant flaw in this proposal: working on "resilience" is treating the symptoms only. Since the disease of inducing global heating is likely to be fatal to most species and most humans on Earth, what really matters is arresting the progress of the disease, not treating the symptoms.
In the US, it has become customary to condemn parents for any freak accident that happens to their children.
The troll and his trumpettes call their factual lies "alternate facts".
How many people attended the inauguration is of no substantive political importance, but the loser's mystique is based on the claim that he always wins, so he is compelled to deny the inconvenient facts whenever he loses any sort of contest.
Romanians protested a plan to free many prisoners to reduce prison overcrowding. They fear this would be used to free people convicted of corruption.
The Republican Party is the disloyal party, opposed to democracy as well as to the Democrats.
Haldeman's notes prove that Nixon sabotaged President Johnson's Vietnam peace negotiations so as to get himself elected. This was an act of treason.
John Dean gives more explanation of Haldeman's notes and why we can rely on them.
Reagan likewise sabotaged his country (working with Iran) to get himself elected. A few years later, he ransomed terrorists' hostages with arms for Iran, from which he also got money to spend illegally to launch an underground war against Nicaragua. That too was treason, I believe.
Since 2000, Republicans have instead cheated by rigging the elections. After gaining power by hook or by crook, they use it to swindle their country.
China has
prohibited
all unlicensed VPNs.
US farmers are suing to stop the use of
Monsanto's
latest pesticide, designed for certain GMO crops.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is
suing
to demand that the troll not receive payments from foreign
governments
Various commentators'
legal
analysis.
Some
points to set against the loser's militarism.
There is a correction for item 4: attacks against soldiers of an
occupying army are not terrorism. They are, rather, an armed
uprising. We need to distinguish armed uprising from terrorism, since
both do exist.
Another point worth mentioning is that the US army already is so big
that no other army would mess with it. However, no army can be so big
that it discourages guerrilla uprising, or terrorism.
UK immigration
ignored
information about repression in Eritrea in order to reject teenage
refugees.
Disturbed
Man Gets Past White House Security, Gives Press Conference.
Lawyers' leaders, world wide,
rebuke
China for arresting and torturing human rights lawyers.
3.5
million people participated in the Women's Marches Saturday, and
established contacts they can use in future resistance to the
kleptocratic party.
The troll has reintroduced the Reagan gag rule that
prohibits
US-funded organizations from referring women to abortion
providers.
In the past, this rule
impacted
birth control provision and health care for women and for
children. It is also likely to kill thousands of women by leaving
them with no safe abortion option.
It will surely encourage population growth and thus increase future
poverty.
English Usage is
changing
so fast that it has become a pitfall for most people — at
least on Twitter.
Since I don't use Twitter or SMS, I have never seen most of the terms
discussed in the article. Indeed, I don't even recognize, the words
that the article describes as "passé". They had their 15
minutes of usage and I never noticed. I don't think I missed much.
I've always refused to adopt the latest fashionable slang words, just
as I've refused to adopt the latest fashionable clothing styles. I
didn't adopt them when I was young, and I see no reason to start. Why
be dragged around by fads?
I still use the word "staff", because "team" means something different
to me. The FSF hires staff, and some of the staff belong to various
teams.
The FBI is now
campaigning
in favor of "forfeiture", i.e. punishment without trial.
Although the US is terribly weak on curbing greenhouse emissions,
California is pushing harder.
Carmen Ortiz,
the prosecutor that hounded Aaron Swartz to death, has
retired.
She stretched the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to an extreme
interpretation that attacks the rights of everyone in the US. It's
too bad she is already gone, because it would have been great have a
rally
to tell her "Good riddance!"
US citizens: call on Congress to
kill the F35 fighter.
US citizens:
call on Congress to defend the programs to protect women
from domestic violence.
Israel set a new record in 2016 for demolishing Palestinians' homes in areas it has annexed to Jerusalem.
Aggressive questioning of suspects, even if it doesn't reach the level of torture, often elicits false confessions.
So if you think someone knows where a ticking time bomb is, and you want to find it, the last thing you'd want to try is torture.
The US intentionally bombed a hospital in Mosul, saying that PISSI soldiers were firing from it. But the US did not say whether it followed the requirements of international law by warning civilians to flee the area.
Japan's inequality is growing—millions of children there don't get properly fed.
When I was a child, my relatives told me to eat because children in Japan were hungry. In the 1950s, perhaps that was still true. How sad that it is true once again. Japan has plenty of food; what it lacks is a progressive government that aims to reduce inequality.
Americans that oppose the troll must aim for more than just to stop him from making things worse.
Amazon and Google are competing for the chance to listen to people's homes.
Be wise—choose "none of the above".
Republicans in several states are passing laws to ban abortions after 20 weeks. This would force some women to carry gravely damaged fetuses to term.
The legislators cite junk science as an excuse.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe will be imprisoned for five years for working with the BBC. According to Iran, the BBC is some sort of plot to overthrow the government. Her trial was a sham.
Any Islamist government is the enemy of human rights, so overthrowing it would generally be an advance for humanity.
Interviews with participants in Saturday's Women's Protest, around the world.
The infant lies even about what we can all see: the size of the crowd at the inauguration.
The infant's press secretary repeated the lies. It is an outright declaration of war against the idea of truth.
I reject the use of the term "Groucho Marxist" to describe this. Groucho's comedy wasn't a lie, it was humorous fiction. His good name should not be tarred by association with the troll.
The proper term for overt political contempt for truth is Orwell's term, "blackwhiting".
Israel, profiting from the troll's backing, just announced plans for a large colonization project in Palestinian territory annexed and called part of Jerusalem.
Varoufakis: as nationalist trumpery disputes power with the neoliberal globalizers, only an international progressive movement can represent the people.
State-supported business globalization means that ships operating in British waters can hire Indian sailors for a pittance, and then refuse to pay them the pittance.
This is no unwanted side effect. Knocking down pay for workers is the purpose of business globalization, and governments that support it compete to undercut living standards around the world.
In response to the massacre last June, American gays are organizing to campaign for gun control.
Jewish institutions in the US are receiving lots of bomb threats.
American antisemites got a big boost from the troll's campaign.
Criticism of Israel's policy now leads people to false history such as denial of the holocaust.
It's a non sequitur, but that doesn't stop people from following it.
Israel won't end the occupation/siege of Palestine for simple justice, will it do so to avert future antisemitism?
This is comparable to the US and Guantanamo. Imprisonment without trial, whether in Guantanamo or Israel, is not only a great wrong, it also provokes hostility. In the case of the US, Guantanamo recruits supporters for jihadi terrorist movements around the world.
The White House web site now promotes Melania Trump's branded products.
That's the troll's totally shameless approach to conflict of interest.
In China, basically anyone can get full tracking data about anyone for under 15 dollars.
The loser is attacking science massively.
Right-wing disinformation includes a phony site which pretends to recruit paid phony protesters against the troll.
It is standard practice for the right wing to falsely accuse their opponents of what they themselves do. The troll's "press conference" had paid supporters.
The Tea Party used fake "grass roots" support.
A
supporter of the troll wrote an essay that clearly presents his
thinking, which he says his community mostly shares.
The people know the facts of their experience, but they have been sold
misguided explanations for them. For instance, they blame welfare,
rather than war, for high taxes, and they don't realize that they pay
so much because businesses and rich people don't pay their share.
Everyone: call on NBC
not to hide white nationalism behind the
innocent-sounding term "alt-right".
US citizens:
call on the Office of Government Ethics to release all
documents
about Trump's conflicts of interest.
North Dakota Republicans propose to legalize hitting protesters with cars. Ostensibly it is only for unintentional collisions, but it is easy for the driver to claim falsely that it was unintentional. Also, it would encourage drivers to be intentionally careless, and intentionally risk hitting someone.
To resist the loser's way of thinking, we should not resist his approach to language.
Half a million people protested in Washington DC today.
The Tories' threat against the EU is to make itself a puppet state of the rich and trash the lives of nonrich Britons.
The Tories are lower than vermin—Aneurin Bevan.
The troll used the inauguration as another bullying campaign rally and a way to reward the investors in his presidency. His speech misrepresented the situation, as usual.
The press must not be distracted by his bullshitting and manipulation—it must focus on the issues raised by what he does.
Five Takeaways From Scott Pruitt's Nomination Hearing That Should Worry Scientists.
Melbourne, Australia, is threatening to attack homeless people for sleeping or begging on the streets.
Where are they supposed to go? A grave?
Arguing that Facebook can't deal with the fake news problem without taking political stands.
However, what political stands would Facebook take? It is not an upstanding organization. It is a business that aims to make more and more money.
My conclusion is that we can't tolerate a business as influential as Facebook.
The loser is encouraging nationalisms that are sure to lead to conflicts.
US hegemony kept many of these conflicts down, but it has been getting increasingly ineffective ever since Dubya's invasion of Iraq.
"The American left will be reborn under President Trump."
On the meaning of citizenship and democracy.
Immigrants are not a burden on the national treasury, because they contribute to it. There are, however, two resources that they strain: housing space and farmland.
The footprint on housing and farmland of one immigrant is no different from the burden of one native-born inhabitant. To limit those footprints is a matter of curbing the future population, not immigration as such.
Canadians intending to march in Washington today were blocked from entering the US, as immigration agents stretched the truth to generate an excuse.
French and British people coming with them were permanently barred from the US.
Agents also searched their car and phones for hours—obviously for no reason but to harass them. The agents glory in the power to harass with impunity. They are a disgrace to their country.
Don't forget the unprovoked beating of Canadian writer Peter Watts when he tried to visit the US.
The loser's first act, as president, was to raise taxes on homebuyers.
UK universities are imposing surveillance and strict censorship on student and faculty email systems.
They require users to agree to this as a condition of using those systems. It is very important for people to respond by refusing ever to connect to them, even once.
Two Britons may be imprisoned for swallowing a goldfish.
What next—prison for boiling a lobster?
Washington DC thugs attacked peaceful protesters with tear gas on Thursday evening.
Extreme weather has killed most of Spain's vegetable crop, so there will be a shortage of fresh vegetables in Europe for a few months.
Global heating makes extreme weather more common. At least this shortage won't kill anyone, but now imagine an equal shortage of grain. That will happen frequently in a decade or two.
Thugs lie, lie, and lie. It's all to protect and serve…themselves.
Blue Lies Matter!
Mallinckrodt raised the price of a drug for infant epilepsy from $50 to $34,000.
The loser wanted to militarize the US in spirit with a Soviet-style parade of tanks and missiles in Washington DC.
The UK illegally rushed deportations of 10,000 asylum seekers, some of whom were sent back to be tortured.
Constant monitoring of employees, while on duty and even when off, adds up to STASI capitalism.
In the US:
join
a rally on Tuesday Jan 24 against the troll's swamp creature
cabinet.
A sit-in protest by "swamp creatures" against Government Sachs.
SCROTUS say they want to "replace" Obama's medical insurance plan, but their design goals lead inevitably to failure.
Over Half of World's Wild Primate Species Face Extinction, report reveals.
Protests against the Dakota Access pipeline are continuing, and so is violence by thugs against protesters.
Obama has never seriously tried to end imprisonment without trial, the central injustice of the Guantanamo prison.
He has freed 200 prisoners that were held without trial, but by accepting the idea that some 25 prisoners can't be tried or freed, he has endorsed that unjust practice.
The US has a moral obligation to try or release every single one of them, without exceptions.
The loser confused two EU "presidents".
Iraq has recaptured the eastern side of Mosul from PISSI, aside from a few pockets.
However, in Syria, PISSI forces surrounded the airport in besieged Deir ez-Zor, which will make air supply of the city difficult.
The EFF calls on Congress to limit the power of EULAs.
I take a stronger position: EULAs should be legally void.
2016 was the hottest year since at least 115,000 years ago.
We will have an even hotter year, next time there is an El Niño
event.
US citizens: call on Senator Booker to support legalizing import of pharmaceuticals from Canada.
DeVos wants schools to have guns for the sake of shooting "potential grizzlies" in the school.
When it comes to protection from bears, a fence is safer for the children (and for the bears) than a gun.
Many reasons why Betsy DeVos should not be head of the Department of Education.
The Paris peace conference is not a serious effort to bring about peace between Israel and Palestine.
A serious effort would require convincing the Israeli government to be serious about peace, and that requires some sort of pressure.
Israeli soldiers attacked a nonviolent protest in Bethlehem.
I think it is foolish to make a fuss about a corpse—but even when a protest concerns a foolish issue, that doesn't justify attacking the protesters.
The Israeli army is destroying 2000 olive trees belonging to Palestinians to make a new road to one of the illegal colonies on Palestinian territory.
The US abortion rate has dropped considerably, but Republicans will not be happy about this, because it is due to more use of contraception.
And Obama's medical insurance system helped pay for it.
Republicans don't actually care about babies, they just want to punish women for having sex.
Cities are investigating how to build flood resilience.
Coping with sea level rise is a short-term approach. For the long term, it's an hopeless— excuse for not confronting the problem.
Several techniques that the troll uses to manipulate opponents.
I suggest that the first step in resisting is to ignore his empty spectacle. Don't show footage of him, and let some analyst report once a month on what he said during that time. Pay attention to what he actually does.
Israeli thugs, suppressing protests at the demolition of Arab homes, saw a Palestinian teacher driving a car. They panicked and assumed he was going to attack them, so they shot him dead.
Pudzer's restaurant chains have a particularly high level of sexual harassment, perhaps inspired by his personal attitude towards women.
A community in Puerto Rico collectivized its land to resist gentrification.
General Kelly, nominated by the loser to head the Department of Homeland Security, omitted two more business relationships from his conflict of interest forms.
Obama has commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence. She is supposed to be released from prison on May 17.
I hope the troll won't find some excuse to undo this.
I don't agree with those who say Manning has "suffered enough," because I don't think she deserved to be punished at all. Her releases to the public were a service to justice.
Obamas's War on Whistleblowers launched the US in the direction of covering up wrongdoing rather than correcting it.
This will give the troll a head start on repression.
Companies have a chance to bribe each new president by sponsoring inauguration activities. This year is no different.
The Fight Inequality Alliance.
A Republican congresscritter offered to meet with his constituents, but when he discovered they were all very unhappy with his vote to eliminate Obama's medical insurance law, he snuck out the back.
Most Americans have fallen into economic hardship, shown clearly by a wide range of statistics.
Martin Luther King, Jr., puts clearly why the laws of today's Republican-dominated states are unjust. Search for "being denied the right to vote."
As long as the loser knows he owns certain hotels in foreign countries, that will prejudice his foreign policy decisions.
Exxon's frequent business with the State Department constitutes a big conflict of interest for Tillerson.
A Pakistani mother has been convicted of murdering her daughter. The daughter had married the man of her own choice.
This crime was horrible, and convicting someone for this crime is a big step forward for Pakistan. However, no one should be executed.
Beware the perversion known as philanthrocapitalism—the idea that civil society, charity and mutual help should be conceptualized and structured on business lines.
Russia is accused of running a disinformation and confusion campaign to keep Sweden from joining NATO.
The wealthy powers, together with the Gates Foundation, have prohibited informal sale and sharing of seeds. Only registered varieties may be sold now.
Farmers who continue traditional practices face 12 years in prison and a fine that no Tanzanian farmer can afford.
It is a shame that the article uses the term "intellectual property rights", since that spreads confusion.
It also uses the term "patented", but plant variety monopolies do not work like patents. The differences are bigger than the similarities.
Several Pakistani dissidents who criticize the power of the military were kidnaped recently.
One suspects the military did it.
The internet age witnesses the loss of effective democracy, and the internet is helping the process along.
Your Private Medical Data Is for Sale.
Clinics sell it in "anonymized" form, but data brokers combine that with prescription data to figure out who it pertains to.
I think drug stores should be forbidden to release any data about prescriptions they fill to anyone under any circumstances, except to patients about themselves, to state agencies, or under subpoena.
The richest 8 people, together, now own more than the poorest half of humanity.
The article is mistaken in excusing Mr Gates. He got his money through proprietary (unjust) software, and substantial parts of his "philanthropy" are harmful meddling.
The Gates Foundation also acts as a tax-deductible marketing arm for Microsoft. It buys Windows licenses from Microsoft at the official price (though they cost Microsoft zero), then "donates" them to schools where they teach students dependence on Windows.
On building local militance to challenge elite power.
Lavabit is
reopening,
with new systems to protect privacy from Big Brother.
The troll's cabinet of saboteurs represent the
plutocratic
establishment that he said he'd protect people from.
I pity the people who chose to trust a bullshitter.
Amnesty International: European countries are imposing
tyranny
and injustice in the name of "security".
The incorruptible judge in charge of Brazil's corruption investigation
died
in a plane crash, and his replacement will be chosen by President
Corruption.
Laci Taylor's baby died while she went to get a bottle for it. Now
she is charged with "endangering a child" —
taking
her eyes off the baby while going for the bottle.
Why is a changing table a dangerous place to leave a baby for a few
minutes?
Researchers are
planning
how to continue research about gun violence despite opposition
from the NRA and SCROTUS, which prefer ignorance to knowledge.
Some of Trump's campaign team are
being
investigated for deals with Russia.
Thugs in Bristol, England, tased 63-year-old Judah Adunbi
as
he was trying to open the gate into his yard.
The thugs mistook Mr Adunbi for a criminal suspect, perhaps because the two had
the same skin color, and then approached him in an aggressive way.
Ironically, Mr Adunbi was part of a program to improve relations
between the thugs and the black community. No one could succeed at
that task while the thugs' own behavior works in the opposite
direction.
Armies from neighboring countries have entered Gambia to
force
the old president to hand over power to the newly elected one.
The Iraqi Kurds are
permanently
claiming territory that they recaptured from PISSI, and preparing
to defend it if necessary.
Here's a wild idea. The Iraqi Sunni Arabs feel oppressed by the
majority Shi'ites, and this hostility led them to ally with al Qa'ida
and partly to support PISSI. They have learned now that
PISSI
is no protector for them, but if the oppression continues it will
continue to breed terrorism.
I wonder if a union between the Sunni Arabs and the Kurds could work
out better. The Kurds are less numerous than the Shi'ites, so in such
a union the Arabs would not be at such a disadvantage.
There are many reasons why this might not work, but I may as well
mention it.
Australia's Conservative Government
Fiddles
on Climate Policy While the Country Burns.
Farmers around the world see how effects of global heating create
new
difficulties for them. Occasionally there is an opportunity, but
mostly the effects are negative because their farming practices were
honed for the old conditions. In addition, extreme weather almost
never benefits people, and one general effect of global heating is to
increase
the frequency of extreme weather.
Parts of Bangladesh are
disappearing
under the rising sea. 25 million people will lose their land by
2050 due to global heating.
The advance of the sea will not stop in 2050.
Our carbon emissions make one side of the vice squeezing the people of
Bangladesh. Their own reproduction is the other. Bangladesh's
population is still increasing, and most of the children born now will
face a disaster before they are old. Bangladesh needs to cut its
birth rate to almost nothing, and we must help.
Resistance and refusal have played important political roles in the
past. They
may
be necessary against the troll and the saboteurs.
Republicans in many states are
trying
to impose harsh penalties on nonviolent protests, following
Putin's example of
repressing
a Greenpeace protest.
SCROTUS
want
to give large tracts of US government lands to states, which would
probably hand it to rich people.
A Republican operative
fabricated
a false accusation of vote-rigging against Clinton.
Now that Libyan dissident Abdel Hakim Belhaj has won the right to sue
the British ministers that handed him over to Qadhafi to be tortured,
the government
must
give him the apology that he deserves.
The troll and SCROTUS are
destroying
the legitimacy of the US government.
US citizens: phone the White House on Jan 23 and remind the troll he
said he would protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Rolls-Royce and other UK companies
lobbied
to weaken new rules against bribing officials in other countries.
Elizabeth Warren: Trump's Nominees Putting Us All at Risk by
Ignoring
Ethics Laws.
Google has
censored
a Chrome add-on that clicks automatically on all ads. The add-on
is an attempt to screw advertising on the web.
Censorship is just as bad when Google does it as when Apple does it.
The troll's appointees for national "security" include people
associated
with face recognition software.
This is dangerous for American's security against tyranny.
The Texas law that forced many abortion clinics to close was very
effective at
making
abortion inaccessible.
Without
Path
from Protest to Power, the Women's March Will End Up like Occupy.
Julian Assange promised to put himself in US hands if Obama commuted
Chelsea Manning's sentence. Obama did so, and Assange
confirms
he is willing to face possible US prosecution.
It makes no sense at all to me.
The last interglacial period, which ended 116,000 years ago, had
global temperatures comparable to today's. Sea level eventually rose
by
6
to 9 meters.
That's enough to inundate many coastal cities. But our global heating
will reach even higher temperatures and melt even more ice.
See New York City, Washington DC, and Boston while they is still here.
I'm not the only one who noticed that the troll committed a felony by
interfering in US diplomacy. Congresscritters have
called
on the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to
investigate this.
Unfortunately, if she wants to do this now, she has little time to
find and appoint one.
Mnuchin
tried
to conceal an investment fund the Cayman Islands.
Note to Britain: "If you thought Brussels was tough, wait until
corporate
America writes the rules."
The article has fallen into the "intellectual property" confusion in a
big way. There is no "pharmaceutical copyright" —
pharmaceuticals are covered by patent law, which is totally different,
and by other specialized laws that restrict generic drugs. If a
statement uses the term "intellectual property", it is wise to be
suspicious of it.
Scotland aims to
eliminate
fossil fuel electricity by 2032.
Due to global heating, the annual rate of flood disasters in Europe
has
more
than doubled since 1980.
Meanwhile, in Egypt, Alexandria is gradually losing to the
rising
Mediterranean.
See global heating at work on
the
Arctic and Greenland ice.
Animals ranging from birds to seals to butterflies are endangered by
global heating. Here are
some
examples, including one that is already extinct as a result.
Climate
[Mayhem] Will Affect All Of Us. So Why the Lack of Urgency?
In the UK under Tory rule, poor people
have
to pay extra to heat their homes.
A sensible country would invest in the energy efficiency of every home
as well as giving the poor what they need.
The details of the plot to murder Archbishop Óscar Romero have
been
found
and published, but those who arranged it (and thus started the
civil war in El Salvador) still enjoy impunity.
China's development of renewable energy is already massive, and it is
ramping
up fast.
China alone can't avoid disaster if the troll and his saboteur cabinet
insist on
rushing
towards it.
Everyone:
call on the British
Commonwealth to take action against slavery in its member states.
The FBI takes
$5
billion per year from people it chooses to suspect of crimes,
without convicting them first. It gives around 1% of that to some
possibly worthwhile local projects — and that's supposed to make
the theft ok.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject Pruitt as saboteur-in-chief of the EPA.
We
need
an independent investigation of the troll's relationship with
Putin — whether the claims are true or not.
Australia has set up a computerized system to take back welfare
payments from citizens who were (supposedly) overpaid. However,
the system is unreliable and
generates
lots of false accusations. The victims, usually broke, are then
cruelly dunned.
The problem is deeper than that. A whistleblower reports that the
staff have been
ordered
not to give victims information about errors that the victims have not
noticed, or correct any.
Clearly someone intentionally squeezes those poor people for money
they do not owe. Maybe the errors are not entirely errors.
A senator wants to
legalize
such leaks.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to defend net neutrality.
Rich people extract far more wealth from poor countries (via tax havens and cheating) than the countries receive in aid.
The troll's "press conference" was a phony rally, with paid staff to cheer, meant to punish and intimidate the press.
Akram Shibly, US citizen, reports being attacked by US border thugs when he refused to give them the password to his mobile phone.
We should not allow public infrastructure repair to be privatized by [the loser].
The Privacy Threat From Always-On Microphones Like The Amazon Echo
The article omits to mention two elephants in the room:
US Workers Making Bisphenol-A Have Enormous Loads of It in Them.
In China, mobs of bullies now attack people that disagree with the official political line.
These mobs are organized with state support, much as Tea Party mobs in the US were supported by funds from wealthy sponsors.
The tacit support of the thugs is a dead giveaway.
Over the long term, China will weaken itself this way—through groupthink.
Several government policies that make it hard for Americans to move to the places that have jobs. One of the worst is zoning law.
Zoning that blocks development of concentrated (efficient) housing benefits those who have already got a house, while screwing those who have not. They make thousands of Americans homeless, and millions live in small rooms far from work. We should get rid of it.
The repeal of Obama's medical coverage system would give a 7-million-dollar tax cut to each of 400 very rich Americans.
It would shaft millions poor Americans, but you can't make a rich person richer without breaking somebody.
10 banks involved with the Dakota Access Pipeline are refusing to meet with pipeline opponents.
If you have any money in these banks, how about moving it out?
A study concludes that threats against sharing have little effect on how much income movies make.
Republicans in Arizona have proposed a law to prohibit public schools from teaching ethnic studies or promote social justice.
I agree that courses aimed at specific social groups have no place in public school, because public school should teach solidarity and respect across groups. Courses about specific social groups are legitimate if they are meant for everyone.
Over 11000 Australians have pledged to join in civil disobedience against the giant proposed coal mine and other businesses that support it.
This is in the face of repression by a state that has pledged itself
to denialism.
GM salmon threatening wild fish populations
Genetically modified salmon interbreed with wild trout to produce offspring that can drive down the wild populations of trout and salmon.
The fact that the offspring are infertile won't stop them from causing great damage.
Comey refused to speak privately to Congress about the investigation of the loser's ties with Russia.
Quite a contrast with speaking publicly about a step in the investigation of insignificant Clinton emails.
So-called master media manipulators are playing to media that beg to be manipulated.
Haiti's debt is increasing and it can't possibly pay.
France should return the money that it took from Haiti in exchange for recognizing the freedom of the slaves there.
A nuclear engineer who reads the secret trouble reports says we are lucky that we haven't had a nuclear power plant disaster since Three Mile Island.
The inspectors are made impotent by law, and plants which were designed to last 40 years are degrading so that they will be distinctly less safe.
Trump and the Dangers of Secret Law
Obama gave many agencies, including the FBI and DEA, access to raw intercepts made by the NSA of foreigners' communications with Americans.
Obama has removed US sanctions against trading with Sudan, claiming improvements in its respect for human rights.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say there were no improvements.
Scott Pruitt, the troll's choice to run the EPA, blocked the approval of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court as a tool to raise money from polluters.
Merrick Garland was a centrist, not the sort of person I particularly want to have on the Supreme Court. But that does nothing to excuse Pruitt.
The European Parliament is considering giving some robots a limited legal status as persons.
If AI continues to advance, this and more will be necessary. I don't think we are there yet.
Tillerson illegally directed millions of dollars to ALEC's lobbying.
Fiat-Chrysler diesel cars have software that misleads emissions tests.
Shame on Democrats such as Cory Booker that voted to support high drug prices in the US.
Prisoners with disabilities are often "protected" with solitary confinement, which damages them even more than it damages other prisoners.
Russia is neither free nor just nor friendly, but neither is it a demon.
Arguing that the collapse of civilization is now inevitable.
The FBI subverted tech support employees of Best Buy to snoop on customers' data.
Performers on "reality" TV shows are being cruelly manipulated.
You have to wonder whether a man who would be the host of such a show can be trusted with public office.
6 more Volkswagen executives have been charged with fraud.
Official unemployment figures give a
misleading
picture of "recovery"; they don't include the people who go
through low-paid precarious part-time temporary jobs.
Erdoğan is changing Turkey's constitution
to
increase his power permanently.
Some manufacturers are
trying
to impose arbitration requirements on purchasers of products.
It should be illegal to impose an arbitration requirement
on either a customer or a worker (whether employee or contractor).
Whatever elements of sovereignty the UK manages to recover by leaving
the EU, it is
likely
to surrender if it agrees to any new business-supremacy treaties.
The troll is the most fragile of snowflakes; he
lashes
out whenever a sunbeam falls on his continent-wide "safe space".
Martin Luther King, Jr: champion of
economic
equality and ending the Vietnam War.
The
distraction-marketing
complex can turn the name of anything important into a mere excuse
for sales.
Atheist Americans of Muslim background
feel
threatened by the troll.
The FBI started questioning surprised American Muslims, based on
no
substantial grounds for suspicion, last year.
Tillerson's last line of resistance against saving Earth's ecosphere
is the claim that global heating will go slower than forecasts say.
However,
new
scientific discoveries point in the opposite direction.
Europe is
moving
to mass surveillance, with some terrorist acts as an excuse.
Competition has finally delivered a
much
cheaper equivalent for the gouging EpiPen.
That it took such a long time for this to happen shows that our system
of competition in making medicines is not working very well. I
speculate that this has to do with the amount of concentration in the
pharma industry.
What to expect if the loser follows Putin's example of
holding
pressure rallies and calling them "press conferences".
What the loser says is of no importance, so the serious press
should ignore these rallies the way it ignores his other rallies.
Bahrain's prison, where dissidents are tortured into false confessions
as an excuse to execute them,
gets
help from the UK in covering this up.
Netanyahu calls the Paris peace talks
"rigged
against Israel", presumably because the countries involved have a
serious intention to work for a two-state peace agreement. He would
say that against any serious efforts. The only kind of peace talks he
has ever been accepted are
pretend
talks, guaranteed to achieve nothing.
Since Israel's colonization of the West Bank is the biggest obstacle
to peace, achieving peace must be based on convincing Israel to undo
the colonization. Given that most Israelis are no longer to trade
land for peace, I think only external pressure can achieve this.
In the US: if you know of a McDonald's that has replaced human
order-takers with computers,
stand
in front for an hour handing out leaflets.
My idea for a leaflet text:
You might have a better idea.
The troll has rejected no only truth but consistency. He
bullies
people weaker than him while claiming to be the victim.
I have a suggestion for the press. Ignore the specific things that
the loser says — they are meaningless
bullshit
anyway — and focus on what he does.
US citizens:
tell
the loser you oppose the Bayer-Monsanto merger.
With Javascript disabled, you will need to use the
Salsalabs fix.
Everyone:
call
on US journalists to refused to be herded or controlled by the
troll.
ePrivacy: [European] Commission's Weak Proposal
Forecasts Harsh
Debates.
FCC Report Clearly Says AT&T & Verizon Are Violating Net Neutrality —
And
Nobody Is Going To Do A Damn Thing About It.
Tillerson had the gall to deny the existence of the fossil fuel
subsidies
that Exxon receives.
Thugs that commit crimes, in many parts of the US, are
protected
by union contracts from proper investigation.
A study found
evidence that using a phone to get information tends to
make people distrust strangers.
The article's title says "your smartphone", presuming in effect that
you
have one, and that you will continue to have one even after learning
more reason not to have one.
The foolish author also says that we
"consume" information.
How silly.
If you're suffering from tech-induced isolation,
the remedy is less
technology, not more.
Fanatic "child protectors" in California have convicted a father of
"child endangerment" for punishing his son by making him to walk a
mile (on a path he walks frequently).
Assad, with Iran's support, is
colonizing parts of Syria
from which Syrian Sunnis have fled.
Uber could destroy public transit, leaving many people no choice
except to be tracked.
We can make this less likely by boycotting Uber now.
Russian yoga teacher Dmitry Ugay has been
charged with "illegal
missionary activity".
Apparently Russia's mad crackdown on human rights had gone insanely
far.
The self-styled "inventor of email" is
suing Techdirt for publishing
the true history of email, which existed many years earlier.
He claims to have made this invention in 1979.
I developed software for email in 1974 or 75: the program Rmail,
a reimplementation of which I am using now to read my mail.
Techdirt could be destroyed by the costs before it can win, and we
would all losts.
Does Betsy DeVos Understand the Impact of Poverty and Trauma on
Children's
Learning?
US citizens:
tell the Senate to oppose Mnuchin.
The
Greek and Turkish parts of Cyprus are basically ready to reunite.
However, Erdoğan spoiled it.
He could be
using Cyprus as a bargaining chip.
US citizens: call on the EPA to
ban Chlorpyrifos.
The Netherlands will veto any trade deal with the UK
which makes it a tax haven.
Why not demand in addition that the UK force its dependencies,
such as Jersey, to stop acting as tax havens?
Contempt
for truth and fact
has undermined many areas of life;
that it has done so in politics is perhaps the crowning achievement.
US citizens:
call on NBC to cut its business relationship with the
troll.
EU citizens:
support
SaveTheLink.
The Justice Department has launched an inquiry into whether FBI director Comey violated official policy with his premature announcement about Clinton.
Too bad they waited till after the election.
The Justice Department made a consent decree with the Baltimore thug department to reduce violence against citizens.
Sad to say, the troll and Sessions might cancel it.
Tillerson wants to give more "intelligence" support to Salafi Arabia's bombardment of Yemen.
However, Salafi Arabia uses such intelligence to attack civilians.
Salafi Arabia's world-wide Islamist propaganda engine is at the root of today's Islamist threat.
The troll's "plan" to deal with conflicts of interest is a failure on all levels.
Buzzfeed published the Trump-Putin dossier knowing and saying that it was unsubstantiated. This has raised a controversy about what the press should do.
Its author has now been identified and is a former UK intelligence officer generally considered credible.
That is no proof that it is true, but I do think that gives it some more credibility. The author does not claim that every point is a certainty, only that they are credible intelligence.
An additional point in favor is that the troll seems to be giving Putin exactly what those documents say Putin wanted.
The troll, in his first press conference after stealing the election, bullied reporters and threatened to have one thrown out of the room.
When the troll bullies people, his aim is to intimidate. "I'm so powerful that I can break every rule and no one can stop me."
Hong Kong's respect for human rights deteriorated in 2016, to the point where the government now refuses to talk with Amnesty International about rights issues.
The corruptor's nominee for head of Homeland Security forgot to mention that he is an executive in a lobbying firm.
Tillerson is talking about a sharp military confrontation with China in the disputed South China Sea.
My proposal to resolve that dispute is to get all the countries involved to agree not to extract any oil from the region. With that in place, I think they will have little trouble agreeing about sovereignty.
The coral in Sekisei lagoon in Okinawa has been devastated by bleaching which killed 3/4 of the coral there.
Australia wants to replace a very dirty coal power plant with a plant to use it to generate liquid hydrogen.
Burning the liquid hydrogen won't emit any CO2, but the process of generating the hydrogen will, so this may not do any good for avoiding global disaster.
Mexico's president vows not to pay for the wall that the loser wants to build on the frontier.
I don't see anything wrong with building a wall there. (I doubt it is a good use of the money it would cost.) However, demanding that Mexico pay for it is something that no proud people could stand.
Employees of Microsoft, whose job is to monitor and delete videos of violence, say they have got PTSD from the experience.
I can believe it, but it may not be easy to avoid. Perhaps if each person does this for just an hour a day it would be easier to bear.
The troll threatens to put big tariffs on US companies that produce their goods in other countries, but his daughter's company is mysteriously exempt.
The UK proposes to start bombing people based on vague information, as the US does.
Giving money directly to poor people in poor countries is an effective part of foreign aid.
Progressives in Congress asked Obama to finish up closing the Guantanamo prison.
Obama should simply release all the prisoners there—including the handful that have been tried and the few that might be tried. Giving them fair trials for their crimes would not be wrong, but it is better to release them just to get the prison closed.
Supposing 10 or 20 of them would join PISSI or al Qa'ida, their contribution would be insignificant compared to the thousands that have already joined those organizations based partly on rage at what the Guantanamo prison represents—or compared to the thousands that continue to join them for the same reason.
Department of Energy finally releases new guidelines to protect scientists from political pressure.
The troll can abolish them, but it will be one more step to discredit him.
Proposed Secretary of State Tillerson says he doesn't know anything about Putin's human rights record and partially denies global heating.
Trump's trainwreck press conference ushers in a clueless presidency.
By putting his children in control of his businesses—children that sometimes join in policy discussions—the big debtor continues to retain effective control over them. Thus, the conflict of interest remains fully active.
The Philippines has rejected building a theme park on an unspoiled island.
Bravo!
Chicago thugs officially found to frequently use unlawful force,
especially
against blacks,
and then cover it up.
WhatsApp has a back door that the company can use to read the
plaintext of
messages.
This should not come as a surprise.
Nonfree software for encryption is never trustworthy.
Billionaire Polluters has been found to have caused the big spill
through
recklessness.
US citizens:
tell the troll: Sell your assets, put them in a blind
trust, and release your tax returns.
US citizens: phone your senators (both of them) at 877-959-6082
and call on them to vote against Sessions for attorney general.
One reason to cite is that he wants to escalate the war on marijuana.
Another is that he threatens to undo the progress on restraining the
violence of local thugs. And he doesn't care about sexual assault.
And another is he concealed a private business interest.
There are more.
Democrats can
turn the Democratic Party progressive again by
participating
at the local level.
Some humans are born intermediate between male and female. In the
20th century,
standard
practice was to do surgery on them as infants to make them
resemble one or the other.
The UK's
immigration
bureaucracy is driven by the goal of excluding as many foreigners
as possible, grasping for any possible excuse to make procedures hard
to satisfy.
I think the words used by the UK about the negotiation sound worse
than the position policy really is. It is valid for the UK to say,
"We will recognize the rights of EU citizens already living in the UK
to stay in the UK if the EU recognizes the same rights for UK citizens
already living in other EU countries." If the EU says the same, they
could sign a preliminary exit agreement to this effect. Whichever
side refuses to sign would bear the moral onus.
It was difficult to be a neutral journalist in Donetsk, where each
side was
inclined
to punish those who reported stories embarrassing to it.
Christians in India face
increasing
persecution by the dominant Hindus.
New York Governor Cuomo
plans
to eliminate tuition fees for non-rich college students in state
universities.
I agree that we must make it feasible for all capable students to go
to college, but a substantial fraction of people are not capable
students, and they still should be able to have a decent life.
Sessions is considering
undermining
court orders aimed at protecting citizens from thugs' violence.
The water supply in Flint is not yet lead-free, but Republican
officials are
rushing
to skip required tests and declare it safe.
US citizens:
phone
your senators in favor of Sanders's budget amendment to prevent
cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
Progressives have abandoned the fight against offshoring, so that
now
the
troll gets to claim credit for whatever good happens.
But there is another angle. The whole idea of plutocratic
globalization is that countries compete to draw business away from
other countries by bowing down ever more to business. The roll
proposes to do that, and businesses expect it. In the short term,
this will draw more business to the US.
In the long term, the concessions that achieve this will reduce the
funds that the government needs to
build infrastructure, help the
poor, provide medical care, and so on. And not just in the US,
but globally, as other countries compete with the US.
An executive of VolksWagen is being
prosecuted
for cheating on emissions tests.
Prosecuting individuals is crucial to convincing companies to stop the
abuses. The fact that the person being prosecuted is an executive
makes it even better.
The troll
intends
to let China have potential good jobs in green energy that the US
could have had.
The article is mistaken in equating China's creation of 13 million
jobs to a loss of 13 million jobs in the US. I expect most of those
jobs will be in China simply because they are setting up local
facilities in China.
But the overall point is valid: investing in green energy is a very
effective way to make jobs, and some of those jobs are up for grabs to
the country that invests to take the lead.
Food not Bombs activists have been
arrested
for giving food to homeless people in Tampa.
An upper limit on salary
can
effectively promote equality. A high tax rate on high incomes, as
under Republican President Eisenhauer, also works.
More about
Corbyn's
proposal, which would apply to government contractors.
Many US businesses
implore
the troll to take action to curb global heating.
Medical marijuana
rescues
some people from a life of hell.
The UK's supposed "economic recovery"
applies
only to homeowners in London and the southeast.
