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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.
Great Barrier Reef: Plan to Improve Water Quality Ignores Scientific Advice.
The US military supported the coup in Honduras, and the US State Department supported it after the fact.
Hilary Clinton was Secretary of State, and this required her personal backing.
A judge issued a preliminary injunction to block the Texas law that forbids sanctuary cities.
This is no guarantee that the law will ultimately be found unconstitutional.
Saboteur Pruitt wants to fund global heating deniers, scientists that cling to theories they have failed to defend in science, to perpetuate the idea that there is a "debate" about global heating.
It is the same bullshit that the Koch brothers have supported privately.
Many chemical plants in the Houston area have released large amounts of toxins after they were flooded.
Maybe we need laws to keep chemical plants out of areas that might be flooded in the next 100 years.
Support is growing for reverting US antitrust law to what it was before Reagan weakened it. That is why Google is using its influence to weaken those that campaign against this.
How I Got Fired From a D.C. Think Tank for Fighting Against the Power of Google.
The saboteur-in-chief proposes cuts for agencies that handle local disasters such as Hurricane Harvey.
UK jobcenters order unemployed people to report to a specific chain of stores to get unpaid "work experience" in putting boxes on shelves.
In effect, this replaces paid jobs with non-jobs that get are a condition for getting unemployment benefits.
The Australian government commissioned inadequate recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and is now subtly weakening them in the process of implementing them.
Seattle thugs shot Charleena Lyles in the back, then claimed she was coming at them with knives when they shot her.
But what else would you expect from thugs?
The obsession about the fetus is not only silly and pathetic, it is dangerous, because right-wingers use it to make abortion seem like a bad thing. A fetus 15 weeks old doesn't have as much consciousness as a mosquito.
Nuclear power plants in Texas are in danger of being flooded. They should be shut down now as a precaution.
10 states have now adopted automatic voter registration.
To do this in all states would be a step forward. What is not clear to me is whether it would be a big step or a small step. Would automatic voter registration protect voters from the Republican voter suppression measures found in so many states?
It's not much use to be registered to vote if Republicans find an excuse not to let you vote.
UK environmentalist campaigner Helen Steel got the UK thugs to apologize for having an infiltrator seduce her. But now they demand she pay around $10,000 for an appeal that she was compelled to drop because it could have cost her even more.
She has announced she will not pay them.
Glenn Greenwald: In Europe, Hate Speech Laws Are Often Used to Suppress and Punish Left-Wing Viewpoints.
If the US abandons freedom of speech, censorship of many causes I support (and that many of you support) is not merely a painful possibility. It is nearly certain.
Real-estate buyers are recognizing that land in Florida will lose value when it turns into ocean.
A large study in the UK found that some teenagers try e-cigarettes, but few continue using them and few go to tobacco from them.
As refineries in Houston shut down because of the storm, they emit lots more toxic air pollution than they usually do.
Efforts to block the availability of drugs generally lead to stronger drugs which are more compact and thus easier to smuggle.
Hurricane Harvey is an artificial disaster. Media coverage which covers this up is aiding the denialists.
Cruel and careless cutoffs of welfare benefits continue in the UK just as bad as ever. Disabled people that are too sick go to the jobcenter for an evaluation of whether they can work are punished for not getting there.
The bully was planning all along to pardon Arpaio.
Food Poverty Is the "New Normal" in the UK. The US did it first, and Republicans are pushing hard to make it worse.
Hasankeyf, 12,000-year-old site in Turkey with thousands of artificial caves, will be destroyed if the Ilisu dam is built.
It is hard for journalists to get access to the place. I think that is because the inhabitants are mainly Kurds, and Erdoğan's war methods includes blocking journalists from seeing what the soldiers are doing.
Shame on "Best Buy" stores for price gouging on bottled water in and around Houston.
Generally you shouldn't buy bottled water in the US. When a contaminated flood has made tap water inaccessible is one of the exceptions.
Nobel peace prize winners call on Norway to stop pushing fossil fuel exports.
Tourists are starting to avoid the Great Barrier Reef because they know the Australian government is pushing to kill it off.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations call on the UN to take action against the war crimes committed by Salafi Arabia with support from the US.
Saboteur Sessions has nominated a long-time enemy of civil rights enforcement for the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice.
Most people never manage to make either a great advance in science or a great advance in ethics. To demand that someone do both in order to deserve admiration is asking too much. If Darwin did the former and not the latter, we can admire him for the former, and recognize that in the latter field he was mediocre, not great.
Fortunately, others since have made the advance of rejecting racism.
The Tory officials of the NHS told NHS managers, "Don't send so many people to the hospital — we don't have money for that."
If they can't handle so many patients in the hospital, they must try to optimize the use of the hospital beds they have. But the issue should not stop there. Why is there a shortage? Is it because they cut taxes for the rich?
Republican bullshitters shrug off Hurricane Harvey. No evidence of global heating can ever be so clear that they can't deny it by lying.
Something must be done to stop Assad from disappearing people.
Many were imprisoned only to use as hostages.
But what can be done.
There are even worse things going on in Syria. For instance, there is PISSI. There is war. There is the danger to refugees that have fled from war. There is the danger that Assad's forces will attack the Kurds once PISSI is defeated militarily. A scheme to end the disappearances has to fit into a scheme to end the other dangers.
After Hurricane Harvey, Will Houston Public Schools Be Charterized?
That's the sort of exploitation of disasters that Naomi Klein warns us about.
The New America Foundation, a think tank, cancelled its support for a project after it made a posting praising the EU's antitrust judgment against Google.
The head of the think tank revealed, in her words about this, that it is frightened to be associated with statements Google might not like.
If the troll restarts drone bombing in Pakistan, it will be a disaster.
A severe episode of global heating 56 million years ago, which caused extinction of many species, was caused by slow and steady release of CO2. Our fossil fuel use is releasing CO2 faster.
Everyone: call on Virginia to remove its statue of Confederate General Lee from the US capitol.
The supermarket chain Aldi, in Australia, is suing the truck drivers' union to silence its complaints that Aldi pressures drivers to drive unsafe long hours (which is illegal as well).
Aldi's statement appears intended to mislead. It said, "We value our employees and pride ourselves on paying our staff well." But even supposing that is true (I won't take Aldi's word for that), it has nothing to do with the truck drivers; they are not employees of Aldi.
Aldi demands "specific information" about the abuses. Would that mean the names of drivers as witnesses? We can guess what Aldi would do to any drivers that come forward as Aldi demands.
It appears that Aldi doesn't directly impose this violation of drivers' rights and public safety. Rather, it subcontracts the driving through companies, and pays the companies so little that they are effectively compelled to do this to the drivers.
So subcontracting facilitates this wrong and makes it deniable.
I think there should be legal limits on the amount of work of any particular kind that a company can subcontract. Subcontracting should be limited to the amount of work that needs to vary from week to week during any particular month. For the base load of any kind of work, a company should be required to hire full-time employees to do it.