The Afghan State no longer officially represses women heavily,
but they
still
face lots of repression there.
Romania's anti-corruption campaign has a 92% conviction rate
because
the
trials are faulty.
The guards at Rykers Island jail have a
tendency
to grope women coming to visit prisoners. It's illegal, but the
guards don't seem to learn that.
Corbyn
calls
for radical action to limit rapidly growing inequality of incomes.
Global heating denialists
still
refer to the so-called "pause" that never really happened.
Jill Stein reports on how her requested recounts were
stymied
by a series of bureaucratic obstacles, often arbitrary and
inexplicable, as well as high fees.
Using computers to count paper ballots is reliable if they can be
checked with a recount. At present, in the US, that is impossible if
local politicians (usually Republicans) want to stop it. As a result,
rigging an election by fiddling with a ballot-reader is as effective
as rigging it in a direct-voting machine.
US citizens: On Jan 23, phone the White House at 202-456-1111 and call
on the loser to keep his promise to protect Social Security,
Medicare and Medicaid.
SCROTUS displays blatant support for corruption in multiple ways.
A change in House rules allows congresscritters to conceal some of their papers from ethics investigations.
Leaked memos say that the troll has been feeding Putin intelligence for 8 years, partly because he is being blackmailed, and that his lawyer helped arrange the cracking of Democratic Party sites.
That lawyer says the memos are phony.
I have insufficient basis to reach a conclusion, but the idea of
blackmailing the troll by threatening to show that he had sex with
prostitutes in a bed Obama had slept in seems implausible to me. I'd
expect the troll to crow about that as if it were some sort of victory
for him.
More analysis of the credibility of this report.
Changes in society, especially in the nature of work, discourage
people from joining organizations which meet physically and can take
political action. That's super-convenient for the rich.
The Luddites destroyed high-efficiency weaving machines because the
factory owners used them to cut wages and starve the poor.
The same thing is happening today. Worker productivity in the US has
soared since 1980, but the rich take all the benefit.
I've read that some McDonalds outlets in NYC have replaced service
personnel with keyboards. If you see one, take your business to a
place that employs humans rather than robots.
The only way to avoid the violent fight against robots is to win by
nonviolent resistance now.
Rex Tillerson is big oil personified. The damage he can do is immense.
The infant wants to put more people in Guantanamo and torture them.
Why? Perhaps the same reason other infants tear the wings off butterflies.
In a setback for freedom of the press, persistent government
harassment has pressured Backpage.com to shut down its adult
advertisement page.
Kamala Harris failed in one prosecution, so she constructed another excuse, and the company couldn't continue to resist.
Under the most pessimistic scenario, we have just one year to take stong action to avert an eventual 1.5C of global heating.
A more optimistic scenario says we have 4 years, which means the
troll can assure the collapse of civilization (some while after his
lifetime) either way.
Poor countries don't adopt measures to reduce smoking, because tobacco
companies pressure and mislead them.
In Racists Anonymous, people work on trying reduce their own personal racism.
It is common for landlords to offer women a lower rent in exchange for
sex. Some of them try to go beyond just offering.
I don't think it is wrong to offer a room in exchange for sex, if it
is offered honestly. The problem is when rents get so high and
unaffordable that many people have no real option to decline such
offers.
The troll has chosen Monica Crowley for a White House PR job just as
her 2012 book has been withdrawn for plagiarism.
What's more, it criticized Obama for things that happened under the
Bush regime.
Facebook plans "stronger ties" with the news venues that it is slowly
strangling. In particular, Facebook may be "more open" with its
useds' data.
The author of the article seems to have reported that with a straight
face,
not realizing that it could mean increased trackinge.
The UK is replacing foreign aid with "investment".
This means that they can't just give food to hungry people; they have
to make it profitable for someone. Businesses will skim money off
this, and those businesses push for the change. Suck-up-to-the-rich
politicians approve it.
Meryl Streep, accepting an award before a large audience,
rebuked
the troll for publicly mocking a disabled reporter.
The troll responded with an irrelevant personal insult, then proceeded
to try to
distort
and deny the visible facts.
But why was the loser attacking that disabled reporter? Because the
loser had misrepresented his reporting about Sep 11, 2001, to try to
justify an major campaign lie. The reported objected to this and
pointed to his real text, so the troll mocked him.
Streep's speech
treated
the troll's offensiveness as a performance and condemned it as one
— which may really rile him.
If people stop using cash, how can
street
performers, musicians, food carts etc. survive?
Of course, digital payments oppress those who use them, because they
track everything. I don't use my credit card except with airline
tickets and fees, and car rental. For the rest, it's cash or nothing,
and if I business doesn't accept cash, I don't buy there.
You can help defend privacy every day simply by firmly telling
businesses "cash or no sale, and no you may not have my name."
Most city Americans have little understanding of the
lives,
attitudes and behaviors of rural Americans (such as supporters of
the troll).
If the loser's net worth is positive, he
can
divest himself of interest in the running of his businesses without
actually selling them in a hurry.
This method won't work, however, if the worth
if
his businesses is negative.
There are two aspects of Republican rule we need to resist:
policies
that are cruel to the poor and weak, and attacks on democracy
itself.
In the latter, conservatives might join in.
Ethics lawyers for Dubya and Obama
called
for delaying confirmation hearings so the ethics reports could be
delivered.
Wisconsin Republicans
threaten
to censor teaching at the University of Wisconsin.
The US lists polar bears as threatened, but the program to protect
them is ineffective, since it
fails
to address the fatal threat.
Hate sites such as Breitbart
depend
on advertising from companies that don't know where their ads will
appear. A movement to show companies how their ads appear on
Breitbart has convinced many companies to exclude their ads from that
site.
The big loser's choice for Director of National Intelligence, Dan
Coats,
loves
imprisonment without trial, hates Snowden, and helped to cover up
torture.
A court case will decide
whether
the big loser can remove Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau.
Netanyahu was recorded
trying
to buy more support from a major Israeli newspaper.
In Missouri, children of any age that fight in school
can
now be jailed for years.
We have to fight the troll and the plutocrats in ways that can
change
politics, not merely enable us to say we tried.
In many parts of the world, menstruating women are
subject
to taboos, and persecuted more or less.
The Israeli diplomat who wanted to "take down" UK MPs that criticized
the occupation/siege of Palestine also set up a
hidden
political group within the Labour Party.
The Democratic Party stopped really supporting unions decades ago, so
union are weakened and their members have often become Republicans.
Part of political organizing today includes
recovering
the strength of unions.
Eliminating anonymity is no guarantee of civility. In practice,
trolls
and haters often choose to state their real names.
SCROTUS
will
find it difficult to "replace" Obama's medical insurance program
with anything different that actually works.
They don't really want to continue to give Americans access to medical
care. They just don't want to be blamed for stopping it. So here
is what I think they will do.
They will come up with something that appears to work, a disguise that
will hold up for a year or two, and lie to claim that is a solution.
When it becomes obvious that it doesn't work, they will duck the issue
by distraction and use standard tobacco/sugar/petroleum obfuscation
techniques to deny the problem.
Arguing that the US is
descending
into an authoritarian regime.
The title says "totalitarianism", but that seems to be an incorrect
choice of words.
US citizens:
oppose
fracking near Chaco Canyon.
Haitian warlord Guy Philippe has been
arrested
for US drug charges.
Philippe fronted the
US-backed
coup that
overthrew
elected President Aristide.
With the REINS act, SCROTUS would
make
all new federal regulations require specific approval from
Congress.
The troll
"accepts"
the claim that Putin interfered in the election on his behalf,
based on non-published evidence.
Based on this, I think I should accept it too. He would not have
taken this stand if he thought he could deny it.
Craig Murray said that he received the first (DNC) leak material
from an intermediary who said it was an
insider
leak.
I have confidence in what he says.
Perhaps Russians were involved in the phishing attack on John Podesta.
Vicious right-wingers are attacking progressive organizations and artists'
centers by getting them
raided
and shut down.
Right-wing organizations, often
secretly
funded by rich people, can afford to rent space that has no flaws.
The US economy is worse for workers now than in 2008,
for
the bottom 50% of earners. They get no more pay, and more of them
are in precarious work.
Meanwhile, in many cities their rents have gone up, and millions had
their houses
taken
fraudulently by banksters.
Facebook snoops on surfers via disqus comments: when a page uses
disqus for comments, the proprietary disqus software
loads
a Facebook software package into the browser of every anonymous
visitor to the page, and makes the page's URL available to
Facebook.
How the plutocratic system
manipulates
Americans to support it even as it squashes them.
I think it is a mistake to equate "capitalism" with the plutocratic
type of capitalism that we have now. There are various kinds of
capitalism, and the one we had in 1970 worked tolerably well in the
US. It coexisted with the public sphere and didn't propagandize that
wealth was the measure of everything.
Public schools are the
largest
remaining sector that hasn't been turned into a business. Thus,
the sect of the invisible hand wants to privatize it.
Americans' support for plutocracy is not complete, as many have come
to see a
conflict
between the plutocratic system and Christianity.
Will 2017 Be the Year We Get Serious about
Sustainable
Food?
One step most Americans can easily take is to eat less beef.
Everyone:
call
for firing the thug that threw Jasmine Darwin on the floor and
gave her a concussion.
Netanyahu
wants
the Israeli soldier convicted of murdering a Palestinian to be
pardoned.
That would mean, in effect, that Israelis could murder Palestinians
with impunity.
US national parks will henceforth be turned into
sales
and promotion schemes for businesses.
Allowing companies to
"sponsor"
parks, or stadiums, or any other civic institution, conveys a
message: "everything here is for sale." The right way to get these
companies' money for civic uses is to tax them properly.
Public response blocked
SCROTUS from
neutralizing the ethics committee. It may be possible to
do
the same to protect Americans' health care.
This applies to Medicare and Medicaid, too.
A scientific report showed that many forms of forensic identification
are scientifically bogus and produce
many
false accusations. The Obama administration rejected the report,
preferring to let miscarriages of justice continue.
Racially biased predictions about the risk of recidivism come from an
inherent
conflict between two ideas of fairness — not from specific
implementations.
Former Texas governor Perry
gave
out billions to corporations.
Bad climate news: a careful comparison finds that the most
authoritative measurements of global heating so far is the set from
NOAA, which
shows
more heating than the other measurements.
Everyone: call on Obama to pardon Snowden
now.
US citizens:
call
on your governor and state legislators to oppose the troll's
registry of Muslims.
Overfishing has knocked down the bluefin tuna population by
97%.
Due to continued human pressure, 95% of bluefin tuna caught are under
3 years old.
A respite could allow fish stocks to recover; in 10 years, we might be
able to fish sustainably and catch more tuna per year than we now
catch unsustainably. But this requires long-term thinking, which is
in short supply when a government bows down to business.
Americans Can Spot Election Meddling Because They've
Been
Doing It for Years.
Rohingya Plight Making Myanmar a
Target
for [PISSI], Malaysia Warns.
A study found that teenagers given a little alcohol by their parents
are
less
likely to drink excessively a year later.
Handicapped people face
big
problems in any place where there is no toilet for them, and it's
not unusual to find them.
Apple used its censorship system to enforce China's censorship by
blocking
distribution of the New York Times app.
More about
Apple's
censorship of apps and other malicious functionalities in Apple
software.
Scrapping EU Rules Won't Save UK Farming.
Supporting
Small Farmers Will.
Scientists have learned how river valleys and floodplains participate
in the ecology of a river, and how
dams
and nearby human activities can damage it.
The UK
needs
more inheritance tax. So does the US.
If the wealthy tend to have more successful children, or even smarter
children, there are so many obvious social causes that there's no
point getting distracted by possible genetic contributions. When they
go to school, they go to a better school, with other good students,
and they make good connections. They have a calm place to study, and
enough food to eat. Even before they start school, they are probably
taught a better approach towards learning and success.
These are things that we can give to children in poor families. All
we need to do is tax the rich to a fair extent (much more than now).
Teenager Slammed to Ground Raises Fresh Concerns About
[thugs]
in Schools.
At the time she was attacked,
that
teenager was trying to break up a fight between others.
Unless your school is very violent, you will be safer if they get the
School Havoc Officer out of it.
One of the principle prosecutors of Leonard Peltier has
called
on Obama to give him clemency.
Record-breaking
extreme weather in Australia caused fires in areas which don't
normally have them.
40%
of the "suspicions" IP addresses that US agencies attribute to
Russian crackers are simply Tor exit nodes.
Either US intelligence agencies are trying to snow us with meaningless
factoids, or they don't have enough intelligence to recognize them as
meaningless.
The jihadi terrorism in Turkey is
fueled
partly by Erdoğan's support for Turkish Islamists, and partly
by foolish purges of officials responsible for security.
When the PKK attacks the forces of the state, that's not terrorism;
that's rebellion. There are some civilian casualties, but the PKK
does not target them. They are what the US calls "collateral damage".
There is no way to fight and completely avoid civilian casualties.
What the Geneva Conventions require, for the US or for the PKK or any
other combatant, is to make sufficient efforts to avoid and minimize
them.
I can't judge whether the PKK makes a sufficient effort, but it is
pretty clear that
the
Turkish state isn't trying to.
It's a shame Erdoğan
terminated
the many years of cease fire with the PKK.
US citizens: call your senators at 1-866-985-2543, and ask them to
support a review of Trump's financial arrangements AND to support
Sen. Warren's bill requiring the president to divest and disclose all
business affairs in order to avoid serious and unconstitutional
conflicts of interest.
The Tories have
almost
completely eliminated UK investment in renewable energy. Their
policy has been to
eliminate
it
step
by step, and they are now
reaching
the end of the process.
The Tories are lower than vermin —
Aneurin
Bevan.
An Israeli soldier has been
convicted
of killing a wounded, disabled Palestinian suspect.
I'm glad the Israeli legal system can at least occasionally give
Palestinians justice, but it only rarely tries.
Right-wing extremists
lionized
that soldier, taking a racist position in favor of killing
Palestinians.
The troll is
begging
for funds to pay his transition team.
This lends support to the conjecture that
his
net assets are far less than zero.
Everyone:
call on
tech companies to refuse to help the loser build a registry of
Muslims.
Pakistani religious fanatics are
out
to murder Shaan Taseer for criticizing the law that punishes
"insulting Islam" with execution.
That law would be a great evil if it were enforced carefully, but it's
even worse because they are sloppy about it. It provides an
all-purpose
excuse to execute people based on unverifiable accusations.
Mnuchin's bank repeatedly
broke
California's foreclosure laws.
SCROTUS
threaten
all aspects of reproductive health care, and don't mind if mothers
and babies die for the principle that the state shouldn't do any good
for individuals that aren't rich.
SCROTUS made
a
plan
to very quickly inactivate the Office of Congressional Ethics, but
was dissuaded by public disgust from various people including the
loser.
It is ironic that the troll helped pressure them to do it, given how
corrupt and corrupting he is in other ways.
Some of the Republicans expressed a preference to do the same plan
but at a later date when it would not be noticed as much.
Drought, probably caused by global heating, is
making
Mexican peasants flee their land; some flee to the US.
Don't blame them, trumpets. They didn't cause the drought; the US
did.
US citizens: Call on the Senate to
reject Pudzer as Secretary of
Labor.
US citizens:
phone your senators to grill Pompeo, nominated to run the
CIA,
about respecting human rights.
This includes surveillance of you and me, and torture.
US citizens:
call on Senate Democrats to fight hard against Betsy
DeVos.
Right-wing budget cuts have
strained the UK's medical system to the
breaking point. Patients can't get urgent treatment, There are not
enough beds available for patients. It takes a long time for an
ambulance to arrive when needed.
Doctors feel that their relatives are not safe in a hospital, and are
thinking of quitting.
An
Israeli embassy official in the UK was caught scheming to "take
down" certain members of the UK parliament that are insufficiently
subservient to Israel.
SCROTUS are
rushing to confirm the troll's proposed cabinet officials
without waiting for the ethics review.
Businesses create or take over NGOs to use as front groups,
even
in the UN.
For instance, CORE, the Congress On Racial Equality, which was a real
and important civil rights group in the 1960s, has been
turned
into a
puppet.
Even groups that are not puppets can be co-opted on a side issue by
businesses that in exchange offer some support for the cause.
This happened to the
NAACP.
The FDA has a
new rule to limit the indiscriminate dosing of farm
animals
with antibiotics. But it is a weak rule, and it's not clear how much
good it will do.
Since our lives are at stake here — resistant bacteria could kill
anyone — we need a strong rule.
A proposed natural gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to North Carolina
is facing increasing local opposition.
Aside from whatever local problems it will cause, the pipeline would
act as inertia for extraction of natural gas. The owners, having
built the pipeline, will do all in their power to make sure it gets
used for a lot of natural gas. That will speed our fall over the
climate cliff.
A large fraction of US employees are
tracked in their movements 24
hours a day by their employers. Most states have no laws against
this.
Basically, if your employer gives you a portable phone, or software
to run on one, don't trust it!
If you have a union, it can help you fight against being tracked
when there is no valid reason.
If you don't have a union, you need one.
A Palestinian in Jerusalem
used a truck as a weapon to attack Israeli
soldiers.
I am sure Israel and its supporters will call this "terrorism", but
attacking soldiers of an occupying army is properly called
"rebellion", "resistance" or "guerrilla war". If the targets had been
civilians, it would have been terrorism.
The World Wide Web has become dominated by a few web sites, most of
which are run by businesses and designed to addict and mistreat their
visitors. A book puts this into the historical perspective of the
"attention industry".
You can personally escape this if you don't visit those sites. I
don't log in on any of them, and I rarely visit them at all. But we
can't individually escape from the harm they do at the social level.
Thick multi-year ice is
rapidly diminishing in the Arctic, leaving an
ice cap made only of thin one-year ice.
The many schemes for corruption of apparently authoritative truth have
made the teaching of information literacy a challenge.
Evgeny Morozov: the epidemic of fake news is a symptom of the digital
system that makes fake news profitable,
but focusing on it serves as
distraction from recognizing the deeper origin of today's real
political problems.
Global heating is
undermining localized rules to protect fish stocks
because it makes the fish move to different areas. Combined with
widespread overfishing, the result is that the total seafood catch has
decreased drastically in 20 years.
This matter much if ocean acidification wipes out the sea life we
catch.
Clothes workers in Bangladesh that participated in the strike
are
not just blacklisted, they are harassed by thugs as well.
What this means is that the Bangladeshi state represses citizens on
behalf of foreign businesses.
Japan's admirable
tradition of designing systems and structures to be
considerate to their users.
Several state legislatures controlled by Republicans are
determined to
crush unions.
Sessions's reactionary views, harshness for harshness' sake, are
rejected by many Republican politicians.
Benevolent sexism and hostile sexism work together, like the good cop
and bad cop, to keep women under men's power. Many women, when they
see hostile sexism, turn to benevolent sexism for protection.
Large companies now own and rent out lots of houses in the US. They
are much quicker to evict tenants that get in any sort of trouble.
I think it would be wise to charge a higher tax rate to a landlord
that owns lots of rental housing.
The most important step to help victims of domestic violence
is to
provide a place for them to go to safety. Right-wing
governments
are cutting that.
Acción Ecológica is struggling to stop the Ecuadorian state from
shutting it down.
Poles in the UK are
often the target of hate crimes by bigots
that hate immigrants. They are afraid to report the crimes
because it could affect the political pressure to make them leave.
The military-industrial complex could be responsible for persecution
of Rohingyas,
in support of a land-grab that has kicked millions of
people (of various ethnic groups) off their lands.
Fossil fuel workers whose jobs will (we desperately hope) disappear
can oppose decarbonization. Also, planet-roaster politicians cite
them as a reason to keep using fossil fuels. If we can help these
workers get new jobs, that will facilitate decarbonization.
But we don't dare choose to slow decarbonization for this. Avoiding
global heating disaster, which could kill 2/3 of all living humans and
2/3 of all living species, is desperately urgent.
Donald Trump Didn't Save the Ethics Committee. The American people
did.
The troll only chimed in with a weak statement.
Several state legislatures controlled by Republicans are
determined to
make life difficult for transsexuals.
In the long run, transsexuals can push back simply by obeying the
bathroom law and refusing to be embarrassed. "Don't blame me —
right-wing jerks passed a law that says I have to use this toilet.
Will you join me in campaigning to vote them out?"
Many Americans that voted for the troll are nostalgic for 1950s
America, with its good jobs to support a family on, with women and
minorities in their place, with gays invisible, and transsexuals not
yet invented.
A six-hour work day
can make society better for people overall, in
countries that don't let the rich crush the rest.
It is one way to cope with the problem of technological employment
for millions of people.
The troll's threats
seem to have convinced Ford not to increase
production in Mexico.
I see nothing wrong about importing products made by Mexicans in
Mexico, but moving production to Mexico should not serve as an excuse
to cut workers' pay. US companies that move US production to Mexico
should pay the Mexican workers US-style salaries.
The newly published report on
alleged Russian involvement in cracking
Democratic Party servers has no new evidence to show that Russia was
involved.
Some of the report was leaked to the Washington Post by the CIA.
The troll is scandalized.
Wikileaks points out that the CIA is
leaking top secret documents to
the press to manipulate US public opinion,
just as Wikileaks is accused of doing.
Why
Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky's Assault on
Unions.
The Israeli soldier convicted of killing a helpless Palestinian is not
a "rotten apple". He's
a typical sample of the whole rotten barrel.
Historian Stephen Cohen, who has studied Russia for decades,
criticized
in 2015 the confrontational and domineering policy that the US has
taken towards Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Here's the
second
half.
I think we can have some confidence in Cohen's judgment, because he is
not one of the Putin pets you find so many of nowadays. He doesn't
start from the assumption that Putin is good and the US is bad. He
regards the US government and the Russian government both as playing
the same kind of power game, but Putin's aims are more modest and his
strategy more coherent.
One point in the articles requires correction. The referendum in the
Crimea was imposed by "pro-Russian gunmen" who had captured the
parliament building and
ordered
the vote at gunpoint. We now know that they were capable of
mounting a "well co-ordinated military operation" because they were
Russian
soldiers not wearing their usual uniforms.
But this is a small error and I still trust the articles overall.
The UK ambassador to the EU has
resigned.
He reported to the Tories that they wouldn't be able to get a
favorable deal when leaving the EU, and they did not like what they
heard.
Speech-recognition devices that keep recordings of what people say —
even if only some of the time —
threaten constitutional rights.
An ethically designed speech recognition device will not save any
voice recordings (or transcripts) of actual use, except when the user
explicitly commands that it save one. Training the device to
understand particular people's voices better should be something that
users explicitly request.
The troll
owes 1.5 billion dollars to Wall Street companies,
adding up to a giant corruptive force.
SCROTUS have
a
plan to distract and impede press coverage of the vital
confirmation hearings for the troll's saboteur candidates.
14,000 people have implored the UK not to deport Bashir Naderi to
Afghanistan, where he knows no people and none of the local languages.
People who have lived in a country for many years, since childhood,
should always be given citizenship. If the citizens want to reduce
the number of immigrants, there is no need to do it in a cruel way.
Uri Avnery: don't despair about getting the Israeli colonies
out of the way of a viable Palestinian state.
Suggestions every American can put into effect for resisting the
troll.
SCROTUS
protect their disinformation from comparison with: their new rules
package tells the Congressional Budget Office
not to report on
the likely costs of repealing or changing Obama's medical insurance
program.
One estimate is that it would cost the economy almost a trillion
dollars a year, and eliminate 3 million jobs. And that's not to
mention
the suffering of people who can't get medical care.
Earth is on track towards more than 2C of global heating by 2050.
US citizens: oppose the troll's
cabinet of polluters.
Kentucky's new
Republican legislature is passing laws to destroy
unions,
so fast that there won't be time for the victims to react.
It appears the UK will exit the EU
with no agreement at all — a
"train crash".
Britain still has hope. If the train is operated by a lousy
privatized UK train company, such as Southern Rail, it may not run.
Facebook provided personal data to Mastercard.
The data was provided in anonymized form, but Mastercard could
reidentify
the data by correlating it with other data.
Sessions wants more private prisons.
He says privatization "seem to work better", but better for whom?
Perhaps for his future employers, some years from now.
Chinese ivory carvers are coming to grips with China's decision to ban
the ivory trade.
It makes no sense to eliminate elephants so that Africa can
accommodate more humans.
Shutting down the legal ivory trade
will not stop the illegal trade.
The FCC's weak ISP privacy rules are
too much for the trumpets.
They plan to eliminate them.
ISPs should respect customers' privacy by not taking any note
of their traffic, except pursuant to a specific court order.
Thugs in Alabama killed Robert Earl Lawrence for refusing to show
identification.
All he did was refuse.
He brought a stray dog to an animal shelter, but refused to show a
driver's license, so the staff called the thugs. How gratuitous.
They could just as easily said, "We won't take the dog from you
without your identification, so just let it run loose outside the
door." It would have been stupid, but no more stupid than what they
did.
More US states have fallen under the control of Republicans and ALEC.
They generally gerrymander the districts so that they subsequently
always "win" even when they don't get most of the votes.
SCROTUS want
to eliminate or neutralize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,
because it does a good job of protecting people
from banks that would cheat them.
SCROTUS have
expanded their power to harass and intimidate Americans
by giving congressional staff the power to interrogate people under
oath.
Congressional investigations have a legitimate function, but
Republicans
are not interested in pursuing real abuses. Their goal is to crush
despised climate defenders and abortion providers, by hook or by
crook.
A US thug that is dismissed for misconduct can easily get another job
as a thug, because there is
no firm system to prevent it.
Many states do absolutely nothing, when thugs are fired for violence
against
the public, to stop them from getting hired somewhere else.
Shawna, in her 19th birthday party, had sex with a younger teenager.
She was sentenced to register as a
sex offender for her whole life.
Zineb El Rhazoui has quit working for Charlie Hebdo, rebuking the
magazine for
no longer daring to draw Mohammed.
Roughly
10,000 people die in London each year from air pollution,
much of it from diesel engines.
The UK government attacks everyone's freedom, supposedly to reduce the
already tiny danger of terrorism. But terrorists would find it
exceedingly hard to kill even 1% as many people as the diesels do.
Britons should demand that the government end to massive surveillance
and focus on the greater danger of cars. But this lesson is not
limited to Britain.
How many thousands do diesels kill every year in France? I don't
know, but it must be thousands. So why have a "state of emergency"
that tramples human rights supposedly to protect against the secondary
danger of terrorists, instead of against car companies?
Now that El Niño has ended,
2017 may not set a new heat record.
Denialists are likely to start spreading the myth that "global heating
stopped in 2016."
China has become dominant in the manufacturing of renewable energy
generation.
China is making a big investment, while its potential competitors are
dominated by planet-roasters and denialists.
US citizens:
call on Senate Democrats to go all-out to block Tom Price
from Health and Human Services.
US citizens:
phone your senators to oppose Resolution 6, which would
condemn the recent UN resolution rebuking Israel for colonizing
Palestinian territory.
If you can't phone (or after you phone), sign
this
petition.
Homeless people are "spat on and ignored."
Outside the US, the TPP is marching on, threatening to subjugate
other countries to the power of foreign business.
Japan Recalls Envoy after South Korea Puts "Comfort Woman" Statue
Outside
Consulate.
This is political posturing on both sides, but South Korea is
posturing
on behalf of a real injustice, while Japan is posturing on behalf of
military nationalism.
Most Israelis support cold-blooded murder of Palestinian suspects.
The World Wildlife Foundation faces accusations of helping to
establish
and patrol a wildlife reserve in Cameroon. The land was inhabited by
hunter-gatherers.
As humans overpopulate Earth and overrun all wild areas, more and more
the survival of some humans will come in conflict with the survival of
specific species, and then the survival of entire ecosystems.
Human population growth will stop, one way or another, in this
century, because too many factors stand to limit it. The question is,
what will be left of the natural world at that point?
I think therefore that preserving species and wild areas has to take
precedence over human claims, when they cannot coexist.
It ought to be possible to do this without violence against
unarmed trespassers, though.
Former congressional staff recommend local organizing methods to fight
the right-wing agenda, learning from the success of the Tea Party.
In order for this to work, we must do another thing that the Tea Party
did:
replace nonprogressive Democrats.
President Do-dirty of the Philippines joins lies to murder; his
campaign to make Davao City by killing all the criminals, which he
claims made it a safe place,
actually left it with a high rate of
crime.
UK thugs surrounded Yassar Yaqub's car as it was exiting a highway,
then shot him dead.
They said that the operation was pre-planned.
His father asks whether it was a pre-planned assassination.
If Yassar Yaqub was a gangster, that was grounds to arrest and
prosecute him, but not to assassinate him.
Of course, the effective way to put an end to drug gangs is to
get the War on Drugs off drugs.
How Washington DC
resists
gentrification to protect low-income residents.
Canada
plans
to work with the loser to resurrect the Keystone XL pipeline.
Los Angeles proposes to follow New York City's absurd law prohibiting
unaccompanied adults from playgrounds, but now there is
resistance.
If the goal is to protect children from sexual abuse, it would be more
effective to keep them away from adults in private places, since that
is where abuse almost always occurs. For instance, there could be a
law to prohibit children from spending time at home with just one
adult. A single parent arriving home with children should call Child
Protective Services and wait for an agent to arrive before entering
the home. When the agent has to depart, the family must leave the
house.
I had better state that the proposal above is meant satirically.
US citizens:
tell
the Democratic National Committee you support Keith Ellison as
leader.
Everyone:
call
on Senator Murphy to stop criticizing the UN resolution in support
of Israeli annexationists.
US citizens:
call
on senators Warren and Murphy to resist bipartisan pressure for
military confrontation with Russia.
Putin is a smarmy tyrant, who has crushed opposition and the free
press in Russia. He engages in military aggression, though in a more
measured way than the US does. I think it is sick to suck up to him
as the troll does, but that doesn't mean we need a military rivalry
with Russia.
More U.S. Workers Have
Highly
Volatile, Unstable Incomes.
That means they are at risk of homelessness, hunger, and
dying
from lack of medicine. Their children are at risk of growing up
under stress that will
impair
them for their whole lives.
Multinational megacorporations can use the forced arbitration of
business-supremacy
treaties to
overturn
even convictions for crimes.
They also
invest
in potential lawsuits to be arbitrated under these treaties.
With the help of business-supremacy treaties, corporations that made a
deal with a corrupt dictator
can
force a democratic successor government to pay whatever the dictator
promised. This encourages dictators to cheat their countries.
We need to change the legal system at all levels so that corrupt deals
can be cancelled and even undone. For instance, a predatory
privatization should be cancelled, and the privatizer should be
compensated with the money it paid minus whatever profit it
has extracted.
Most privatizations of state operations are
predatory.
US citizens:
support the
National Popular Vote Act.
A
proposed US pipeline company merger would reportedly create so
much
market power that the combined company could raise prices for oil and
natural gas.
If it could do that, it might discourage consumption, but not enough:
we need heavy taxes on petroleum products and an end to all subsidies
to raise the price enough to avoid disaster.
The better reason to oppose this merger is that bigger companies have
more lobbying power. We need to make large companies split up, except
for those that are natural monopolies and ought to be regulated
utilities.
The ACLU warns that bill HR 6421, the misnamed "Anti-Semitism
Awareness Act",
would impose unconstitutional censorship on debate
about
Israel and its occupation policies.
The
Free Market Isn't Working — And Labour Now Dares to Say
So.
The troll
provides
growing authoritarianism in the US
an opportunity to potentially supplant democracy.
The
15
Warnings Signs of Impending Tyranny — as seen through the
troll.
People in the US are supposed to be able to buy copies of their credit
reports, but
Equifax
and Transunion have been lying — sending people
doctored reports that are not what businesses get.
It's
a fundamental mistake to make a fuss about the national debt,
disregarding other systems that will make the public pay in the
future, such as toll collection and drug patents.
Pressuring restaurant chains
to stop causing antibiotic resistance.
The Jack in the Box pledge is an example of, "We will stop using
certain antibiotics in certain animals for certain purposes, several
years from now." Which is more show than reality.
We shouldn't need to campaign to pressure restaurants or companies. A
government that gives companies the value they deserve, and human
health the value it deserves, would have made this a firm law many
years ago.
Don't these legislators realize that antibiotic resistance can kill
them or their children?
Tom Price, the troll's choice for a cabinet post,
appears to have
committed insider trading.
The US abolished direct military conscription, but has replaced it
with an
indirect system of economic conscription: young people from
poor backgrounds often see no opportunity to get ahead except
through the army.
The article is mistaken on a couple of important points. First, Nixon
did damp down the movement to end the Vietnam War, by pulling the US
army out of Vietnam, but that was not the permanent effect that the
article presents. The US antiwar movement was quite strong for the
first few years of the occupation of Iraq.
It also omits another, deeper blindness about thanking troops for
"serving their country" — for the most part, that's not what they are
doing. And, in Iraq, many of them figured that out; (then) Bradley
Manning was far from alone. A soldier wrote to me, responding to
what he saw in stallman.org, saying that the troops in his unit
felt that they were in Iraq to support an empire.
I think we should offer troops condolences rather than thanks.
Many of them joined up intending to serve their country, and
they were cheated of the opportunity.
The
Chicago Review of Books will boycott publisher Simon & Schuster
because of its book deal with a hate guru.
Nuclear Experts Warn [the troll]:
Do Not Torpedo Successful Iran Deal.
It not only keeps Iran non-nuclear, it indirectly helps keep other
countries non-nuclear.
A
school thug in North Carolina picked up a student, then threw her on
the floor, momentarily stunning her.
We should refuse to call these thugs by the euphemism, "school
resource officer". These thugs are the suction end of the
school-to-prison pipeline, and their presence in a school creates
a danger of more than physical injury.
Anti-Surveillance Clothing
Aims to Hide Wearers from Facial
Recognition.
The idea is good, but does it do the job effectively? It may be hard
to determine that. However, at least it will serve for public
education
about the danger of surveillance.
NAACP activists held a sit-in in Senator Sessions' office to oppose
making him Attorney General.
US citizens: join rallies on
Sunday
Jan 15 against Republican cuts to medical care and Planned
Parenthood.
US citizens: phone your senators to
oppose
Resolution 6, which would condemn the recent UN resolution
rebuking Israel for colonizing Palestinian territory.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Australia is full of introduced feral cats, which have
wiped out 20
native species and could wipe out many more.
Another
Tory politician has been connected with hidden offshoring of
profits.
A
last-ditch plan to protect the remaining vaquita porpoises: find
them
and move them to a protected area.
It could wipe them out, or it could save them. But since they are
being
wiped
out anyway, I think it is better to try it than not to.
Amnesty
International is campaigning for Obama to close the Guantanamo
prison now.
The injustice of the Guantanamo prison is not which prison those
prisoners are in, but that they are held in prison without trial.
Releasing all the prisoners that don't face charges, and giving the
rest real trials, would end that injustice. That's what needs to be
done.
Obama can do the first part, and he should. As for preventing the
troll from imprisoning more people without trial, Obama can't do that
now. If he had firmly opposed imprisonment without trial for years,
as he should have, he might have made it difficult for a future
president to restart it.
18-year-old Idress Wazeer
faces deportation from the UK to
Afghanistan, where (he reports) his family was murdered by the
Taliban. He says he would rather die than be sent there, and he means
it: he has tried twice to kill himself in immigration prison.
Both times he was saved by a meddlesome cellmate who is too mentally
rigid to realize that saving Wazeer was only making things worse.
It takes courage to end your life today in a way that might achieve
some good, rather than hang on a while so that it ends later in a
useless way.
Israeli doctors, in the name of medical ethics,
defy the state and
refuse to force-feed Palestinian hunger strikers.
Israeli
Home Demolitions Break Records, Shatter Lives in 2016,
Rail
passengers protested in many UK train stations against high
fares
and unreliable trains.
This is the natural result of privatization.
An infectious disease, buruli ulcer, has become more common among
humans
because humans have wiped out carnivorous wildlife.
Peter Dahlin reports on his 23 days in a brainwashing Chinese prison.
A year later, he has not recovered.
The Tories plan to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights
endangers human rights in the UK and globally.
It appears that the loser must have debts that he can't pay.
Relating the violence of US thugs in the US to the violence of US soldiers
in other countries.
Kerry's last speech acknowledged in detail the oppression of Israel's
occupation of the West Bank.
If Obama had made this point persistently for 8 years, and insisted on it,
we might have a peace deal by now.
In France, everyone is now an organ donor by default.
You can opt out, but I can't see any rational reason to do so unless
for some special reason you are likely to murdered for your organs.
E-cigarettes are much less dangerous than smoking, but if you are not a nicotine user you should not start using it
in any form.
Oakland, California, provides ordinary public services to a homeless
encampment instead of trying to drive them away.
A leak showed that Jean-Claude Juncker, when PM of Luxembourg, worked
actively to protect tax dodging by thwarting EU efforts to reduce it.
The EU is set up to give the executive power to playthings of the
rich, such as Juncker. That means it is corrupt at the root.
Austerity in Greece means sick people die who ought to be cured.
Why Oil Is the Glue That Bonds Trump and Putin.
Express lanes in security are a clever idea to make Americans want to be
biometrically tracked.
It is fairly predictable that once the gentry are eagerly doing this,
it is likely to be pushed on everyone else.
Please use your moral strength to resist biometric tracking
to the best of your ability.
The UK should not follow China with state control of universities.
The rising US stock market constitutes a big bet that the new
president is a conman, and won't really do anything to benefit the
working-class people that voted for him.
All that money wagered will generate pressure for him to be a conman
so that the bettors win the bet.
The cease-fire in most of Syria is holding.
We have 100 months to curb global heating or face probable catastrophic
change in climate.
Three Miami thugs were fired for a racist discussion in which they joked
about shooting blacks for target practice.
That's far beyond unconscious racism; that's real hatred.
Previous presidents opposed Israel's land grab much more forcefully;
Obama has been mostly subservient.
And when, at last minute, he dares to show a sign of opposition,
Netanyahu vilifies him.
Matt Taibi distrusts the accusations of Russian meddling in the US
election. It's not impossible, but there seems to be more propaganda
than evidence.
Large companies that buy consumer debt has made debt collection an
unbearable burden for millions of Americans.
Since the debt-buyers are more aggressive, one solution is to forbid
that activity. Legislators are constantly pestered by companies for
laws that let them make more money … often at society's expense.
Australian volunteers tag and measure the loggerhead sea turtles every year
as they lay eggs on the beach. They rarely find a mature turtle they had
not already tagged, which indicates the species is dying.
Several cities in the San Francisco area have rejected "predictive
policing".
Using a proprietary program such as PredPol to guide policing means,
in effect, outsourcing the data analysis and policy decisions of the
state to the proprietor of the software. That's never justifiable.
One of the singers in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has quit rather
than perform for the loser.
I've decided to call him "the loser" for a while
rather than "the troll".
Is Civilian Control of the [US] Military in Jeopardy?
The new American segregation, like the American segregation of 50 years ago,
is created by a system of institutionalized bigotry.
The most effective way to radicalize Muslims is to display bigotry
toward them.
Faux News wants to eliminate food stamps because allegedly .1% (one
part in a thousand) gets fraudulently put into buying drugs.
When dooH niboR wants an excuse to hurt the poor, the smallest excuse
will suffice.
Oil companies are blocking research into the effect of spills of
diluted bitumen into the sea, by keeping the composition of the
diluent fluid secret.