The racist that attacked Deandre Harris with a metal pole has been arrested and charged with a felony.
The other racist man arrested might be the shooter described here, who tried to shoot a counterprotester dead, but was prevented by the pistol's safety which gave him a chance to think twice. He fired into the ground to let off steam of his hatred.
Or they might be two different shooters.
Naomi Klein: plutocratist politicians are already planning how to use Hurricane Harvey as an opportunity for dooH niboR. We had better not be squeamish about organizing to stop them.
The troll has placed financial sanctions on Venezuela, designed to make the food shortage worse.
The food shortage is mainly due to mistaken economic policies of the Venezuelan state, but now that the troll owns it, Venezuelans will start blaming the right-wing opposition too.
Venezuela needs a progressive opposition that doesn't aim to return the country to control by foreign businesses and whichever local elites they can corrupt.
Republican heating denialists that opposed a special aid law after Hurricane Sandy now ask for a similar aid law for Hurricane Harvey.
Hurricane Harvey is an example of a general problem; the US government should address the whole of the problem. Democrats should refuse to vote for a special aid package limited to Hurricane Harvey.
They should demand instead a law that will provide this aid in the case of Hurricane Harvey and future hurricanes without requiring cuts in other spending. The law should recognize that global heating will cause more and larger floods, and include strong flood risk criteria, both for construction of new government infrastructure and for flood insurance to private buildings.
Japan has defeated Sea Shepherd by means of a law that classifies Sea Shepherd's obstruction activity as "terrorism", combined with actions by Australia, New Zealand and the US to stop Sea Shepherd from operating.
Sea Shepherd does not engage in violence; it gets in the way of whaling ships. The idea that an inconvenient nonviolent protest is "terrorism" is twisted, but then, so is everything about Japanese hunts for whale meat that people mostly won't even buy.
India's Supreme Court has ruled that discrimination based on gender identity is unconstitutional.
Houston's ever-more-frequent floods (one is happening now) show how damaging the saboteur's cancellation of Obama's flood-risk rule will be over time.
A time-limit on analysis of projects will certainly assist projects that submit bogus environmental impact studies. When those in harm's way criticize the flaws in a bogus study, the developers will use the deadline to pressure spineless or semi-corrupt officials to overlook the flaws "so that the project won't be canceled by the time-out."
A firmly honest official or judge won't cede to that pressure, but Republicans won't appoint honest officials and judges.
Heavy rains are more devastating for Houston than they would have to be, because the old infrastructure, and lots of houses, were built in places with too high flood risk.
Meanwhile, the number of heavy rainstorms keeps increasing, just as global heating is expected to do. So it will get worse and worse.
A right-wing extremist claimed to have been stabbed by a black man. That was a lie—actually he had stabbed himself as a false-flag attack.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the troll's proposed saboteur of antitrust enforcement.
Asia’s Harry Potter Obsession Poses Threat to Owls.
Never buy an animal that has been captured in the wild. The trauma and suffering of being captured does not make a good pet. Make sure that the pet you buy was born among humans and raised by humans.
Burma's repression of Rohingya, which has gone on for many years, has enabled jihadis to get a foothold among them. Now Burma has accused international aid workers of supporting jihadi violence.
Although antisocialists disagree on some basic issues with right-wing bigots, it is peculiarly frequent for antisocialists to become right-wing bigots.
I do not use the term "libertarians" for the former group, because what distinguishes them is not support for human rights but economic laissez-faire (dooH niboR). We progressives, who oppose laissez-faire economics, support human rights too.
I will not legitimize the antisocialists' claim that they support liberty more than I do.
Germany has set up a facial recognition surveillance system with the privacy protection that all such systems should be required to have: face images that don't match anyone in the search target database are immediately deleted.
To make an ethical system, we need a couple of additional points. A court order should be required to put someone's face in the database, and people should be informed when they are in the database so they can challenge the order.
The saboteur may have pardoned Arpaio as a signal that he will pardon anyone jailed for refusing to testify against him in the Russia investigation. Everyone in Congress must stop appeasing Nazis now.
Advocating reparations to the descendants of people that were enslaved.
I've posted about this before.
Why the ACLU still defends the freedom to rally for right-wing views that its lawyers and members despise.
Giving a few dozen companies arbitrary power over what people are allowed to say on line is a dangerous policy.
A couple of steps down the road, the right-wing trolls may force those companies to censor us.
Transgender people in the US military have sued to block the troll's plan to dismiss some or all of them.
If the lawsuit succeeds, would it have any effect on the order not to allow trans people to join? I tend to think not.
The bully wants to give US thugs more heavy weapons.
Instead, most SWAT teams should be shut down, because their use kills innocent people through mistakes that happen repeatedly.
Global heating made Hurricane Harvey stronger and more deadly.
Evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe is effective at convincing other evangelicals to recognize that humans are causing global heating.
Now the question is, how can she and others like her reach more of them?
The saboteur-in-chief is pressuring intelligence analysts to distort their reports to make an excuse to sabotage the nuclear deal with Iran.
The troll's supporters don't care about Iran; he won't be able to keep them motivated with this. So he must be doing the bidding of neocons that want war with Iran.
Global heating is gradually making parts of Afghanistan dry up. When agriculture fails from too much risk of a dry season, the inhabitants will be compelled to flee or fight.
A biddable, retarded man who could never function in life without help and supervision was put on the sex offenders list for a "crime" that he committed under the orders of a competent adult. His life, and his parents' life, have been permanently ruined.
For Christian crazies, a flood is either a punishment for not serving their cult or a beneficent lesson, depending on whose house is flooded.
Closing public schools that are doing badly, and replacing them with charter schools, does not lead to an improvement.
So, will states pass laws to close malfunctioning charter schools and replace them with public schools?
China has made anonymous commenting on web sites illegal. All sites must require users to register with their real names.
We must think twice before proposing this sort of "solution" even when there is a real problem.
A study demonstrates that US taxation has become less progressive.
The US needs to return to the "bad old days", when Americans in general could have a decent life, not penury; when the US could afford to build what the public needed instead of privatizing everything with a toll.
Wealth tends to make people stingy and callous, and philosophers used to say so. Since the 1970s, rich people have funded an effort to make society forget this.
Macron is determined to reduce workers' rights, but unions are planning a general strike.
The root cause of unemployment in France is world-wide plutocracy, imposed through business-supremacy treaties.
Under plutocracy, every country must choose between lots of unemployment (as in France) and lots of Mcjobs (as in the US).
Right-wing extremists cancelled their rally in Berkeley after they were told that weapons and helmets would not be allowed. Counterprotesters deployed mockery and jokes against the remnant.
When these extremists say they are defending "freedom of speech", remember how they fuzz the boundary between speech and hitting people with cars. That's not "speech," that is terrorism.
If the saboteur-in-chief succeeds in cancelling the Clean Power Plan, one way to compensate for the damage is to plant 10 billion trees, covering 40,000 square miles with forest.
Planting so many trees is easier said than done. What's more, for the trees to take the intended amount of CO2 out of the air, it is not enough to plant them. It is necessary that they survive and grow for many years. That is hard to assure, what with local disasters fueled by global heating threatening to kill them and increased CO2 levels slowing the growth of plants.
Is it possible even to find that much land on which to plant trees?
Then there is the point that the Clean Power Plan doesn't go far enough.
The Republicans that control Texas have made it hard to get reliable birth control there. Now they are working on smashing the legal basis of Medicaid, nationwide, so that they can cut off the last funding for Planned Parenthood in Texas.
I hope the students of Texas Tech organize to demand that the university replace the doctor that tries to stop students from getting contraceptives. By refusing to give them proper medical care, sh is refusing to do her job.
Persecuting immigrants was just one of Joe Arpaio's many illegal practices when he was sheriff.
The troll has made a series of attempts to derail the investigation of his links with Russia.
We have not seen proof that he and his campaign did anything criminal with Russia, or even anything particularly wrong. However, his persistence in trying to quash the investigation is a very strong reason to suppose there is something nasty to expose.
The bully is building a terrorist movement aimed at journalists. He practices "stochastic terrorism", much as PISSI does in Europe: stirring up acts of violence which are statistically predictable although individually random.
Clowns are often effective responses to Nazis.
Censorship of radical views will be turned against critics of the plutocratic world order. In fact, Germany has already started doing it.
Macedonia has convicted someone of insulting Turkish President Erdoğan, violating even the weak European standards of freedom of speech.
Another lone-wolf right-wing terrorist attack with a car in the US.
It will soon be possible to develop genetically modified yeast that can make morphine.
To prevent these yeast from being developed, or from being used, will be almost impossible. Governments will have to choose between repression such as we have never seen in free countries, and dropping the "war on drugs" (which is also the war on people in pain).
Imagine yeast whose level of functioning can be increased or decreased by exposing them to some signal chemicals. You could get them into your intestines, then swallow the signal chemicals to adjust the dosage rate. This would be the equivalent of the intravenous morphine that people get in a hospital after an operation, but you wouldn't have to be in a hospital.
This will be a great ease for people in pain, until the day we can turn off the pain and no longer need opiates.
Once the US conquered Afghanistan in 2001, most Taliban just wanted to give up fighting and get accepted into the new power structure. If Dubya had permitted this, the US could have been out of there in 2002.
Using bitcoin, or any blockchain system, paying multiple stores for goods would totally ruin privacy when the data leaked by these stores are combined.
The people must tell businesses what kinds of personal data they are allowed to collect.
The article exaggerates when it says "you can't avoid" Google, Facebook and Amazon. I avoid them almost totally. (I occasionally do a Google search and occasionally look at a page on Amazon, but I hide who and where I am, and block their surveillance.) You can do this too.
However, the article's conclusion is valid and very important.
Successful resistance to unjust government calls for a diversity of nonviolent methods, but a firm rejection of violence.
Kenya seems to be attacking election monitors and human rights defenders.
It would be "legally, procedurally and practically impossible" for India to deport Rohingya refugees.
In addition, I doubt Burma (from which they have fled) would allow them in.
US citizens: submit a comment in favor of network neutrality.
Here's the comment I filed. I avoided the terms "content" and "people of color."
The internet is a crucial medium for communication and each person's rights must be protected from commercial interference.
Just as telephone companies are not allowed to interfere about who we talk with by phone, ISPs must not be allowed to interfere about who we contact by internet.
Just as phone companies are not allowed to give out hints about who we talk with by phone, ISPs must not be allowed to give out hints about who we contact by internet.
ISPs must not be allowed to discriminate based on what we communicate over the internet. In the absence of a court order, they should not even be allowed to take notice of what it is (or enable anyone else to do so).
The first step is to avoid making things worse. Keep internet access under Title II.
US citizens: conscientious objectors must not be required to pay for substitutes.
Alfred McCoy's research led in 1972 to a book about US complicity with drug trafficking in Laos. The CIA tried to suppress the book, intimidated his informants, and tried to get him kicked out of Yale graduate school. His subsequent research found that US secret surveillance has been at the service of repression, of treason against democracy, for over a century. But it was never as pervasive and complete as today's digital surveillance.
TV channels that profit from presenting the troll as a freak show are giving support to his power.
The first thing you can do to resist is not to watch.
Whatever the troll says is of no importance. He will say something contradictory tomorrow. Watching him is at best a waste of time. Spend your time on resistance activities.
If you are with friends or relatives that want to watch, take advantage of the opportunity to set a visible example of not joining in. Say, "I'm going to do something useful (or, something I really want to do) instead."
Italian thugs evicted hundreds of refugees from a collective squat, beating them cruelly in the process.
A few Christian fundamentalists have rejected the planet-roaster blindness, and are trying to convince the rest.
It isn't easy, because US evangelicals have made contempt for the world that they are destroying an integral part of their religion. In effect, their religion is a satanic nihilism.
The saboteur-in-chief has pardoned Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of carrying out ethnic profiling in defiance of a court order to stop.
This is an attack on the fundamental ideas of human rights and rule of law. Laws are meant to protect people from abuse of state power. Prosecutions such as that of Arpaio are the way we stop officials from spitting on that protection.
With this pardon, the troll tells his followers that they are welcome to break laws and abuse their power, as long as it they do it for reasons he supports. In other words, that laws can no longer protect us from tyrants and bullies.
In the rural far north of Vietnam, thousands of young women are kidnaped and sold into sexual slavery. The prices paid for women can corrupt entire local families to help kidnap them.
As usual, a crucial cause of the problem is the ingrained custom of blaming the victims. I suspect this is part of why the purchasers of the kidnaped women often treat them so badly: the men who had them kidnaped despise them for having been kidnaped.
From the point of view that judges people by their actions, this attitude seems incomprehensible.
Now that the troll supports Nazism, we can see who the appeasers are.
Progressives in San Francisco blocked a right-wing rally by walking their dogs on the field where it was scheduled.
Sabotaging an opposing rally with dogshit is not part of civil political discourse. If it becomes accepted, it would be used against us, against everyone or anyone.
However, when it is used against today's right-wing extremists, it is such a low level of violence compared with theirs that in effect it is an example of restraint. There is no need to be ashamed of it.
The right-wing group claims says it isn't white supremacist, but such claims mean nothing because right-wing extremists have become totally at ease with lying about this (or anything else). One day they are Nazis, the next day they are white supremacists, the next day they are conservatives. They devalue truth just as the troll does.
Liberals must stop encouraging people to divide themselves by identity and campaign instead to give every human being the essential human rights. Martin Luther King, Jr., showed the way.