I don't believe in prohibiting companies from keeping secrets, not in
general. But companies are not persons and they are not entitled to
human rights. Any time their secrecy interferes with some public
need, the state should require publication. The companies that don't
like this are welcome to shut down or go away — good riddance to
them.
Turkish writer Aslı Erdoğan has been released from jail
but still faces political charges.
Tiny irukandji jellyfish, whose sting can kill a human, are spreading
along the Australian coast, far beyond the equatorial areas where they
have lived in the past.
Global heating is cause of this, as well as so many larger dangers.
The Republican plan to destroy medicare works by letting hospitals and
doctors charge whatever they like, and bill the old people for
whatever Medicare doesn't cover.
Although the Rockettes have been told that they have the option of
not performing for the troll, the dancers fear getting fired.
I have a suggestion: they should perform in the park that day, in
street clothing rather than their costumes, as a protest.
If the troll stretches the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force
the way Obama did, he could bomb or invade nearly anywhere.
The troll claims credit for 5000 jobs that are moving to the US
under a business agreement made before the election.
Assange was smeared with distorted quotations claiming that he
supported Trump and supported Putin.
Looking at his actual interview, the main reference to Trump, which ends with
I think Assange exaggerates a little when he says that the tolerated
Russian opposition press constitutes an alternative to Wikileaks.
Those publications may be tolerated for now, but if they published
leaks they might be shut down.
However, his point that Wikileaks can't publish effectively to
Russians because that needs to be done by people with a Russian
background is valid — and a far cry from what the smear article
claimed.
Burger King says it will cut out use of "critical" antibiotics
in raising its chicken.
That is a significant step forward, but it has to be spread to all farming
of all kinds of animals.
Cartoonist Eaten Fish, imprisoned by Australia on Manus Island,
will be sent back to Iran, where he faces imprisonment or execution.
Jeffry Wagner is charged with "child endangerment" because his child
started walking to school on Saturday morning while Jeffry was asleep.
Naveed Baloch, who was temporarily suspected of being responsible for
the terrorist attack in Berlin, reports that the thugs brutalized him
while he was in jail.
The security of "smart meters" is very stupid. Crackers can find out what
devices you own, in many cases take control of them, bankrupt you with a false
electric bill, and even make them explode.
The crackers can learn an awful lot by watching out how much electricity
you use from second to second.
Even worse, the electric utility can learn it, too — and tell big brother.
The obvious "solution" to this problem would be "better security in
the smart meter". That way, only the electric utility and big brother
could snoop on you, invade your other devices, etc.
The real solution is to design smart meters so that they can't do this,
at all, for anyone.
Al Qa'ida is slowly growing by seeking support locally and being less
bloody.
Perhaps it will morph into something we could make peace with.
Any Islamist group advocates oppressive Shari'a law, and thus aims to
violate people's human rights. But it's not usually necessary or
legitimate to respond to every such regime with war. The US has not
started drone attacks in Poland and Hungary, let alone Belarus,
Thailand, and Malaysia, nor even in Bahrain, Egypt, and Salafi Arabia,
for their violations of human rights.
When thugs kill a dog, that's not as grave as killing a person. But
the frequency of killing dogs highlights bad values in training, and they
endanger humans too.
One lesson we could learn from the killing of Philando Castile is
that, in some kinds of traffic stop situations, the thug should stay
in the car and avoid risk to the driver and to the thug.
Tory bigotry has sown bigotry in UK elementary schools.
Activists are attacking the funding of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Some banks have pulled out, and the company may soon have to renegotiate.
Duterte said that he killed a man by throwing him out of a helicopter.
Such an act is murder, no two ways about it.
I don't think it matters much whether Do-dirty's claim is true or false.
Someone who boasts of murder is despicable whether it is true or not.
Jewish Voice for Peace: Kerry's last-minute push for peace between
Israel and Palestine had the right goals, but it wasn't a serious plan
for overcoming the obstacles.
Electing the troll was effectively a big temper-tantrum, and it presents the
US as infantile. It will have trouble inspiring respect or admiration
anywhere in the world.
The partial vote recounts confirm the previously reported counts, but
show vulnerabilities that need to be fixed.
French President Hollande pardoned a woman who was imprisoned for
killing her violently abusive husband.
Self-defense should apply to spousal violence just like violence by a
stranger.
In Every [US] State, Minimum Wage
Falls Far Short of a Living Wage.
A Texas thug
shot a black man in the back, as he was walking away, and
left him paralyzed for life.
Even supposing that the story about the box cutter was true, the thug
didn't need to shoot him at that time. But you can't believe the
accusations
thugs make against their victims.
How Propaganda Works — repeating a simplistic slogan until the
zombified
followers don't want to try to think.
Israel's response to the UN's condemnation of colonizing the West Bank
is
the usual stupid attempt to put the blame on its critics.
It would be appropriate now for other countries to adopt a first stage
of sanctions, to start pressuring Israel to make peace with Palestine.
Obama should give Palestine US recognition now.
Israel can kick Palestinians around with impunity because they are
stateless. I agree with Juan Cole that the Palestinians must be able
to be citizens of a state that will try defend their human rights,
just as Israelis are.
The troll said he was so rich he could not be bought, but it appears
that his billionaire donors
bought cabinet offices.
Growing Mega-cities Will Displace Vast Tracts of Farmland by 2030,
Study
Says.
Poland shows how a repressive right-wing party can build public
support for repression and tyranny based on subsidies for ordinary
people.
In East Palo Alto,
right near the wealth of Silicon Valley,
1/3 of the children in public school are in families that don't
have a home of their own.
Most of them don't have to live on the street. They live in someone
else's
house, or in a vehicle.
Turkey and Russia have agreed on a limited partial Syrian cease-fire
between Assad's men and non-Jihadi Arab rebels.
PISSI and al-Nusra are excluded. So, at Turkey's insistence, are the
Kurds.
Nonetheless, I think this will be a step forward,
as long as Turkey doesn't turn it into an opportunity to launch
renewed
war against the Kurds.
US progressives are
organizing behind Sanders.
Tony Fullman has been effectively exiled from New Zealand for
talking
with Fijian democracy campaigners. New Zealand brought in Australia
and
the US NSA to spy on him in ways that were illegal for New Zealand to
do.
Sabrina Siddiqui, a Muslim reporter who doesn't dress as one,
encountered violent hatred while covering the troll's campaign.
Prisoners in US prisons are excluded from work safety standards. They
can be maimed on the job due to lack of safety equipment and training,
and the US government covers it up.
Global heating, by changing the seasons, is causing birds to arrive at
their
summer breeding grounds too early. Some find an absence of food.
How the CIA
manipulates the US media.
A fear-spreading city council member in Los Angeles
proposed to make
it a crime for an adult to enter a playground if not accompanied by
children.
Doesn't that fool realize how easy it is for the hypothetical
stranger-molester to arrange to bring a child? One child would pave
per way to meet other children.
Nearly all adults that have sex with children are their relatives or
friends of the family. What could be more natural than to bring that
child in order to meet another?
It would be more logical to prohibit adults that do bring children.
Fortunately the LA Times rebuked this stupid idea.
The US Export-Import Bank
lent over 8 billion dollars to Pemex,
Mexico's
state oil company.
Even if it oil extraction were not dangerous to the world,
that certainly counts as corruption.
American adults under 64 have a 40% higher chance of dying
if they
don't have medical coverage.
This means that
SCROTUS and
the troll, when they plan to cancel Obama's medical care plan, are
planning to kill tens of thousands of people. And if they eliminate
Medicare, they will kill even more.
This article, a couple of years later, suggests that the number
increased
over that time.
Because Fox Asked,
Here Are Examples Of [Americans] Who Were Denied
Health
Care.
To teach your children discretion about what to post on social media,
you have to respect their privacy.
This article recommends a rule: never post anything personal about
family members or friends without explicitly asking permission.
I suggest not posting photos of anyone else, except people who
have sought public attention (me, for instance).
Paying for digital services
through surveillance can do people a lot
of harm.
China's kidnapping of publishers has
crushed the Hong Kong publishing
industry.
Bookstores have been privately censored, or shut down, so that books
that criticize China are now hard to find, if they are published at
all.
Angela Gui, daughter of a kidnaped publisher, has been
warned not to
go to Asia lest she too be attacked by Chinese agents.
Everyone:
urge
Protonmail to make its Javascript code free
such that LibreJS can recognize it.
Gingrich argues that the president's power to pardon is so powerful
that it permits making anyone whatsoever completely above the law.
He didn't urge the troll to do this; it seems he was rather warning
that the troll might do this.
Ever since President Ford pardoned President Nixon, I have believed
that we should amend the constitution to reduce the president's
power to pardon crimes connected with the federal government.
Specifically, the president should not have the power to pardon crimes
that were committed by anyone holding elected or appointed federal
office at the time of the crime, or any crime carried out as part of
working for the federal government or cooperation with the federal
government.
New York State will not allow the Trump Foundation to dissolve
because it is being
investigated for alleged corruption.
Shi'ite Iraqi Ali Amin Abdullah
survived 2 years in Mosul under the
rule of PISSI by pretending to be Sunni.
He did this so effectively that the Iraqi army put him in prison
and his family cannot find him.
There is a rational need to do something to prevent PISSI supporters
from remaining underground in Mosul and setting up cells to try to
take power again. But it has to be done without terrorizing masses of
people because they appear to be Sunnis, or even because they are
Sunnis.
Obama's last blow against the US independent press: establishing an
"anti-propaganda center" for "recognize, understand, expose, and
counter" foreign propaganda.
In principle, that's not a bad thing to do; in practice, almost any
sort of US state propaganda could be described as "countering" some
sort of foreign propaganda. A single foreign article published
anywhere in the world could serve as the excuse for a mammoth US
government propaganda campaign.
Looking back over the history of American journalism, we find, about a
century ago, that articles based on
rumors
and lies were common.
The imperialist war against Spain was started through such pressure.
The slogan for the war was "Remember the Maine", alluding to a US
warship
that exploded mysteriously in Havana. The most recent investigation
concluded it was an internal explosion.
Movements for independence in Cuba and the Philippines were both
crushed by the US, which turned Cuba into a puppet government, and
reduced the Philippines to a colony after years of war and repression.
The rain in Spain
fell mainly on fresh vegetables for sale to the UK,
so UK supermarkets will fly in fresh vegetables from the US.
The heavy rain was probably a result of global heating, and flying the
vegetables will surely cause more global heating. This is one little
example of how civilization can fall.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is going to be
threatened again
by the troll and his extractivist cabinet members.
A
guide
to the planned US protests on Jan 21.
Bangladeshi clothing factories crushed a week-long strike and protest
with
the
help of thugs.
They fired 1500 workers and blacklisted them. This is "free trade"
at
work.
The article calls this a "blow" to the Bangladeshi clothing industry,
but I disagree, because it appears to me that the bad guys won.
(Nonetheless, it was a good try!)
A real blow to the industry will be if the workers win.
How far has sexual repression in the US gone? A
proposed law to
establish a 5-year maximum penalty for sex involving teenagers (in
certain limited cases) is actually a reduction in the
repression.
Cheetah numbers are
dropping fast.
Global heating
threatens
the survival of reindeer. They can dig through dry snow to find
food, but they can't break a surface of ice from rain that froze on
the ground.
Gingrich argues that the president's power to pardon is so powerful
that it
permits
making anyone whatsoever completely above the law.
He didn't urge the troll to do this; it seems he was rather warning
that the troll might do this.
Ever since President Ford pardoned President Nixon, I have believed
that we should amend the constitution to reduce the president's
power to pardon crimes connected with the federal government.
Specifically, the president should not have the power to pardon crimes
that were committed by anyone holding elected or appointed federal
office at the time of the crime, or any crime carried out as part of
working for the federal government or cooperation with the federal
government.
New York State will not allow the Trump Foundation to dissolve
because it is
being
investigated for alleged corruption.
Shi'ite Iraqi Ali Amin Abdullah survived 2 years in Mosul under the
rule of PISSI by
pretending
to be Sunni. He did this so effectively that the Iraqi army put
him in prison and his family cannot find him.
There is a rational need to do something to prevent PISSI supporters
from remaining underground in Mosul and setting up cells to try to
take power again. But it has to be done without terrorizing masses of
people because they appear to be Sunnis, or even because they are
Sunnis.
The rain in Spain fell mainly on fresh vegetables for sale to the UK,
so UK supermarkets
will
fly in fresh vegetables from the US.
The heavy rain was probably a result of global heating, and flying the
vegetables will surely cause more global heating. This is one little
example of how civilization can fall.
Looking back over the history of American journalism, we find, about a
century ago, that
articles
based on rumors and lies were common.
The imperialist war against Spain was started through such pressure.
The slogan for the war was "Remember the Maine", alluding to a US
warship that exploded mysteriously in Havana. The most recent
investigation concluded it was an internal explosion.
Movements for independence in Cuba and the Philippines were both
crushed by the US, which turned Cuba into a puppet government, and
reduced the Philippines to a colony after years of war and repression.
Obama's last blow against the US independent press: establishing an
"anti-propaganda
center" to "recognize, understand, expose, and counter" foreign
propaganda.
In principle, that's not a bad thing to do; in practice, almost any
sort of US state propaganda could be described as "countering" some
sort of foreign propaganda. A single foreign article published
anywhere in the world could serve as the excuse for a mammoth US
government propaganda campaign.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is
going
to be threatened again by the troll and his extractivist cabinet
members.
A
guide
to the planned US protests on Jan 21.
How far has sexual repression in the US gone? A proposed law to
establish a
5-year
maximum penalty for sex involving teenagers (in certain limited
cases) is actually a reduction in the repression.
Bangladeshi clothing factories
crushed
a week-long strike and protest with the help of thugs. They fired
1500 workers and blacklisted them. This is "free trade" at work.
The article calls this a "blow" to the Bangladeshi clothing industry,
but I disagree, because it appears to me that the bad guys won.
(Nonetheless, it was a good try!)
A real blow to the industry will be if the workers win.
Cheetah numbers are
dropping
fast.
Everyone:
urge
Maine legislators to impeach the governor of Maine.
Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the crucial
witness spoke a strongly nonstandard dialect of English, typically
found among blacks, and the jurors
interpreted
her testimony wrong by taking it as standard English.
More analysis confirming that Rachel Jeantel spoke in a typical form
of
African-American
Vernacular English, though with a little influence from Haitian
Kreyol, and that she consistently followed the grammatical and lexical
rules of her dialect. The jurors (none of whom knew that dialect)
frequently misunderstood her testimony.
I support the idea that courts should use interpreters whenever
witnesses appear to be speaking in a dialect that many jurors will not
understand.
This also demonstrates how important it is for everyone in the US to
learn to speak a more standard form of English — standard enough
that you won't be systematically misunderstood. Not that you
shouldn't ever speak some other dialect that you grew up with —
but don't let that be the only one you can use fluently.
The US government has
started
asking visitors to give a list of their social media accounts.
Although the answer is not required, many visitors will fear to
decline.
A
link
between Michael Flynn and the KGB.
Amazon has so much market share that its sheer size
distorts
the market.
We should not allow a company to have a share over around 10% of any
market. If in a certain field a single dominant company is beneficial
for society, that means it is a natural monopoly, and should be
served by a regulated utility.
The Scandal of
Vast
Inequality in Retirement Pay.
The CEOs pushed their income way up the same way they pushed US
workers' wages down.
Americans'
customary
response to small harmful freak event: demand someone turn the
world upside down to make sure it "never happens again".
This American Fought [PISSI]. Now He's Trying to Get Washington to
Untangle Its
Syria
Policy.
Afghanistan's
military
aid funds support local militias, ostensibly to fight the Taliban,
but they also fight each other and the central government.
Because of overpopulation,
millions
in Manila live in areas that often flood. But hurricanes are
getting stronger and in the future will flood nearly all of Manila.
Meanwhile, crop failures will mean food is scarce.
How to cope with this in the future? Condoms and sterilizations will
help.
Due to global heating, major floods in the UK are
likely
to happen every year.
The ministers not only don't have a plan to deal with it,
they intend to continue the policies that created it.
It would be
useful
in schools to teach adolescents to think critically about porn.
The FBI has collected photos of half the adults in the US, and many
city thug departments feed cameras on the street into this data base
to recognize
everyone walking by.
More
information.
We need laws to restrict putting faces with names into a face
recognition data base.
Schooled in Terror: The Tactical Trainings Where Cops
Militarize
Their Brutality.
Sexist sexual repression in the US starts in school with a
dress
code.
One way girls can push back is by wearing oversize yellow shirts
and making it a new style.
US citizens:
call
on Obama, once again, to pardon Snowden now.
The troll's
proposed
ambassador Israel would be better suited for Israeli ambassador to
the US, but only under a virulent racist extremist government of the
farright.
Egypt Arrests [vacationing] Al-Jazeera Journalist over
"Provoking
Sedition".
Egypt is one of the few countries I have never seen, that I would
specifically like to visit. But I wouldn't go there now; I am afraid
of the repression. I don't suppose the Egyptian regime hates free
software, but it might object to something I say on this site. In
addition, the Egyptian government is so random about its repression
that anyone there could be imprisoned for years
simply
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I urge tourists to punish Egypt by boycotting it.
A fake news site published a report that Israel threatened a nuclear
attack against Pakistan. The report was false, but
Pakistan's
counter-threat was real.
Focusing on mental illness and failed relationships as causes of
misery
should
not be used to excuse policies that cause poverty.
Poverty has a tendency to cause stress, which can exacerbate mental
illness and provoke relationship problems.
Many mammals can see ultraviolet light. The reason they won't walk
under an electric power line is that those cables
emit
flashes of UV.
Israel threatens to punish the UN by
breaking
off ties with it.
Factory Near Carrier Sends Jobs to Mexico, But
Trump
Just Tweets.
Identity politics is valid opposition to bigotry, but when its
supporters are
not
also the poor and downtrodden, it can turn into "It's ok for
people to be poor as long as it's not due to bigotry."
"You don't build the left by figuring out which victim has been most
victimized; you build it by organizing all the victims."
It seems Betsy DeVos advocates using government money to
subsidize
religious inculcation. Privatizing schools may be a covert scheme
to achieve this.
Campaigns against torture tend to overlook the
everyday
torture of poor people — those who, lacking fame or foreign
supporters, can be tortured with impunity.
Boycott Dr Seuss the greedy, grasping
copyright
bullying.
Thomas Piketty: We Must
Re-Think
Globalization, Or Trumpism Will Prevail.
Thousands of Chinese ships
travel
long distances to fish illegally all around the world. They will
surely wipe out all fisheries that are not protected from them.
Protests (as such) can't take power away from right-wingers.
Only an
electoral
movement can do that.
Madison, Mississippi, passed a law
requiring
every store, business and professional office to run a security
camera. This includes doctors' offices and lawyers' offices.
There's a danger that the city will make this even worse, by requiring
businesses to hand over the recordings without a warrant. Though that
might be overturned as unconstitutional.
Why
Christmas
Time in China Means Jail for Human Rights Activists.
The troll has nominated a man with
no
diplomatic experience to supervise peace negotiations with Israel
and Palestine.
The nominee is well suited to that sinecure, since Netanyahu has
already rejected peace and
has
not held any serious negotiations for many years.
Dishonest publishing lobbyists are
trying
to recruit the troll to make the DMCA even worse.
I was delighted to see that the article recognizes the
absurdity of the
term "intellectual property". I've been explaining this to people
for 12 years now.
The article refers to misrepresentation of the US Constitution
regarding copyright law.
See
https://gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html
for how I treat that point.
In 2015, two Turkish members of parliament accused the Turkish state
of shielding
people who provided Sarin gas to Syrian rebels.
This was originally published in the newspaper Today's Zaman, which
was
shut
down arbitrarily by the Turkish government earlier this year.
This accords with claims made by
Seymour
Hersh.
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst, describes how Obama
recognized
these facts and cancelled the plan for military intervention in
Syria.
Now Yemen gets its cluster bombs
from
Brazil.
The US Department of Justice is
letting
banks off the hook for giant frauds with inadequate fines.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject Pruitt as head of EPA.
US citizens:
call
on Obama not to start an arms race in space.
The troll said he would stop foreign workers from taking jobs in the US,
but his family's vineyard has
applied
to bring in foreign workers.
Republicans are striving mightily in various states to
block
local laws and even state-level referendums to raise the minimum
wage.
Unauthorized immigrants in the US pay
lots
of taxes, including Social Security tax, although they can't get
Social Security benefits.
George Lakeoff: we who
oppose
the troll should show that he is a loser, corrupt, and a betrayer
of trust. That undermines his message. But we should focus, not on
the troll himself, but on what policies make a nurturing society.
Rick Perry is accused of corruption as governor of Texas, and he
could
easily carry this forward to the US Department of Energy.
US right-wingers make a fuss about religious freedom, but really it's
only when Christians want to
impose
their religion on others.
Republicans in Congress are
frightened
to disagree with the troll on anything. His mob of extremist
supporters, organized through Breitbart, keeps them in check.
This could be the reason why the troll
continues
to hold rallies of the same sort he did during the campaign.
Charter schools in the US are
businesses
subsidized by public funds with very little accountability. They
are now going through a wave of mergers.
The troll, naturally, wants to unleash them to drain even more funds
away from American children's education.
The Nigerian army has
captured
the last Boko Haram camp in the Sambisa forest, which they used to
control.
Alas, this doesn't automatically wipe out Boko Haram. A permanent
camp is useful for operations, but they can surely survive moving
around in the forest.
Kamala Harris is
trying
again to prosecute Backpage and its owners for publishing ads for
escorts, who are probably prostitutes, because some of them may in
fact be minors.
Prostitution should be lawful. Prohibiting the advertising of
prostitution does no good for prostitutes, and tends to force them to
work on the street, which hurts them plenty.
The principal way to prevent women and girls from being forced into
prostitution is to reduce poverty.
Some women are forced into prostitution by violent threats by pimps.
It is hard to prevent that — banning advertising won't do it.
Maybe targeted surveillance could be made to work.
Thailand's new "computer crime act" includes
punishment
for violating vague censorship rules.
Thailand is one of the countries that I won't visit, because of the
repression there. I encourage everyone to boycott Thailand.
The troll's plan to
move
the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would be an explicit
endorsement of Netanyahu's intention for a permanent occupation of
Palestine.
As more children in the UK fall into poverty, the Tories handled it by
eliminating
the special government program meant to reduce the causes of
poverty.
Perhaps the government want to reduce them — since the main
cause of poverty in the UK today is the Tory party.
Another refugee died after
months
of being denied access to Australian medical care. The refugee
was imprisoned by Australia on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
The refugees that die are a small fraction, but they are all subject
to grave mistreatment every day.
Former president Rousseff fights to clear her name of the
charges
used by the right wing to seize power.
A House committee prepared a report to smear Snowden, but
couldn't
demonstrate anything bad about him. Snowden called it
"accidentally exonerating".
It is
full
of falsehoods and distortions.
I speculate that the purpose of this report is to influence the
general climate of public opinion against Snowden, and thus oppose the
campaign asking Obama to pardon him.
Sad to say, that tactic sometimes works. I know someone who is
generally sensible, who has been persuaded by the parade of lies to
call Snowden a traitor.
Obama finally stood up to Netanyahu,
allowing
the UN to rebuke Israel's colonization of the West Bank. This is
a reversal, because Obama has
bent
over backwards to prevent UN criticism of Israel.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been
accelerating
the colonization, while completely shutting down the possibility
of a peace deal with Palestine.
Netanyahu has displayed
overt
arrogance towards the US, and mostly Obama has swallowed this,
because Congress gives Israel almost bootlicking support.
All this
as
American Jews become increasingly critical of Israeli occupation
policies.
US citizens:
protest
on Jan 9 against the troll's worst saboteur nominees for cabinet
positions.
If necessary, you can hand-edit that URL, substituting your zip code
into it.
Haitian warlord Guy Philippe has been arrested for US drug charges. Philippe fronted the US-backed coup that overthrew elected President Aristide.
With the REINS act,
SCROTUS would
make all new federal regulations
require specific
approval from Congress.
Nothing
is too ugly for a trumpet to say.
The ACLU has got a court order to
stop
schools from arbitrarily demanding drug tests of students.
There is no justification for making people take tests of whether they
have used recreational drugs in the past few days or weeks.
In certain special circumstances it is justified to require someone to
take a test of whether per functioning is currently impaired by a
drug; but that's a different kind of test. And doing schoolwork
is not one of those special circumstances.
Irish homeless people, with support from the community,
occupied
a vacant building to make places they could sleep.
Naturally, the government took the side of the future and past rich
owners rather than people who need a place to sleep. That's a sign of
fundamental callousness: those politicians should spend some months
sleeping on the street to understand what is at stake here.
North Carolina Republicans said they would repeal the "bathroom bill"
if Charlotte repealed its antidiscrimination law which said that
people could use the bathrooms of their own gender identity.
Charlotte did so, upon which the state Republicans
did
not repeal the "bathroom bill".
Republicans are like Trump: cheaters! Never make a deal with
Republicans — if you care whether they keep it.
I suggest that Charlotte pass its bill again, just to show those
cheaters for what they are.
The EU is
considering a plan
to take fingerprints from all visitors. It has no specific
grounds for this violation of privacy, just a vague handwaving that
this is good for "security".
How the group Hope not Hate
teaches
people to have calm discussions to diffuse the anger that promotes
bigotry.
A Breitbart internet mob latched on to a rumor and bullied a Jewish
family with
threats
that made them fear violence.
The Daily Mail attempted a hatchet job against the people behind
snopes.org. Fortunately, without causing much damage. But it raises
the suspicion that the Daily Mail
doesn't
want facts to be checked or myths to be busted.
The troll seems to have
pressured
Egypt to delay a UN resolution to condemn Israel's colonization of
Palestinian territory.
Has the troll violated the Logan act? Could he be prosecuted for this
now? Could that prevent him from taking office?
Apartheid is imposed by the Israeli government on
70%
of towns in Israel: Arabs are entirely excluded.
Right-wing extremists in Israel's government are
setting
their repressive sights on academic freedom. No one, they
believe, should be allowed to question their politics in school.
Unlike the still-risible Professor Witchlist in the US, this will
be state-imposed, enforced censorship.
Israel still claims to be a democracy, but it allows ever less
in the way of human rights.
There were Israelis that predicted after 1967 that occupation of
Palestine would destroy Israel's spirit. I have to say they were
right. The reason the occupation continues is the Israeli colonies
constructed in Palestine by Israelis that want to expel the
Palestinians, slowly.
The current Israeli government has sped up the construction, and the
expulsion. Most Palestinians have
given
up hope of ever having a state of Palestine.
Now that California kicked out Uber's crash-risking driverless cars,
citizens
of Arizona must organize to do likewise.
The Philippine Commission on Human Rights
will
investigate Duterte's confessed killings.
The rate of use of marijuana by teenagers in Colorado is the
same
as it was before the state legalized marijuana sales in stores, to
within the margin of error for surveys.
The
"half-blind
trust" that the troll proposes for his conflicts of interests
would be an absurd parody of a solution.
Workers in the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas
won
a new contract, but the troll is likely to sabotage the NLRB so
that unions can't win any more.
SCROTUS have
another
plan to cut Social Security. In typical right-wing dishonesty,
the plan tries to camouflage the cuts with smaller increases for a
fraction of workers.
Craig Murray says that he received the leaked Democratic Party emails,
from an intermediary who told him that they were
leaked
by an insider.
Ecuador is
acting
to forcibly shut down Acción Ecológica, which
opposes oil drilling in the Amazon.
A future climate lawsuit against Washington state
parallels
the federal future climate lawsuit.
Many of the plaintiffs, now teenagers, could live long enough to see
the years when climate mayhem kills lots of Americans, and be killed
by it.
North Carolina's civil rights campaign, the Moral Mondays, has
succeeded so well that it
elected
a Democrat as governor.
Its success is helped by appealing to universal goals rather than a
specific identity — like the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
A minority that is the target of prejudice and bigotry is entitled to
demand better treatment, but it is hard to get majority support for
changes by setting yourself against the majority. A campaign for
universal values, such as justice for all (so that the minority is no
longer an exception) is more likely to succeed.
The Moral Mondays could win the election for governor because that
runs by simple popular vote. But it can't win back the state
legislature, because that election is
rigged.
Now that thugs have killer robots to use, we have to consider the
danger
that their use will become attractive and frequent.
Does concern about that eventuality seem like borrowing trouble? In
1970 it might have seemed silly to worry that SWAT teams would be used
50,000 times a year, and often against suspects not known to be armed.
Where other large banks have agreed to pay billions in penalties for
cheating millions of American homeowners,
Barclays bank decided to fight the charges.
I wonder if Barclays Bank has made a deal with the troll. Perhaps to
lend one billion dollars with no collateral as part of a scheme
like the one
he did decades ago,
in exchange for being let off the hook.
I don't have enough faith in the honesty of either party to regard
this as impossible.
I expect the penalties are insufficient to deter banks from doing such
things in the future. I don't have any specific knowledge about that,
but it's the usual weak practice of the US.
Arleen Matthews worked for a local government in the UK taking care of
temporary housing. She couldn't pay her own rent, and became
homeless, so she made arrangements with one of those tenants to let
her sleep in a garage.
When her employer found out,
it fired her. What callousness.
CO2 released by melting permafrost could
add .5C extra heating in this
century. The methane released could add even more, for the short
term.
Chopping down (or drying up) a large forest
can alter the climate all around the world.
Everyone:
call on
Democrats in Congress to skip the troll's inauguration.
US citizens:
call
on states to adopt the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,
so that presidential elections will be decided by the popular vote.
US citizens:
call on the
Senate to reject Tillerson as Secretary of State.
For
more
explanation.
A video shows a Texas thug
attack
and arrest a woman and her teenage daughter, because she raised
her voice to the thug.
Per standard practice, the thug made false accusations against the two
of them.
The troll said he
wants
a nuclear arms race.
Assuming nuclear weapons continue not to be used, this will be a
bonanza for weapons companies and an excuse to further cut social
programs that people depend on for their lives.
A tribe in the Brazilian Amazon fights violent illegal deforestation
with
their
own traditional arms, as well as modern technology.
Nearly all people who sleep on the street face
frequent
attacks from passers by. The get as bad as kicking them in the
head, and rape.
4000 rebels and civilians were
calmly
evacuated from Aleppo, and Assad's forces took control.
I think this means that the bloodbath and torture fest that some had
feared will not take place.
Obama has
ordered
the elimination of the inactive NSEERS tracking program which was
set up under Dubya to track Muslim visitors to the US.
Tracking 80,000 Muslim visitors must have created plenty of
resentment, but it did exactly zero to reduce terrorism.
Hope not Hate, in the UK, demands an apology from the
right-wing
politician who launched an internet mob attack.
This is "a David v Goliath struggle, where the other side portrays
itself as the underdog, yet in reality is backed by an online army and
millionaires in the wings."
The latest (presumably) Chinese counterfeit food product: fake rice,
made
of plastic.
Facebook lurkers are
likely
to feel happier if they stop being used by Facebook for at least a
week.
If you want to "engage with others" more, how about doing it
outside of Facebook? That would provide the same benefits
and would avoid giving Facebook any more information about you or the
others you engage with.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter (on Jan 4 if possible) to
oppose cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
The giant new Adani coal mine in Australia was funded by the World
Bank through a program that is
supposed
to fund "sustainable development".
Why
Time Management Is Ruining Our Lives.
If the work you do is essential for fighting injustice or preventing
disaster, perhaps it is really desirable for you to work as much as
possible. Otherwise, you shouldn't have to work so hard, and the
reason you do is because an exploitative system wants to extract as
much as it can from you. Rather than working hard for it, better to
organize against it.
Oracle executive George Polisner has resigned in protest against the
CEO's
acceptance of a position in the troll's "transition team".
Joseph Stiglitz describes how the IMF and the US fixed the Russian elections
in the 1990s
in
favor of Yeltsin.
Kuwait's annual diplomatic reception was scheduled for some other hotel,
but the troll's staff
pressured
Kuwait to move it to the troll's hotel.
The best defense against truck-ramming terrorism is with simple
physical
barriers. There is no need to panic.
Especially there is no need to authorize increased surveillance of
people in general. The Berlin truck attacker was a known known
terrorist sympathizer who
had
been investigated and was facing deportation soon.
This specific suspicion could have been used (and, I expect, was used)
to obtain orders for surveillance and searches targeted at him
personally. Increases in surveillance of everyone in Germany would
have provided no more information about him.
It looks like they have
lots
of possible suspects (only a tiny fraction of whom will actually
commit any crime) that they can't keep close tabs on all of them.
Many
places in the US have high levels of lead in the water, enough to
be a real danger to children growing up there.
A proposed EU directive to reduce tax-dodging by businesses has been
undermined
by officials in favor of continuing the tax-dodging.
Trumpery doesn't replace the neoliberal mindset (society is nothing
but business); rather, it takes that mindset to a
further
extreme.
The new FCC commissioners
intend
to eliminate network neutrality rules so that ISPs can mistreat
and manipulate their customers more.
Thousands of retired Americans are having their social security payments
confiscated to pay the
interest
on student loans.
For 2/3 of them, the confiscation pays only interest, so the principal
of the loan does not decrease. They will go on paying this way until
they die, or they elect progressive officials.
It will be hard for the troll's children to avoid
insider
trading charges, if they buy and sell stock and are involved in
policy matters.
The troll's sons
plan
to sell meetings with him for a million dollars, to anonymous
"donors".
India is
investing
heavily in renewable energy and expects to make 57% of its
electricity that way in 10 years.
The European Union is
talking
about taking action against Poland's nondemocratic changes in law.
The year 2016 in
American
child-protection mania.
The Clintons
Turned
the Democratic Party Over to Donors. Can It Recover?
Alas it wasn't just the Clintons. Plenty of Democrats in Congress
still stand for the same center-right positions.
A Nauru refugee has been
denied
medical treatment for a heart attack for a month now.
We urgently need to reduce emissions of soot, so as to stop
blackening
and melting ice.
We wouldn't be grasping at these straws if we had started acting
rationally 15 years ago.
Who disagrees with the studies that show sugar causes obesity?
Researchers
funded
by the sugar industry.
Those sugar-funded scientists will give the sugar industry a way to
claim that there is doubt about the question. Does this seem familiar
to you?
Obama has finally placed a
permanent
ban on oil extraction on most of the Atlantic and Arctic coasts.
The end result of UK austerity is now visible in
the
people sleeping on the streets.
The European Court of Justice ruled that states
may
not collect people's emails indiscriminately.
This could
force
revision of the UK's massive snooping law.
Temporary agencies in the UK profit by
systematically
cheating the employees.
The corrupt Brazilian government is
planning
to legalize massive deforestation.
George Monbiot: Celebrity Isn't Just Harmless Fun — It's the
Smiling
Face of the Corporate Machine.
It is especially disappointing that what young people desire
most is to be famous.
An Israeli politician
wishes
that Arab citizens didn't vote.
In fact, the government
wants
to find an excuse to ban the candidates they elect.
Compare this with the troll, who said he was
glad
many black Americans didn't vote. As usual, he was bullshitting,
since they tried to vote but his party dishonestly
stopped
them from voting.
Torture of Palestinian prisoners is common in Israel. There have been
1000
complaints since 2001, and Israeli officials have dismissed every
one.
Israel has declared half the land area of the West Bank for ethnic
cleansing, and is using a
broad
campaign of repression to drive Palestinians out.
Israel is
confiscating
parts of an old Palestinian cemetery just outside Jerusalem, with
the excuse of making the land into a park.
The troll's proposed ambassador to Israel
viciously
insults Jews that disagree with his politics.
Israel is
threatening
to expel an Australian journalist, but Palestinian journalists get
imprisoned instead.
A business in the UK will have to pay a
million
pounds to some of the workers it enslaved.
Isn't it a crime to imprison people and threaten the with violence
using attack dogs? Why are those abusers being allowed to get off
with a monetary payment?
A UK woman is suing the thugs for having an undercover infiltrator
seduce
her and break up her previous relationship.
The troll is
continuing
to hold campaign rallies, apparently to stir up his supporters
with the latest bullshit.
That he praises them for being violence-maddened suggests to me that
he intends to use them as a kind of private army, for some sort of
harassment that he won't be able to get official thugs to do.
More
officials have been charged about the Flint lead poisoning.
It is good to prosecute the individuals that are responsible, but we
must also get rid of the system that is responsible: the
"emergency
manager" system that Republicans in Michigan created so they could
set aside democratic local government in Detroit and Flint, so as to
screw the residents there.
Workers in the UK should unite against "free trade" that means
moving
jobs to places where workers can be paid a pittance.
And then they should insist that all workers get enough pay, and
enough hours, to
make
work pay.
"Taking back control" does not mean people should get offered
a
few horrible alternatives to choose from. That's like choosing
between a proprietary Microsoft system, a proprietary Apple system,
and a mostly proprietary Google system.
The EU accuses Facebook of
lying
when it applied for permission to buy WhatsApp.
If Facebook is fined $100 million, that won't be enough to deter it
from lying again the same way. Laws should be changed so that mergers
approved as a result of fraud can be undone, with fines far larger.
A poll reports that
most
Americans, even most Republicans, support clean energy and
reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet Republican politicians regularly, almost without exception,
convince those same Republicans to choose denialist candidates.
The European Commission has done next to nothing to enforce emission
standards against the
car
companies that have cheated on tests.
Finland will try giving money
for
two years to some currently unemployed people.
Islamist terrorists and right-wing extremists
want
the same thing: to create social hostility that they can profit
from. Don't help them.
The Professor Witchhunt web site (to call it what it is)
mixes
false rumors with some true facts to create a potential threat to
intellectual freedom in the US.
Several New Orleans thugs were
convicted
or pled guilty to killings, beatings and false accusations made
against innocent people who were trying to flee New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina. Now the city has paid millions to the victims.
It is exemplary that thugs were prosecuted for the more frequent
lesser crimes, and not solely when they had killed someone.
Polish protesters
made
the regime withdraw planned restrictions on journalists in the
parliamemt building.
As the ice melts, the
polar
bears of Hudson's Bay head towards extinction.
US citizens:
call on
Obama and Feinstein to publish the CIA torture report.
Many unions are striking in the UK. Other workers should
follow
their example.
The US Protects Its Wealthy Professionals Financially While
Throwing
Workers to the Wolves.
Salafi Arabia has acknowledged
dropping
UK-made cluster bombs in Yemen. This puts pressure on the UK to
stop selling arms to Salafi Arabia.
The melting of Arctic ice has deranged the jet stream,
causing
strange weather all around the northern hemisphere.
It
endangers
the way of life, and the language, of some indigenous peoples, as well
as the land they live on.
Everyone:
Call
on tech companies to refuse to help the troll register US Muslims.
Instead of identity politics, let's campaign for a government the
provides
justice
and a good life for all.
Also, we can oppose bigotry (whether conscious or unconscious) and
work against it without identifying with a particular identity.
A Jew
condemns
the troll's choice for ambassador to Israel.
The UK Labour Party calls for
regulation
of algorithms used by servers in some cases.
If you can't resist obligatory gift holidays, at least give gifts that
don't
take a lot of resources and don't produce permanent trash.
The Republican
Sabotage
of the Vote Recounts in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Poland Is "on Road to Autocracy",
Says
Constitutional Court President. When his term ends, soon, Poland
may reach the end of that road.
Various Republican-dominated states are trying to propagandize for
their idea that fetuses are human beings with rules requiring
hospitals to
treat
fetuses as dead human bodies.
It is possible to identify at age 3 a fraction of people who will
place a big burden on society, from a few
measurements
of "brain health".
How many such people there are is partly under our control. It is
clear that lead poisoning can put people into that fraction, so the
amount of lead that gets into people will make that fraction bigger or
smaller.
If people get bothered by the fictional all-seeing eye of the
"Elf
on the Shelf", maybe they will start being concerned about
real
systems that do pervasive surveillance.
Tillerson is a director of Bahamas-registered Exxon subsidiary that is
involved
with Russia.
Companies in the Bahamas usually exist to hide income or dodge taxes.
Maybe that is what this one is for. Exxon claims that it doesn't
dodge taxes in one particular way. The denial is phrased in a
legalistic way that makes me suspect it's a word game. Maybe this
subsidiary dodges taxes in some other way.
Identifying the
15
tax havens, measured by the amount of harm they do.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter on Jan 4
to oppose cuts in Medicare. Say that includes
anything that reduces benefits or increases costs,
such as "balance billing".
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
With automation reducing the number of well-paid jobs, most remaining
jobs pay next to nothing and employers prefer
trafficked
workers.
Google says that it's not to blame that its algorithm
makes
a denialist site the number one answer to questions about the
holocaust, but Google tunes that algorithm to serve its own
interests.
Note that what the author reports buying is an ad to appear in the
search results page, not an actual search result.
Xu Hongci was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, campaigning
idealistically for a better world. Eventually he learned the hard way
that
it
had set up a tyrannical regime.
Meanwhile, back in the US, the tyrannical side of the troll is
not
hidden behind goodness.
Giving or receiving gifts on an obligatory gift holiday is an
emotional
minefield.
I recommend you do as I've done, and say, "Please don't give me gifts
for any holiday."
A consortium of German universities will
reject
Elsevier's licensing for journals.
It is good to see a sign of resistance, but it isn't clear whether
they are going to demand a real change, or only a lower price.
Japan's peace movement is
growing
in strength, stimulated by a government oriented towards
militarism.
NPR systematically
substitutes
neuropsychology for political debate.
People's actions are decided by how their brains respond to
circumstances. In areas where people frequently make ineffective
choices, it may be interesting to ask, "What leads people to make that
choice?" But the question that will help us is, "What should we do
instead?"
I think the article is mistaken in equating "progressive" thinking
with a focus on the individual rather than organizing society. What
NPR does is one thing, and what progressives do is another. NPR is
not particularly progressive. I stopped listening to its news
programs in the late 90s when I noticed how often they criticized Bill
Clinton by presenting him as leftist, which I came to recognize is
standard right-wing tactics.
Once, in the 1990s, there was an NPR call-in discussion about how
workers could get raises and improve their work environment. I called
it to suggest they should form unions, but the phone answerers told me
that this was outside the scope of the discussion. People (other than
the rich) were supposed to be divided, not united.
Congresscritters and senators that owned bank stock were
more
likely to vote to give money to banks.
Reportedly
the FBI agrees that Russia was behind leaks that targeted the
Democratic Party.
This is still not proof; but it is clear enough anyway that the troll
is the enemy of American democracy and should not become president.
Ariel Dorfman, Chilean exile,
compares
the possibly Russia-imposed government in the US with the US-imposed
government that made him flee Chile.
Tsipras is defying the banksters,
giving
funds to poor people that the banksters want Greece to starve.
Apparently he sees a crack to exploit.
Those banksters, and the banks they run, are everyone's enemy.
I hope to see them ruined.
In Nebraska, where begging has been declared a crime, beggars are
jailed for
weeks
or months until they are tried.
I have an idea. Homeless people should picket, every day, a store
whose owner advocates repression of the homeless.
Michigan made tens of thousands of
automatic
accusations of unemployment fraud. Investigation of 22,000 of
them found that 93% of the accusations were false. The victims were
hit with fines up to 100,000 dollars.
Of the 20,000 victims, I wonder if some of them were jailed because
they could not pay the fine, or lost their homes, or died because
they could not afford medical care.
Michigan is ruled by crush-the-weak Republicans. I won't say that
they intentionally designed the algorithm to make false accusations,
but it's clear that they went to great lengths to uphold them.
Punishment of the poor, justified or not, serves their politics. It
gives them an excuse to demonize the unemployed and, by extension,
anyone who gets government assistance and isn't rich.
Mass Atrocities Feared in South Sudan as Ethnic Violence Is
Stoked
by Hunger.
President Maduro of Venezuela
cancelled
the invalidation of 100-bolivar bills.
Apparently he is more ready to admit a mistake than
Modi.
Amazon Workers
Sleep
in Tents Near Firm's Scottish Depot to Avoid Travel Costs.
ACLU: The California Transportation Department Is
Cruelly
and Unconstitutionally Destroying Homeless People's Belongings.
The troll's "tech summit" was a
thinly
veiled business negotiation.
Conservatives evince more concern for environmental destruction when
it is presented as a
campaign
to restore the world as it was.
You don't have to be overweight to get type II diabetes. There are
other
causes.
Tis the season to be
sweated,
for those who make Christmas presents.
I recommend rejecting
obligatory
holiday purchases entirely.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to finalize the new fuel economy standards.
US citizens:
Support
the proposed law to require presidents and cabinet officials to
avoid conflicts of interest.
US citizens:
call
on the EPA to ban neonics now.
To sign this with Javascript disabled, you need to employ the
salsalabs method.
The troll's success by broadcasting lies creates a problem
for bringing up children:
how
can parents teach them to be honest?
The Montreal Neurological Institute has
decided
to publish all its data, results, and software, and to reject
patenting anything.
This is a great step forward. It is unfortunate that they refer to it
with the vague and usually weak word "open".
Does anyone know what license they will use for publishing software?
Everyone:
call on NBC
to cut its business ties with the troll.
Even in 2011,
the
Republicans had embraced post-truth politics, where what they say
to win has nothing to do with the policies they will actually impose.
Every time Obama foolishly offered them a concession, hoping for a
compromise, the Republicans said, "Now give us another concession."
However, part of the explanation is that Obama acted for a weak,
centrist program, not a progressive one.
Twitter would close the troll's account,
if
it applied its usual rules.
A church in Maryland has been
fined
heavily for giving homeless people a place to sleep.
High inequality in the US is not inevitable. The obstacles are
political.
Wells Fargo bank cheated customers by
charging
them for useless insurance policies they never signed up for.
This means there are now several reasons to move your money out of
Wells Fargo. In addition to the ethical reasons, such as
financing
part of the Dakota Access Pipeline, there is also the protection
of your money. Don't leave your money where Wells Fargo has access to
it. If we move enough money into smaller banks, we can defeat Wells
Fargo.
National Security Advisor-to-be Flynn
violates
conflict of interest law.
Charter schools
undermine
public education, in Africa just as in the US.
Cities and even public service campaigns are outsourcing
transportation to Uber, which is a form of
privatization
of public transit. This excludes poor people, and subjects those
who do use the service to being tracked.
Lyft is no better than Uber in this regard.
The DEA corrupted employees of the TSA, airlines and Amtrak to
finger
people who might carry illegal drugs, or totally lawful cash.
How to get by on social security disability in the US: be
homeless.
Evernote has given itself additional right to
read
users' notes.
Even before this change, Evernote notes were susceptible to being read
under various circumstances. The way to protect your privacy is to
keep your notes in your own computer.
Since North Carolina elected a Democrat as governor, the Republicans
in the state legislature are
passing
laws to reduce the governor's authority.
The Republicans control the legislature due to gerrymandering that
make it nearly impossible to remove them from control.
The troll embodies a lifestyle of the rich and famous. Some voted for
him out of identification with that lifestyle — never mind that
that he
will
get even more of it at their expense.
Calling out intentional, coded racism is not a matter of "political
correctness." Such racism is not innocent, it is a
system
of propaganda.
Mass protests blocked the doors of Poland's parliament after the
ruling party
claimed
to have unconstitutionally passed a budget.
Everyone:
tell some big
banks to stop funding the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Condemning
the IHRA redefinition of "antisemitism".
Another conflict of interest for the troll: he
owes
Wells Fargo Bank a lot of money, and he could let it off the
punishment for its crimes and dishonesty.
Israel seized a
medical van
that Italy gave to Palestinians. This is part of the decade-long
campaign to exile all Palestinians from that area.
Powerful Democratic politicians
still
want to serve Wall Street.
Refuting
six
common conspiracy theories about the Middle East.
With various sides
eager
to lie, and willing to kill journalists, the war in Syria is
endangering our ability to find out the truth about the events of war.
Thai fishing boats operated by slave labor now
operate
for long periods far in the ocean, transferring their catch to
other ships to be ferried to land. This way, the fishing boats escape
from all laws, and slaves can never escape.
Greenpeace reports that this provides an entry path for
tainted seafood, and urges prohibition of the practice
of transferring caught fish to transport ships.
Technology has made fishing ever more efficient, and the result
is overfishing, as well as idleness for many fishing boats.
More efficiency in fishing is the last thing we need.
The UK government has
converted
public schooling into a system for tracking children of illegal
immigrants.
The express purpose of this is to
"create
hostility" in the school system.
They will respond by keeping their children out of school.
The right-wing double standard at work: Flynn, the troll's national
security advisor, was
rebuked
twice for revealing secrets to foreign officers.
The inspector general of the NSA condemned Snowden for releasing
information to the public instead of "going through channels" to
report abuses internally in the NSA.
Reportedly the same inspector general
retaliated
against another NSA staffer who did exactly that, and he faces
punishment for it.
As this example shows, reporting some illegality internally would be
inadequate even if it were safe. We can't rely on internal reports to
make the NSA obey laws, let alone to make it respect our freedom.
In Reed College, radical students
intimidate
teachers based on their "identity". This sort of bigotry becomes
ludicrous when, as in Reed College, the students are factually
mistaken about the people they label. But it's equally wrong when the
labels are accurate. This form of bigotry is a part of the "political
correctness" that some right-wing Americans resent.
There are much bigger patterns of bigotry in our society. Many
studies have shown that
blacks and
women
are systematically judged by a harsher standard than while males. To
measure this bigotry, we have to classify people as bigotry does.
Then we can institute measures to change the bigoted judgments.
That's where the classification should stop. To condemn speakers, to
say their views should not be heard, because of labeling them is an
injustice (which, as it happens, plays into the hands of right-wing
bigots).
Thousands in Venezuela are using bitcoin to
get
away from the inflation of the national currency.
Protests against the troll's rule
need
to focus strategically on undermining his power base.
How fake news
succeeds
in perverting the systems of Facebook and Google.
Some of the promoters of fake news are only in it for the money. They
promoted mainly anti-Clinton fake news once they saw that Clinton's
supporters were not as easy to fool as supporters of the troll.
Russia had
little
to do with the fake news problem.
In Turkey, the politics of contempt for truth led to a tyranny in
which people are
attacked
unless they repeat lies.
California has released many prisoners, but they can't find drug
treatment and
many
have trouble finding a way to live without crime.
This is a general problem in the US. 50 years ago, there were many
jobs you could get after being released from prison, and you could
live on one. Nowadays that is difficult.
Jennings, Missouri, a suburb of St Louis comparable to Ferguson,
jailed 2000 people for not paying fines. In 2014 it issued
more
arrest warrants than it had adult residents.
Basically, it set up a scheme to fund the city by squeezing money out
of the poor and weak.
1/3 of US cities prohibit homeless people (and others) from "camping"
on sidewalks, and use this as an
excuse
to steal their possessions.
When business owners and rich people demand that the city persecute
the homeless, the response they deserve is, "How would you like to be
homeless?"
500 climate scientists joined a
"stand
up for science" rally.
Uber's autonomous cars
frequently
violate traffic laws.
Uber
tries
to put the blame on human safety monitors, who could in principle
intervene to stop this.
That's the general Uber attitude: profits to the company, burdens to
the drivers.
I would guess that the safety monitors would be hard-pressed to react
fast enough to prevent these maneuvers — which would mean that they
are an excuse and a scapegoat, not a real safety system.
Mosques in Cameroon are
starting
education for girls as a campaign to turn the social climate
against Boko Haram.
An autistic teenager in Australia gave radio commands to pilots,
pretending
to be speaking from the control tower.
This kind of hack is very dangerous. I hope he can learn to
understand why he should not do it.
Many civilians were evacuated from Aleppo, but
no
places have been prepared for them to shelter.
Then the cease-fire was broken after rebels
refused
to allow evacuation of civilians from villages they have besieged.
We must condemn
Russian
atrocities just as we condemn
US
atrocities.
But the existence of Russian atrocities doesn't mean western
intervention is the solution.
The evidence does not clearly link the cracking of the DNC to Russia.
It is only suggestive,
not
conclusive.
I wouldn't be shocked if Putin ordered this. He has a penchant
for dirty tricks and for rigging elections (primarily in Russia).
But I also wouldn't be shocked if Putin had nothing to do with it.
Trump offered a major foreign policy post to John Bolton, whose
scheming
made it possible for Dubya to pretend that Saddam Hussein had chemical
weapons.
Facebook
will
use several outside fact-checkers to downgrade fake news.
New Map Reveals
Shattering
Effect of Roads on Nature.
HBO
sent
a DMCA takedown notice to a piece of art that used the phrase
"winter is coming".
The article suggests that at some point in this issue, people confused
copyright law with trademark law. The two have nothing to do with
each other.
HBO has no copyright claim based on that phrase. That phrase might be
a trademark, but the DMCA is only concerned with copyright law and is
not applicable to trademarks at all. Anyway, using a trademarked word
or symbol in a noncommercial way is not trademark infringement.
Unprecedented rapid heating in the Arctic is
showing
in many different measurements.
Michigan refused to count
75,000
votes for president, most of them in Detroit and Flint which means
they are likely to be Democratic votes. The margin of Republican
so-called victory was 10,000.
Do you think the troll really won Michigan? Not likely.
When people are
conscripted
by the DMCA into the War on Sharing.
Reasons not to use
evernote.com.
The troll's choice to head the Interior Department
promotes
coal mining at all costs to society.
American Held Over 900 Days in Egypt
Begs
US for Help Before Trump's Reign.
Many Britons
would
rather die than live in a typical lousy nursing home using up the
money they could otherwise leave to their children.
As the British state finds excuses to punish people by leaving them
destitute, they
end
up in food banks.
Evacuation of wounded people from east Aleppo
has
begun.
San Francisco has passed a law
stopping
landlords from limiting their tenants' choice of ISP.
This is a small positive step, but not applicable in many places in
the US because most places have few high-speed ISPs to choose among.
For the US to get much benefit from ISP competition, it needs to offer
most Americans a choice of many competing ISPs. Failing that, we
should prohibit ISPs from keeping any records of what their customers
connect to.
House Passes Bill
Allowing
Government to Microchip Citizens With "Mental Disabilities."
California Governor Says His State Will Be a
Sanctuary
for Science Under Trump.
George Monbiot: Neither the market nor the state can provide what
people need.
We
need commons as well.
The article starts with a brilliant presentation of the contradictions
of today's plutocratic capitalism.
Ironically, the article
refers to the GNU
system as "Linux" and mentions "open source". Monbiot is probably
not aware that
"open
source" is a corporate-friendly cover-up for views more like his.
Ohio has passed a law
banning
abortion after 20 weeks.
The aim is to create an opportunity for the Supreme Court to reverse
the Roe v Wade decision, in case Trump gets to put a theocratic
fanatic on the court.
US citizens:
call on
Obama to block the Trans-Pecos pipeline (intended to carry fracked
gas).
Many presidential electors (members of the electoral college) are
reportedly considering disregarding their states' official election
results and not voting for the troll.
It would be improper for electors to disregard the voters' choice over
political disagreement. However, on this occasion there are two
reasons why electors might legitimately decide to override the
official election results: because the troll
intends
to violate the emoluments requirement of the Constitution, and is
therefore unfit for office, and because of voter-suppression, which
means that the official election results in some states are false and
Clinton
actually won.
Haiti's Fraudulent Presidential Frontrunner
Seizes
Land for His Own Banana Republic.
The cease-fire arranged by Turkey and Russia may have failed to hold
because
Assad
needed Hezbollah's militia more than Russian bombers.
Reported details of the
phishing
attack that obtained John Podesta's password.
The article ends with claims about Russian cracking groups, but I
can't tell from this article whether those claims are credible.
Craig Murray says that the Democratic Party emails came from a
whistleblower,
not from a cracker, and that he knows the whistleblower.
I trust Craig Murray, but I am not sure which of the conflicting
stories is true.
UK women campaign
against
applying shari'a law in British family courts.
How Roberto Kozak
saved
thousands of people from Pinochet's torturers and murderers.
Duterte said that he used to drive around town
looking
for opportunities to kill suspected criminals.
The main Malaysian opposition candidate has been
imprisoned
and excluded on absurd grounds ("sodomy").
The US Senate unanimously approved a
definition
of "antisemitism" that includes political positions about Israel.
If this law is passed, it will endanger political freedom in US
universities.
An Israeli soldier
shot a
Palestinian for taking photos as the soldiers raided his town.
Two Palestinians imprisoned by Israel without charges have been
on
hunger strike for 80 days. After a court refused to release them,
they have decided to stop drinking water.
Many other Palestinians are
imprisoned
without trial.
President you-know-what
might
be driven to distraction if people don't say his name.
A US hospital chain
tricks people
into committing themselves as mentally incompetent, then holds
them as long as insurance will pay for.
This is one of many reasons to eliminate for-profit hospitals.
Officials accused of corruption in several countries have
found
shelter in the US.
In some cases, there are valid reasons for not deporting them —
for instance, that the justice system in their home country is
suspect.
Trump has announced he
will
paper over his conflicts of interest, rather than actually
eliminate them.
Price Waterhouse Coopers
tried
to suppress knowledge of a security flaw by making legal threats
against the security company that found it.
All proprietary software must be suspected of
concealing flaws, but
software from Price Waterhouse Coopers now has an extra reason for
distrust.
US government scientists are
rushing
to save copies of climate data before Trump can destroy them.
Harper in Canada ordered climate research data
thrown
in the dumpster.
We shouldn't let accusations of Russian interference blind us to the
bigger wrong of
Republican
election-rigging.
Assad's almost-completed conquest of Aleppo, together with the recent
UN resolution, create
opportunities
for intervention (not by fighting) to protect civilians in Syria.
The cease-fire agreed on did not hold, and
civilians
have not been able to leave.
Men
need to be concerned about gender violence.
Solar power backfire: in Australia, houses with solar power systems
buy
more electricity from the grid than houses without solar power.
This defeats the intended social benefit of reducing fossil fuel use.
It seems that the people who have got solar power don't think about
how much electricity they are using. Perhaps they need very visible
meters to show them how much power they are taking from the grid. Or
perhaps there needs to be a higher tax on electricity from the grid.
Why Donald Trump's Potential Conflicts of Interest Are So
Important.
The EU has
increased
fishing quotas in the teeth of existing overfishing, yielding to
short-termers' political pressure.
Across the US, the practice of keeping poor people accused of crimes
in jail unless they can pay to get out is being eliminated, but
some
places hold out.
In theory, you can post bail and get it back. But nearly everyone
pays a bail bonds company to post the bail. The bail bonds company
charges a certain fraction of the bail, and keeps it.
Philippine Senator De Lima
faces
prosecution for criticizing Duterte's murder campaign and his
removal of her from being in charge of it.
The ACLU is
suing
to overturn a Florida abortion-repression law that requires any
person or organization giving anyone advice about abortion to register
with the state, to hand out a state publication (surely full of
anti-abortion lies), and to tell the woman's parents.
The Voice of America and related US government broadcasters have been
placed directly under the president's control, and they are
now
allowed to try to influence US public opinion and beliefs.
Trump could turn them into the Voice of Trumpery, like a US version of
RT.
It appears that civilians in PISSI-held territory in Syria
were killed by a gas attack,
perhaps
sarin.
The US will stop selling some missiles to Salafi Arabia because of its
using them for
war
crimes in Yemen.
This decision does not come because the US has learned new information
about that intervention, in which it has been closely involved all
along. It is a political decision.
At least it's a change in the right direction, so I won't quibble.
Human activity emits
130
times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
CO2 from fossil fuel combustion
can
be collected through a process that makes limestone, avoiding the
need to quarry limestone.
Most Americans
no
longer earn more than their parents did. The "land of
opportunity" is no more.
What the Department of Energy does, and why
Rick
Perry is a bad choice to run it.
I think there is something sleazy about funding nuclear weapons
through the Department of Energy. It looks like a way to disguise how
much of US government spending is actually on weapons and war.
Global heating generated a
million
climate refugees in Africa in 2015.
The EPA Withdraws Claim that Fracking has no
"Widespread
Systemic Impacts" on Drinking Water.
US citizens: Tell Congress not to create the
neo-McCarthyite
intelligence committee.
Here's
more
information about why not.
To sign the petition with Javascript disabled, you need to use the
"salsalabs method".
Brazil's senate has approved a
20-year
cut in government spending, which 60% of Brazilians oppose.
Brazil is in an economic slump, and cuts in spending are just the
thing to make it worse.
Heroin use is down in the US, but deaths from overdoeses are up. It
seems that the war on drugs is
making
heroin more dangerous.
Heroin is not particularly dangerous if it is manufactured under
proper regulation. It is dangerous because it is sold on the black
market.
The incomplete recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania
have shown
substantial
abnormalities.
Individuals, and the city of Seattle, are protesting Wells Fargo Bank
for
financing the Dakota Access Pipeline.
While Bermuda is the world's most damaging tax haven, the top ten
include the
Netherlands,
Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Jersey.
Tax havens are not the only way business gets out of paying taxes.
Low
tax rates on businesses, combined with plenty of
special
exceptions, are also big parts of the problem.
The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters without Borders
complained to the US about
interrogation
and search of journalists trying to enter the US.
The UK
blocked
19 delegates to the annual Trust Women conference that aims to end
enslavement of women.
Canada did something similar in August,
blocking speakers coming to
the World Social Forum.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to investigate Trump's ties to Russia.
The CIA has not provided proof of its claims of Russian interference
in the election, and that claim might or might not be true. But we
don't need to wait for certain knowledge before
we investigate.
Mental Illness And Poverty: You
Can't
Tackle One Without The Other. Indeed, each tends to cause the
other.
India requires the national anthem to be played before every showing
of a movie, and
people
who refuse to stand up are arrested.
Orthodox Jews
threaten
secular Israelis with "modesty police".
130,000
gallons of petroleum have poisoned an area in North Dakota, not
far from the Standing Rock pipeline. The test equipment that was
supposed to detect leaks failed to detect this one.
To get 130,000, I have subtracted the amount of oil that was recovered
from the total amount that was spilled.
The UK has
adopted
a formal definition of antisemitism.
I see no problem in the definition itself, which
comes
from the IHRA.
However, some of the suggested interpretations pose problems. For
instance, one says that it is antisemitic to claim that the existence
of Israel is racism. I've met people who argued that the
establishment of Israel was itself an act of racism, and while I don't
agree with them, their reasoning was not based on bigotry.
Another says that it is antisemitic to compare Israel's policies
towards Palestinians to those of the Nazis.
Uri
Avnery has made such comparisons and it is
absurd
to call him antisemitic
In a free country, people can argue about these points, but the state
is not concerned. The injustice in Britain is that the state is
concerned through its censorship policies. What makes this definition
is important is that it sets the criteria for state censorship, the
boundary between opinions that are permissible and opinions that are
criminalized.
Some UK local regions have set targets for
how
many children to remove from their families and send for adoption.
The targets are a response to the annual Tory budget cuts. At this
point, there is no harmless place to cut, except the money that goes
to rich people.
10
years of European attempts to "engage" with Eritrea show that the
very idea is ridiculous.
In principle, abolishing such a cruel regime justifies war, if
Eritreans want that sort of rescue — which we cannot take for
granted — how could it be done?
Ethiopia is no friend of Eritrea. Conceivably it is possible to bring
Eritrean exiles to Ethiopia to train as an army, so that they can kick
out the government that rules Eritrea.
Of course, there are many possible reasons this could be a bad idea.
Everyone:
call
on tech companies to refuse to help Trump set up a registry of
Muslims.
Neonicotinoid pesticides
damage
bumblebees' brains so that they can't learn the way to get pollen
out of some flowers.
Prepare for
50
million refugees from flooding and water shortages by 2020,
according to a report form the Institute for Environment and Human
Security.
Daiwon McPherson
staged
an arrest scene with the local thug department to make a
spectacular proposal of marriage.
To avoid accidents, they carefully informed everyone concerned —
except one, the woman who was the target of the scene. She might have
done something drastic to protect her boyfriend. But that was
unlikely and it didn't happen.
I tend to think that starting off a marriage in such a theatrical way
bodes ill for its durability. It puts the emphasis on getting married
rather than on the relationship itself.
Amnesty International says that Qatar's "labor law reforms" are
too
weak to protect foreign workers from enslavement.
Obama has declared the CIA torture report
secret
for at least 12 years.
This decision protects the report from being destroyed by Senate
Republicans, but I'm not convinced it is safe from being destroyed by
Trump. The only way to preserve it for sure is to publish it, which I
hope will occur one way or another.
Candidate Trump criticized Goldman Sachs, and condemned Clinton for
being close to that company, but he has already
named
three people from that company as officials — now including
its president.
Obama must release
the
intelligence that purports to show Russian interference in the US
election.
"Inclusive economic development is
the
only socially and economically sustainable form of development,"
say Stiglitz and 12 other prestigious economists.
Food studies funded by food companies show a
big
tendency to praise those company's products.
This is corporate corruption of science, comparable to
the
corruption practiced by drug companies.
Some academics even publish articles that have been written for them
by food companies.
Drug
companies have done that, too.
We can develop specific measures to reduce this corruption,
but the root cause is that companies have too much money
and the state has too little. That makes all institutions
of society vulnerable to corruption.
There is a
movement
to reject end-of-year obligatory gifts.
I rejected this when I was a teenager, and am glad that I did. For
me, it was easy, as I was living nowhere near any of my family.
I didn't try to convince others about it.
Elif Shafak writes about how the imprisonment of writers in Turkey
affects
the writers not yet in prison.
Malak al-Shehri, a woman in Salafi Arabia, posted a photo showing
herself with uncovered head. She has been
arrested
for this, demonstrating the misogyny of that Islamist monarchy.
The damaging effects of that country's ultra-harsh version of Islam
can be seen in the people who demand that she be killed.
European Surveillance Companies Were
Eager
to Sell Syria Tools of Oppression.
Conjecture:
Putin intervened to help make Trump president for the sake of an oil
deal that was blocked by US sanctions.
If this is true, the US is in the position of a banana republic, with
a government imposed to serve the local elite and foreign business
interests.
US coal production is
on
the way out, with or without the EPA.
Note, however, that the reason natural gas is so cheap in the US is
fracking, and that's likely to
poison
people's drinking water unless the EPA starts doing its job.
And it may have as much greenhouse effect as coal, when
all
the leaks of gas (methane) are counted.
Rapid Rise in Methane Emissions in 10 Years
Surprises
Scientists.
A suicide bombing was seized on by Erdoğan to arrest over 200
dissidents and opposition politicians,
calling
them "terrorists".
It's clear that those people couldn't all be connected with the
bombing. Most of them, perhaps all, must be falsely accused.
Terrorism means political violence aimed at civilians. This bombing
appears to have been aimed at armed agents of the state, not at
civilians. If so, that makes it rebellion rather than terrorism.
Turkey and the PKK had a cease-fire that lasted for many years, until
it was broken by Erdoğan for
political
reasons. I hope that they mutually reestablish the cease fire,
and that Turkey returns to respecting human rights, for the benefit of
all its citizens of whatever ethnic group and whatever politics or
religion.
After years of effort,
almost
1/4 of the girls in Somaliland escape FGM nowadays.
Somaliland is a mainly peaceful country next to Somalia.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to fire Bannon for promoting bigotry.
More
information about Bannon.
Here's one of the cited examples: an article that
attacks
Anne Applebaum mainly for her political activities.
The article, by Matthew Tyrmand and published under Bannon's
authority, mentions that she is a Jew as a brief aside; that point is
not a focus of the article. However, the aside is harsh in tone, and
entirely irrelevant to the political points. The only possible reason
for including it was as an anti-semitic cheap shot.
A smog protest in Chengdu, China, met with
heavy
repression.
Because protesters wore smog masks, people wearing masks to protect
themselves from smog were also suspect.
Due to global heating, Britons will have to learn to eat
squid
instead of fish.
Crimean Tatars that oppose Russia's annexation of Crimea face
prosecution, exile, psychiatric investigations, even
disappearances.
This is what Putin does to opposition everywhere in Russia.
But the Tatars also face
collective
repression.
The Tatars are a minority in the Crimea, and would not be entitled to
determine the Crimea's fate on their own. The Crimea is full of
people of Russian origin, and it is possible that most of them in 2014
wanted the Crimea to become part of Russia. There's a good case that
they were
entitled
to a real referendum about this question.
But you can't tell anything about the public's views from an election
run under Putin's repression. His elections are
sham.
Kyrgyzstan, the one country in central Asia with some amount of real
democracy, has adopted
constitutional
changes that may reduce democracy.
Bermuda
Is World's Worst Corporate Tax Haven, Says Oxfam.
Global heating effects in the Arctic are affecting reindeer in
Spitzbergen; they
can't
find as much food in the winter.
South Korea's president has been impeached for corruption, and
protesters
now celebrate.
US citizens:
Call on
Trump not to corrupt the FCC.
Willful blindness: Australia plans to invest
4
billion dollars in a second airport in Sydney, to prepare for
increased air travel.
It takes decades for those investments to pay off, but if they keep
increasing carbon emissions, flying won't continue long enough for
that.
Apple buys US government bonds with its profits while still keeping
them
"outside
the US".
Some remote exams demand
total
control over your computer. To agree to that is extremely
dangerous: they could insert malware and copying your files.
The exam service company says it does "proctoring", but I think
"proctoscopy" describes it better.
Letting a company have total control over your computer is simply
nuts. Imagine a computer security school which asks every student to
submit to this, and flunks whoever says yes.
This was reported for a job interview for Amazon. Amazon reportedly
no longer uses that method, but the employee's words suggest that this
disservice is mainly used for course exams. There is no reason to
think schools have stopped doing this.
New York City will
cease
retaining personal data about people who apply for the NYC ID
card, to protect them from repression by Trump.
UK thugs ripped a phone out of a suspect's hands
in order to access the
data in it.
The article fails to say whether the thugs got a specific court order
to authorize the operation, but that is the crucial question. We can
accept such operations if a court has to authorize each one; however,
if thugs can do this on their own authority, that is dangerous.
Global heating has
altered
air and water circulation in the Arctic.
It looks like the Earth's ecosphere is already crossing the edge of
the cliff. Exxon has already brought about the disaster it has been
campaigning to stop us from avoiding.
Trump will now try to prevent US scientists from telling us about it.
The French government
wants
to extend the "state of emergency" yet again.
Couldn't they at least limit these powers to some extent?
Mohamed Tamalt, imprisoned in Algeria for a poem, has
died after months on hunger strike.
Merry Grav-Mass!
Trump has nominated
another
arsonist official: a global heating denialist who would ruin
federally managed land pulling out fossil fuels and burning them.
Uber claims its drivers are independent contractors, but not very
independent, since they are
not
allowed to contract for other ride companies.
By the way, it is clear that Juno has the same basic injustice as
Uber: customers must run nonfree software and identify themselves.
Uber is more nasty and arrogant, but both of them are enemies of our
freedom. We should should reject both of them completely.
Censorship on WeChat for Chinese people is now deceptive: you
can't
tell that your message was blocked.
A poll found that
more
Americans endorse torture than oppose it. Apparently Trump was
right about how to exploit the evil side of Americans.
Thousands of civilians have fled east Aleppo, and report that the
rebels
shoot at civilians that try to leave.
Russia and Syria, encouraged by the example of Guantanamo and CIA
torture, have
overturned
the Geneva conventions. They have established that no atrocity is
beneath them.
I am not convinced that a victorious Assad would make Syria into an
"Iranian-led Shia protectorate". (Assad would surely continue a
friendly relationship with Iran, but that's not the same thing.) But
if it does, I don't see that it would be as bad for the world as
Salafi
Arabia already is.
Nonetheless, I agree with the article overall. The US must stop its
imprisonment without trial.
Obama proposed measures to
punish
US companies that moved jobs out of the US. Republicans defeated
them.
Obama also proposed foolish measures to "reward" companies for not
doing so. Imagine offering each millionaire a government subsidy for
each day he didn't do some antisocial thing.
Why is it that our government tries to influence the poor by
punishing them, and to influence the rich by making them richer?
A small quantity of fentanyl can be an overdose, and due to
prohibition of opioids, it is being
included
in varying concentrations in pills labeled as other opioids.
A
new
treatment for opioid addiction is on the way.
The Pentagon
reports
intentionally bombing a building in an Iraqi hospital, saying that
PISSI fighters were firing from it.
If this is what really took place, it might have been justified.
To find out what really took place, we need another Chelsea Manning.
Everyone:
call
on the International Criminal court to prosecute American war
criminals too.
PISSI has
recaptured
Palmyra, defeating Assad's forces despite Russian air support.
The Exxon oilman, Tillerson, that Trump proposes for Secretary of
State has a
long
history of making deals with Putin's men.
Geert Wilders, a Dutch populist, was convicted of "inciting
discrimination" for
suggesting
it would be desirable to have "fewer Moroccans" in the
Netherlands.
The question of how many immigrants a country should have is a valid
political question, and it should not be a crime to say "fewer".
However, some points in
Wilders'
party platform are outright tyranny. "Preventive" imprisonment is
Guantanamo — an injustice. So is exiling citizens for crimes.
Banning the Qur'an is outrageous censorship. Kicking out asylum
seekers is cruelty.
Cutting foreign aid is cruel. Cutting public broadcasting won't save
much money and seems foolish. Not supporting research is certainly
foolish.
Some aspects of the program might be good. Increased direct democracy
could be good if implemented the Swiss way, where plebiscites can be
held to validate or to reject laws passed by the legislature.
The promise to reduce taxes and increase benefits is questionable.
That can be done for a while by deficit spending, which is the right
way to give the economy an emergency boost, but is harmful to continue
for the long haul. Does the Netherlands need an emergency economic
boost just now?
How will rents be lowered? Building more housing would do the job
well, but they might try some other less healthy method.
Cutting taxes for owning a car is a way of subsidizing fossil fuels.
Do they want the sea to overflow their dikes?
An estimated 1/4 of US prisoners were imprisoned in the
absence
of any public interest in keeping them in prison.
Nuns that feed the homeless in San Francisco got money to buy a
permanent base, but the other residents
don't
want any kindness in their building.
Everyone:
call
on two large California retirement funds to divest from the Dakota
Access Pipeline.
They should be required by law not to invest in any fossil fuels
or fossil fuel infrastructure.
Students suggest names to add to the
Professor
Watchlist.
US citizens:
stand
in support of the First Amendment.
Repressive
Hungary warns us of what Trump and the Trumpets might try to do.
Why we must keep the resistance to trumpery
nonviolent.
The coverup of the CIA-cocaine scandal of the 1980s shows we
can't
trust the major newspapers to separate truth from falsehood.
However, the situation today, where hate groups and political
manipulators fabricate a dozen fake stories a day and supporters take
them as truth, is
even
worse.
I think it is an important insight that this is not a matter of
ceasing to care about the truth, but active rejection of unpleasant
truths.
As for those that invent and post fake news, they don't believe it.
They are lying and they don't care, because they
want
to win by hook or by crook.
Did you know that, when Trump is inaugurated, he will give everyone
that voted for him the ability to fly by holding their arms out to the
side? It will be easy for them to try this: just step out the nearest
window.
Trump voters are
factually
mistaken about what happened under Obama.
This shows how effective the right-wing noise machine is at
misinforming people.
Global heating positive feedback: it will
speed
up the action of soil bacteria that metabolize carbon and release
greenhouse gas.
The effect is huge — like "adding another United States" to the
world's climate cycle.
I don't think global heating is likely to cause the extinction of
humans. That would be almost as hard as making cockroaches extinct.
But it could destroy technological society and kill most of the humans
alive at the time. If you're young today, you could live to see this
happen.
Trump seems to be planning a witch hunt
against
government employees that did any work related to global heating.
Everyone:
call
on Obama to commute Chelsea Manning's sentence.
Batteries
won
a substantial fraction of the auction to provide nighttime and
peak power in the UK.
Some existing coal plants also won, but no new large gas plants.
The article refers to some who inexplicably think it would be better
to burn gas rather than charge batteries from windfarms. I can't
imagine a rational argument for that.
Bigotry/hate groups have
figured
out how to SEO Google's page rank algorithm, so that sites saying
"Jews are evil", and falsehoods such as denial of the holocaust, come
up at the top of search questions.
It isn't clear how to defend against this. If Google chooses the
results of specific searches, it will become legally responsible
for its choices, which currently it is not.
Maybe opponents of bigotry need to play the SEO game against the hate
groups.
The Middle East
still
used leaded gas until 10-20 years ago. The effects might include
today's level of terrorist violence there.
If so, the level of terrorism there might decrease in 5-10 years.
Spikes
and railings are increasingly used in the UK to deny the homeless
any place they can sleep. When they do find a place, people are hired
to spray them with hoses.
Loud music prevents sleeping in public space. Park benches are
designed with bars so people can't sleep on them or under them. This
suggests that one way to help the homeless would be to saw off those
bars, or deactivate the speakers.
Government programs in the US are
gradually
reducing homelessness. Trump's spending cuts could put an end to
that.
The occupants of just one non-state-authorized Israeli colony
in the West Bank
face
demolition of their houses, much as thousands of Palestinians
have.
The inhabitants of Amona have a lot of warning, and won't have to pay
for the demolition. They won't find it impossible to get a building
permit anywhere else. And they, unlike most of those Palestinians,
did something to deserve this — stealing Palestinians' land.
Perhaps the US should convert its aid to Israel into purchase of the
housing in these Israeli colonies, which it could then turn over to
Palestinians.
The Indian state of Goa is
trying
to require all merchants, even in the market, to accept digital
payments.
Present-day digital payments for purchases disrespect the purchaser's
freedom because they are not anonymous. When governments pressure
people to identify themselves when they buy, we should not rely on
their pressure to be defeated by natural resistance. We should push
back, and hard.
That's why I don't use my bank card to buy anything but airline
tickets.
Senator Reid
accuses
FBI chief Comey of suppressing evidence that Russia was
responsible for cracking the Democratic National Committee.
We
don't
actually know whether Russia was responsible, though I would
not be shocked if it were. Whether or not Putin was responsible for
this, he has done nastier things already.
More importantly, we should not let the proof that the DNC corruptly
favored Clinton over Sanders be eclipsed by the question of who
obtained and released that information. If the DNC had not
rigged
the primary election for Clinton then Trump would not have come
close enough to winning for Republican officials to
steal
the rest of the way.
A fracked gas pipeline is being built across Florida, and the public
is
only
beginning to notice it.
US farmers are losing money (on the average) each year because
big
food corporations are taking all the profit in the system.
The long-term effect is that
farmers lose their land, and
it can be taken over by a big corporation.
Charges against Backpage.com and its owners, because prostitutes
advertise there in coded ways, have been
dropped.
Long live the First Amendment.
Prostitution
should be legalized, too, and regulated to protect the rights and
safety of prostitutes.
Trump says he won't actually work on Celebrity Apprentice, just get
credit.
A typical piece of trumpery, because the question is not whether he
does work, but whether he gets paid.