As Hurricane Harvey approached, US border thugs continued to operate checkpoints along the evacuation routes.
Unauthorized immigrants, fearing the border thugs, may stay put in homes that will be flooded. They could be killed. The saboteurs know that; they know that previous presidents turned off the checkpoints during evacuations, and they know why. By changing that policy, they are trying to kill people.
Announcing roadmaps for 139 countries to move to renewable energy by 2050 and probably avoid global disaster.
California is thinking about creating a state-chartered public bank specifically so that marijuana companies could use it. This would be generally good for California, regardless of marijuana.
The European Union donated a school to the Palestinians of Jub a-Dib. The day before school was supposed to start, Israeli suppression forces demolished the building.
The dishonesty of the right-wing: posting violent insults against women that voted for the troll, and trying to attribute them to progressives.
If there were a Satan, he would love the right wing.
Irene Clennell was finally given the right to live in the UK with her British husband and children.
A previous article said that Ms Clennell had had permanent residency in the UK before, but the Tory state took it away because she spent "too long" in Singapore — caring for her dying parents.
I suspect that part of why right-wing governments tell immigration officials to be rigid and gratuitously cruel is to develop a reputation for heartlessness, so as to dishearten everyone they pick on. They suffered a defeat this time, so naturally they pretend that it wasn't so.
But I suspect they have another motive too: to make people loathe the state and thus demand "small government." That will help right-wing parties reorient the state from helping people in general (which it used to do quite well) to helping only the rich.
London thugs set out to arrest a list of hundreds of people, based on specific accusations and using every possible excuse, solely to force them to stay away from the Notting Hill carnival.
One of them was arrested for possessing frankincense. Is it a crime in the UK to have incense?
White supremacists put up no monuments to Virginia General Mahone, skilled general though he was, because after the war he rejected racism and led an integrated party that governed Virginia with integrity.
The purpose of the monuments was to promote the racist cause, and someone like Mahone wasn't useful.
North Korea is repeatedly asking for nuclear negotiations.
If the US won't accept the invitation, I hope South Korea will.
Portugal has proved once again that the way to get out of a depression is by increasing government spending.
That's what Keynes taught us, and what the neoliberals worked so hard to bury.
Racist white Americans believe they are safer in a neighborhood where almost everyone is white. But it's the opposite: the right-wing policies that push away nonwhites also shorten lives.
ACLU: California discarded 45000 ballots because voters' signature "didn't match".
The troll's men want to search the emails of organizers of inauguration protests. The judge authorized an indirect search, where someone else looks for emails (if any) that organize violence and only those are handed over.
This still looks like a fishing expedition to me, even if not as broad as the original proposal.
Republicans in Pennsylvania want to make all protesters convicted of any crime in connection with a protest pay costs that no one could afford.
Governments must not have the power to make people pay for the privilege of saying controversial things.
Mozilla's free database of recordings of English speech could be crucial for free software for speech recognition.
Speech recognition done by by companies usually involves sending your audio to the company's server. It is foolhardy to allow such a device into your home.
Burning the frozen methane hydrates from the ocean bottom would make it possible to push the world's temperature even higher.
It is good news that there is little chance of a catastrophic release of methane into the atmosphere from those deposits. But if that is because the methane gets converted to CO2 in the ocean, that replaces one danger with another.
Robots that can make t-shirts at high volume might put millions of garment workers out of a job in poor countries.
It's great to make things with high efficiency using automation provided everyone gets to share the benefits.
The "ozone hole" is not closing, and new industrial chemicals now threaten it.
1987 was before the World Trade Organization; the dominion of business over states was not as strong then. If the ozone hole were first discovered today, I don't think anything like the Montreal Pact would be possible, because chemical businesses would veto it.
After the elimination of instant divorce for men only, Indian marriage laws continue to have other forms of sexist bias.
No one should be forced to stay in a bad marriage; anyone who wants a divorce should be able to get one, through appropriate procedures. But the law of divorce should not embody prejudice against any subgroup of persons.
A British arts center is showing a science fiction film about a future world with a partial resemblance to the occupation of Palestine. Supporters of the occupation demand it be removed for "antisemitism".
The Israeli right-wing lobby is pushing in many countries, including the US, to criminalize opposition to the occupation.
We Thought the Nazi Threat Was Dead. But Donald Trump Has Revived It.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter at 1-202-224-3121 and say to preserve the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. This protects unauthorized immigrants from deportation if they were brought to the US as children, many years ago, and have lived here ever since.
Indigenous peoples in the Peruvian Amazon threaten to block oil extraction if the state fails to comply with its law requiring consultation with them on a new oil project.
It is inexcusable to start new oil wells in places where they can be particularly harmful. We need to leave 80% of the known reserves in the ground, so any reserves that cause special risks should be part of that 80%.
The Texas voter-ID was overturned by a US court.
An underground US agent seduced Jennifer Padilla, then pressured her into making a call to arrange a drug deal for him. Then he arranged for her to be prosecuted for this entrapment.
I am disappointed that the newspaper disguised his face. The public need to be warned about this predator. Has anyone posted a photo of his face? Had she posted photos of the two of them?
Saboteur Teresa Manning claims to be "pro life", but only for potential future human beings. She's willing to help let the Nazis off the hook for killing millions of real human beings.
The company behind the Dakota Access pipeline has sued Greenpeace and other protest organizations for 300 million dollars, in an attempt to wipe out those organizations and make organized protest against environmental destruction too dangerous in the US to consider trying.
15-year-olds attending summer camp in the US today have to be monitored by an adult at all times during the day. They are not even allowed to go to the toilet on their own.
Apparently the Girl Scout motto nowadays is "Be dependent." (I'd guess it is the same for the Boy Scouts.)
If these teenagers do not rebel, it could only because they have been made to expect suffocation. Nothing could be worse preparation for the upheaval that global heating is likely to cause, a few decades from now.
Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen rebuked the saboteur-in-chief for planning to eliminate some of the inadequate protections enacted after the financial crises to prevent a repeat.
The financial crises was terribly harmful to Americans in general, but it was also very profitable to some, and the troll is whoring for them.
Facebook has deleted deceptive posts designed to recruit customers for smugglers that offer to take them across the Mediterranean.
Removing these lies is a good thing, since they are dangerous traps. At the same time, allowing Facebook to censor the world seems dangerous too. Facebook claims it can impose any criteria of censorship, as a private company; but no company with that big an impact should be allowed to set its own policies.
Cuba is cooperating with the investigation of the hearing damage to US diplomats that appears to have been caused by an ultrasound transmitter.
Even though Wikileaks is drifting into disreputable conduct, we must not allow criminalization of the honorable journalism that Wikileaks started out doing.
'Time to Redistribute Wealth': 1% [in the US] Thriving While 78% Living Paycheck to Paycheck.
Everyone: call on US national park superintendents to resist bottled water sales.