The US Border Patrol chases border crossers on the Mexican border into
harsh terrain, as a
tactic
to kill lots of them.
The Trump energy plan:
going
all-out to boost greenhouse gas emissions.
France
requires
products of Israeli colonies in the West Bank to be labeled explicitly
as such.
The US government makes its photo data base
available
for stores to recognize people.
The announcement says that only criminal's photos are offered for
matching. But we know that the US government has photos of millions
of other Americans. Does it secretly match the photos companies send
against all of them, too, and make a private tracking list?
Trump's choice to head the Labor department
wants
the minimum wage to be low.
Due to Trump's intimidation,
no
US book publisher dares to publish a book of spoof Trump photos
made using lookalikes.
The newspaper lobby
wants
to reduce fair use.
I would not oppose very narrow laws to make very large companies such
as Facebook and Google pay more money to newspapers when their
articles are read through those sites.
The state of the
political
battle in Europe over state surveillance and the right to use
encryption.
We
Must
Find New Ways to Protect Human Rights Defenders.
One aspect that the article does not cover is that the US cooperated
in establishing some of the regimes that crush human rights defenders
— for instance, the one in
Honduras.
Facebook tends to lead its useds into a sort of trance in which
they
believe, more or less, whatever comes up in the feed.
In a small act of defiance, Greece gave pensioners a Christmas bonus.
The euro-banksters are
outraged
that their crushing cruelty was diminished even a little.
They demand that Greece be totally obedient and treat the Greek people
with total contempt.
I still believe that Greece should leave the euro zone.
Uri Avnery: Israelis that want to make peace with Palestine
are the
true
and sincere Israeli nationalists.
The case of Hamid Kehazaei, imprisoned by Australia on Manus Island,
shows how Australia set up a system with
multiple
levels of bureaucratic hurdles against bringing any refugee to
Australia, and run by functionaries who put all rules above human
life.
Gambian president Yahya Jammeh conceded the election, but now has
changed his mind and says he
will
not let go of power.
On World Human Rights Day, many writers and officials of PEN
called
on China to release imprisoned writers.
The US and EU also
said
something similar. In the case of the US, the moral weight of its
statements is limited by the fact that its holding of prisoners
without trial in Guantanamo, and its association with cruel buffoon
Trump.
Trump
Makes America Goldman'ss Again! No better than Clinton —
indeed, perhaps even worse, because Trump doesn't try to hide it.
US citizens:
phone
Democratic senators and urge them not to try to "work with" Trump.
US citizens:
call
on the senate to think carefully about whether to approve Scott
Pruitt to head the EPA.
Everyone:
call on Ohio
Governor Kasich to veto the Ohio bills that would more or less ban
abortion.
US citizens:
phone
Senate Republicans to urge them to oppose Trump's corrupt and
racist appointees.
If the Republicans cancel Obama's medical insurance law,
millions
of Trump voters will lose their coverage.
Obama's system was a step forward but with serious flaws. It was
designed to give people coverage, not to reduce costs, so
coverage
costs too much. If we want to save money and give all Americans
good medical care, we should set up a National Health Service like the
one that works well in Canada.
It is important to ridicule Trump, because
he
has trouble handling it.
The US government, and US states, are paying
almost
100 billion in ransoms to companies so that they won't move jobs
to other states or other countries.
The states can put a stop to companies' practice of playing one
against the other, by forming a union against the companies.
I've suggested calling it the
United
States of America.
Stopping this sort of competition with other countries would require a
treaty — the Make Companies Pay Taxes treaty. It would be a
treaty to assure state supremacy over business, the opposite of a
business supremacy treaty.
The UK foreign minister, Boris Johnson, is considered a semi-Trump
buffoon, but he was right on target when
criticizing
Salafi Arabia.
[Union president]
Chuck
Jones Is a Better President Than Donald Trump Will Ever Be.
Jones is
receiving
death threats from Trump's attack dogs, who he trained in the
campaign to attack whoever Trump insults.
This seems to indicate that Trump aims to destroy unions.
Unions are workers' principal real defense.
Thousands of Brazilians
protested
outside Congress, which is busy ignoring them to amend the
constitution for crushing austerity.
Big cuts in state spending tend to lead to economic collapse. Maybe
that will inspire the political changes needed to reverse austerity.
Two Moroccan girls who faced years in prison for charges of
homosexuality were acquitted, but
the
law that threatened them is still there.
Trump may threaten sanctuary cities with
cutoff
of federal funds.
If they cut off a city's funds for the War on Drugs, the obvious
response is to pull out of that crazy war. While I have no sympathy
for the members of gangs that sell drugs, who may well commit violent
crimes too, the War on Drugs does more harm than good overall and we
should seize any excuse to drop it.
Trump plans to keep his conflict of interest in the TV program,
Celebrity
Apprentice.
The Boston thug department plans to monitor all "social media" posts
for
opportunities to arrest someone.
Trump has appointed a
professional
harasser of climate scientists, David Schnare, to tie up the EPA.
Hey, White Working Class, Donald Trump Is
Already
Screwing You Over.
The 800 Carrier jobs that Trump "saved" from going to Mexico
will
be replaced by robots instead.
Indigenous people in Peru
vow
to block oil drilling in their land, imposed by the central
government.
Andrew Puzder, Trump's choice for Secretary of Labor, is another
saboteur; he has
led
extreme attacks on workers.
Uber in the UK is running as a sweatshop, with drivers often making
less
than the minimum wage.
Clinton supporters circulated
fake
news to discredit Wikileaks' accurate reporting.
A "satanic" display in Florida
resists
pressure to have a religion.
Putting Pruitt in charge of the EPA is like
"putting
an arsonist in charge of fighting fires."
The Japanese antiwar movement is
campaigning
to preserve the provision in the constitution that Japan cannot deploy
its army for fighting outside Japan.
I don't entirely sympathize with the people of Okinawa that object to
US military bases there. It seems they are exaggerating the effect of
some very rare dangers. They could have a valid argument if they said
that their island bears too big a share of the burden of the bases.
If Japan dropped its alliance with the US, it could tell all the US
troops to leave. But Japan would have to become much more
militarized, or else fall under Chinese dominion.
Patriarchal murder is
surging
in Jordan. Various laws facilitate the practice, as do men so
cowardly that they can't refuse family pressure to murder their
sisters.
As was the case with lynching of blacks in the US, the women actually
murdered are the tip of the iceberg, since the point is to intimidate
millions.
The European Central Bank is
investing
billions in fossil fuels.
After 15 years with no major airline accident in the US, many people
still perceive flying as dangerous. In the same way, they perceive
leaving
a child in a parked car with ventilation as dangerous.
Don't forget some things that do endanger children in the US:
poverty, food insecurity, underfunded schools that prepare them only
for Mcjobs, riding in cars, and peer pressure to take foolish risks.
Feminism is the campaign for equality for women. Individual women who
overcome the odds to be very successful are a
distraction
from that goal unless they help lead the way for all women to join
in the equality.
It's a
mistake
to focus disporportionally on the minority of women that have high
status, well paid jobs.
Most women workers need the same thing that most men workers need:
better pay and better working conditions. Since women tend to get
less pay for the same work, women need this even more than men do.
Wolfgang Streeck forecasts the collapse of capitalism:
eventually
people won't stand any more dooH niboR, and will destroy the
system.
Children's Characters May Disappear from
Unhealthy
Food in Netherlands.
US citizens:
save
the Desert National Wildlife Refuge.
China will require universities to
indoctrinate
obedience to the dictatorship. All teachers will be required to
indoctrinate.
The Great Barrier Reef
will
not exist in 2050 if heating continues.
Low wages and cuts in welfare benefits have squeezed working Britons
against the high rents, so many of them live in
permanent
poverty.
The
Tories made
all three jaws of this vice, with help from New Labor.
Along with the Salafi-US bombardment, Yemen is afflicted by
economic
warfare.
Amazon's new grocery stores do not accept cash. They
impose
the same surveillance as ordering online from Amazon.
In addition, success of this would mean the
loss
of thousands of jobs.
I refuse absolutely to use automatic checkout machines in stores: I
insist on going to the human sales agent, not because I desire a
conversation, but specifically to defend their jobs.
What's more, I often shout out loud, "If you use these machines,
you're putting Americans out of work," once when I enter and once when
I leave. Please join this movement!
Technological "advance" is not an imperative, and it is not always an
advance. It is for us to judge whether a technological change is an
advance for society. Then society can decide which
technologies to use. We can reject harmful technology if we dare to
try.
US citizens:
call
on Obama not to let Arch Coal do mining in roadless Colorado
forest.
Everyone:
call
on Cameroon to free Fomusoh Ivo Feh, who has been imprisoned for
sending a joke mocking Boko Haram via SMS message.
What makes the joke so funny is the idea that Boko Haram would want
recruits to have western education (i.e., to study from the "boko",
books, that it calls "haram", anathema).
US citizens:
call on
Obama to dismantle the NSEERS program so that Trump can't use it
to register all Muslim visitors.
If your family chooses to participate in obligatory holiday
purchasing, try adopting this rule:
buy
only second-hand goods, with a stated maximum price.
The article suggests that books and music ought to "go digital" —
meaning, using internet distribution. Beware of that! Don't "buy"
DRM-restricted copies or copies with End-User License Agreements.
Insist on paying anonymously.
For books and music from major publishers, the only digital copies
that do not oppress their users are the unauthorized ones.
The Five Stars party in Italy
wants
a referendum on moving Italy away from the euro.
Spain and Greece would also benefit from leaving the euro zone.
Senate Democrats
hope
some Republicans will join them to block saboteur Scott Pruitt
from becoming head of the EPA.
Exxon is trying to harass the activists investigating its climate
deception through
subpoenas
meant to burden them with lots of work and lead to a fishing
expedition.
Exxon's lies are known because of
internal
documents from Exxon, which showed that Exxon was publicly denying
global heating while its own research demonstrated the reality of the
danger.
Remember, the name "Exxon" is
not pronounced
"Ekson".
Uber is trying again to force all customers to agree to
arbitration
of disputes — rather than lawsuits.
Newly elected Florida prosecutor Melissa Nelson wants to reform
prosecution so that the goal is to
do
justice, rather than to convict people whether they deserve it or
not.
Consortiumnews.com is
concerned
that it will be labeled as "fake news" for disagreeing with the
official line.
ISTR seeing articles from Consortiumnews that were biased and
one-sided — for instance, they denied that Russia's takeover of
Crimea was a military conquest, and appealed to the subsequent
Putin-organized plebiscite in the Crimea as proving something about
what the inhabitants wanted.
I have not seen in Consortiumnews any fabricated factual claims such
as we call "fake news". If the labeling system is run honestly, I
think Consortiumnews has nothing to worry about. But can we trust it
will be run honestly?
SCROTUS are
trying
to eliminate the requirement to buy US-made steel for Federally
funded water pipes.
The next step in the "deform" of public schools is to eliminate
schools of education and
replace
teachers with customer service workers.
Jill Stein's recount in Michigan was
cancelled
by the judge.
Seafood in the US will require digital tracking to
identify
where it was caught or grown, and what species it is.
I'm in favor of this system, because it it doesn't track human beings.
I don't think live fish have a right to privacy, let alone dead fish.
The War on Drugs is
even
more blitzed in Mexico than in the US.
Court documents show some California thugs
committed
perjury and destroyed evidence.
Will they be prosecuted? Blue Lies Matter!
A national campaign
seeks
to make all US states prohibit sex between humans and nonhuman
animals.
This campaign seems to be sheer bull-headed prudery, using the
perverse assumption that sex between a human and an animal hurts the
animal. That's true for some ways of having sex, and false for
others.
For instance, I've heard that some women get dogs to lick them off.
That doesn't hurt the dog at all. Why should it be prohibited?
When male dolphins have sex with people, that doesn't hurt the
dolphins. Quite the contrary, they like it very much. Why should it
be prohibited?
I've also read that female gorillas sometimes express desire for sex
with men. If they both like it, who is harmed? Why should this be
prohibited?
The proponents of this law claim that any kind of sex between humans
and other species implies that the human is a "predator" that we need
to lock up. That's clearly false, for the cases listed above. Making
a prohibition based on prejudice, writing it in an overbroad way, is
what prissy governments tend to do where sex is concerned. The next
step is to interpret it too strongly with
"zero
tolerance".
Will people convicted of having dogs lick them off
be required to live at least 1000 feet from any dogs?
This law should be changed to prohibit only acts in which the animal
is physically forced to have sex, or physically injured.
Students at Georgetown University
demand
the school end a clothing contract with Nike because of the cruel
conditions in Nike's factory in Vietnam.
E-cigarettes
get
young people addicted to nicotine, and tobacco companies market
them towards young people.
Trump's phone call to Taiwan's president was no gaffe. It was a
calculated
measure, prearranged with lobbyists, probably aimed at profit for
his business.
Aside from demonstrating once more that Trump is a liar, and that he
views the presidency as an opportunity for profit for himself and
billionaire cronies, it shows us that Bob Dole has sold out his
country by working for a foreign government.
Taiwan is a democracy. The US properly treats it as a friend and
ally. However, a former US official that represents a foreign
government has sold out his country even if that foreign government is
a friend and ally. Friendly countries often have different interests,
and disagreements. Dole has given his loyalty to Taiwan before the US
on those disagreements; that's not what a patriot does.
Hundreds of UK thugs face accusations of
sexual
abuse of criminal suspects and victims of crime.
I would guess that most of the suspects that were abused were
suspected of some "crime" related to prostitution. One of the reasons
those things should not be criminalized is to avoid putting
prostitutes and their associates at the mercy of abusive thugs.
Snowden files show that the UK
spied
on the head of the World Trade Organization as well as many companies
and heads of state.
Another reason not to keep your money in Wells Fargo bank:
it
forces
its customers into arbitration, which is biased against them.
I suggest moving your money out of any of the large US banks.
French law makes it a
crime to
repeatedly view publications of PISSI.
That activity is grounds for suspicion, and might persuade a court to
order an investigation, but it is an injustice to punish people for
being suspect.
The UK does that, too, and it is
unjust
there too.
US citizens:
call on the EPA
to retract its forcibly altered report that said fracking was
safe.
The low oil price has
led
more people to travel by car or plane, rather than more efficient
buses.
Nobel laureates
call
on the Nobel Foundation to divest from fossil fuels.
Registered sex offender Steven Folster was
forced
to move into a tent in the woods, or be imprisoned. Either one
could kill him, since he is supposed to spend 8 hours a day on an
oxygen tank.
I don't see how someone in such bad health is likely to be a danger to
children, but if he were, living in a tent in the woods would not
prevent it.
Telling him that his new house was a permissible place for him to
live, then deciding the opposite after he had spent the money to move,
was a dirty trick.
US citizens:
call
on Trump not to appoint Tillerson as Secretary of State.
A Canadian court has ordered Google to remove a page from searches
world-wide,
triggering an appeal on a question of world-wide importance.
The article spreads gratuitous confusion by calling this trade secret case
an
"intellectual
property" case. Other so-called "intellectual property" laws are
totally different from trade secret law, so associating this case with
them can only spread misunderstanding.
The US government
can
collect US citizens' emails "accidentally on purpose" as part of
its massive searches for everything else in the world.
Donald Slump
proposes
to put global heating denialist Scott Pruitt and other denialists in
charge of the EPA
Meanwhile, the national chicken coop will be monitored by Fox News.
Global heating is
wiping
out some species of seabirds on St Kilda island in Scotland.
If the sea life they eat moves north, it is moving away from land.
These birds won't find many places to breed up north.
Maybe we could save them by creating artificial islands, or floating
breeding platforms. But with so many kinds of damage being caused by
our CO2 emissions, the only feasible way to stop all the damage is to
stop increasing the atmospheric greenhouse gas level.
Australian politicians are seeking
legalistic
excuses for preventing public exposure of how farms treat animals.
Some US states have already done this with
Ag-gag
laws.
Farmers have two legitimate choices: either treat animals in ways the
public finds acceptable, or convince the public to accept more.
Finding excuses to stop the public from finding out about farm
practices is not legitimate.
Now, if only the campaign could convince the public that farms'
treatment of animals is a kind of sex…
A Rio Tinto mine
plans
to track employees totally, even when they are off duty, using
sensors on lampposts as well as drones.
Tracking people this much should be prohibited by law, even employees
on duty.
The
response
to the Oakland fire is eviction of many poor people and art
centers.
Are electric cars really zero-emissions vehicles? That depends on
whether
the electricity is generated from fossil fuels.
This doubt is for the short term. In the long run, electric cars are
a step forward because we can generate all our electricity renewably
just by ramping up existing technology. The car batteries can serve
as load buffers.
We have to make sure that recharging electric cars is anonymous.
Giraffes are listed as "vulnerable" after their population has
fallen
40% in a 3 decades.
We can still
save
them.
Libraries in the UK are
hit
hard by the effect of austerity on local governments.
Democracy in Central Asia has turned out to mean
dictatorship
and poverty. Most people there wish they could have the Soviet
Union back.
A new US law
prohibits
companies from restricting how their customers post reviews of the
company's products or services.
The article ends with a fatuous statement that companies "should
protect" their "intellectual property". That term is
so broad that it
is fatuous to say that people "should" (or "shouldn't") do
any particular thing with it.
If we make the subject narrower and concrete by replacing
"intellectual property" with something specific, such as copyrights,
then it becomes mistake. It is wrong to endorse in a blanket way all
the things that companies do to enforce copyrights. Some are
legitimate, and
some
are not.
Repealing Obama's medical care extension
would
cause between 27000 and 36000 deaths per year.
Unemployment in the UK has gone down, but most people
can
barely live on the pay of their precarious jobs, and they have no
career path to a better job.
It's easy to get full employment by letting employers pay people too
little to live on. That is not enough to qualify as successful
management of the economy.
I think the answer to their needs is
Corbyn
and his supporters, who want to make the Labour Party a real Labour
Party again.
Israel has
permitted
Gaza to export strawberries to Europe.
Americans have come to accept
recognition
of Palestine and opposition to Israel's colonies in Palestinian
territory. Especially Democrats.
US Jews
will
mostly go along with this too.
The reason US politicians don't generally condemn the occupation is
the money offered by some donors for not doing so.
US citizens:
take
a stand for freedom of the press and freedom to dissent, and
against bigotry.
US privacy law is based on whether a person has an "expectation of
privacy", and this gives a bad result with
license
plate tracking.
States should pass laws
limiting
the data that license plate cameras can save.
New York City Thug Department lawyers
specially
prosecute protesters, to pressure them to make deals that include
admissions such that would stop them from suing the city for their
false arrests.
Why Does a Woman Stay with a Violent Man?
Sometimes,
to Save Her Life. Women are most likely to be murdered by men
just after leaving them.
The US congress protected many ecosystems by refusing to resuscitate
the
Export-Import
Bank.
The Export-Import Bank has
funded
lots of fossil fuel projects and getting rid of it is substantial
progress.
The danger is that Trump will bring it back next year.
A
public
campaign forced the EU's plutocratist president to give up on a
plan to "reform" wildlife protection directives to serve business.
Azza Soliman, Egyptian women's rights activist, has been
arrested,
and her NGO shut down.
"Detained" is a fashionable euphemism for "arrested". I never use it,
because I think we should call an arrest an arrest.
Acid water in an
old
open pit mine in Montana killed thousands of migrating geese that
found no other place in the area to stop in.
It goes to show that we need to clean up old mines — putting up
"danger" signs is does not make them safe. Cleaning up the mine has
to be treated as part of running the mine. Indeed, starting to
operate a mine should require posting a bond for the expected costs of
cleanup.
Assad's troops have captured the old city of Aleppo
and
most of the former rebel areas.
Australia is
lobbying
the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to support coal and
nuclear projects rather than renewables.
One small positive step: Trump
fired
a crony's son for spreading the false "Pizzagate" accusations
against Clinton.
This in itself isn't much, but just maybe it will develop into
something more.
We will see.
Many of Trump's
choices
for cabinet offices are closely linked with the Koch brothers.
Julian Assange has
published
his answers to the Swedish prosecutor's questions, in effect
daring the prosecutor to either charge him for real or let the issue
drop so he can leave the Ecuadorian embassy.
Assange says they can't actually charge him because the evidence
offers no legal grounds to do so.
I don't know what went on between Assange and the woman, but I do see
that the prosecutors are using the charges as an excuse rather than
really concerned about them. If they were serious about the alleged
sex crime, they would have made the formal commitment not to send
Assange to the US, and he would have gone to Sweden to face the legal
proceedings.
"Democrats must
become
progressive or get out of the way."
I disagree with one background point: Trump did not win the election.
Rather the Republican Party stole the election through
voter-suppression. The
Crosscheck
scheme denied a million Americans the right to vote.
With this unjust advantage, Trump didn't need to actually win; it was
sufficient for him to get within stealing range. He did that against
Clinton because of her nonprogressive policies.
Sanders might have won by a bigger margin, beyond stealing range.
Rep. Ellison faces a smear campaign for
insisting
that Israel should make peace with Palestine.
If you feel your organization needs
a "presence" in
Facebook.
Eran Cohen, running to lead Britain's Union of Jewish Students,
supports
the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions movement against
Israel
where he was born.
Israel fears boycott of products of its colonies
because that could easily
extend to a broader boycott of companies that operate there.
Israel calls Shuafat refugee camp a part of Jerusalem,
but it is
surrounded by walls and some residents are in effect imprisoned by
them.
They have to pay taxes for city services that they never get.
Israeli thugs enter only to arrest people or demolish buildings.
Aside from that, they protect the drug dealers that operate near
a checkpoint in the walls.
Residents estimate that 1/3 of the people are addicts of this drug,
which leads some of its users to suicidally attack Israelis with
knives. This gives Israeli thugs an excuse for
illegal collective punishment:
blowing up the family's house.
US citizens:
support Keith Ellison for chair of the Democratic
National Committee.
Disinformation, Not Fake News,
Got Trump Elected,
and It Won't Go Away.
Replacing printed newspapers with digital distribution turns out to
make censorship easier.
For a while it was the opposite, but that was before states began trying
in earnest to censor.
Accusing Venezuela's president Maduro of
becoming a dictator.
It seems pretty much true to me. Chavez held real elections, and
really won them. Maduro doesn't do that.
While it is true that Chavez started some of the policies that are
today causing economic problems, he did so to correct other economic
problems (poor people had trouble buying necessities of life). I
think he would have corrected the details of those policies if they
had caused big problems while he was president.
Jihadis boast that Trump will play into their hands, by spreading
bigotry and thus
provoking hatred from other Muslims.
I fear it may be true.
When neonicotinoid pesticides were banned in Europe,
farm yields have
not decreased.
There is no reason to hesitate about banning them to
save the bees.
Personalized Pricing in the Air?
Why Consumers Should Be Wary of a New
Airline Pricing Proposal.
About the book,
We Sue an Artist
— by an artist that was sued.
Want to Discredit Donald Trump?
Show His Base He's Part of the Elite.
[Global heating] Threatens
Ability of Insurers to Manage Risk.
This is a consequence of increases in extreme weather of various kinds.
Each instance of extreme weather has some chance of causing lots of damage.
The US opposition to Assad is
not about an oil pipeline,
as some claim.
North Dakota has around
4 oil spills each year
from existing pipelines.
In November the Arctic set a record for the
least sea ice ever observed.
If Republicans Want to "Cut Fat",
They Might Start at the Pentagon.
For plutocratist politicians, "cut fat from the budget" means "cut
spending that goes to the non-rich." Paying businesses to build arms
or run prisons never counts as "fat."
It suits Russia to
make the West distrust the internet,
because Russian elites
already did.
Trump's advisors want to
privatize indigenous peoples' land
in order
to deregulate drilling for fossil fuels.
Privatization of tribal lands has been used in the US as a means to
take it away. Once an individual, rather than the tribe, can sell the
land, desperate poverty is likely to make that happen. The result is
that the tribe's members end up just as poor, and without land.
And in some cases poisoned by toxic releases from the wells.
How Trump's Grift Gave Government to
the 0.01 Percent.
What the Robots Are Doing to the Middle Class.
The new middle class is smaller and requires a higher level of training.
Obama's latest report says that terrorist suspects must have
proper
trials in real courts,
and that that the Authorization for Use of
Military Force does not permit attacking any and all suspects of
terrorism no matter where they are.
Publishing a good policy so late in Obama's term of office is unlikely
to restrain Trump very much.
If he had published these decisions in 2008, and put them fully into
effect, the US would be more respectable and more respected today, and
it would be politically harder for a subsequent president to go
against them.
Dominic Ongwen was kidnaped at age 10 by the Lords Resistance Army and
forced to be a soldier, then became a brutal leader.
Was he a victim,
or a war criminal?
Clearly he started out as a victim; the question is to what extent he
later became culpable.
When children are forced to become soldiers, we can't hold them
responsible for what they are forced to do. No 10-year-old can be
expected to have the force of will needed to stand up to such
pressure; few adults could do it.
If the same person continues to do similar crimes when older, in a
predatory army that punishes soldiers for not doing them, I think it
is still senseless to put that person individually on trial.
However, when a solider becomes a leader, and orders others to commit
crimes, at that point I think person becomes responsible for them
and cannot plead coercion.
Nicole Bolden is suing officials in the St Louis region
for
jailing her for being too poor to pay fines.
Online sales, with tracking and surveillance of customers, enables
businesses to
show different people different prices.
I protect myself from tracking and surveillance by paying cash in
stores.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to resist Trump and Ryan by preserving Medicare.
A book of satire, meant to expose and mock racism, has been withdrawn
in response to
condemnation
from people who thought it was serious.
The Chilean agents that murdered exile Orlando Letelier in the US in
1976 have been living safely in the US since then. Now Chile
will
try to extradite them.
George Monbiot:
"No
country with a McDonald's can remain a democracy." McDonald's,
here, stands for the multinational companies that atomize and dominate
society in each place.
UN Human Rights Experts Demand Answers from China over
Missing
Lawyer. Reportedly they suspect he was imprisoned for meeting
with someone from the US.
Israel
denied
entry to the general secretary of the World Council of Churches
because she advocates boycott and divestment of Israel.
A state that excludes people for peaceful criticism is moving towards
tyranny. Israel calls itself the "only democracy in the Middle East",
but it is getting too repressive to qualify any more.
Extreme rains (and flooding) in the US
could
increase 400% by the end of this century.
These strong rains will destroy crops.
Courts in three US states have ruled that broad restrictions on the
lives of registered sex offenders are
unconstitutional.
There may be some convicted sex criminals that are so dangerous to
children (or, in some cases, to adults) that we need to prevent them
from having a chance to attack anyone. But it's absurd to do this by
putting most work, most education, and many civic activities
off limits for them based on broad and dumb criteria.
Surely there are smarter ways to achieve the goal — perhaps
achieve it more completely — without forbidding them from
walking around town.
It would be better to sentence a few who are likely to commit more
crimes to lifelong prison or parole, rather than impose such
restrictions on a far larger number of people.
The thug that killed Walter Scott had a
mistrial,
because at least one juror refused to consider a guilty verdict.
This article argues that the US has a
presumption
of guilt for black men.
Bacteria resistant to carbapenem antibiotics have been found
in
pigs in a US farm. When this resistance spreads to human
environments, we will be left with no antibiotics that bacteria can't
resist.
Thanks to the practice of giving regular doses of antibiotics to all
pigs, you'll be able to buy cheaper pork, and you'll die if you get an
infection.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to reject Bahraini government payments to his hotel.
Here's part of
why
it's bad for the president to legitimize Bahrain.
General Petraeus leaked more sensitive secrets than Snowden, and did
so for his own personal benefit. He got a slap on the wrist and now
is considered for cabinet positions.
Snowden, who risked imprisonment go give the public vital information,
ought
to be treated better than Petraeus.
What workers need, for a better life, is a union. Politicians that
are sincere about helping working people will support laws making
unions stronger and
helping
workers form unions and remain in them.
A virtual distance-midwife
can't
do the job of a real midwife.
China
Torturing
Suspects in 'War on Corruption', Says Human Rights Watch.
Does Trump want the US to follow China's example?
"Poverty
graduation" enables poor people in Bangladesh to become
permanently self-supporting for years. It costs $100 per family.
Another important Brazilian politician, the president of the Senate,
has been
indicted
for corruption.
Portland, Oregon, is considering an
extra
tax on companies whose CEOs are paid more than the median salary of
workers.
I hope this takes into account workers that are hired through
temporary agencies or obligated to act as "independent contractors".
I also hope it is not limited to companies whose headquarters are in
Portland. It needs to include all companies that have any business
activity located there.
"Australia
must
choose between coal and coral — the Great Barrier Reef
depends on it."
Fortunately, Australians
strongly
oppose providing subsidies to the proposed giant coal mine's railroad
link.
Israel's parliament has voted for a bill to
retroactively
legalize the theft of private Palestinian land for unauthorized
Israeli colonies in the West Bank.
All the Israeli colonies in the West Bank
violate
international law. These colonies were built in violation of
Israeli law.
An armed man
attacked
a pizzeria in Washington DC to "investigate" fabricated stories
that it Hillary Clinton was holding "child sex slaves" there.
Private Prisons Are Really Bad, But Good Enough for Immigrants,
Concludes
Homeland
Security Report.
The new, democratically elected president of Gambia has
freed
the opposition leaders that were imprisoned in protests in April.
The US could take a lesson from Gambia.
The UN has
identified
41 peacekeepers active in the Central African Republic as suspects
for sexual abuse.
Rising temperatures have eliminated
at
least 40 marine species from the eastern Mediterranean coast.
Why Land Rights for Indigenous Peoples
Could
Be the Answer to [global heating].
I quibble with one point in the article, where it asks, "How do you
compensate industries reliant on the agriculture that entails
deforestation?" Why should they get compensation, rather than
punishment?
Russia is imposing Chinese-style
censorship
and control over the internet.
US citizens:
call
on Trump to sell his businesses and eliminate his conflict of
interest.
The European Parliament will have to
vote
on CETA. If it does not reject that business-supremacy treaty, it
will strengthen the right-wing "populist" parties.
The Ogoni people of Nigeria want to sue Shell in the UK for
polluting
their land and groundwater through repeated oil spills.
The corrupt politicians that rule Brazil are
pushing
a constitutional amendment to impose austerity until 2037.
US citizens:
call on the
Senate to block the AT&T - Time Warner merger.
The
danger
is that Trump will approve it.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject Mnuchin.
The
price
of an Uber ride is only around 40% of its cost. This shows how
intensely much the company is running at a loss.
The only way this can be rational is if Uber plans to greatly increase
its fees (perhaps after destroying its competitors) or else greatly
reduce costs (by getting rid of drivers).
Either way, let's not help Uber bring that future about.
A study has found that a child's cognitive ability correlates with how
much time they spend with their mothers
in
ages 3-7.
This may or may not be true for fathers too; the study did not get
much data about fathers.
In other words, pushing parents back into full-time work could impose
a lasting handicap on their children.
Police Violence Against Native Americans
Goes
Far Beyond Standing Rock.
Illegal mistreatment of workers is
the
norm in Chinese factories (in this case, making cheap toys for
westerners).
Australia is
racing
through its carbon budget from now to 2050. At this rate, it will
use all of that up by 2032.
Ralph Nader:
Trump
and His Betraying Makeover.
I support the campaign to move Oregon to
score runoff voting, also known
as
range voting.
Jews in New York
protested
against Trump's association with antisemitism, and against
pro-occupation Jewish organizations that cozy up to Trump by turning a
blind eye to antisemitism.
Sea Shepherd faces credible accusations of lying about the sinking of
the Ady Gil. However, it has been
very
effective, first against whaling and second against illegal
fishing.
Recommending
books
that shed light on today's right-wing trumpery, and on why
America's working poor are so mind-numbed by their lives that they
don't try to organize politically to make it better.
Tories say that leaving the EU is an opportunity for more
"free
trade" in Britain. In other words, they advocate face-planting
surrender to business, this time supported by Britain's remaining
naval power. Plus selling arms to regimes that don't deserve support.
The main problem with the EU is that it surrenders to business. There
is no sense leaving the EU except to stop surrendering to
business.
Giant avalanches in Tibet are
probably
due to global heating.
The US Army
denied
permission to finish the Dakota Access pipeline on its current planned
route, and will consider rerouting it.
This could be a victory for protecting the local water. But if the
pipeline crosses the Missouri somewhere else, it will only move the
threat to a different backyard. Meanwhile, its contribution to
increased global heating will be unaffected by changes in its route.
The only real victory would be to stop the pipeline completely.
The decision about the route also requires a proper environmental
impact statement. Maybe that will provide an opportunity to stop it
completely.
Melon pickers in Honduras ask people to boycott Fyffes melons because
the company
blacklists
those that join a union.
Amnesty International says
Fiji's
thugs torture suspects, even kill them.
Relations Between US And UN Strained over
Afghanistan
War Reports.
Europe is in danger of choosing the
not-quite-extreme
repressive right wing as a lesser evil than the extreme repressive
right wing.
Both of them, like Trump, scapegoat immigrants for economic setbacks
that most people experience as a consequence of concentration of
wealth, and neither one proposes to end that concentration process.
Indigenous Sámi activists in Norway
convinced
Norway's largest bank to pull its investments out of the Dakota
Access Pipeline.
Trump threatens an
extra
tax on products imported from companies that moved manufacturing out
of the US.
It might be a positive step, but companies will easily find ways
to game the rule.
The crucial thing is to make large companies in general (and rich
people) pay more tax, and Trump
seems
to be planning the opposite.
Australia is considering a government subsidy to a
giant
proposed coal mine.
How suicidal can humans get?
How the Media
Iced
Out Bernie Sanders & Helped Donald Trump Win.
Mattis has suggested
eliminating
land-based nuclear missiles. This could be a good idea, since it
would reduce the hair-trigger readiness as well as saving lots of
money.
As the need for humanitarian aid around the world
keeps
growing, wealthy countries' governments have ceased donating what
is needed.
The need increases because of global heating effects, population
growth and degraded natural systems. The reason governments no longer
donate what is needed is that neoliberal policies have cut taxes on
the rich and on business.
These are the things we need to change.
The Rockefeller family foundation will divest
entirely
from fossil fuels.
Elizabeth Warren called Steven Mnuchin, Trump's choice for the US
treasury
"a
self-dealing, Wall Street tool."
Trump attacked hedge fund managers in his campaign, but now he's
selling
out to them totally.
Trump's "cleaning up the swamp" was pure bullshit — he's
filling
it up with alligators.
Howard Dean, who seeks leadership of the Democratic Party, is
similarly
bad.
Obama has been pretty
lousy
in that area, too.
Clinton, like Trump,
wanted
to jail people for burning the US flag.
Russia
is copying China's system of making the Internet effectively
useless for dissent or criticism of the state.
The
Grand Tradition of Burning the American Flag. It's part of
America's even grander tradition of respecting freedom of expression.
No
One Should Be Diagnosed at a Distance — Even Donald Trump.
Using antibiotics
makes
a subsequent drug-resistant infection much more likely for at
least the next few months.
Many of Trump's cronies are
involved
with ALEC.
A respected Canadian journalist was
barred
from entering the US to cover the pipeline protests at Standing
Rock.
The US immigration agents took his phones and copied their contents
before refusing to let him in.
A former UK "job adviser" says the purpose of her job was to
find
opportunities to punish unemployed people for any failure to go
through the all the required steps.
Even being in the hospital was not accepted as an excuse.
Steven Mnuchin's bank foreclosed on an old woman's house because
of a
27-cent error
in her mortgage payments.
Trump's choice to administer Medicare and Medicaid
designed Indiana's
Medicaid plan,
which was intended to shaft poor people.
Bigots have tricked Google search completion into
promoting bigotry
sites that attack women and Jews.
The United Kingdom plans to
sentence drivers to life in prison
if they kill someone
by driving while speeding or holding a phone, or while drunk, etc.
If the goal is to discourage drivers from doing those dangerous
things, this approach is big on harshness but low on effectiveness.
Only a tiny fraction of people that today drive speeding, holding a
phone, or drunk, will cause actual harm and be punished for it. The
rest tell themselves, "Nothing will go wrong", so they don't worry
about what the penalty would be if something did go wrong.
The effective way to discourage those dangerous behaviors is to
apply a small punishment more often. If 10% of the people who did one
of these things on any given day were sentenced to one night in jail,
almost all of them would soon learn not to do it any more. Even 1%
might be enough, since everyone would know people who were caught.
US citizens:
oppose putting Exxon in charge of US diplomacy.
Everyone: call on the Anti-Defamation League to
stop condemning
criticism of Israeli colonization in Palestine,
and focus on
its proper mission, fighting against antisemitism and other bigotry.
2000 unarmed US military veterans
are headed for Standing Rock
to act as human shields for the pipeline protesters.
Trump Allies in Battleground States Rush to Stop Jill Stein's Recount Efforts.
There is no possible legitimate reason to oppose a more careful count
of the ballots. The reasons they give are trivial. We know what
the unstated motive is: "If there's a mistake in our favor, we
don't want you to find it!"
Everyone: call on TIAA to
reject palm oil from deforestation.
US citizens: call for
endangered species protection for bluefin tuna.
US citizens: call on Rep. Chaffetz to
investigate Trump's conflicts of
interest, as he said he would.
Everyone: call on journalists
not to disguise racism behind the
innocent-sounding term "alt-right".
US citizens: phone the White House at (202) 456-1111 and call on Obama
to stop the siege of pipeline protesters. Thugs are cutting off
supplies and ambulances; if the thugs attack again and injure more
protesters, they could lose organs or die due to this.
US citizens: call on your senators to
oppose
bills that undermine science and science-based policies.
Trump wants to pass a law
allowing people to carry concealed guns
anywhere in the US
if they get approval in some (any) state.
If all states had strict standards, this might be ok.
Brazil's lower house used the plane crash of a football team
as cover for passing a bill to
eliminate penalties for corruption
of officials.
Of the 513 members of the lower house, 450 voted for this.
US white-supremacists are supporting Trump, but also using Trump to
make people think that all Trump's supporters support them too.
The denialist-controlled House Science Committee
claimed that world
temperatures are decreasing.
They are paid to repeat that message; they feel no shame about its
obvious falsehood.
The habit of online gambling
affects more teenage boys in the UK than
drugs or alcohol.
If they need it to unwind, could a game which doesn't cost money give
them the same sensation? For me, it could.
Assad's forces have captured half of east Aleppo
and might capture all
within a few weeks.
The US Senate voted to
continue sanctions on Iran.
Iran says this violates the nuclear agreement. Can anyone find an expert
analysis of whether that is true? I can't take either side's word about the matter.
Why Is the Obama Administration
Opposing Rights for Immigrant Detainees?
Some will have a good case, and some will have a bad one, but each immigrant should have the chance to present the case to a judge.
The UK's new law authorizing massive surveillance also
requires back doors
in encryption.
It is a
threat to academic freedom and to the subjects of academic research.
Trump cleverly makes scandalous announcements to
distract attention
from the scandals of substance.
Women the World Over Have Shown the US
How to Deal with Sexism And Racism.
Australia rejected Greenpeace's freedom of information request
for
details of offshore drilling plans based on a laughable excuse — that
Greenpeace might use the information to oppose the plans.
If the US really wanted to reduce illegal immigration, then rather
than building walls or imprisoning deporting people, it would only
need to
punish employers that hire immigrants illegally.
I am not strongly concerned about the number of unauthorized
immigrants. As a US citizen, though, I object to the requirement for
employees who are US citizens to prove they are. I would have no
difficulty proving it, but I resent being required to do so.
"Fears around gender-neutral toilets are all in the mind".
Men can
attack women anywhere, if they are minded to do that sort of thing,
but trans people face real danger.
Barrett Brown has been released from prison.
The court convicted him for Anonymous's cracking of Stratfor's
systems.
It now appears that the US government suppressed evidence that
he was reporting on the cracking but not participating.
Banning drones at pipeline protests
is a way of suppressing journalism
that can expose the violence of the thugs.
Before Trump phoned the president of Taiwan, a representative of his
hotel business called to
discuss a hotel investment there.
People who are
almost blind, but not 100%,
face a lot of misunderstandings.
The right-wing theocratic rule that limited use of embryonic stem
cells impeded research into treating retinitis pigmentosa with stem
cells to restore people's sight. Their objection was based entirely
on religious irrationality. Obama eliminated this restriction; will
Trump impose it again?
The Trump building across the Hudson from Manhattan was built using
a government subsidy for visas for foreign workers.
The Canadian government has
approved a new oil pipeline,
to be built
by the company we could call Unkind Warmin', but Canadians are
determined to stop it anyway.
Most of the inhabitants have
returned to the town of Jalawla,
liberated from PISSI in February, but there is no money
to rebuild what was destroyed.
Meanwhile, the Kurds and the Iraqi government dispute control of the
town.
How people learn to prefer
new technically advanced diminished substitutes
for direct conversation.
Here are suggested ways to
support the pipeline protesters in North Dakota.
The election stolen by Trump,
like the attacks of September 2001,
are blow-back from years of dangerous actions.
Warren Refuses to Let
Trump's Luxury Hotel Conflict
Slide.
Peace with the FARC could be
an opportunity for Colombia to have peace,
but that won't follow automatically.
One of the ways the US legal system systematically squeezes the poor
is
jailing women because a thug suspects they are prostitutes.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
The Dakota Access pipeline means disaster. You must consider
the threats it poses to to drinking water supplies (a likely future
disaster, as pipelines generally leak sooner or later), sacred sites
and indigenous rights, and contribution to global heating and
exacerbation of its now inevitable disaster. If the full range of
threats are included in your environmental study, I’m confident you
will determine that the Dakota Access pipeline must not be
built.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
while (policy continues)
fines *= 2;
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Take your business
where they employ humans
instead of robots.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
there are opportunities for change in the
United States: change for the worse and change for the better.
is a cool evaluation of an unknown factor, not support.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
As far as I can tell, the only motive for prohibiting prostitution is that some people find the idea disgusting. What kind of justification is that?
Historians discuss the similarities and differences between Trump and 20th century fascism.
Activists are protesting against the banks that have invested in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A hedge fund manager says he feels "glee" that Trump has "conned the voters" by promising to curb hedge fund profits and now, when elected, heading in the opposite direction.
US grassland is being rapidly converted to farmland. This releases lots of carbon that grasslands store up.
A right-wing blacklist, the "professor watchlist", labels professors as "anti-American" and falsely accuses them of "discrimination against conservative students", because they do things such as teach a feminist approach to things such as Trump's attitude towards women.
The real point of that activity is harassment and intimidation.
This is one of many examples of where right-wingers systematically and falsely accuse others of the sort of wrongs they actually do. Others include Trump's accusations of election rigging on the Democratic side (when actually the Republicans are the ones that do this) are another example.
Steve Mnuchin, the foreclosure king.
Several big US banks were guilty of fraudulent foreclosures during several years after the financial crisis.
It seems that Mnuchin's bank took that one step worse, buying up old mortgages in order to foreclose houses based on similar invalid justifications.
Andorra has yielded to pressure and ceased maintaining banking secrecy for EU citizens.
It may still be a tax haven for rich Americans.
Trump's method of "keeping Carrier's jobs in the US" was to offer the company a tax subsidy.
As Sanders put it, the company "took Trump hostage and won" — a victory over the US government.
We can't afford to pay thousands of companies to keep jobs in the US. We can afford to make them pay to move jobs out of the US.
Trump has sued to prevent the recount in Michigan.
Trump is now the avowed enemy of free and fair elections.
A series of court decisions have made "national security letter"
secret subpoenas
less secret and easier to challenge.
We need to give the state power to subpoena specific information with
specific grounds. To keep them from becoming oppressive, we must
insist on narrow and specific subpoenas only, with concrete
justification each time.
Trump appointed a science-denier to take charge of NASA.
Russians Talk with Syrian Rebels as Eastern Aleppo Runs Out of Food.
Imprisoned Iranian musician Mehdi Rajabian has been hospitalized after a month of hunger strike.
Stephen Hawking: politicians must reduce inequality if humanity is to work together to deal with the global challenges that endanger the survival of civilization.
Australians have grasped that they must reduce chemical pollution
in order to
save the Great Barrier Reef.
Will they recognize that this also requires capping the level of CO2
in the atmosphere?
Excessive heat of the water kills corals,
and so does
the acidity that will result from additional CO2 dissolved in the water.
The UN admitted responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti and has stated long-term plans to eradicate it.
Netanyahu accused a critical journalist of "brainwashing" the Israeli people for publishing stories about possibly corrupt activities in his family.
Want to Know Why Young People Are Sexting? Try Asking Them.
London: Squatters Evicted from Building of Company That Works to Stop Squatting.
We Cubans Will Restore Civil Liberties — Without Help from Donald Trump.
The Texas requirement to bury or cremate fetuses
as if they were human
beings is extremely cruel to women who have abortions — or miscarriages.
And if the women have to pay for this sick ceremony, it will put some of them
out on the street.
Perhaps hospitals and abortion clinics can arrange to bury 100 fetuses
at a time — at least that way it won't cost much, and the women won't
be required to come and dwell on the situation.
Sexual harassment and even assault are widespread in schools in the UK.
Teachers want action to protect students.
I support that demand, but
adopting a policy of "zero tolerance" in a
school
is asking for trouble no matter what issue it's about. We
don't want children to bring weapons to school, but "zero tolerance"
for weapons leads to things like kicking children out for pictures of
guns.
Greg Palast explains why the recounts are essential: so many ways that ballots can be counted wrong, or rejected entirely.
Gamergate, in 2014, was the
training campaign for Trump's army of
bullies.
The other Trump supporters provide a sea of people in which the
bullies can swim. They disapprove of the bullying, but they never go
so far as to make the bullies go away.
Colombia has
signed a revised peace deal with the FARC.
This time, without a referendum. I hope the people accept the peace.
Adolescents and adults fall victim to manipulative strangers that pressure
them to make nude videos, and then
threaten to post those videos on the
net
unless the victims pay.
The blackmailers are doing something very nasty, and I'm glad if they
are imprisoned for their crime. However, what enables them to get
money this way is the prudish prejudice of the victims' friends,
family and actual or potential colleagues. If not for this, the
victims would only laugh at the demand for money.
Scientists that study pollinating insects say we urgently need to restrict pesticide use to save the pollinators.
Large companies use palm oil made systematically with child labor, and on their labels claim that it is "sustainable".
CIA Chief Warns Trump Against Torture.
Elizabeth Warren reminds us that Republicans do not have majority support in the US.
Trump's choice for Health and Human Services (Tom Price) would like to
take away non-wealthy people's medical care.
Trump will offer them
small tax credits as a partial substitute.
Price aims to
enrich those who get rich from medical care.
He is also a
fanatical activist against women's rights,
including
birth control, and opposed a law to help protect women from domestic
violence.
Poor rural citizens of Kentucky, who voted for Trump,
are now afraid
of what he will do
to the health insurance that Obama gave them.
The article uses the word "moron", but I think that is uncalled for. It's not that these people are stupid, but that they asked to be
fooled. What they lack is sense.
Uber has started tracking users' movements before and after rides.
It is unacceptable for a ride service to localize identified people ever. The fact that Uber knows passengers' names is already inexcusable.
The Internet Archive will create a backup copy in Canada as protection against the danger of being trumped by censorship.
North Korea faces new sanctions, supported by China, in response to its nuclear test in September.
We don't expect airlines to behave decently, so it is news when one does.
Airlines' reduction of seat space tends to provoke air rage, and that it follows that airlines share the culpability for it. Most people take for granted, in such cases, that the culpability must fall on one or the other; that assumption means letting one or the other off the hook.
Castro sent troops to Africa to fight colonial regimes, and sent doctors to countries when the US ignored them.
[Global heating] will stir 'unimaginable' refugee crisis, says [UK] military.
Psilocybin has been effective for treating depression.
Right-wing bullies stretch the term "political correctness" to present any disapproval as mere narrowminded ideology.
The pressures criticized as "political correctness" do exist. The term "trigger warnings" is used by people who ask for them, even demand them. "Microaggressions" and "cultural appropriation" derive from schools of thought that use them for actions that they disapprove of. They are meant to criticize acts seen as mistreatment of those who are weak or hurt.
I agree with them on some issues, but on some points I think they go too far. For instance, telling people to say "black" instead of "negro" (which was not a pejorative word), then to say "African-American" instead of "black", then to say "people of color" instead of "African-American", led me to decline to follow them. ("Of color" is so clumsy that using it strikes me as conspicuous subservience.) I stuck with "blacks". (Then I learned Spanish, in which they are called "los negros", which means "the blacks".) I feel vindicated now that blacks have come around to using the term "black" again.
What right-wingers have done is apply the label of "political correctness" to any disapproval of anything — even substantive condemnation of a nasty actions.
Trump uses this distortion (see examples in the first article) when he bullies the weak, to imply that disapproval of bullying is mere "political correctness".
Some neurobiological support for the maxim not to go to bed angry.
Finally, A Chance To Remake The Democratic Party.
A wildfire in Tennessee entered the city of Gatlinburg and destroyed buildings.
For wildfires to be dangerous almost at the start of winter is shocking. Part of the cause was drought. That this is the hottest year humans have ever experienced is probably pertinent.
The Pentagon recognizes it bombed Syrian army soldiers in September by mistake.
The Tories have never tried to verify whether punishing unemployed people for every failure to carry out the job search dance really led to more of them in employment.
I'm not surprised that the Tories have not tried to measure the "effectiveness" of these punishments in achieving their supposed goals, because the goals don't make sense anyway, and I don't think the Tories were honest about their goals.
I think the Tories' real motive for these punishments is to demonize the unemployed and the disabled (often labeled as capable of working, through a carefully arranged system of excuses to disregard their medical evaluations) and to make it seem they don't deserve any help, which in the long term serves as an excuse for ceasing to help them. That will "save" money, making it possible to further cut taxes or increase welfare payments for the rich.
As for the non-rich unemployed and disabled, with no state help they won't live many more years, and the Tories will say, "Mission accomplished."
"The Tories are lower than vermin" — Aneurin Bevan.
The EU has a plan to cut energy use and stop subsidizing coal by 2030.
Clearly these officials do not understand the gravity of the problem. They should have eliminated coal subsidies 10 years ago, but since they didn't, they should eliminate the subsidies tomorrow.
Trump said he would protect Social Security and Medicare, but seems to be choosing officials and allies that want to privatize them.
Chiquita, the fruit company, pled guilty to supporting a terrorist organization (the paramilitares of Colombia). Now the paramilitares' victims are suing Chiquita in the US.
High officials directly altered an EPA report about how fracking can poison water supplies.
The report was written by scientists who said that the danger is real, but was altered to deny the danger.
Boys and young men seem especially susceptible to Trump's message of hate and bullying.
Trump made a splashy announcement that on Dec 15 he will announce some way of distancing himself from his business.
Why tell us only that he will tell us later? This media manipulation leads me to suppose he will announce some inadequate step, such as letting his children run it for him.
Jimmy Carter: America Must Recognize Palestine.
A private meeting with the heads of the New York Times, who described making deals with US and foreign politicians about how their coverage would read.
The Associated Press has decided to explicitly identify US white-supremacists as such, rather than let them use "alt-right" as a mask.
Israel will keep interrogations of accused terrorists secret, which means the thugs can get away with doing anything whatever to the accused.
Israelis that have taken houses in Hebron
have now started building in
a Palestinian school's yard.
If they keep going, they will eventually force all the Palestinian students
to leave the school, on the grounds that some of them might someday attack
Israeli colonists.
Arabs in Israel can be prosecuted for sarcastically condemning crimes
such as arson,
"because someone might misunderstand".
Yes, there is a chance someone might misunderstand. I've sometimes
asked people to rewrite certain statements to avoid the risk that
someone will misunderstand them and draw a meaning that is the opposite
of what was intended. I've also occasionally written statements that
some people have misunderstood, because I didn't make them clear enough.
Suggesting clarification is one thing; prosecution is another.
A university in an Israeli colony in Palestinian territory invited foreign speakers on the false pretense that it is located in Israel. Gush Shalom informed the speakers of the error, and at least one cancelled participation.
Right-wing fake news is sometimes attributed to fake journalists.
No lie is too sleazy for the US right wing today.
Uri Avnery reports how drought in Israel led to a wave of forest fires; right-wing politicians found an opportunity to blame Arabs for the inevitable effects of planting trees in a drought-prone land.
The history of a politically motivated conspiracy theory invented by a mob.
US citizens: call on Senate Democrats to oppose the 21st Century Cures bill.
It was written to improve health care, but corporate lobbyists hijacked it and converted it (in substance) into the "21st Century Curse Act".
Some details are in this article whose main point is how US "patient advocacy" groups have been paid by big pharma to lobby for that hijacking.
The 21st Century Curse Act would allow drug companies to make secret payments to doctors.
Drug companies have gone to great lengths to corrupt the medical system, even going to the point of making phony "scientific journals" to publish resmercials that praise their products. It is not a mere possibility that these secret payments would be in exchange for prescribing their drugs.
Haitians protested massively, claiming the presidential election was rigged.
With just a million people voting out of a population of 10 million, the election was surely no good.
The previous "president" Martelly was imposed by the US, not honestly elected. I would guess that Moïse was also imposed by the US.
In the 10 days after the election the US had a high rate of racist incidents.
It's clear that the bulk of them were inspired by Trump.
Pipeline protesters have sued various thug departments for wanton, dangerous and unjustified violence that threatens people's lives.
Thugs also systematically fabricate false charges against them.
I bet most of those thugs call themselves Christians. Have they ever heard of the commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness"? That refers to making false charges against others.
Fake News and the Internet Shell Game: the dishonest need not convince people of specific falsehoods; it is enough to make it too difficult to identify truth among the many conflicting claims.
Putin has developed a state propaganda arm that spews a constant political bullshit stream.
Trump's history of public racism goes back to the 1970s.
Former congressional staff, participants in the Church Committee's investigation of CIA crimes, called on Obama to make a deal for Snowden to return to the US.
Trump is in bed with people that have led funded disinformation campaigns for many years.
Trudeau has approved an additional pipeline to transport tar sands oil to the Pacific coast for export.
Once new fossil fuel supply infrastructure is built, it makes reduction of fossil fuel use much harder. The pipeline owners always pressure for it to continue to be used. "We have a right to return on our investment", they say.
Not at the cost of millions of lives, they don't!
Note how Trudeau justifies his decision based on assuming that oil extraction in Canada will increase. In other — in other words, assuming that we won't avoid disaster. That's defeatism.
Thousands of low-paid workers went on strike Tuesday in 340 US cities.
Hundreds of them were arrested.
Brennan, head of the CIA, warned Trump that cancelling the nuclear agreement with Iran would be disastrous.
The US Export-Import Bank has put over 30 billion dollars into construction of fossil fuel infrastructure that will continue pushing the world towards disaster.
Trump and his proposed secretary of education wish to undermine and destroy public education.
The result would be great for the private owners that squeeze money out of cheap private schools at the expense of children and teachers.
Nazism and comparable right-wing parties are gaining support in various European countries.
Trump convinced Carrier to keep 1000 jobs in Indiana. It will move 1000 other jobs to Mexico as planned.
He has done some good, but I doubt it will last more than a couple of years. Once people forget, the company could move the jobs just as they planned.
Firms Such As Kellogg's, Unilever And Nestlé "Use Child-Labor Palm Oil".
Budget cuts have made UK prisons drug-ridden, spirit-crushing and violent.
US citizens: phone Obama and call on him to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
US citizens: Call on Republicans to respect Medicare.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate any possible conflict of interest that Trump has.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Stalling Mass Damaging Hacking Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Is there anything Mitt Romney won't do, to get appointed Secretary of State? Apparently not much; he has just given Trump effusive praise.
One of the worst effects that Trump has is to normalize the practice of sucking up to him and denying his faults. People do this for various reasons, but none of them can excuse it.
China has arrested the publisher of an important human rights web site.
How journalism should deal with a bullshitter as president.
US citizens: call on Trump not to appoint Ebell.
Using a smartphone is bad for your romantic relationships.
The thugs that attacked pipeline protesters subsequently lied about what they had done.
If we are ever to be safe, we have to make those bullies pay for their lies. Blue Lies Matter!
US airport workers and fast food workers will strike on Dec 1.
Albuquerque thugs don't just cover up videos of their killings, they alter it too.
Medicare covers only part of the costs of treating cancer, leaving old Americans with bills they may not survive.
Assange has been questioned in the Ecuadorian embassy.
If Swedish prosecutors really want to prosecute Assange in Sweden, they will be able to do so with little further ado provided they give the formal assurances they won't send him to the US. Their refusal to do so shows that they are not really interested in the crimes alleged against him, and only interested in an excuse to send him to the US.
Soon we will see what the Swedish prosecutors' next maneuver is.
Begging is banned in Lagos, and tens of thousands of people, most of them disabled or mentally ill, have been jailed in horrible conditions without trial.
Around the world, cities either are harsh toward beggars or try to give them help and treatment.
Raúl Castro has made some economic reforms in Cuba but has not increased human rights.
I think Cuba deserves human rights, but must be careful about how far to permit private business.
Cubans deserve democracy but have no experience in running democracy.
They could easily fall into the plutocrats' trap. Even US voters,
with much more experience have made the mistake of electing
politicians such as Clinton, Dubya and Obama that have
surrendered their countries to global business. How, then, to
lead Cuba to a democracy that won't allow multinationals to take
power?
As long as businesses are small, and have no political power, they are
safe and useful — though it is necessary to police them carefully so
that they don't think they can
get
away with stealing workers' pay and other abuses.
Perhaps the Cuban constitution should prohibit in a broad way the operation of foreign companies in the country. Buying and selling foreign goods, ok; letting a large multinational actually operate in the country, no.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Presidential Accountability Act.
Everyone: call on Egypt to free journalist Shawkan.
US citizens: call on US TV networks not to become Trump's lapdogs.
It is starting to appear that "homelessness [in Australia] is not just caused by government policy, it is government policy."
The book Burn Zone accuses individuals of campaigning to roast our planet.
It will take 15 years for the Great Barrier Reef to recover from massive coral death (caused to ocean temperature among other things).
More likely it will never recover, because even broader coral deaths will follow during that period.
Oil from the Big Spill has been found in feathers of land birds on the Gulf Coast.
Economic modelling says that a revenue-neutral carbon tax in the US would create jobs and economic growth, and increase the income of working people, as well as accelerating the reduction in CO2 emissions.
The crucial point is that the tax increases every year, and investors know that it will increase every year. This means that the pressure on investors to avoid future fossil fuel use is very strong.
The model for this study was revenue-neutral, but I don't think that a carbon tax has to be revenue-neutral. Perhaps the state should keep some of the money to spend on useful things such as infrastructure; that too puts the money back into circulation.
300 US churches have recently offered sanctuary to non-citizens without visas.
"Help the downtrodden" is the good side of Christianity. The bad side shows in Trump supporters those who wish to persecute someone.
Keep in mind that Obama has deported over 2 million unauthorized immigrants, in some cases because they committed minor crimes decades ago.
If Trump wants to adopt a harsher policy, what will he do? Deport jaywalkers?
As a new corruption scandal directly implicates coup-president Temer, nearly all the major parties in Brazil are supporting a bill to protect everyone in Congress from corruption accusations.
Will Self: "Are humans evolving beyond the need to tell stories?"
Reading the article, I think it is only speculation that this change (which affects a large fraction of young people but not all) is a pathway to any new capability. It seems more likely to me that it is a pathway to cognitive discapacity.
Tunisia is considering a new form of national ID card, which would be used for unspecified forms of tracking and surveillance.
Even nastier, a citizen would be punished for trying to decrypt the data in per own ID card.
The UN Human Rights Council continues to extend its support for privacy rights.
However, it is advocating insufficient measures — data "protection" rather than banning the accumulation of personal data.
The supporters of taking the UK out of the EU condemned a neutral agency that reports facts and estimates, because it didn't distort them to suit that side.
Their arrogance towards the truth resembles Trump's.
Schools in many southern US states still spank or beat students. It has bad effects on students, both in the short term and the long term.
The Tories are lower than vermin — Aneurin Bevan.
The EU has agreed to let companies send personal data to the US based on totally inadequate assurances.
Rules about the use of accumulated data are just a band-aid. To avoid tyranny and protect dissent and journalism, we need to forbid and prevent the accumulation of data about people.
Philip Morris, the tobacco company, set up an organization to deny scientific conclusions about the danger of second-hand smoke. To disguise itself, it sought to attack various other valid scientific conclusions, including that global heating would be dangerous. That was the beginning of organized global heating disinformation.
Exxon started funding it later.
Twelve Ideas Post-Election from Front Line Organizers.
Trump's Seven Techniques to Control the Media.
I think the etymology of "news media" given in the article is not quite correct — I think "media" refers to "medium of expression", in this case used to present news.
Millions of Americans face
constant financial stress due to their debt.
This causes them bodily, medical harm.
Elizabeth Loftus received a prize for standing by science against the
illusions of people who had been led to
invent and believe, as adults,
false memories
of child abuse that never happened.
The victims of real child abuse generally don't forget about it, and
don't need the help of a "recovered memory" practitioner to remember
that it happened to them. (They may wait many years before they
decide to talk about it — but that's not forgetting.)
On the other hand, it is not hard to convince a person to "remember"
imaginary abuse (or other imaginary events), using repeated sessions
and various techniques of manipulation. Thus, we should be skeptical
of criticizing anyone based on "recovered memories".
EU countries are
surrendering to car manufacturers
that want to continue
cheating on emissions tests.
The purpose of the state is to make companies like that bow to the
people's needs. The EU is, evidently, inadequate.
Global heating has
taken away Bolivia's water supply.
This problem is not of Bolivia's making — the US has done far more to
cause it — but to cope with it will require Bolivia to convince people
to have fewer children.
Linking Trump to the Ku Klux Klan Risks Boosting a Rump Organisation.
A small island in American Samoa has
replaced 100,000 gallons per year
of diesel fuel with solar power.
With batteries, no more fuel needs
to be burned.
American Samoa plans to end fossil fuel use by 2040.
But I think that is not soon enough, if it is to be a leader for the
rest of the world to get off fossil fuels fast enough.
Some reasons why the electoral college should refuse to vote for Trump.
Compared with 2012, Trump got more votes from nonwhites, apparently
because he talked about the
injustice of plutocratist politics
while Clinton (more honestly) did not.
This brought him within range for Republicans to
steal the rest of the way.
Trump was lying in
saying he would help,
of course.
Hedge Fund Managers Expect a Return on Their Investment in Donald Trump.
Michael Flynn has a history of making
untrue claims about facts.
The article also includes actions that
violated government security
rules more than Clinton did.
(It may not really have been harmful in Flynn's case, or in
Clinton's case. Rather, there was a risk in each case that it would
be harmful.)
With Trump, the only standard is a double standard. Nothing is
objectively right or wrong, for him, only an opportunity to praise someone (if that is his wish) or to condemn someone (if that is his
wish).
Australia says that the boat people it stores in Manus Island will be moved to Australia for medical care if their illnesses require this. Leaked documents show that bureaucrats work very hard to deny that this is necessary.
Thug departments in the UK (and, I suppose, the US) are rife with bigotry against homosexuals, but they pretend not to be.
Scholars call for a congressional investigation of possible foreign manipulation of the US election.
Progressives must pressure and replace business-subservient centrist Democrats. Just as the corporate-funded "tea party" targeted centrist Republicans and replaced them with science-denying theocrats.
Israel loves its anti-Semitic supporters in Trump's circle. "If an anti-Semite can be a Zionist then anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same."
The way to determine whether US election security was cracked is to check the ballots by hand.
It's too bad that the article uses the term "hack" as a synonym for "break computer security", but that doesn't alter the validity of the point.
The article advocates insisting on voting with paper because that system is the best. I agree.
The author asks us not to call him a Luddite — but this is precisely what Luddism means. Luddites believe we can reject technological "advances" when they are harmful. We reject the assumption that these harmful "advances" are inevitable and that resistance is useless (technological defeatism).
The use of "Luddite" as an insult is an indirect way of presuming technological defeatism. If we pander to that, it will will undermine our opposition to harmful technologies. We must be proud to oppose harmful "advances" in technology, proud to call ourselves Luddites.
Fellow Luddites, stand tall with me!
Even workers at factories in China are afraid of being employed by Chinese subcontractors.
Trump's campaign focused on bullying and bigotry as much as on economic losses for working class Americans.
Republican legislators in North Carolina seem to plan to override the voters' choice of a Democratic governor. The party is now spreading FUD to make it look less bad.
The voters didn't really choose those legislators, either: their districts have been gerrymandered. In effect, they intend to rig all elections for all state offices forever.
UK ministers knew they were applying a double standard in helping NIMBYs to block wind farms but suppressing them for fracking.
Scientists identify several possible tipping points in global heating that the current rapid Arctic melting may trigger in the next few years.
Global heating has made the US naval defenses vulnerable.
Of course, this is small potatoes compared with the danger of global heating itself. But it might get through the think heads of some denialists.
Much of the "renewable" wood burned in Europe is chopped down illegally from protected forests.
Everyone: call for auditing the vote in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. This is to double-check that the computers were not rigged.
US citizens: phone the Army Corps of Engineers to ask it to stop the Dakota Access pipeline.
phone numbers:
Main: 202-761-0011, press 9
Regulatory (permits) office: 202-761-5903
Hello, my name is ________. I'm calling from {city, state, county}. It is your duty to pull the permits for the Dakota Access pipeline immediately. Police are violently attacking peaceful water protectors, putting their lives in danger by blasting them with water cannons in freezing cold weather. You must stop this pipeline now. It is dangerous in the long term, but right now, this very second it is a threat to the lives at Standing Rock.
Putinism means considering nationalist legends so important that they should not be "besmirched" by historical facts.
I expect that many soldiers in Panfilov's division fought heroically. After all, they stopped the German advance on Moscow, and that could not have been easy. Does this need to be exaggerated? Isn't that victory good enough?
Trump's foreign policy will affect his business interests. Will those conflicts of interest influence his decisions?
Mainstream media headlines hide the violence of thugs against pipeline protesters.
Israeli soldiers watched passively as fanatical Israelis attacked Palestinians stuck in their cars while stuck at the soldiers' checkpoint. The violence could easily have killed some Palestinians.
Cryin'air is heading towards air fares of zero.
It could be very convenient for those who can afford to take time off work at all — if we ignore what the CO2 from those planes will do.
Yes, the Democratic Party Did Abandon the Working Class.
A registered sex offender is dying of Alzheimer's disease in a hospice, but he has been ordered to leave because it is too close to a facility for children.
The offender's crime, 30 years ago, did not involve children.
There were protests across Canada against a proposed new pipeline.
The Canadian government isn't as delusionist as Trump, but it is trying to keep the CO2 flowing as much as it can.
Fidel Castro's Dark Legacy:
Abuses, Draconian Rule And "Ruthless Suppression".
I'm very sad to recognize that the US has gone a long way in that direction:
from
torture by the CIA
to
violence against protesters
to
imprisonment without trial.
Fake scientists on editorial boards of journals demonstrate the vulnerability of scientific publishing to being gamed in various ways.
Indian feminists object to
a law that allows a man to get a divorce
from a wife that refuses to live with the man's parents.
Should anyone ever be forbidden to get a divorce? Is this really the
right way to protect women's rights — forcing men to be married to
them? It seems to define women's rights as "right to be married".
Jill Stein's interview about the election.
Germany Planning to 'Massively' Limit Privacy Rights. This includes surveilling people secretly with few limits.
The UK government doubles down on its proposed new censorship rules,
proposing to block access to sites that show
certain kinds of
"unconventional" sex.
There is no obvious motive except bureaucratic rigidity. But perhaps this is tactical. To undermine the fight against imposing censorship
level 1, propose censorship level 2. If the opposition fights that, censorship level 1 can be the "compromise".
A BBC journalist was arrested in Turkey while reporting on a mine disaster.
Malaysia's repressive ruler had
a opposition cartoonist arrested
The leader of Bersih is
still jailed.
Assad's army has captured part of eastern Aleppo.
Assad is guilty of many atrocities, and the rebels (mostly Islamist)
are likely to repress all groups other than Sunnis if they get a
chance. It's possible that Assad is the lesser evil.
Global heating is making grass pollen more allergenic. Combine this with a thunderstorm and it can kill people with asthma, even if they never had asthma before.
Israeli Arab-haters are accusing Palestinians of starting wildfires, and arrested a journalist based on mistranslating something he posted.
Trump's Presidential Hires And Advisors Own a Hell of a Lot of Fake News Sites.
Philippine President Duterte is trying to
negotiate peace with a leftist
armed rebellion
that has gone on for years.
The article is mistaken in saying that Duterte is the first to reject
military ties with the US. After Marcos fell, the Philippines closed
large US military bases. If I recall right, all of those bases were
closed.
In part of Mosul recaptured from PISSI, the locals are content with the Iraqi army and see no need to move to a refugee camp.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, adopted an ordinance requiring the thug department to get the city council's permission for any new surveillance technology.
Some Fake News Publishers Just Happen to Be Donald Trump's Cronies.
The UK snooper's charter means that a dispute with any company about decrypting users' data will happen entirely in private. The public will be forbidden to know whether companies are defending the public's privacy or not.
The CIA made hundreds of plans for killing Fidel Castro. Many of them were actually tried.
The US Army is forcing the pipeline protesters out of their main camp.
Look at the absurd excuse, "We're crushing your protest to
protect nonexistent bystanders when thugs attack you."
A proposed merger would give one company control of 90% of New Zealand's newspapers.
"Hunger follows displaced people around north-east Nigeria, as Boko Haram and [global heating] drive millions from their homes."
The Washington Post reports researchers identified Russian propaganda agencies' agents as originating some fake news to support Trump, and boosting circulation of other false news.
Glen Greenwald says those claims are bogus, and that the group that originated them seems to make false claims of support.
Soil loss is going so rapidly that the world has, on the average, 60
harvests left.
This cause of food scarcity will combine with other causes (drought,
flood, heat). If they destroy most of the world's agriculture well
before 2070, maybe we will not exhaust the soil.
A Trump-supporting state legislator wants to label inconvenient protests as "economic terrorism", following Putin's lead.
Drought has killed 1/3 of the trees in California.
Since global heating will mean more drought, I think many of those
trees will not be replaced.
A Canadian legislator won applause from the legislators of all parties, by reading out the misogynist abuse she had received and calling for all legislators to oppose such abuse.
Reductions in some state subsidies could reduce obesity. That would increase the cost of sugar.
Depending on GPS navigation systems to find your way could
cause the
hippocampus to atrophy.
It will take some time for experiments to test this theory, but other
short-term effects are a good enough reason to get out of that.
Huge rent increases are closing small retail stores in cities all
around the US,
while Amazon attacks them from the other side.
Please join me in never buying from Amazon.
There are so many
reasons.
Bernie Sanders Is Not Giving Up on Positive Change Because of an Election.
Burma is forcing Rohingyas to flee, through a series of atrocities.
A new analysis says that we have underestimated the likely amount of global heating &emdash; suggesting 5 to 7 degrees C is what we are heading for if we do not greatly curb emissions.
7C of heating would make large areas of the Earth's surface fatal to humans.
US citizens: urge Michael Flynn (Trump's advisor) to end US support for Salafi Arabia's bombing in Yemen.
Planet-roasters in Australia think it's bad that gas-guzzlers pay more tax than efficient vehicles. This disparity threatens to reduce sales of fuel. So they plan to replace the gasoline tax with a "road use tax" that would treat gas-guzzlers "fairly".
It occurs to me that the road use tax could offer the state a bonus: an excuse to track where cars actually go, as occurs now in London.
Whatever it takes to keep the CO2 flowing, they will do. Why didn't the editor ask the author to cover the most important effect of this proposed change?
Walmart was found guilty of making truck drivers to work without pay.
Everyone: call on Obama to dismantle the surveillance state so Trump can't get his hands on it.
"Child labor is part of most of what we buy today: what can we do?" We can start by providing birth control aid to places with a high birth rate (and lots of children). This would help protect the environment and the wild from an excessive human population, as well as putting an end to child labor.
The leader of Bersih, the Malaysian nonviolent anticorruption movement, has been imprisoned without charges under a law supposedly directed at "extremists".
Everyone: Thank the California Democratic Party for rejecting money from Big Oil.
How the idea of "social entrepreneurship" undermines efforts to make the world better.
US citizens: call on the EPA to retract the invalid report about fracking and water supplies.
Bahrain has freed Ebrahim Sharif who faced charges of "inciting hatred" for calling on people not to forget the regime's denial of human rights.
Trump's proposed Secretary of Education is a billionaire that has worked for years to undermine public schools.
The ruins of Nimrud, recently captured from PISSI, need guarding right away.
Egypt will try around 300 accused violent Islamists together.
Their goal is to impose a harsh version of Islamic law. This attacks everyone's human rights but especially women's.
In recent years the Islamists have turned to terrorism, but the Egyptian state practices terrorism too. It may kill or imprison anyone who is in the wrong place and time, and the trials are a joke. Those people might be guilty, but it is hard to see how a trial of 300 people in Egypt could be fair.
I advise people to stay away from Egypt because of the danger of state repression.
New roads in Asia threaten to divide tiger habit and wipe out the remaining tigers.
Trump has started to distance himself from his Nazi supporters.
It's better than if he did not distance himself from them.
White Nationalists? Alt-Right? If You See a Nazi, Say Nazi.
Today's governments fail to try to address the global problems that will affect all countries.
Monbiot is wrong about Sanders. He did not say he would bring good jobs back from Mexico; he said he would fund public works. But that's a small detail in the article.
The Facebook news feed, seen as an instance of the AI apocalypse.
It is important to keep in mind that Facebook is bad for many other reasons. This is one more reason to oppose it, but we had plenty already.
It is unfortunate that the article uses the term "content" to refer to published text. Just because CNN does that is no reason why we should follow its example.
The Facebook feed algorithms are firmly under the control of (certain specific) humans. Surely they are so circumscribed that they can't even raise the question of whether to obey what those humans want.
This demonstrates that danger area of AI is much broader than what we usually suppose: even if the AI is firmly under the control of some humans, that does not make it safe, not by a long shot.
The evil side of Islam shows itself in Turkey as girls who are raped (or come close to being raped) are forced into marriage.
While the rapists do the immediate wrong, the parents that fail to support their daughters against rapists are equally wrong.
"The new [global heating] story must be one of rapid transition."
It would be wise not to use the mild term "climate change" which was chosen to downplay the danger.
Trump's tax cut for the rich will be accompanied by a tax increase for the poor.
But the big screw is the cuts in the support that low-income or unemployed or disabled Americans depend on for their lives.
How to Interview Extremists — And Avoid Normalising Racism.
Will the Catholic Church Ever Earn Women's Forgiveness?
Pompeo, Trump's choice to head the CIA, advocates religious war, with the US presented as representing Christianity.
What would Jesus do in regard to waterboarding?
Facebook has developed software to allow various countries to directly control censorship of what useds in that country can see.
Pipeline protester Sophia Wilansky was gravely injured by a thug's grenade. If she doesn't lose her arm, she will not be able to use it much again.
The thugs continue to maintain absurd lies about what caused this.
Militarization of US thugs regularly kills people.
The Tohono O'odham nation will fight to stop any wall across its land, which is divided between Mexico and the US.
Opposing Belgium's shot-in-the-dark system for tracking people's travel (and lots more about each traveler).
The New York Times contributes to false news reporting.
There is a big difference between fabricating bullshit every day and supporting the false "official story" on some major issue. They both do harm, they both mislead people, but the former also attacks the very idea that we can find out the truth. So it might be useful to have a system block the former even if it doesn't block the latter.
More on the danger that thugs created by keeping burned-out vehicles chained to the road to the pipeline protest camp, and the danger of their attack with various not-usually-lethal but often dangerous weapons.
US citizens: call on Congress to resist Trump and preserve government health care.
US citizens: Call on Congress to reject Sessions.
There is evidence that vote-counting machines in some states were manipulated in favor of Trump. Will Clinton call for a recount?
US citizens:
call
on Obama to protect the Arctic and Atlantic permanently from
drilling.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Trump plans to cancel NASA's Earth science division so it can't help us understand global heating.
Thermometers now suffice to observe the advance of global heating, but NASA could help us see how far away from disaster we are.
In Central America, gangs force young women into sexual slavery by threatening to murder their families.
These families have to flee, often to another country, to escape the gangs.
To describe being a sought-after victim as "a crime" is unclear thinking — it is the first step towards blaming the victim. We must insist on distinguishing moral responsibility from practical cause.
Canada proposes a massive privatization.
The need to improve infrastructure is no reason for privatization. Canada should tax the businesses, not let them buy public assets to squeeze the public.
Trump Formally Picks Two Net Neutrality Opponents To Head FCC Transition.
Erdoğan proposes to give himself more power and allow himself to remain president/tyrant until 2029.
If that's not long enough, he could easily extend his rule as many decades as he wants.
China Emerges as Global Climate Leader in Wake of Trump's Triumph.
Since what's at stake is to avoid global disaster, I think leadership from China would much better than the incompetent leadership the US has offered so far.
"As a judge, I can see the racism embedded in the [UK legal] system."
A federal court ruled that Republicans' gerrymandering in Wisconsin is unconstitutional because it was designed to make Republicans win.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to aid Flint with its water, now.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call for overhauling the Democratic National Committee.
Big US front companies set up an organization to make Bangladeshi factories implement fire safety is not trying very hard.
This doesn't surprise me. Those companies don't really want to protect the lives of the clothing workers to whom they pay only a pittance. They just want to deflect public criticism.
In effect, the wolves' boss is responsible for safety of the henhouse.
Leaving the EU has become a reason to offer businesses tax cuts.
The only good reason for any country to leave the EU is to treat business less spinelessly than the EU requires. But if the leaders of that country are plutocratists, they will treat it as an opportunity to do the opposite.
Trump's hotel in DC has become a way for foreign diplomats to suck up to him. Maybe others, too.
Trump is not concerned about conflict of interest, because he knows he has only one interest: his own success. He isn't concerned about appearance of conflict of interest, because it's just another opportunity for him to respond with an absurd claim that it's actually good for us.
The UK's inquiry into joining in the invasion of Iraq was set up with secret restrictions on its scope, intentionally to protect individuals from being punished for this enormous crime.
Trump's cruelest immigration plan is to deport people who were brought to the US as children many years ago.
What would you do if sent to another country that you haven't seen since you were 7 years old? You might not even remember the language spoken there. If you were 14 months old at the time, you might never have learned it.
Even if you want less immigration overall, we should not kick out people who have grown up in the US and hardly recall any other country.
A Republican proposed making protests that block traffic a felony.
It is standard right-wing policy to repress protests, except those carried out by armed right-wingers.