US citizens: call on the Fish & Wildlife Service to continue protection for the endangered Florida panther.
My childhood sweetheart, Melynda, campaigned to protect the Florida panther.
US citizens: call on the Department of Labor to protect workers' overtime pay.
US citizens: call for protecting Social Security from right-wing cuts.
US citizens: support Sanders' bill to limit what drug companies can charge for drugs developed with government funds.
Salafi Arabia bombed a hotel in Yemen and killed around 35 people, as its US-backed bombardment continues.
There was never any justification for either Salafi Arabia or the US to make war on Yemen. The motive is only strategic rivalry between Salafi Arabia and Iran.
Iran and the US have a history of war from some decades ago, but nothing stops the two countries from being at peace today except for US neocons.
Iran is a repressive partial tyranny, but Salafi Arabia is a more repressive total tyranny.
Various European countries are sending refugees who first arrived in Greece back to Greece.
Greece, crippled by Euro-imposed poverty, cannot support all these refugees without help.
NHS Accused of Keeping Secret Its Plans to Cut Services.
You wouldn't expect Tories to take responsibility for the wrong they do, would you?
A Christian refugee from Iran, where the idea of the Rapture represented escape from the repressive Muslim state, finds that the cult of Rapture in the US is the basis for a mad nihilism.
It reminds me of chapter 5, "The destruction of the Xhosas", in Joseph Bulgatz's book, Ponzi Schemes, Invaders from Mars, & more extraordinary popular delusions, and the madness of crowds.
Samsung Heir Found Guilty of Corruption And Sentenced to Five Years in Prison.
Arguing against a sale of rhino horn from farmed rhinos.
I don't know whether this argument is valid, overall.
I agree that the sale is really intended to be illegally exported. Does that mean it is wrong? Being illegal does not imply something is wrong. Exporting poached rhino horn is wrong because it is leading to extinction of rhinos, but whether exporting farmed rhino horn is wrong is a different question. Indeed, that is the crucial question here.
A sufficiently large supply of farmed rhino horn, together with a fairly effective anti-poaching program, ought in principle to drive poachers out of business. But that depends on making the anti-poaching program effective enough to drive up the cost of poached rhino horn, and a large enough supply of farmed rhino horn to drive down the price they can charge. Is that feasible to achieve? I don't know.
Counterpropaganda against the medical myths about rhino horn is clearly a good thing to do.
Dosing men with testosterone makes them more impulsive and less intelligent.
Once in a while, the troll repeats a valid point that people aren't supposed to talk about — for instance, about the 12 US presidents that owned slaves at some time in their lives.
To demand that past heroes measure up to modern moral conclusions is anachronistic. We stand for these conclusions on the foundation of many years of further moral thinking, which those of the past did not have the benefit of. That Washington and Jefferson failed to anticipate the arguments and conclusions of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, which we know by hindsight, does not negate the good they did for fighting for an incomplete freedom.
But we should recognize that they did wrong by keeping people in slavery. We shouldn't demand perfection in our past heroes, either.
Saboteur of Energy Perry altered a report so that it would support subsidies to power plants burning fossil fuels.
However, the honest report is still visible inside the coating of ashes.
In Raqqa, PISSI is forcing civilian human shields to move the place where it plans its last stand, Russia and/or Assad are dropping cluster bombs, and the US shoots indiscriminately at every boat that heads out of Raqqa.
There has got to be a way to capture the people in boats when they don't fight back (as civilians won't).
The real heroes of the south were the hundreds of thousands that fought for the United States, and against slavery.
The US Department of Labor will spit in the face of workers by honoring President Reagan, union buster, saying his "distinctive contributions to the field of labor have enhanced the quality of life of millions yesterday, today, and for generations to come."
Tommy McAdoo, at age 70, couldn't bear living on the street or in unsafe homeless shelters. He robbed a bank to get back in prison.
It's our shame that our treatment of homeless people is worse than prison.
The partial legalization of marijuana fails to undo the harm done to people who were convicted of possession or sale of marijuana in the past.
Brazil has abolished a large reserve in the Amazon, exposing it to deforestation which will destroy it forever.
Saboteurs in the US have presented supposed reasons for "reviewing" US national monuments. They are bogus.
The economic analysis makes the frequent economic error of measuring the "health of the economy" by totals, or equivalently per-capita figures. This is a fallacy because it disregards the harm done by inequality. If one billionaire gains a million dollars, and 9000 minimum-wage workers lose 100 each, the total increases by 100 thousand but the net effect is more suffering.
However, the article's point is valid nonetheless.
The loss of Arctic sea ice has proceeded so far that a tanker has been able to cross the north of Asia without an ice breaker.
If that were the only effect, it would be a great savings. Alas, the absence of ice is rapidly heating the Arctic even more.
Is it possible to be friends with a Tory, or a Republican?
Like the writer, I don't refuse a priori, but I'd probably find little basis for friendship with a person with those values.
Joe Robinson from England spent four weeks acting as a medic for Kurdish troops in Syria. Now he is in prison in Turkey, accused of "being a member of a terrorist organization."
This illustrates the wrong of arbitrarily labeling a group as a "terrorist organization". That is wrong when the US does it, too.
Robinson also joined the Kurdish forces in Iraq, which Turkey appears to have military cooperation with.
The Capitol region (around Canberra) wishes to invite the refugees Australia holds on Manus Island and Nauru.
India's Supreme Court ruled that privacy is a fundamental right; this may help pin back India's hard-to-escape biometric ID system, Aadhar.
Thailand has dropped charges against British journalist Jonathan Head, who had reported on enslavement of workers there. However, one of the victims of the scam he reported on still faces prosecution.
Nuclear power in the US and Europe is moribund because of its costs.
It ought to be moribund because of the danger of accidents in the nuclear power plants themselves, and the medical danger of the wastes that will have to be stored.
The idea that it is somehow more legitimate or reassuring to eliminate an environmental threat because it is expensive, than because it could cause a local disaster, effectively says profits justify risking disaster.
In the US, the damage of global heating will fall hardest on the southeast, where people mainly support the liar.
Perhaps they support him as a way to firm up their denial of what's going to happen to them. Like not going to the dentist, or not getting tested for cancer.
Medical journals now have a system for deciding whether to publish a report on a clinical trial without knowing the trial's outcome.
It's a clever piece of diplomacy.
University Teachers' Jobs And Dignity Are Under Threat.
These letters are about the UK, but the situation is the same in the US.
The primacy of research over teaching in prestigious universities is nothing new. A few decades ago, it was a joke at MIT that the annual award for excellence in teaching meant "No tenure for you." To some extent, this prioritization is legitimate and necessary, but it could be reduced.
Sanders leads the cheater by 13%, according to polls.
That means the Republicans need to gain over 13% by cheating in 2020.
A court ruled that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission didn't even try to make a careful judgment of a proposed pipeline.