It is dark now in the Arctic, but the temperature is going up. It is already 20C above the usual temperature for the Arctic. Ice is melting when water ought to be freezing.
We need political help 20 years ago!
Trump: publicly criticizing Pence is "harassment."
His definition of "harassment" is "any criticism of my side". That's why, when Trump calls on people to beat someone up, he does not think that is harassment.
A large fraction of Japanese adults never find a mate, never have sex, and fall in love with game characters or dating simulations.
I can understand fantasizing about love for an imaginary person, but why bother going on an expensive trip to a special hotel for such mixed-reality-level couples?
Voting for Trump was a shameful thing to do; shaming people for it is legitimate.
A miniature low power WiFi device is as small as a postage stamp.
Is anyone developing a device to find any of these devices in your home? And, optionally, to fry them?
Facebook must stop presenting users with a "news feed" which is not composed of real journalism.
Greensburg, Kansas, had to be completely rebuilt after a tornado. They rebuilt for energy efficiency and saved lots of electricity.
It seems to me that the resistance to necessary green measures is not natural for right-wing Americans. Rather, denialist money and PR has led them to consider denialism part of their faith.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to
put a stop to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to attacks
on protesters.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
Proposing the Clean Deal, a compromise between Republicans and Democrats that would benefit the US and the environment.
"Advocates of the knowledge society once promised we could have our cake
(an extreme form of capitalism) and eat it too (personal freedom). It
turned out to be a ruse. Now workers have the worst of both worlds."
When business has the whip hand, workers naturally get the worst of
everything.
Two black officials criticized Sessions for racist remarks; this denied him a judgeship. It appears Sessions arranged to prosecute them in retaliation.
The Tories keep squeezing the NHS for funds, figuring they will make it so ugly that people will forget that it was once good. The latest trick is to tell doctors to check patients' ID. Some doctors say they will refuse.
Okke Ornstein has been sentenced to prison in Panama
for the "crime"
of writing to expose corruption there.
That's more or less a Trump-style government.
Trump's "infrastructure plan" is a fraud. Instead of funding infrastructure, which could be useful, it would only give construction companies a tax cut.
"Our grandchildren will face the economic terror trickling down from the greedy top."
An example from China shows where Trump's supporters are taking society. Chinese distrust all media knowing it is controlled by the state, so they fall into trusting rumors, which are mostly run by the state too.
Guber has been found in Denmark to be an illegal taxi service. Some drivers were prosecuted first, but now Guber itself may be prosecuted there.
Trump's choice for CIA director supports torture.
The Republicans' budget bill is full of provisions to help various companies cheat or screw the public.
Thugs in North Dakota attacked hundreds of pipeline resisters with
fire hoses.
This was was even nastier than it would usually be, since
the temperature was freezing; wetting them put their lives in danger.
Of course, the thugs lied about it afterward.
26 people were taken to a hospital afterward.
The thugs used other weapons too.
Yellow-Breasted Buntings 'Being Eaten to Extinction by China'.
The worst drought in 900 years in the lands around the Mediterranean is probably due to human activity.
Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.
For me, career success is not the most important issue.
I judge social networks based on other criteria; thus, I judge
Facebook
and
Twitter
very differently.
But it is clear that using them very frequently is going to be bad for
you.
The Republican Deficit Hawks Abandon Their Religion.
Republican politicians fought against deficit spending because it was
what the country needed. They don't actually stand for anything
except dooH niboR.
The UK officials pushing for approval of a controversial railway project planned to snoop on opponents and critics' private lives.
ACLU: help give Trump less surveillance power than Obama has.
Chris Hedges: (my summary) the Trump supporters have adopted a
nationalist
religion based on a supposed mythical savior — because they
saw no hope in reality. The left, absorbed in fussing about identity,
didn't offer them anything.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
I agree with the conclusions of this article. It's just as foolish to
choose a candidate for being female or black as to choose one for
being male or white.
I've posted many times about patterns of injustice visited
systematically on certain groups, but I reject identity politics.
Rejecting Dangerous Saviors: Can "The People" Save the US?
The UN Global Commission on Drug Policy called for
ending punishment
of possession or use of drugs.
Hooray!
There are drugs for which it makes sense to limit sale, but repressing
the drug users is pure cruelty.
Things women can do to protect their rights from Trump and trumpery.
Some of them are also useful for men.
The author encourages being used by Facebook;
like most people, she does
not see the danger in that company. I hope you do.
The NAACP, ACLU and other groups are going to court to reverse Republican election-rigging in various states, arguing that they were won by Clinton.
US Nazis cheer the victory of their mascot, Trump.
Trump's campaign encouraged them, so he can't wash his hands of them;
it's his responsibility to oppose them now. He hardly does that at
all; indeed,
through his association with Bannon,
he continues to
support them.
Hundreds of thousands of American women have tried to self-induce abortions because of existing policies of the Christian theocrats.
Santiago Sánchez Ramírez posted videos demonstrating lack of security at events in Spain. This seems to have embarrassed the authorities so much that they want to imprison him for 9 years.
Product assembly plants in Malaysia use migrant workers in forced labor.
Here's an example:
a Samsung plant.
Malaysia is not a poor country itself, but it competes with China and
Bangladesh in permitting countries to mistreat workers and pay them
poor country wages.
Business-supremacy treaties
were designed specifically to pressure states into such competition.
We must get rid of them.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Stop Mass Hacking Act.
Here is more information about the issue.
Russia is systematically bombing hospitals in east Aleppo; all have been destroyed.
Philosopher Richard Rorty predicted Trump's rise, and how it would follow from mistakes and weakness of the left.
For the US left, focusing on identity and equality seemed like the best approach because it didn't require a direct fight with powerful business. Unfortunately, if you don't defeat powerful business, you don't protect people's interests, or democracy.
A thug has received minor discipline for punching a woman in the face as she was held by two other thugs. (They were arresting her based on their mistake.)
This is not enough. Thugs who engage in completely unjustified violence, even though it does not maim or kill the victim, should face prosecution and substantial prison sentences.
It is important to prosecute this frequently precisely because it is a smaller form of violence than killing, and occurs much more often.
Zika: Let's Give Women the Contraception They So Desperately Want.
Court Says Police Need to Make Time for "This Constitutional Bullshit".
Note that one other cause of the problem is that people doing various jobs have been trained to prepare always for the worst imaginable case.
The US is stuck in a war/torture/terrorism spiral, and the only way to get out is to change its actions.
Arthur Heeler-Frood wanted freedom. In the past, leaving home at 15 was normal.
Trump's contempt for democracy and human rights is already encouraging tyranny all across the world.
The article exaggerates in a few points. For instance, substantive disagreements about how to "handle Russia" are not a problem, and the supposition that it is one seems to be support for the neocons' desire for sharp military confrontation with Russia. Russia is far less powerful both militarily and economically than China.
EU officials have recognized, privately, that some large companies have dangerous levels of economic power.
School teachers staff are being replaced with "pod people".
The article is about the UK, but similar things happen in the US.
Gold mining using mercury in the Peruvian Amazon has made fish so toxic that people don't dare eat them.
Flaky Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser would be dangerous.
The US government presented, in the Marrakesh climate meeting, a roadmap for how the US could reduce greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050.
But it isn't a detailed plan, let alone a policy proposal (not that Obama could implement one now).
Why did Obama wait until this was ineffective? If he had announced it two years ago it might have had a political effect.
Fake news stories were more popular on Facebook, on the average, than real news stories.
Increased concentration of wealth in the US means that donations to charity are also more concentrated.
Why Democrats and Progressives should refuse to cooperate with Trump.
The idea that you can make an evil system less so by supporting it, to change it "from within", is usually self-delusion. Cases of success are very rare, and aside from that, you're doing harm.
However, I think Sanders's approach was the best: he offered to cooperate if Trump did something good for Americans in general, while condemning the bad things Trump is likely to do.
Trump Isn't Hitler. But We Should Act Like He Is.
A funny/sad filk of the Marines' Hymn.
The NSEERS program that Trump might resurrect for registering all Muslims visiting the US has one major flaw: it was totally ineffective for finding terrorists. No one covered by that program has been convicted of any terrorism-related offence.
Since the FBI is constantly trying to find people to entrap as "terrorists", either the info was never given to the FBI or none of those people could be drawn into anything criminal, not even in fantasy.
48 poor countries have promised large greenhouse gas cuts.
Now it's up to a few powerful rogue states, led by the US.
Obama cited a false legal principle as an excuse for not pardoning Snowden.
Everyone: call on the Anti-Defamation League to stop defending land-grabs in Palestine, to gain the moral high ground against anti-Semitism and other bigotry.
US citizens: call on Democrats to try to block the nomination of Sessions for Attorney General.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to scrutinize Sessions carefully.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
The head of the Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against anti-semitism, says he will register as a Muslim if Trump requires all Muslims to register.
Two major internet retailers have dropped Trump brands in response to boycott pressure.
It's a good campaign to try. Note that I would never buy from these companies, because they offer no way to buy anonymously.
Obama has banned oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean for five years.
It's useful to do this, as Trump will bring discredit on himself by cancelling the decision.
Senator Sessions, that Trump has nominated for Attorney General, supports taking people's property ("forfeiture") without convicting them of a crime, and endorses the War on Drugs. He also wants to keep lots of people in prison.
He has also made racist statements.
After attacking Clinton for not being strict about the manner for protecting state secrets, Trump is considering nominating General Petraeus, who famously gave secrets to his lover/biographer.
As the article explains, the government already applies these laws selectively — dissidents get punished, establishment supporters don't. But Trump wants to take this even further.
California's drought has now killed a hundred million trees. Each year, tens of millions more die.
Trump decided to settle with the students that sued Trump University for fraud, apparently to avoid showing evidence that would look very bad.
If it were not bad about him, he would have let us see it, so we can rationally assume the worst about it.
"The UK now has a surveillance law that is more suited to a dictatorship than a democracy."
Activists for clean government held a large march in Malaysia. Naturally, prime minister Razak prohibited the march, but they held it anyway.
"Bersih" means "clean" in bahasa Melayu.
A two-year-old biological boy in Canada decided quite firmly and insistently to identify as female. Her mother yielded to this, and courts then took custody away from her.
Most ivory obtained from killing elephants is being stockpiled to keep prices high.
To stop it, perhaps we must stop the illegal sale of products made from ivory, whether now or in the future.
There have to be a lot of final purchasers of ivory products. It can't be too hard to pretend to be one.
Nov 30 is Remembrance Day for Lost Species: by mourning forms of life that we have wiped out, we can try to awaken people to the need to avoid wiping out more species.
Homeless families are decreasing in the US, but not homelessness of individuals.
"I'm glad cryonics is legal — we should all have rights over our bodies."
Everyone: call on US mayors to declare sanctuary cities.
Everyone:
call
on Obama to declare a Standing Rock National Monument to block the
Dakota Access Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Kofi Annan: "State impunity is back in fashion — we need the international [criminal] court more than ever."
What tech companies must do so Trump can't use them against the public.
I am very glad to see the EFF start campaigning against collecting data about people, rather than only for regulating how the data is used.
Trump-inspired acts of hatred are occurring around the US.
A British university's student government purports to have banned certain newspapers from the campus.
I gather they are right-wing exploitative newspapers, but still, no one should be able to ban people at the university from having copies of those newspapers.
"The Tragedy of the Two Americas" — actually, two groups of Americans, both mistreated by the elites, each seeing the other as the threat.
Arthur Heeler-Frood, the British teenager who shocked his parents by leaving home to seek education on the street and left a friendly note behind, faces questioning by the thugs who claim this is an attempt to "help" him.
The media made a fuss, pretending he was in danger and needed to be "saved". I don't think they deserve thanks for "protecting" him from their imagination.
He might really be in danger if he tells the thugs anything about what he did.
If Colombia and the FARC make peace, that will create a big opportunity to extract more fossil fuels and poison the environment. Extractivists are champing at the bit to reach areas previously protected by the civil war.
Google has responded to pressure and reenabled the accounts of people who resold some mobile phones.
That's sensible of Google, but does not excuse putting "terms of use" on a product. That should be prohibited under all circumstances.
Giant mice (well, giant by mouse standards) threaten to wipe out the seabirds that nest on Gough Island. Some of them live nowhere else.
Since the mice do not seem inclined to control their population, people are thinking of killing them off. I am in favor. However, it creates a moral conundrum: those mice are a subspecies found nowhere else in the world. Perhaps even a new species, if they and normal-size mice don't breed together. (I wonder if they do.) To protect the birds, we have to decide not to protect the mice.
I agree that it is better to lose the mouse subspecies that didn't exist 150 years ago than to lose the birds.
A similar effort on Australia's Macquarie Island was a big success.
Bags of leaves, for salad, increase the risk of salmonella infestation by 2400 times.
The bacteria can grow under those conditions even in a refrigerator, and they can't be washed off the leaves.
I love spinach in salads, but I will not get those bags any more.
The Democratic Party organization is totally disconnected from Democratic voters. That needs to be changed.
Women's rights groups brace for Trump: "We are used to fighting impossible odds".
Racist night-mayor Rudy Giuliani faces opposition as a possible choice for Secretary of State.
NAFTA hurt US workers, but it did far bigger harm to Mexican farmers.
The beneficiaries were mainly the businesses — but that's what you'd expect from a business-supremacy treaty.
"Class and identity politics are not mutually exclusive. The left should use this to its benefit."
I think it is a mistake to focus politics on "class" or (group) "identity". We should focus politics on justice and injustice. When injustice systematically happens to people because they are in group X, I will campaign against it — whether I belong to group X is beside the point.
Trump-petters eagerly take satire as true and pass it on as false news.
We can rebuild the ancient buildings that PISSI has destroyed, for visitors to see.
However, nothing can recover the remaining information yet to be discovered by further study of the original material of those sites. That loss is forever. If PISSI bulldozed anything that wasn't yet thoroughly excavated, it can never be excavated now.
Trump thinks he can drive facts into the dust no matter what the proof.
A newly discovered oil deposit in Texas could make some people 900 billion dollars, but if they extract it and sell it, they will destroy civilization.
Defying weak laws and divestment, many new fossil fuel infrastructure projects are being constructed. States and people must protect the activists that try to stop them.
We have to fight to stop them, because even using all the facilities that exist is projected to make disaster inevitable.
Trump adviser and proposed official Michael Flynn is not a lobbyist. He just runs a lobbying company.
Trump is asking appointees to pledge not to lobby for 5 years after leaving office, but there are many ways they could slither out of the pledge. And if he does not clean up his own corrupt conflicts of interest, his example will spread dirt everywhere.
Slovenia has amended its constitution to declare water a "public good managed by the state" and affirm everyone's right to clean water.
PISSI's branch in Afghanistan took over one small region and has been impossible to eradicate.
Malaysian editors face charges before Malaysia's special cybercensorship court after writing about the prime minister's corruption.
They are accused of publishing something "offensive" in the internet. (I refuse to refer to publications using the deprecative term "content".) Such laws are unjust because offending people is a part of freedom of speech — and this case shows how important a part it is. I can well understand why an official would feel offended by accusations of corruption, especially if the official claims the accusations are untrue.
If the accusations present good proofs that they are really true, the official will find them even more offensive. And annoying, too. Since the publishers will be aware that the official will be annoyed, the "intent to annoy" criterion will not be hard to argue for.
Any law that prohibits truthful exposure of official corruption is clearly wrong.
EPIC has sued to stop the FBI from handing over people's biometric data to the Pentagon.
The main danger of these biometrics is not that recognition is imperfect but that recognition is possible. For non-criminal citizens to be safe from this biometric data, we need to stop the FBI from keeping it.
Russia has blocked access to LinkedIn because it doesn't store users' data in Russia.
Storing their data in Russia makes them less vulnerable to spying by the US and more vulnerable to spying by Russia. On general principles, the latter is a greater danger for Russians. While US snooping agencies often defy and twist the law, Russian spy agencies need not contend with any law or any human rights.
Emily Johnston, faced with years in prison for shutting off an oil pipeline, says that she finds the consequences of burning fossil fuels more dreadful than going to prison.
US citizens: call on Obama to ban offshore drilling now.
Of course, Trump could reverse the decision. If he does, the moral onus will be on him. If Obama refuses to make the decision, the moral onus will be on Obama and Obama will have helped to legitimize Trump.
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Obama to cancel the Dakota Access Pipeline now.
The White House comments line is 202-456-1111.
A journalist in Ecuador faces criminal charges for publishing politically scandalous leaks.
Some US Jews and Muslims are joining together to defend both groups from bigotry and protect their human rights.
The International Energy Agency says there could be an oil shortage by 2020.
What it means by "shortage" is that demand could exceed supply. That does not mean that humanity would have less oil than it needs. What it really needs is to use even less oil.
For the sake of curbing global heating, we must make sure that demand does not grow. One way is to increase taxes on petroleum products; that will keep the demand down.
The IEA also recognized that pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are far too weak.
Statements Trump made as a candidate about clean government. To be compared with what he does now and henceforth.
A British woman, who made the mistake of going to Dubai, was raped there. Now she is being prosecuted there for having sex with the unknown rapists.
Islamic law is especially cruel and unjust to women, but men are not spared. Those who believe in freedom and justice must work to abolish Islamic law.
Going to Dubai was a foolish mistake, but it does not excuse the rapists. They are still the ones culpable for the rape.
Trump recognizes the reality of global heating and its effects, when his own property is at stake. He just refuses to help save the rest of the world.
Google cuts off accounts for users that resell Pixel phones. They lose access to all of their mail and documents stored in Google servers under that account.
It should be illegal to put any "terms of service" on a physical product. It should also be illegal to close an account on a service without letting the user download whatever was stored there.
These events provide another reason why schools must never ask a student to use a service account linked to the student's name.
AirBnB seems to have resisted an attempt to study whether black users face discrimination in it.
Trump Begins Filling Environmental Posts with Clowns.
I think the term "saboteurs" fits them better. If you are under 30 years old there is a good chance that you will be killed by global heating in a few decades. Trump and other extractionists are planning the biggest act of mass murder in history, and you're the target.
Clinton would not have openly destroyed the EPA and climate defense but she showed no inclination to take the vigorous measures needed to evade disaster.
The DNC is not weak, it is corrupted by rich people's money.
Despite weak laws and divestment, many new fossil fuel infrastructure projects are being constructed. States and people must protect the activists that try to stop them.
We have to fight to stop them, because even using all the facilities that exist is projected to mean disaster.
The UK has made it risky to sue to challenge government projects that could (for instance) harm the environment, alleging for instance that the environmental permission applications were invalid.
This is basically a plan to make environmental protection laws easy to violate.
Welcome to Swamp Trump — Please Don't Feed the Gators.
How Australia And Other Developed Nations Have Put A Stop To Gun Violence.
The example I recommend to the US is that of Canada. Many Canadians still have guns, but few people in Canada are shot with them.
China reprimanded Trump for denying global heating and pointed out that Reagan and Bush I launched global climate defense negotiations.
Dubya was the first president to be so submissive to the oil companies that he worked explicitly to thwart efforts to protect the world from disaster.
Obama made small steps in the right direction while mostly continuing Dubya's practical policies and not saying much.
US senators, including theocrat Marco Rubio, have proposed personal sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for kidnaping Hong Kong booksellers.
In principle I support efforts to make China back off from crushing freedom in Hong Kong, and I would not reject an initiative just because it gets support from right-wing theocrats. But I think this response is too small to make China concede anything, and more likely to provoke a hostile response.
An ex-Russian thinks Trump will be like Putin: a gang leader who uses bigotry but only really wants to repress those who oppose him or get in his way.
This may be true — I've suspected it too — but the bigots that Trump has made socially acceptable will continue to recruit, with or without further support from him. Moreover he seems inclined to continue to give the bigots help (for instance, Bannon).
Meanwhile, Pence is a solid theocratic right-wing extremist.
The West faces a choice: to ally with most Muslims to defeat the jihadi fanatics that kill them, or to equate them to the fanatics and drive them into the fanatics' camp.
Recognizing that human grievances drive people of Muslim background to become devout and fanatical at once, we must end Israel's siege/occupation of Palestine — which is called for by justice anyway.
It's bad news for Australian wildlife and the environment as one state, perhaps 10% of Australia's land area, weakens protection for native bush. This will increase greenhouse gas emissions too.
UK: Cut After Cut Has Left a Disabled Woman with Nothing to Live On.
In the US, many people are told to go die if they can't find work, but disabled people may get support via medicaid. Paul Ryan wants to put an end to that.
There have been many close encounters between airplanes and drones.
The chances that one of these results in a collision are small but significant. (5 meters away from the plane includes an area several times the plane's own cross section.)
Many drones are small and lightweight. Does anyone know how likely it is that a collision with a plane travelling at (say) 200 miles an hour (since it's close to landing or taking off) is to damage the plane? I guess the chance of significant harm is small — this is not like colliding with another plane.
It would be good to find a solution for avoiding the danger, but we shouldn't panic about it.
One of the bad things about Clinton was her association with neocons that wanted to launch more wars. Trump didn't seem to support that, but he may be about to appoint a militaristic neocon as Secretary of State.
In order to turn the neocons into ex-cons, we first need to prosecute them. Perhaps for the crime of aggressive war.
Anna Yocca has been in jail for almost a year under various charges because she tried to give herself an abortion.
If we don't want women to get abortions after almost 6 months of pregnancy, we should make it easy for them to do so earlier.
The thug that shot and killed Philando Castile has been charged with manslaughter.
A British boy left home, saying he wanted to go off on his own. This article takes for granted that this was unthinkable and that he needed to be rescued by thugs.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject Steve Bannon as official White House bigot.
Here's what makes Bannon so bad.
Florida adopted a "stand your ground" defense for shooting someone dead in 2005. Since then, the rate of killings with guns has increased substantially.
This is not proof of causality, but it seems plausible.
Many thugs kill dogs when they raid a house without the slightest reason.
Trump wants to deport immigrants who were charged with crimes but not convicted. Trump does not understand that punishing people without a conviction is an injustice.
In general, I think it is legitimate to deport foreigners who are present without authorization in the US (or whichever country). To prioritize those who committed serious crimes is acceptable too.
However, if people were brought in to the country as children and grew to adulthood in the country, they should be given citizenship, even if they committed minor crimes.
Israel is using Trump as cover to legalize robbery of land from Palestinians, and even annexation of additional parts of the West Bank.
Margaret Thatcher's lasting legacy is that most Britons are getting poorer and social mobility is reduced.
As in other countries, the victims often support right-wing candidates that scapegoat marginal groups instead of pulling back against the elites that are responsible.
Facebook and Google have taken steps against being used to distribute false news.
However, Facebook has other harmful effects, and is actions against fake news (even if effective against that problem) may make the others worse.
The battleground states in this election were also states with a high rate of foreclosure of housing.
Fear of Trump is leading some tech companies to consider collecting less data about people.
I hope it persuades some, but I don't think it will persuade them all.
Canadian schools, when they have indigenous religious ceremonies, violate religious neutrality.
Obama, responding to Americans' rejection of his business supremacy treaties, calls for leaders to reassure people that they are "being heard", but not for any concrete change in the rejected policies.
Large temporary agencies in the UK cut their payments for workers' health care by pretending they are employed by many small dummy companies.
A proposed pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver is likely to wipe out the resident population of Orcas there.
Meanwhile, the CO2 from burning additional fossil fuels from Alberta, no matter what kind, or how they are exported, could wipe out a million other species.
Trump has promoted antisemitism and made it acceptable in the US again. It adds to the viciousness of his other forms of bigotry.
"Fellow white evangelicals: your votes for Trump shook my faith."
One neighborhood in Montreal is trying to resist gentrification by limiting the number of restaurants.
I don't think there is a human right to run a restaurant, so if this measure succeeds I will give my congratulations.
However, in the long term the ways to prevent gentrification are to reduce economic inequality, allow increased density of housing construction, and provide more opportunity for work (or at least prosperity) outside the centers of cities. Reducing population growth can help, too.
Russia has cancelled its weak support for the International Criminal Court after it criticized Putin's military takeover of Crimea.
If the ICC ultimately fails, I think that will be due to the failure of the US to support it. If the US had done so, it would be difficult for others to reject it; they would have appeared brutal.
Why Keith Ellison and not Howard Dean should be head of the Democratic National Committee.
President Hollande wants to extend the French State of Emergency for 6 more months, till May.
Will it ever be allowed to end? I doubt it. Unless the French people remember how to fight for their freedom, they will never get it back.
The UK has finally denied the Chagos Islanders the right to return to the islands from which they were forcibly removed to make a US naval base.
The UK created a nature reserve which was widely seen as an excuse to keep them from returning home. Some environmentalist groups advocated the denial as a means to keep the people out entirely.
I think it must be possible for civilization to have a part and for wildlife to have a part.
Jakarta's Christian Governor to Face Blasphemy Trial over Islam Insult Claim.
The government ceded to the demands of religious fanatics, stirred up over decades by Salafi Arabia, who are using him as an opportunity to deny equal rights to all the non-Muslims in Indonesia.
The right to criticize a religion is an essential part of human rights. It appears that Ahok did not really do that; I think he would not have won the election if he really had criticized the religion of most of the voters in his region. But someone's innocence or guilt under a manifestly unjust law is a distraction from the guilt of the law itself.
The idea that no one but a Muslim should be a leader over Muslims is in itself an example of the bigotry that often embodies Islam. We are obligated to respect people's right maintain such a view, but the view itself deserves only condemnation.
Everyone: to the US press: don't "normalize" Trump and his henchmen.
Here's what the issue is.
Germany has admitted defeat for the TTIP.
Even if everything else Trump does is vicious, we must credit Trump with this one good deed. Activists had pretty much defeated the TTIP, but there's a difference between "pretty much defeated" and "defeated conclusively". With so much political pressure to agree to an antidemocratic deal, states can often find a way to bypass democratic obstacles.
Trump has invested at least a million dollars in companies that are involved in the Dakota Access Pipeline, and one of them paid at least 100,000 to his campaign.
It seems like a corrupt conspiracy to me.
1/3 of young teenagers in the UK encounter bigotry on the internet.
Children who see insults aimed at groups they belong to may feel hurt, but those that are targets of bigotry were sure to encounter it sooner or later. If they are told lies about their own ethnic groups, they will probably find that their families correct the lies.
I am worried more about children that see hatred expressed towards other groups. I worry that they will imitate it, and that they will believe the lies because they will not know anyone who will correct the lies.
So this suggests to me that it might be good to make persuasive refutations of bigoted lies, and good examples of rejecting hate available where more kids will see them.
Canada Gives $3.3bn Subsidies to Fossil Fuel Producers Despite Climate Pledge.
A man confessed to giving Qadhafi's money to Sarkozy's presidential campaign.
Kerry says a cease-fire has been agreed in Yemen.
Jill Stein: it is fallacious to blame other parties for the fact that people didn't vote for Clinton, or to assume that they would have voted for Clinton if the other parties didn't exist. Instead, push for instant runoff voting.
She could make her point stronger if she didn't legitimize the Republicans' dishonest "victory".
Why the Corrupt Rich Will Welcome Modi's "Surgical Strike on Corruption".
Trump will increase some threats to humanity's survival.
US citizens: call on states to negate the electoral college by passing the National Popular Vote act.
US citizens: call on Democrats not to cozy up to Trump.
Bahrain continues to repress anyone that criticizes the regime's disrespect for human rights.
"Sense About Science" tries to teach people not to question research results based on who paid for the research. It was founded by someone with ties to the tobacco industry.
Trump "empowers" his daughter as a substitute for respecting the rights of women in general.
In the Age of Trump, Why Bother Teaching Students to Argue Logically?
Trump's extreme misogynist supporters are a radical movement that could become violent and dangerous.
Local organizing against injustices in Russia continues despite Putin's power.
A plan to genetically study some African crop species could be the basis to harm farmers in Africa.
In principle, genetic engineering of these species could be a good thing — if the result is seed that farmers can freely grow and breed. But if it provides an opportunity for Monsanto and Bayer, or some other seed company, to impose its power over farmers, it will be a means to extract more money out of Africa.
The article repeats the common confusion of using the term "intellectual property rights", which confuses many different laws. The two laws which are pertinent here are patent law and plant variety monopolies. Each of these gives seed companies power to restrict farmers, but the two laws give different powers.
China's rulers rejoice in having a US president that admires unjust rule.
However, US presidents since from Clinton (and maybe Bush I) have been heading in the same direction.
Many cans of soda have more sugar than an adult should consume in one day.
The US Army has put a hold on construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, saying that it requires "additional discussion and analysis".
If it had done its job carefully, it would have said this before construction started. Environmental laws requiring environmental impact statements are ineffective if agencies accept incomplete statements. It should not take months of protests, and violence against protesters, to get an agency to recognize that requirements have not been followed.
Well, better late than never.
Trump may order officials to accept bogus environmental impact statements intentionally all the time.
Today is the Day of the Imprisoned Writer, and five writers that are now in prison have been specifically honored with support.
Damage from floods, storms and droughts costs over 500 billion dollars a year.
A century ago, such disasters were essentially natural. To continue calling them "natural disasters" nowadays is an error, because global heating and deforestation have become a considerable fraction of the cause.
In a few decades the annual damage will be far more than now.
Two journalists have been arrested in Burma and charged with the crime of "defamation".
That law is so vicious that Trump would be in favor of it.
Senator Warren is campaigning to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from Wall Street flunkies led by Trump.
Trump's expected actions are likely to indirectly increase the danger of extinction of humans.
Global heating has enabled tropical fish to spread away from the equator, to places where kelp forests are found, and the tropical fish destroy the kelp.
Once the kelp is gone, many species associated with it disappear too.
Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs.
Bigots for Trump already did so.
Shame on composer Wendy Carlos for copyright aggression.
Don't pay for anything that includes her music.
Many men loathe lewd "stag parties". It seems they participate because they don't know how to say no to social pressure.
I hope they start trying to resist social pressure soon. A few uncomfortable visits to a strip club won't ruin your life, but a habit of letting people pressure you into drinking to excess can make you an alcoholic, and that can kill you.
Masculine Culture Responsible for Keeping Women out of Computer Science, Engineering.
'It Was Too Hot, Even to Leave Home': Stories from the World's Hottest Year.
In Nigeria, Alaska, Russia, India, Finland, Thailand, Australia, Malawi, Brazil, the heat affects people's lives.
It's interesting that Boko Haram, like PISSI, seems to have got its chance from global heating.
TTIP Was Defeated by Activists — before the stolen election that Trump almost won.
Trump may be responsible for stopping the TPP from being passed in the US during the coming lame duck session of Congress. If so, we benefited, but his goal was not really to end the economic harm that globalization does to working people. He wants plutocracy with a different business model.
Users Around the World Reject Europe's Upload Filtering Proposal.
It mandates censorship on behalf of companies that have far too much power already. We need to make copyright weaker, not stronger.
It is regrettable that the EFF article disparages publications and creative works by calling them "content".
Cuba must take care when liberalizing its economy not to fall for the plutocrats' trickle-down idiocy.
Better analysis shows dams emit 25% more methane than was believed.
I wonder whether something can be done to reduce that, or else to collect the methane.
"He's right, the economy is sick — and businesses like Trump's are part of the disease."
Why Wallonia fought CETA, and what it won for Europeans and Canadians by doing so.
Obama will press for "meaningful debt relief" for Greece, now that he no longer has much influence.
Why didn't Obama push for this a year ago? Two years ago? Three years ago? Clearly he already knew what was harming Greece.
Trump's mouthpiece threatened to sue Harry Reid for an accurate condemnation of Trump.
This confirms that Trump will try to intimidate all criticism.
Important stories the US news media would cover thoroughly if it were Liberal.
The idea that US news media are Liberal is a right-wing lie. They want people who see the mainstream media to imagine that the truth is even more right-wing than what they find there.
Quebec thugs snooped on Canadian public radio reporters too.
An open letter to the thugs enforcing some laws against protesters in North Dakota, to help corporations disobey other laws.
The town of Cheran in Michoacan has kicked out gangsters and set itself as an autonomous indigenous community. However, other localities have not succeeded in replicating this. It seems to require strong social cohesion that is not found elsewhere.
We could get rid of Wall Street by 2050 through global heating.
Trump could destroy environmental protection in the US by appointing hypocritical officials with orders not to do the job. Obama did just that with agencies such as the SEC that are supposed to regulate Wall Street.
Sanders will continue the campaign to redirect Americans' anger at plutocracy into a movement that will honestly oppose it.
Amazon pressures its "self-employed" delivery drivers to drive without seat belts; they aren't given time to go to the toilet so they have to piss and defecate in the car.
This is perhaps not as bad for the individual as being unemployed, which is what they will become when Amazon gets driverless delivery vans. But that does not make it acceptable.
A lockdown in prison automatically creates tension. As a method to deal with tension among prisoners, it defeats itself if it is used very much.
Snopes.com continues its fact-checking service, but our political system no longer rejects lies.
The fake story about Ted Cruz and the ban on masturbation is funny because it is believable. It goes just a little beyond the sort of thing religious conservatives would really advocate.
Audi's proprietary software used a simple method to cheat on emissions tests: to activate a special low-emission gearshifting mode until the first time the car made a turn.
This is proprietary software at work. You can't trust a proprietary program with control of anything.
It was Clinton's own plutocratic nature that brought the election within stealing range for the Republicans,
Remember when polls showed Sanders had a better chance than Clinton against Trump? Sanders might have won by too many votes for the Republicans to steal.
Forget "Why?", It's Time to Get to Work.
Whether or not they favored Trump this time, and no matter who they favor in the future, this is clearly bad.
Paul Ryan wants to eliminate Medicare.
Republicans depend on the votes of older Americans — I see some hope that this plan can be stopped. However, it will be harder to stop the plans for tax cuts for the rich.
During Obama's presidency, many Democrats protected vicious state practices such as massive surveillance, torture, targeted killings, and imprisonment without trial.
Not all Democrats accepted these practices, but enough did so that we missed the chance to make it hard for Trump to use them.
Car manufacturers ask Trump to cancel fuel economy standards.
He has two reasons to do it: to please car companies, and to please oil companies. I expect he will do what those companies want.
Just 1 degree C of global heating has already altered ecosystems around the world. Some animals have evolved to be significantly smaller in just 50 years.
If you imagine that something killed all tall humans, humans could become substantially shorter in a few generations, because shorter humans already exist. But this rapid evolution can only go as far as the existing variation permits. To evolve to be even shorter would require a long time for mutation to make more variation.
A big fuss is made about a champagne party at a university, for the wrong reasons.
That college students already have an alcohol problem, and drank themselves into unconsciousness, is very grave. However, I don't see anything wrong in having sex at a party, or in jumping in a pond, if you want to do that.
Scump's victory has encouraged violent bigots of all stripes.
Obama defended massive surveillance, so now Trump gets to use it against the world.
Climate scientists warn, "There's no plan B" if Trump sabotages the already-insufficient plans to curb global heating.
Exit polls confirmed that Clinton won some of the states that were credited to Trump — but many people's votes were not counted.
Republican rule is like a roach motel for free elections.
Campuses Confront Hostile Acts Against Minorities After Donald Trump's Election.
US citizens: Stand with ACLU against Trump's bigotry and repression.
Trump's business interests add up to a broad net of conflicts of interest. Almost any decision he makes will be a matter of his own profit and loss.
He plans to handle this pervasive potential corruption the way he handled his bullying and bigotry: by insisting that there is nothing wrong with them.
The Pentagon doubled its estimate of civilian casualties from US bombings in Syria and Iraq since 2014. But most of the casualties known to Amnesty International are still not included.
Attacking Trump's narcissistic appeal with criticism of his wrongs bounced off him because his followers admired him for dismissing all possible criticism.
I disagree with the article's claim that that was the whole way Trump got as many votes as he did. But it played a role. Without it, he would not have got close enough to steal the election.
Proposing a ban on ads for junk food as a way to curb childhood obesity.
European Union citizens: sign the campaign against CETA and TTIP.
The web site does not work without running nonfree software, but it offers ways to sign by email or fax.
Trump seems likely to drop the pretense of pushing for a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, and effectively endorse the occupation and apartheid on a permanent basis.
I doubt that he will do all of these bad things, but I expect he is likely to make some things considerably worse.
Iraqi thugs tortured and killed villagers suspected of being supporters of PISSI.
Maybe those people did support PISSI, but that doesn't excuse killing them arbitrarily in a place that has been recaptured.
And nothing excuses torture.
Italy is providing training and support to Egyptian courts.
In addition to use of torture and the death penalty, Egypt's courts are basically irrational. They sometimes sentence hundreds of people at once hardly bothering to find out what each person did.
Since Egypt's courts will exist in any case, training judges in paying attention to details such as guilt or innocence seems like a good thing even if the other injustices continue, provided it can be done without endorsing Egypt's courts in any way,
However, providing facilities or equipment is going too far.
Brazilian politicians have proposed laws to shield themselves from prosecution.
Local Democrats warned the Clinton campaign that she was going to lose traditional working-class Democratic votes.
Right-wing extremists have many opportunities in Europe against parties that have surrendered to the banksters. I expect that, like Trump, they will adopt policies that screw the non-rich even worse if they win.
Robert Reich: It's Time to Dismantle the Democratic Party and Start Anew.
Facebook will stop allowing advertisers to discriminate by race, only in the specific areas where that is illegal in the US.
In other words, Facebook supports racism as far as the law allows.
Trump seems to be serious about bringing back torture in the CIA.
If Obama had prosecuted Dubya and other guilty parties, Trump wouldn't be able to do this.
The German government agreed to cut emissions 95% by 2050.
"Trans people are terrified of what lies ahead. We must look out for one another."
Trump will certainly approve the Dakota Access Pipeline, but the company is already disregarding Obama.
Facebook and other digital media have encouraged the spread of falsehoods — what can be done about this?
Facebook presents fake news like real news, with no attempt to check.
How Facebook provided the perfect platform for trumpery.
However, rather than begging Facebook to use its influence "better", I think we need to reduce its influence.
Some Czechs are working for reconciliation with the German families expelled from Czechoslovakia at the end of World War II.
Hitler used the presence of ethnic Germans in part of Czechoslovakia as an excuse to take over part of Czechoslovakia.
Companies Should Be Forced to Say How Much Tax They Pay And Where.
Also how much income they get and where. And many other things.
Trump wants to destroy the Dodd-Frank law so that business executives can more easily cheat their investors and clients.
"The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia."
The main responsibility for the Democrats' loss falls on the right-wing Democratic establishment, which made Clinton the candidate despite knowing she could easily lose.
Black Lives Matter refuses to be silenced by a racist president.
Another name for this movement could be Blue Lies Matter.
Trump will now inherit the official "kill list" that Obama didn't try to kill off.
Trump may be planning to privatize Social Security.
Four yeas ago, Trump called for eliminating the electoral college and letting popular vote decide the presidency. Maybe it would be a good idea, since it would have denied him victory this time.
In Salafi Arabia, thousands of foreign construction workers have been working for months without pay.
I hope that country has had to cut back its world-wide support for a malignant variety of Islam.
Brazil's substitute President Temer has been charged with taking bribes.
Four US states' citizens voted to raise the minimum wage.
One reason voters supported Trump is as a rejection of political correctness.
Objective measurements show that racism and sexism in the US are real and cause substantial injustice. For the sake of justice, we need to put an end to them.
However, the use of political correctness as a method has to be limited. We need to aim to win real support for equality, not just shame bigots.
In the UK, the state is more xenophobic than most people are.
For people who arrived as children, and are now entirely anglicized, it is absurd to send them back to their dangerous places of origin where they wouldn't speak the language and could never fit in.