The UK is keeping an asylum seeker, who was tortured in Chad, in prison in defiance of repeated court orders to free him.
A nationwide anti-Muslim hate group cancelled rallies all across the US after seeing how many counterprotesters came out in Boston.
Dear Trump Voters: he lied to you.
The Bayer-Monsanto merger would endanger farmers, thus agriculture too.
Everyone: call on China to free Tibetan Jamyang Lodru, imprisoned for no stated reason.
The US Deportation System Is Verging on Lawlessness.
Exxon knowingly mislead the public about global heating. Its advertisements to the public sowed doubt while its researchers reported the truth.
Wall Street companies are swindling would-be home buyers with rent-to-own contracts that make them vulnerable to losing everything they have paid if anything goes wrong.
Why isn't it a felony to offer houses that way?
Qatar has passed a law to give domestic workers some rights and benefits.
American right-wingers that despise women's rights are circulating photos of western-dressed Afghan women from the 1970s to justify keeping Afghanistan violent today.
GM Salmon: Want to Try It or Avoid It? Either Way, Good Luck.
Philippine thugs, sent to kill drug dealers, drug addicts, and anyone that tries to record what they are doing, shot a high school student.
The US gave up on demanding information on all the visitors to the inauguration protest site.
Attempts at repressing Americans that don't support the troll will surely continue.
Is Russian theater director Kirill Serebrennikov being framed for political reasons?
The Republicans' "border security" bill is actually a bill for more surveillance of everyone, including citizens, in a zone extending 100 miles from every coast or border.
That includes cities such as New York, Boston, Washington, Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
New York City will now provide legal help to every tenant facing eviction.
(Except those whose income is so high that they can afford to pay a lawyer.)
The mainstream media start respecting the liar when he expands wars.
Seeing this, he will learn to expand wars.
Chile has legalized abortion, when there are specific reasons.
It is a step in the right direction. Women should not have to give reasons in order to have an abortion.
Inequality of wealth in Russia is more extreme even than in the US. The state has covered it up with false statistics.
"Virtual charter schools", where the student talks only to a computer, provide a failing education.
"Anyone who continues to work with Trump is complicit in his support of white supremacists."
The CNN article this refers to errs when it suggests that we have no crimes to impeach him for.
It's true that endorsing bigotry is not a crime, but receiving pay from foreign interests directly violates the constitution. Using his office to get money from his hotels is corrupt. Let's impeach him for those.
Many recent technological "advances" seem to be designed to save us any real interaction with other people.
I reject some of the services the article discusses because of their surveillance, and some because I want to protect people's jobs. It is interesting that the three problems often co-occur.
In a way, dating services and apps are doing the same thing. They don't entirely eliminate human contact — you still (possibly) have a date or have sex — but the human contact is greatly reduced. Maybe that is an impediment to finding a real relationship.
A thug publicly claims that condemning them for unjustified killings is a kind of "racism" against "blue people".
This seems crazy, but he really says it. The right-wing contempt for truth is so great that Republicans will say obvious bullshit, relying on other Republicans to support it anyways. And they do!
I know of one case where racism is directed against blue-skinned people. When thugs beat up black people, their skin turns black and blue. The usual racism against them continues, but now it is against blue-skinned people.
The saboteur-in-chief has done away with the Advisory Panel for the Sustained National Climate Assessment.
He is anti-science in general and especially opposed to climate science. His strategy is that if we close our eyes and don't find out the details of how global heating does and will effect everyone, many people will make less effort to resist the massive denialist campaign.
Medical doctors must advocate for their patients by protecting their insurance funding.
The diversity of a nonviolent movement gives it a considerable advantage over violent movements of young males.
One of the troll's saboteurs ordered the national academies to stop work on a study of the health effects of mountaintop-removal coal mining.
I wonder whether the national academies can keep the study going.
Students in primary school do not benefit from being assigned homework.
Australia is trying to impose drug testing on welfare recipients even though that has failed to do any good in other countries.
It is wrong to require drivers to take drug tests. Instead, they should have to use a machine at the beginning of each shift that tests their alertness and capacity at that moment. This would detect drivers impaired for any reason, whether it be illness, lack of sleep, painful experiences in their lives, or drugs.
The ACLU has decided not to defend people's right to have a rally with guns. But it stands firm for defending freedom of speech for any opinion or position.
I support this, because if legal censorship is tolerated, it will be applied to your views and mine views. I am proud to be a member of the ACLU.
The right-wing has taught people a spirit of hostility to anyone that needs public help.
Except for rich business owners, who claim they are doing us a favor when they take a handout.
Analyzing three principal right-wing propaganda tactics, also used by Putin, and suggestions for resisting them.
Right-wing terrorist attempts in the US are twice as common as jihadi attempts. Meanwhile, left-wing terror plots are rare by comparison.
Right-wing attempt is twice as likely to proceed unobstructed as each jihadi attempt. Perhaps that indicates that the state has focused its efforts more on jihadis and ignored right-wing terrorists.
It makes sense to limit how much time your daughter spends in front of a mirror.
Decades of "progress" in American business means ever more concentration in a few firms, and ever fewer good jobs.
Erdoğan has put an end to teaching evolution in Turkish high schools.
Christianity and Islam over and over deal with inconvenient truths by teaching ignorance.
Argentine thugs grabbed Santiago Maldonado as he was giving support to a protest by Mapuche indigenous people, and disappeared him.
Don't Pin Your Hopes on Military Generals' Saving the World from Trump.
The US government crushed white-supremacist violence in 1870. All it takes is suitable laws and a firm effort.
Working six days a week won't pay for a place to live in the extremely unequal USA.
US citizens: call on the troll to preserve the DACA program, which protects people that were brought to the US without authorization as children many years ago.
The "president" of the Maldives is using thugs to stop parliament from replacing his ally, who is speaker of the house.
This "president" took power through a coup against President Nasheed, who campaigned ceaselessly to curb the global heating that threatens to destroy the Maldive Islands. I suspect that oil companies helped organize the coup.
The troll announced a plan to send more US troops to Afghanistan, supposedly to "win" the war, although we already know that is impossible.
What it amounts to is a decision to continue supporting the Afghan government, which can't win a war because it inspires little loyalty. The US can prop that up as long as it has the strength, but that won't improve anything.
The troll said he would focus on killing more enemies. Arguably, that's what resuscitated the Taliban when Dubya did it.
At least he said he would cancel the "nation-building" programs that were basically handouts to corrupt people in the US and Afghanistan.
In principle, the idea of helping people establish a peaceful and prosperous nation makes sense. But the conditions for success don't exist in Afghanistan.
Another reason for failure was that Americans chose projects that made no sense in the local context — failure guaranteed.
All the Times Donald Trump Said the U.S. Should Get Out of Afghanistan.
It seems that the troll can't stand up to the neoliberal/theocratic establishment on any issue other than bigotry.
As more US thug departments aid deportation, the school-to-prison pipeline now includes a school-to-immigration-prison branch pipeline.
Idlib, Syria, is ruled by an ally of al-Qa'ida: Islamist and somewhat unjust, but not foaming at the mouth like PISSI. Two million civilians fear being killed when Assad tries to conquer Idlib.
Avoiding that war might be possible through diplomacy.
Permitting women in Northern Ireland to have abortions in England through the NHS without a fee is a helpful step forward — but they must have abortion rights at home.
Chinese defense lawyer Jiang Tianyong "confessed" and "pled guilty" to "subversion" a show trial.
To Fight Child Obesity — Let Children Play Outdoors More with Their Friends.
The article weakens its case by erroneously legitimizing the idea that the presence of cars requires keeping children on a virtual leash. It may be true that parents' fear of cars influenced parents' thinking, but the real presence of cars did not justify their conclusion.
There were plenty of cars in Manhattan in 1960, but that did not stop 7-year-olds from walking to school, even though we had to cross large avenues. We went on errands, too.
The crime wave that lasted from 1965 to 1995 probably played a role. It seems this was caused by lead poisoning, which was spread by lead in gasoline.
Part of the obstacle to children's walking and playing is due to urban sprawl.
Sprawl causes many other problems too. Let's build dense housing (necessary anyway to make enough housing and make transportation efficient) so that children don't have so far to walk to stores and school.
India's Supreme Court ruled that the Muslim practice of instant divorce (for men only) is unconstitutional in India.
Cambridge University Press reversed its decision to censor articles against netizens in China.
Academics threatened a boycott.
The publisher still has a paywall and forbids redistribution by mirrors. These unjust measures give it the capability to impose selective censorship. That makes the publisher a tempting target for such pressure. When publishers restrict availability of publications, they provide a foundation which any censor can take advantage of.
The limits of dumping industrial waste in rivers in India: when it colors stray dogs blue, that's when you get shut down.
A massive effort is planting coral in Belize's sea, but the reefs are threatened by unchecked industry and by oil drilling which ought to be banned entirely.
Calling Trump an "Embarrassment," Sanders Says Organized Labor Key to Nation's Future.
US citizens: call for restoration of funds for programs to discourage right-wing extremism.
Since then, the troll's saboteurs have killed another such program.
Everyone:
demand
no foreclosures in Flint because of bills for toxic water.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the troll to take action to stop federal contractors from offshoring jobs. He made this one of the central points of his campaign.
If you do this with Javascript disabled, you will get a page that says donation won't work that way. My experience says that it signs the petition before that happens, and you should get an email to confirm.
Everyone: Tell Starbucks and Nike to stop renting space in buildings that belong to the troll and carry his name.
US citizens: Tell your senators to protect the CFPB's rule that stops banks from forcing arbitration on their customers.
The imported European custom of persecution of homosexuality has taken deep root in Uganda. The state uses thugs for violent attacks on homosexuals.
"Sanctuary Schools" Across America Defy Trump's Immigration Crackdown.
Non-wealthy inhabitants of San Francisco and Oakland sabotage the municipal bicycle-rental systems, using it as a proxy for the gentrifiers.
Bicycle rentals are not "sharing", so "bicycle sharing" is a misleading PR term. Please let's avoid it.
Bicycle rental systems as such are not bad, but these systems are unjust and intolerable because they track their users. I would not propose to eliminate them, though; better to fix them not to surveil (see https://gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html).
The non-wealthy residents have discovered that sabotaging bicycle-rental is a way to fight gentrification. Urging them to think instead of it as merely a transportation service is valid in a shallow sense, but totally misses the point. First, those people surely know whether it will serve them or not. Second, if you want them to stop defending their housing this way, what other way do you suggest?
The thug that killed Laquan McDonald has been charged with murder.
India's Supreme Court annulled a marriage, and ordered the wife to be held incommunicado as a prisoner of her parents.
Her father claimed the husband had forced her into marriage, but she says no.
The court also ordered an investigation of the facts. An investigation may be called for, but how can that justify imprisoning her now?
Sony and IBM want to make a combined database of all schools' educational records, grades, and perhaps every piece of big data that digital education is planned to collect about each student.
To make it exciting, they plan to use a blockchain. Blockchain is the time-release version of cleavage: it blinds techies so they don't think about what might be wrong with the project.
What might be wrong with this project? The question of privacy does not seem to get much attention, and I fear they will use this to get data and misuse it.
I expect they will adopt a worthless "privacy policy", tell the public "We protect your privacy by firmly following our privacy policy", and the result will be injustice.
Spain has released Turkish exile Doğan Akhanlı from jail, but has not yet ruled out extraditing him to Turkey. Meanwhile, writer Hamza Yalcin remains in jail as Spain considers whether to extradite him.
Sinclair Broadcast News is an overt white-supremacist propaganda mill.
In the US: see the Population Connection's resistance toolkit for ways to oppose the troll's war on birth control.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
Erdoğan is trying to make Spain extradite an exiled Turkish writer.
US Christian organizations in the US can't bring themselves to rebuke the bigot no matter how great a sin he commits.
They have been turned into hypocrites, through and through.
This is not a new phenomenon. Recall why there is a "Southern Baptist" church? It split off to endorse slavery when the broader Baptist church came out against slavery.
Maduro's questionable constitutional assembly has annulled the legislature's power.
Republicans mostly excuse the bigot in chief for supporting violent extremists, and are reluctant to criticize the violence, too.
A woman wants to apologize to her estranged father for the false accusations of molestation that she made against him, as a young child, under irresistible pressure from her mother.
False accusations may be unusual, but they are not impossible.
Republicans sabotaged an anti-fraud system by threatening to apply it arbitrarily to birth control.
Cambridge University Press imposed censorship of its journal, the China Quarterly, on users from China. It has blocked 300 articles, following orders from the Chinese state.
China's demand for censorship is tyrannical, but don't forget that the roots of this injustice are in the journal's paywall. The paywall is an inexcusable attack on scholarship which also gives CUP the power to track and control who can read the articles. Having this power made CUP vulnerable to pressure from China, which demanded that CUP use its power for the Chinese state against the Chinese people.
The Cambridge University Press must immediately remove the paywall from the China Quarterly, and permit everyone to mirror the journal freely (which it morally ought to have done anyway). Then it will have a simple, ethical answer to give China when China demands that it control who can read the journal: "We are unable to do that."
Scholars, please refuse to serve as reviewers or editors for journals that control access to articles or restrict sharing of articles.
Poaching mafias in Africa also move drugs.
"You will not replace us" is the Republican Party's motto as well as the white supremacist's.
Refugees dumped by Australia on Nauru are being denied surgery, and Nauru blocks all women from getting approval for an abortion.
The Republican Party is the dirty water party.