The US does this, too.
Russia said that Trump's campaign was in
frequent
contact with Russian officials.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Do medical studies find a link between sugary drinks and diabetes? It depends on who funds them.
Will Trump destroy America? Here is how it might happen.
It won't necessarily happen, because Trump doesn't mean what he says.
Trump Won. Now We Organize to Block Him, Every Step of the Way.
In South Korea, abortion is a crime outside of specific circumstances. This is both wrong and dangerous.
What do you tell your children when a gross and obvious bully wins the presidency?
Naomi Klein: "It was the rise of the Davos class that sealed America's fate."
That's because dooH niboR "trickledown", and the globalization of increasing economic inequality, caused the economic decline for American workers that motivated many of them to support Trump.
Sanders pointed at the real enemy, but the establishment defeated him. (Through trickery in the Democratic National Committee, we now know.)
Meanwhile, Trump used typical right-wing scapegoating of groups with little power, to distract American whites from the real enemy.
US women: if your insurance covers an IUD, try it now before Trump can screw you.
In a Black Precinct in Georgia, Simply Finding the Polling Place Was a Challenge.
Republican election-rigging operates on many levels.
Somali-American Ilhan Omar has been elected to the Minnesota legislature.
Trump says that Somali-Americans are a "disaster". I hope she leads to a disaster for Trump.
US citizens: Call for respecting nonviolent protesters' rights at least as much as armed protesters.
Trump can make global disaster inevitable simply by promoting fossil fuel use for four years.
Since he is 70 years old, he He probably will not live long enough to reach the point where it is impossible to deny the disaster.
How much further can global heating denialists fool themselves?
There is no point trying to cooperate with Trump so we can "get to know him". We already know his trumpery too well.
The idea of "unity" with Trump is absurd. With so much self-contradiction, he can't even unify himself.
Sanders says, with justification, "I told you so."
[Elected] Democrats Once Represented the Working Class. Not Anymore.
Trump doesn't represent them either, but he incoherently pretended to.
Transgender Americans fear oppression under a Trump regime.
All depends on whether Trump sees a personal benefit in continuing to demonize them. If he does, he might hound them cruelly. On the other hand, he may feel that now that he's elected he has no need to do that.
"You're hired: how The Apprentice led to President Trump."
I never watched The Apprentice — In 1970 I decided to drop my TV habit cold-turkey and I've never had one since. But it sounds like the sort of callous bullying that we have seen from Trump this year.
Israeli colonists
attacked
Palestinians as they tried to harvest their olive trees.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Elsewhere colonists stole olives after Palestinians harvested them.
In El Araqib, Israel state agents don't just destroy houses and tents, they also steal anything movable.
Chris Christie closed lanes to punish Democrats, but Israel closes roads entirely to punish Palestinians.
Netanyahu believes that the world doesn't care enough to object to Israel's colonization of parts of Palestine. He figures he can get away with blatant gradual oppression.
US citizens: call on the FCC to investigate cell phone jamming at pipeline protests.
Valerie Tarico explains why she is pro-abortion.
India has attacked payment in cash by suddenly invalidating all bills that are worth more than around $13.
I support fighting corruption, but tracking everything everyone buys is tyranny.
After Ethiopian expats protested in Australia, Ethiopia arrested their relatives.
EU Can't Afford to Fudge Tax Haven Blacklist.
Indian soldiers have blinded hundreds of protesters in Kashmir by shooting pellets at crowds.
When India took over Kashmir, it promised the population a plebiscite to decide whether to remain part of India. That plebiscite has never been held, and I think India should hold it.
The government of Pakistan is more repressive than that if Ondia, in general, but Kashmir does not have to become part of Pakistan if it becomes independent from India. There are many possibilities.
Florida voters rejected the anti-solar amendment.
Trump seen as a "winaholic" who has to believe he never loses. He may now have so much power that he can deny all future failures and make people around him deny them too.
Some prominent US racists are very happy with Trump's victory.
Republican vote-rigging in Ohio.
We need to determine whether Trump stole this election or whether he would have won without the vote-rigging, intimidation, and voter suppression.
Here's voter-suppression from Arizona.
If you believe Trump meant what he said, here's what that might imply for the coming years.
I don't think Trump meant very much of what he said. It was mere Trumpery. The only serious part was his inclination towards bullying and intimidation. Aside from that, he might do anything whatsoever.
Trump took advantage of broad US freedom of speech even as he said he wanted to get rid of it.
Trump has showed that one can fool enough of the people, enough of the time, to become president if one is insincere and exploitative.
Sheriff Arpaio, who had contempt for laws that protected other people's rights, has been voted out of office.
How Forensics Are Aiding the Fight Against Illegal Wildlife Trade.
Trump could commit unspeakable horrors because Bush started them, and Obama either continued them or created no obstacles to stop them.
After a prestigious Israeli human rights award to Breaking the Silence was vetoed blocked for political reasons, other Israelis set up an alternative prize to give it.
In Breaking the Silence, former soldiers talk about the occupation atrocities they saw, or participated in.
US citizens: oppose the "21st century cures act" which would create longer monopolies on medicines.
Everyone: call on Sempra Energy to compensate and aid the poor residents of Eight Mile just as it did the wealthy residents of Porter Ranch.
The campaign for a UN treaty against abuses by corporations.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to sign the Grijalva-Huffman letter in support of pipeline protesters.
I don't call the protesters "water protectors" because, important as it is not to pollute rivers, not burning more oil is even more important in the long term.
Canada will ban oil tankers on the coast of British Columbia where a pipeline for tar sands oil was planned.
"This is mankind's 'great urbanisation' era. We must act now, or the planet will pay."
Bill Clinton mocked Corbyn, and no wonder.
Clinton supports the plutocratic power structure, and thinks anyone that challenges it must be mad.
A Republican "voter fraud investigation" is really an intimidation operation designed to make Hispanic citizens afraid to vote.
Impartial Journalism Is Laudable. But False Balance Is Dangerous.
1/4 of the increase in CO2 levels is absorbed by increased plant growth. The other 3/4 is causing global heating.
Iraqi men liberated from PISSI's rule celebrate being free to get rid of their beards.
I hope that women will celebrate being free to get rid of their veils, but I am not sure if they get that freedom.
A survey in Germany found that 2.4% of men admitted to viewing "child sexual abuse images". I share the article's concern, but my conclusions are very different from those in the article.
To imprison such a large fraction of society would be outrageous. In the US, that would amount to millions of people. (The US already imprisons far too many of its residents.) This shows that the current repressive approach is untenable.
The boundaries of "child sexual abuse images" are subject to a lot of stretching, and I don't know what those men had in mind when they answered, or whether they were shown a specific definition. We must not label everyone under 18 as "children", nor assume that sex for someone under 16 or 18 (take your pick) is invariably "abuse", nor treat images of fictitious children as real "abuse". But real children are sexually abused for real, and I support laws against that. Efforts against the business of making and distributing images of that are justified — but these must not be done by dangerous methods.
A law against looking at or possessing a copy of some publication, no matter how odious it is or why, is a threat to everyone. It is an excuse for fishing expeditions, when the state seeks an excuse to imprison someone. It also provides an easy way to manufacture a case against someone. How hard is it to slip copies of things into your computer?
Israel rejected France's proposed peace process in favor of an alternative that has been dead since 2014, and was only a sham before that.
The WiFi systems of portable phones make it easy to get the phone's unique number or IMSI.
I think the root of this problem is that the phone transmits a unique number that the user cannot change. When I connect to WiFi or ethernet, I change my MAC address each time I use a different network. Machines that won't let you do this are mistreating you.
How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News.
Would Wall Street Have a Place in a Clinton Administration?
Trump's Three Enablers: The GOP, the Media, and... The Establishment Democrats.
"Tax meat and dairy to cut emissions and save lives."
Africa Still in the Crosshairs as Land Grabs Intensify.
A UK prison doctor says that half the people in prison should be getting medical treatment instead.
Many laws restrict freedom of speech in Australia.
China banned the two pro-independence legislators from taking office in Hong Kong's legislature.
This confirms that the legislature is just a rubber stamp for Chinese power.
China is also repressing Hong Kong's book publishing.
Rather than looking at how to regulate these beacons, which would limit only those that don't think they can get away with breaking regulations, I think it would be wiser to modify a phone's operating system to filter out all ultrasound so nothing can use it.
Arguing that debt-based currency must be abolished because it requires countries to run unsustainable economic growth.
I am not sure this argument is conclusive. I think it would be possible to run some continued economic growth in a sustainable way, although that is not how it's being done at present.
But the idea of changing the monetary system might have other advantages such as reducing the concentration of wealth.
The fictional Net of a Million Lies has become real, and the filter bubble has made serious political discourse almost ineffective.
A protester holding a sign, "Republicans against Trump", at a Trump rally was attacked by a mob of Trump supporters.
China seems to be planning to ban the election-winning pro-democracy candidates entirely from being admitted to Hong Kong's legislature.
Pro-democracy protesters marched again in Hong Kong.
An Iranian-American who visited the old country as a child, and saw Khomeini's violent followers impose the official line on everyone there, says says that Trump's racist movement reminds him of that.
Everyone: call on Turkey not to imprison human rights lawyer and journalist Eren Keskin.
US citizens: Call on Clinton to
oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Trump Campaign and Republicans Paid $1.8m To Companies Mired in Voter Fraud Claims.
Anonymous held a "million mask march" in London.
Canada has required ISPs to forward notices making large claims for "piracy". Some foreign students fear they will be deported.
"It feels like blackmail" is an understatement. It is blackmail. Canada should get rid of its unjust copyright laws and legalize sharing.
"Why I declared my wealth and made Ukraine's elite follow suit."
I think that it is legitimate to require these declarations from public officials as an anti-corruption measure.
I hope the e-declaration web site does not require running nonfree software.
Stern, whose report ten years ago warned of the dangers of global heating, says things are worse than he expected then. He also says that the world is slowly coming around to making efforts to slow global heating.
Many children are becoming addicted to proprietary software games.
The games are designed to make users keep playing — and, in many cases, keep paying. Unlike the games of 30 years ago, you don't just buy a copy once and use it as much as you like. In many games, players are pressured to pay to advance.
The fact that the games are proprietary, not free (libre) software, is a crucial part of the problem, because that enables the designers to maximize the amount they draw out of people, and gives them an incentive to make the games addictive.
The technology-industrial complex shows a general dynamic of designing things to be increasingly addictive.
Trump lied (as always) when he said he was against the political insiders. His transition plan is the opposite.
How Donald Trump Used Fine Print To Make It Harder To Sue Wall Street For Fraud.
He made bullshit predictions about the profit his casino would make, then said "But it might not be true". When sued, he cited the latter to excuse the former.
He's used the same approach, over and over, in his campaign.
Report Collects Government Spying Cases from 10 Countries.
Sheriff Arpaio, facing imprisonment for contempt of court, is alas not in prison yet. So he is planning to try to intimidate voters on election day.
Comey said that his latest statement about Clinton's emails was a false alarm.
Of course, this "forget what I said" statement won't cancel the effect of what he said. It was a dirty trick and he ought to be punished for it. An FBI director that feels entitled to mess with people by sowing suspicion based only on lack of information is unacceptable.
If the FBI is going to disregard the rules not to discuss investigations that have not led to any significant conclusion, here are some others it should explain.
US citizens:
call
on Obama to ban tar sands tankers from US coasts.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
New extractivist government policies will destroy the remaining koala habitat in a major Australian state.
Officials of North Dakota rebuked the pipeline company for ignoring indigenous artifacts which it was required to report.
US citizens: call on Congress to press the Israeli government to disavow an anti-Muslim hate group.
The Russian bombing of Aleppo is horrible, but don't forget that the the US bombing of Iraq and the (mostly gratuitous) Israeli bombing of Gaza were roughly equally horrible. And there's the US-Salafi bombing of Yemen right now.
US citizens: call on the EPA to reschedule hearings about Roundup soon.
US citizens: call for cancellation of the F35 fighter plane.
Parents that post on Facebook about their children (especially photos) are making an imposition. It won't always do specific and direct harm to the children, but it is never right.
Michele Pred distributed Official Air Travel Replacement Knives to passengers arriving at San Francisco Airport.
Governor Dayton created an economic boom in Minnesota by raising taxes on the rich and increasing the minimum wage.
Reagan's "trickle-own" economics is nothing but an excuse for dooH niboR.
A data base of "malicious" web pages is allegedly corrupted with hash codes of pages with useful DRM-breaking software.
File-Sharing Can Be Legalized Immediately, While Complying With All Treaties.
Beware: Countering "Violent Extremism" Online Risks Human Rights.
Republicans have eliminated many voting places since 2012.
The US was totally incompetent in sending Afghans to Guantanamo. Then, as typically happens, officials went to absurd lengths to justify the incompetent decisions.
The global business agenda: "small government for helping people; big government for keeping business on top of people."
I think it should be the other way around.
The singing star Adele said she was pushed to have children by pervasive social pressure, and said that "it's the bravest thing not to have a child".
You can help women resist this pressure, by speaking up when you see others create this pressure. You can also say, "Having children is selfish. If you don't have children, you can dedicate your time to something that the world really needs."
US citizens: call on ash Carter to suspend handing military weapons to thug departments.
US citizens: call on Indiana's governor to back off an attempt to disenfranchise tens of thousands of black voters.
Everyone: call on the FBI to investigate apparent cell phone jamming at pipeline protests.
A Canadian court ordered the national snooping agency to stop "sharing and analysing" data about people that are not specifically suspects.
The stoppage is temporary, pending an analysis. It remains to be seen how much change will be made after the review is complete.
A School Administrator in Indiana Works to Protect Student Privacy. And also rejection by some students, or their parents, of digital technology.
The article doesn't mention it, but almost all the programs in question are proprietary software (hence, unjust to the user), and I expect that nearly all of them are malware (spyware, DRM, or both). You should tell your children's school not to use them on your child.
Jammie Thomas-Rasset has been sentenced to pay almost $10,000 for each of the 24 songs she downloaded.
This is a victory for those bullies, the record factories.
The legally authorized disservices for downloading or streaming music are unjust, usually in several ways at once. (I absolutely refuse to use them, and I hope you do, too.) Even sales of CDs over the internet disrespect customer's rights, because they have to identify themselves.
Aside from sales of CDs in physical stores where you can pay cash, the only form of music distribution that doesn't do you an injustice is peer-to-peer.
The US representative in the UN opposed the very idea of nuclear disarmament.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association has been fined 18 million dollars for hiding the sources of its political campaigning.
Unfortunately, it comes too late — and they already won this battle at the federal level.
One large progressive issue that Clinton really cares about is women's rights.
I support them too, but I think that fighting to restore democracy (which means ending plutocracy) is the most important issue of all. Don't forget that plutocracy is what has enabled the global heating denialists to push us more or less to the edge of the pit.
"The Purely Private-Purpose Corporation Is an Illegitimate Entity."
Obama invites the local indigenous people protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline to become NIMBYs.
In the US: call on the AARP to stop supporting Paul Ryan and harmful Social Security "reform".
US citizens: call on the EPA to strictly regulate smog-causing ozone emissions from oil and gas wells.
Vancouver is considering a long-term plan to cope with global heating: moving people out of low-lying areas by the coast.
California Politician Likes Climate Change Because "Our Enemies" Live in Hot Places.
This is stupid at so many levels. But he does it because lots of Americans have been taught to lap it up.
Algorithms that purport to estimate the chance that a DNA match is spurious could be erroneous — or biased — or snowing juries with babble.
What is certain is that courts are being invited to depend on proprietary software, and that's always wrong.
Internet memes make falsehood just as powerful as truth.
The library in Beaverton, Oregon, now requires all children to be accompanied by their parents.
America's Nuclear-Waste Plan Is a Giant Mess.
This is why I don't trust nuclear power plants.
Governor Christie's aides were convicted of closing lanes on the George Washington bridge as political punishment for a politician that wouldn't endorse Christie's campaign.
I hope it is possible to prosecute Christie, who was apparently the ringleader.
Iranian journalist Yashar Soltani has been jailed for publishing leaked documents showing that a powerful politician is corrupt.
The right-wing activist behind voter suppression in North Carolina was recorded comparing his activities to Jim Crow.
US citizens: call for effective protection of the endangered pallid sturgeon.
Global heating is destroying some archeological relics.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect wolverines.
A British ex-con writes about what structures a prison, and how foolish UK prison policy encourages violence and recidivism.
I'm pretty sure US prisons use some of the same policies and get similar results. Efforts for rehabilitation were cancelled in the 1980s as the drug-ridden War on Drugs led to today's massive incarceration.
Many aspects of forensic "science" in the 20th century were just guesswork and carelessness.
Some of the guesswork is being replaced with evidence-based science, but what can we do about the carelessness?
To Reduce Prison Population, Invest in Public Mental Health, New Study Says.
It would also be a profitable change, since the decreased prison spending would exceed the medical spending by a factor of 1.26.
(The article states this in a confusing way, but someone checked the study for me.)
The Dakota Access Pipeline was approved based on a bent environmental impact statement.
That is a common method of disregarding environmental protection laws.
Oil companies will spend a billion dollars on energy efficiency and methane leak reduction.
It is a useful thing to do, but far too little.
'The FBI Is Trumpland': Anti-Clinton Atmosphere Spurred Leaks, Sources Say.
The FBI accepts false information from crackpots to attack Clinton.
Trumpets are planning a campaign to destabilize the US if Trump does not win.
Turkey has imprisoned the leaders of the HD party. They refused to testify about crimes labeled as "terrorist propaganda", which probably refers to acts of journalism about Kurds or political support for Kurds' rights.
You'd have to bend over backwards at this point to claim that Turkey is a democracy.
Women Who Quit Smoking Before 30 Cut Risk of Tobacco-Related Death by 97%.
Even if you quit later, you will still reduce it a lot.
US military personnel could be prosecuted for their role in carrying out the bombing of Yemen.
The media like to call it "Saudi-led", but it would be just as true to say that Salafi Arabia is acting as a proxy. The bombers are not US planes, but the bombing campaign could not be carried out without US support and participation.
Many Trump supporters are drawn by a message that seems like Obama: "Change!"
It was foolish to support Obama for that, and it is equally foolish to support Trump for that.
In North Carolina and Florida, is the Trump Voter Suppression Plan Working?
A hundred years ago, wearing a poppy in Britain was a call for peace. It has been converted into support for war.
There is a lot of sunshine in Greece.
US citizens: call on the US to cooperate with Russia more in Syria.
To advocate this course does not require admiring Putin or endorsing Russia's actions.
A revision of the International Labor Organization's treaty prohibits
forced labor.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Now we have to push the United States and most of the rest of the world to ratify the treaty.
It is dangerous to increase punishments for crimes because the perpetrator expressed disapproval of thugs.
The British campaign to leave the EU has associated "foreigner" with hatred, through a series of innuendos in the press.
Burma official denies citizenship to all except a specific list of authorized ethnic groups.
North Dakota thugs have accused protester Red Fawn Fallis of shooting at them. She is an avowed pacifist and would not have had a gun.
In the absence of any objective evidence, I think it is more plausible that the thugs have lied (yet again).
Florida electric companies have set up a referendum for a proposal to slow the installation of home solar power. It is deceptively written so as to appear to be in favor of solar power.
The UK military fired a doctor in a non-regulation way, apparently because he reported a suspicion of diversion of drugs.
Governments' current greenhouse gas pledges lead to 3C of global heating, assuming yet-unknown positive feedbacks don't make it worse.
The pervasive corruption of Spain's right-wing Partido Popular produced jealousy that resulted in the murder of a powerful politician that controlled lots of patronage.
They were cowards — they should have stood firm and used the campaign against their attackers.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to oppose the Russell amendment.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
Everyone: call on governments to exclude planet roasters from climate negotiations.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to prosecute Wells Fargo executives.
Rich Ukrainians are being forced to declare their wealth.
I hope the declaration has a threshold that exempts most citizens (the ones who are not rich).
Deceiving Donald gatecrashed a charity event and took a seat on stage
but he
didn't
give any money.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
The Navy's Use of Depleted Uranium in Our Coastal Waters Threatens Humans, Wildlife.
The threat will grow over the millennia.
Facebook appears set to be the next US tech giant to serve as a censor for the Chinese regime.
Large protests in Morocco have been triggered by the killing of a fisherman who had been fishing illegally out of season.
There is a big difference between this death and the death of Mohammed al-Bouazizi, who committed suicide as a protest against a tyrannical regime. Fikri was stopped for carrying out an environmental crime, endangering a species. It is very important to enforce such laws. Fikri did not deserve death for that, but it's not clear whether the thugs expected anyone to be in the fish crusher.
Erdoğan has crippled Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey's principal newspapers, by arresting the editor and many of the staff.
Summarizing why coal power is not useful for lifting people out of poverty, and why in the future it will push people into poverty.
A year after PISSI was chased out of Sinjar, few inhabitants have returned and rebuilding has not started.
Syrian Rebels' Aleppo Offensive Could Amount to War Crimes, UN Envoy Warns.
90% of the world's children live in places with excess air pollution, which can cause them permanent health problems. 15% live in extreme pollution.
However, an even bigger problem is that there are over 2 billion children. People are making so many that the population is increasing.
We should aim to have only 1.5 billion children, 20 years from now.
Erdoğan continues arbitrarily closing periodicals and news agencies.
FBI Stands Guilty of an Overtly Political Act at a Crucial Moment.
The FBI started a pseudo-scandal about Clinton's email, where the only scandalous information is an absence of evidence or conclusions.
How the Oregon Militia Acquittals Reflect the Appeal of White Nationalist Agitators.
Facebook blocked Admiral insurance from analyzing clients' Facebook postings to choose their rates.
Facebook is not on your side, though. It wants to manipulate its useds to keep giving Facebook lots of information about themselves (and other people).
The fact that Admiral's program is "voluntary" does not make it legitimate. If it caught on, it would soon become effectively compulsory, except for the wealthy. This has been called "STASI capitalism."
We need to decide democratically what information insurance companies are allowed to have about drivers — which means, not by letting a few companies decide to where herd people.
Here is an example of what we should not allow.
The root of this problem i the collection of this information by companies such as Facebook and Fitbit. That is another issue we should decide democratically, not by letting a company do its damnedest to manipulate and then pressure people into giving it.
Scotland needs land reform, for people and for nature.
Some of the outer areas of Mosul have been liberated by the Iraqi army.
The reaction of the civilians justifies use of the word "liberated".
The right-wing government naturally prefers a handout for businesses to any real CO2 reductions.
Islamist bigots in Jakarta are protesting against the mayor, who is a Christian, saying he committed "blasphemy" when he criticized their citing the Koran for purposes of bigotry.
Indonesian Muslims did not think this way 50 years ago; they were taught by activities sponsored by Salafi Arabia.
Note that this is not an endorsement of Trump (or Clinton). It is a calculating analysis of which of two evils would give the better chance for subsequent improvement.
I am not sure whether I agree with the analysis. It may have been true in 2000, but the existence of Sanders and his movement will limit Clinton's power to anesthetize in the next few years.
But even supposing that analysis is still valid, I take a less Machiavellian approach to the question. I do not wish a worse president on people merely in the hope he will create unrest. I think things will be much worse in any case.
It is still possible to teach Jewish and Palestinian teenagers to cooperate better.
Russian Dissident Ildar Dadin Accuses Prison Staff of Torture. He has been imprisoned for the crime of protesting.
Copyright Office Fucks Over Thousands Of Sites With Plans To Remove Their DMCA Safe Harbors.
The DMCA takedown system is unjust in many ways — it is regularly used for censorship — and Hollywood wants to make it worse. The Copyright Office basically treats the public with contempt.
Earlier this year the Copyright Office invited public comments and stubbornly refused to let people submit them in any way other than with use of nonfree Javascript code from their site. I have a hunch they are doing the same thing now with the new DMCA contact registration system. Would someone like to check?
Arab Gulf States Are Surveiling, Imprisoning, and Silencing Activists for Social Media Posts.
Comey has been politically misusing his power as FBI director for years. (What else would you expect from a Republican?)
Did you notice how strange it was that Obama's appointment of some Republicans to important jobs was treated as wise, rather than right-wing? I suspect that we saw the resonating voice of the center-right elite, the same elite that backs Clinton now.
Thugs are cracking down hard on pipeline protesters, and the US Army (under Obama's command) is backing them.
Obama said wants to let the pipeline advance "play out" for more weeks, but since his own men are joining the attack on protesters, those words misrepresent his actions.
Meanwhile, the US government is looking at "re-routing" the pipeline. That might avoid the secondary problem of destruction of archeological sites. It might alter the danger of water pollution, but can't eliminate it — the pipeline will still have to cross the same rivers.
Re-routing certainly won't do anything to curb global heating. It won't get us off the path to defeat for civilization and the natural world. That's Obama in a nutshell.
"Why do we punish Dakota pipeline protesters but exonerate the Bundys?"
My conjecture is, because the Bundys are selfish bastards and the pipeline protesters are not.
That answer might seem flip, but it is actually a serious conjecture stated in flip words.
Two Moroccan girls face criminal charges for kissing each other.
Sometimes it's Moroccan, but right now it is less rockin'.
Diesel engines may be banned from UK cities to reduce pollution there.
The manufacturers lied to the public, including the purchasers of these cars. Will they have to compensate those victims for the costs of replacing these cars with non-diesels so they can drive into cities again?
Children need to spend lots of time playing with other children, with no adults to interfere, in order to develop personal and social strengths. Today's controlling treatment by parents denies them this opportunity.
This article made me realize something about myself. I find myself at a loss for what to say to children, because I am disinclined to speak to them in the way adults usually do. The article says that the usual discourse of adult Americans towards children is dishonest and phony. I think a vague perception of that is what makes me reluctant to do it.
The main driver of the Internet of Stings may be to help insurance companies control people.
The article has the artificially light tone which, in today's mainstream media, is the obligatory substitute for standing for people's rights. But it ends by identifying a series of technologies that contribute to oppressive surveillance: portable phones, activity trackers, "smart watches", Internet of Stings, and cars.
I don't own any of those, and I don't tolerate them in my home or my office.
Most election spending this year in the US is "outside" funds, often from hidden sources.
The US says its intervention in Yemen is because Iran is sending arms to the Houthis in Yemen. Arms were found in boats, but evidence suggests it was bound for Somalia instead.
More fundamentally, even if Iran is sending arms to the Houthis, so what? Salafi Arabia has sent plenty of arms to jihadis; that is a much bigger harm to western countries. It makes no sense for the US to support Salafi Arabia's war crimes.
They don't point out that the decrease in revenue would mean additional cruel cuts to support for the poor and disabled. What we need to do is increase tax on the rich.
President Zuma's history of corruption.
He's not as horrible as his predecessor Thabo Mbeki, who denied HIV medicine to millions because he refused to recognize that it caused AIDS. But Zuma's pretty lousy anyway.
Californians are gong back to wasteful lawns again.
I don't like the article's tone of sympathy for that.
An Israeli judge ruled that thugs tortured Faiz Mahmoud Ahmed Sherari into making a confession.
It is normal practice to do this to Palestinians, but Sherari is a UK citizen so he can't be treated that way.
"Indigenous rights are key to preserving forests."
Protesters demand resignation of South Africa's corrupt president Zuma.
The African National Congress has lost all the moral stature that it built up during years of fighting apartheid. Mandela's successors are not worthy of him.
Russia seized the Amnesty International office and changed the locks, as a surprise.
Wasteful bottled water sales in the US are based on taking water from the ground, gratis, and leaving communities scant.
Participation in this is "voluntary", but if it typically offers significant discounts, non-rich people will say they "have no choice" about posting on Facebook. This sort of system trashes people's rights in practice even though in theory they still have the rights. We therefore should prohibit it.
"Wait until insurers can see the contents of your fridge."
Don't get a refrigerator which keeps track of its contents, dummy!
The $100bn Gold Mine And the West Papuans Who Say They Are Counting the Cost.
US laws have been designed to produce "Socialism for the Rich, Free Enterprise for the Rest".
The Montreal thug department used Canada's new "anti-terrorism" powers to spy on the contacts of a reporter that writes about that department.
This is what "anti-terrorism" laws typically do. States really love having more power to crush criticism, which is why massive surveillance is more dangerous than terrorists.
I expect it will find that the Taliban carried out plenty of war crimes, but that conclusion will cause me no sense of guilt. It's different when my country is the culprit.
Reminding people of the reality of lynching, by re-enacting one of the last lynchings, in 1946, which helped launch the civil rights movement.
We need to regulate the use of license plate cameras.
Limiting where they are used is only part of what's needed. They should be built so that they only "see" license plates that are being sought under court order, or are invalid.
Under Canada's unjust copyright laws, publishers are bullying thousands of users into paying settlements of thousands of dollars.
Everyone: call on Facebook to stop offering advertisers the feature of discriminating by race.
There is no need to be afraid of poisoned candy on Halloween. It has only happened once, so you're in more danger of being hit by lightning.
Pollster Tony Fabrizio made a fool's mistake: he agreed to work for the Trump campaign and did not demand payment in advance.
Christian fanatics in the US want to use "religious freedom" laws to excuse child abuse.
Trump has repeatedly dodged lawsuits by deleting emails and other documents.
Trump's 1990s tax avoidance, which removed almost a billion dollars from his taxable income, is illegal now, and arguably was illegal then too.
Trump would say this makes him smart, but really it just makes him crooked.
US citizens: petition on Obama to kill the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Israeli politicians have threatened human rights defender Hagai El-Ad (head of B'tselem) with exile, cancellation of his citizenship, because he spoke to the UN Security Council against Israel's colonization and repression in the West Bank.
While the threat of exile is new, it occurs in a context of pervasive censorship applied to dissidents and reporters in general, including Arabs and Jews. Don't forget Anat Kam, who was jailed for talking to an Israeli newspaper about secret death squads, and Uri Blau, the leading journalist who was convicted of publishing about them.
Israel has privatized the guards at checkpoints, which makes it harder to get any accountability when they harass or kill Palestinians. Anyone trying to find out who is actually responsible gets a runaround.
Privatization has also impoverished many Israelis.
What the Israeli occupation looks like to a schoolchild in the West Bank.
Water is now available in parts of Palestine only two hours a week.
A leaked list of IP addresses that might be those of computers that the NSA has cracked.
(Please don't use the word "hacking" as if it referred principally to breaking security — that's insulting to us hackers. See /articles/on-hacking.html.)
US citizens: call the White House via 877-559-7809 and ask Obama to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline, and protect the protesters from violent abuse by so-called "law enforcement".
You may have to wait on hold for quite some time, so use a speakerphone or headset.
Using jellyfish to make absorbant products.
Some species are tasty, too!
The War on Drugs is responsible for shielding HIV from medicine's awareness for many years. Junkies died from AIDS without seeing doctors, since they were scared to visit a hospital, and nobody investigated why. By the time society took note, years had been lost.
If junkies had had an alternative to sharing needles, the disease might never have affected many people.
Disabled US citizens face a struggle to vote.
Carbon emission per dollar of global production is declining significantly, but not as fast as is necessary to avoid global disaster.
Trying high tech methods to protect desert tortoises from extinction by ravens.
Since the ravens are plentiful, and attack sage grouse which need protection too, I wonder if it might be better to cull the ravens.
Turkish journalists face constant harassment from regime supporters if they do not fully parrot the regime's line.
War Is Hell — for the Natural World, Too.
A big leap forward in use of contraceptive use in Africa.
If anyone is being held back by lack of money, the developed world has the responsibility to help them.
Uber systematically discriminates against passengers that are black, and tends to cheat women.
The study does not demonstrate how the discrimination and cheating occur, but does demonstrate the statistical phenomenon.
What it has done, rather, is to enrich a few large companies that use their money to lobby our plutocratic government for unjust laws to cover up what they are doing.
The Podesta Emails Show Who Runs America - And How They Do It.
The people participating in that discussion are not the ultimate masters — the billionaires. Rather, the participants are the billionaires' fixers.
The Oakland "housing cabinet", whose goal is to enable ordinary people poor people to remain in Oakland, includes the landlord who has the record for eviction notices in the city.
He's right, though, that the real solution is to build lots of housing. With too little place to live, people will compete for them, and that competition will inevitably have losers.
When zoning laws limit the amount of housing construction, in effect those who are locally on top (and expect to hold on to their housing) mistreat those locally who are worse-paid or precarious. I have no sympathy for this practice.
In some parts of the US, women get fined, even jailed, if they won't press charges for domestic violence.
I am in favor of encouraging victims to testify, but this is not the way to do it.
Donna Brazile, the new head of the Democratic National Committee, seems to have leaked a primary debate question to the Clinton campaign, then falsely claimed she didn't.
How the US is applying today the propaganda and coverup lessons it learned in Vietnam.
After Two Wars, Standing Rock Is the First Time I Served the American People.
The American UN ambassador called for an end to the Salafi/US bombing campaign in Yemen.
This is paradoxical since the US actively supports and advises that campaign. The US could stop it immediately if it decided to.
Tories: Creating Child Poverty for a Whole New Generation.
"The Tories are lower than vermin" — Aneurin Bevan
A catalog of the violence used by thugs against nonviolent pipeline protesters.
Why were the Bundy occupiers treated with more respect? Was it because they were right-wing and thugs support the right wing? Was it because they had a lot of guns?
James Comey Has Been Abusing His Power for Years.
Everyone: call on Clinton to oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Putin claims the US military is sabotaging Obama's diplomatic efforts with Russia.
Putin is not above lying, but there seems to be some truth in this claim. Many of the activities cited in the article, on both sides, are only gestures, but they reflect the current state of tension which the US could have avoided by not proposing to extend NATO to Ukraine and Georgia.
US citizens: call on AARP to stop spreading right-wing FUD about Social Security.
"Abstinence only" is as silly in regard to sexting as it is in regard to sex.
Harassing registered sex offenders on Halloween is completely gratuitous and pointless.
"Bulk collection clearly violates global rights to privacy and free speech."
Why Can't We [Americans] Rein In This Ridiculous Military Spending?
Because politicians listen to lobbyists, is the answer in a nutshell.
So what if the F-35 fighter project has created 125,000 jobs in 46 states? Instead of spending that money paying businesses to build a weapon that works badly, we could spend it on renewable energy development and create more jobs, and achieve something useful at the same time.
Gorbachev: the coldness between the US and Russia is a more dangerous problem than the disputes that provoked it.
Thugs confiscated the camera of a journalist at a pipeline protest, claiming it is "evidence of a crime". Evidently, the "crime" is journalism.
Trump, in his campaign, uses the same maneuvers as an abusive spouse.
I wonder how he has treated his wives.
As PISSI retreats, it leaves behind large numbers of booby traps, even booby-trapped toys to kill children who return.
Fossil fool state prosecutors want to put protesters and journalists in prison for decades.
Any sort of crime committed against fossil fuel facilities is covered by the necessity defense. Continuing fossil fuel use will kill hundreds of millions of people; activities to increase that use will be the biggest atrocity in history, worse even than the crime of starting World War II. To thwart even a millionth of that atrocity would save many lives.
The UK's decision to expand Heathrow airport is a decision to spend tens of billions to rush to disaster. But all that matters to the government is that fossil fools will make a profit from it for a few decades.
The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights condemned the UN for refusing to take responsibility for bringing cholera to Haiti.
Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton's Policy for Syria Would "Lead To World War Three".
Since Trump says all sorts of contradictory things, occasionally he says something valid.
Albuquerque thugs were tried for a gratuitous killing, but the Albuquerque thug department continues its aggressive and violent practices.
The US government wants to label all sorts of services that don't join in the War on Sharing as "piracy facilitators", using its typical propaganda for the enemy.
The article quotes a statement that uses the confused term "intellectual property" when it clearly refers to copyright and only copyright. That's like saying "New England law" in an article about a law adopted only in New Hampshire or only in Vermont — a bogus and misleading generalization from one state to several that are quite different from each other. "Intellectual property" is a bogus and misleading generalization from one law to several dissimilar laws.
That term spreads confusion every time it is used, so no one should ever use it. Even when it is mentioned in a quotation or a name, we should warn people that it misrepresents reality.
The EU's absurd proposed "link tax" — actually a fee for copying small snippets from articles — would apply to anyone who posts a small quotation, even individuals.
The whole idea is foolish, because Facebook is the big threat to publishing, not aggregators such as Google and Reddit.
The article unfortunately uses propaganda terms of the copyright industry such as "protection" and "intellectual creation". See https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html, and please don't fall into their trap.
We're Not Helping Our Kids by Keeping the Deficit Down.
Bahrain is holding as hostages the wife and child of an exiled dissident to punish him for criticizing the cruel and violent regime.
CETA faces legal challenges in Europe and in Canada.
Why Wikipedia Is Worried About Global 'Right To Be Forgotten' Delistings.
Public opposition convinced Kuwait to drop its plan to take DNA from all residents and visitors.
Protonmail mysteriously disappeared from Google search results.
One economic reason why it is harder to get a job now than 10 years ago is that the recession pushed businesses to compete to become more selective about who they hire.
The result is to increase inequality.
The article, naturally, suggests that the remedy is to compete harder with other jobseekers. That is an effective one way to benefit yourself, but if everyone does that, it won't do much for working people.
What we need is a collective way to reverse the increase in inequality. The obvious way is through taxes. But another way might be to reduce the effectiveness pressure of competition.
UNESCO reported on Israel's interference with Muslim use of the temple mount in Jerusalem. Israel tried to distort this by calling it "anti-Israel".
Pittsburgh let the water privatizer Veolia decide how to run its water supply. Veolia's cost-cutting measure resulted in lead in the water. And other problems, too.
Today's capitalism is designed in hundreds of ways to let rentier middlemen extract money from others' economic activity. When we do work, they are the ones that profit.
We need to make them pay a lot more in taxes.
The International Maritime Organization is stalling on taking action to reduce CO2 emissions from shipping.
The UK may impose a massive censorship system requiring people to identify themselves personally to view any website that is supposedly "not for children". This would imply blocking thousands of foreign web sites.
The UK's laws about sexual images are twisted and sick.
A Trump PAC operative offered supposed Chinese donors a scheme for contributing millions to the campaign.
The operative said it is lawful to do this, and sad to say, he may be right.
One economic reason why it is harder to get a job now than 10 years ago is that the recession pushed businesses to compete to become more selective about who they hire.
The result is to increase inequality.
The article, naturally, suggests that the remedy is to compete harder with other jobseekers. That is an effective one way to benefit yourself, but if everyone does that, it won't do much for working people.
What we need is a collective way to reverse the increase in inequality. The obvious way is through taxes. But another way might be to reduce the effectiveness pressure of competition.
UNESCO reported on Israel's interference with Muslim use of the temple mount in Jerusalem. Israel tried to distort this by calling it "anti-Israel".
Pittsburgh let the water privatizer Veolia decide how to run its water supply. Veolia's cost-cutting measure resulted in lead in the water. And other problems, too.
Today's capitalism is designed in hundreds of ways to let rentier middlemen extract money from others' economic activity. When we do work, they are the ones that profit.
We need to make them pay a lot more in taxes.
The International Maritime Organization is stalling on taking action to reduce CO2 emissions from shipping.
The UK may impose a massive censorship system requiring people to identify themselves personally to view any website that is supposedly "not for children". This would imply blocking thousands of foreign web sites.
The UK's laws about sexual images are twisted and sick.
A Trump PAC operative offered supposed Chinese donors a scheme for contributing millions to the campaign.
The operative said it is lawful to do this, and sad to say, he may be right.
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