There is a large reservoir of methane in the ground under the Antarctic ice sheet. If the ice melts, that methane will be released, which would cause further global heating.
Methane lasts only a few decades in the atmosphere. If the ice melts over a period of 200 years, only a small part of the methane will be in the air at any one time.
Elon Musk calls for regulation of AI so it won't be dangerous.
Someday an AI might be developed that has desires of its own and could be dangerous the way an immoral or unhinged person can be dangerous. In the short term, the danger of AI is that it will help rich people and companies that own AIs do an even better job of transferring wealth from the rest of humanity to them.
Thus, the regulation we need for AI in the next decade is to reduce the harm it can do to employment.
The troll completely misunderstands what Hezbollah is about.
There are partial ideological parallels between jihadis and white supremacists.
US citizens: call for restoration of funds for US programs, cancelled by the troll, that aimed to discourage right-wing terrorism.
US courts have protected almost everyone involved with CIA torture, from top to bottom. Only the psychologists who designed the torture program have been made to testify in a civil suit.
Torture victims did not apparently win anything, but by suing they forced the CIA to reveal secrets about its torture program.
The troll's supporters in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, eat up his bigotry and cruelty, while living in a fantasy world of right-wing propaganda.
People have proposed a pitifully small change to one of the US snooping laws. The snooping services are pushing back by misrepresenting it.
NAFTA renegotiation could be used to make copyright even more repressive in the US (and Canada and Mexico).
Amish people and nuns are resisting the construction of a fracked gas pipeline.
Thousands protested in Hong Kong to demand the release of jailed protest leaders.
A leaked conversation implies Wikileaks was not interested in leaks from the Russian interior ministry in 2016.
Some volunteers dedicate their lives to finding the corpses of people who died crossing the US border from Mexico.
I don't think finding corpses is important; I wouldn't put any effort into that myself. Avoiding deaths is important.
The reason those people die is that they think two liters of water are enough to walk to safety. What efforts are being made to inform would-be migrants in Mexico of how much water is really needed? My rough estimate is 10 liters, which weighs 10 kg. Many of them, informed of this, would stay in Mexico rather than die in the desert. Only a few would be able to take advantage of the information to reach a town in the US.
Wouldn't an intense, truthful information campaign be more effective than a wall? Also cheaper, easier, less ecologically damaging, and less offensive to Mexico and Mexicans?
A suggestion I saw for counterprotests against Nazis: sing "Springtime for Hitler" (the song from The Producers).
An unusual large wildfire is burning in Greenland.
Global heating is surely partly responsible. And the fire risks increasing global heating by dropping soot onto the ice sheet.
Australians who tried to burn a mosque will be charged with terrorism.
A special opioid intervention court in New York State is designed to lead addicts to treatment.
US citizens: call for removal of the statues of rebels from the US capitol.
US citizens: call for removal of white supremacist advisors from the White House.
Everyone: call on US states not to pass immunity laws for deadly drivers.
Wildlife protection leader Wayne Lotter was murdered in Tanzania, perhaps by a team engaged specifically to assassinate him.
EPA Welcomed Industry Feedback Before Reversing Pesticide Ban, Ignoring Health Concerns.
The troll's saboteurs are hard at work, and they are making steady progress. Their mission is to help rich Americans get even more rich by poisoning the rest of us.
For the most part, the real actions of the saboteurs are more important than what the troll says, which is mainly for distraction. So normally I focus on the real actions. His support for Nazis and bigots is an exception because that has real and harmful effects.
The Mayor of Charlottesville will campaign for repeal of the Virginia law that prohibits removing monuments to the Confederacy.
It is better not to call them "Confederate monuments" because term suggests they remain from the Confederacy itself. In fact, most of them were erected by white supremacists long after the Civil War, mostly after 1900, and some in the 21st century.
While the law prohibits removing the monument to Lee, an alternate way to deal with it is by erecting another monument nearby, perhaps depicting some of Lee's slaves after they were freed.
Was there a regiment of freed slaves from Virginia? That regiment could be honored in Emancipation Park.
Mehdi Karroubi ended his hunger strike when the government of Iran agreed to take the human spies out of his house. But he still has not received any official charges to justify his punishment.
Mike Tang lost his appeal, and has been sentenced to two months of "hard labor" for telling his son to walk home at night.
The web site of the organization mentioned in the page is totally dependent on JavaScript. Without that, even the text is not visible. If you feel inclined to support the organization, please tell them you will do so if they make their web site work properly.
The mother of murdered protester Heather Heyer says she refuses to speak with the troll. She doesn't want to play into his political agenda.
The right-wing prime minister of Spain injected himself into a vigil for the people killed by car terrorists on Thursday.
Rajoy and his dooH niboR policies have surely killed more Spaniards than all the terrorists in Europe since 2000.
Terrorist attacks against people based on an identity they associate with tend to make them more firmly and more cruelly attached to that identity.
That's what terrorists seek, in their pursuit of an unendable "culture war".
The advanced countries have not learned the lesson of the financial crisis 10 years ago; they continue to try to depend on banks to cause growth.
Of course, when you give banks more power, they use that power to make it impossible to take the power away without a fight. We need to defeat the power of the banks.
There is no doubt that Egyptian thugs murdered Italian student Giulio Regeni and then covered it up. But there is no hope of finding out any more than that, and the murderous regime feels no pressure to do justice.
I had a visit to Egypt scheduled at the time of al-Sisi's bloody coup d'état. I skipped it. Even if you are just a tourist, you can put pressure on those murderers by not visiting Egypt.
Meanwhile, the UK (like the US) continues supporting Egyptian "security".
US citizens: tell Senate Democrats, Ensure the National Defense Authorization Act does not include funding for Trump’s war on immigrants, his discriminatory ban on transgender troops or any other policies that promote or advance Trump’s agenda of fear and hate.
Everyone: call on mainstream media to ditch the term "alt-right".
The troll's endorsement of right-wing extremists, in the meeting where he intended to push his corrupt infrastructure plan, may have pushed away the support of plutocratist Democrats such as Pelosi and Schumer.
Those pseudo-Democrats will have plenty more chances to support the banks and dooH niboR. We need to replace them with progressive Democrats — people who will reject these bow-down-to-business plans because they bow down to business rather because of secondary associations.
The reason the US government can't afford to maintain and build infrastructure now is because business has too much power, and uses that power to pay too little tax.
Republicans, and plutocratist Democrats, offer this as an excuse for privatization that would give business even more power. What we need to do is take that power away.
Workers in Silicon Valley are forming unions.
Airplane crewmembers are getting contaminated with organophosphates, and this is suspected of causing some to end up permanently sick, or even dead.
Liu Xia, widow of Liu Xiaobo, is still held incommunicado, but her captors released a video in which she says what they told her to say.
Korea's missile tests appear to have carried extremely light payloads and lacked heat shields. They would not be able to reach Guam with a real bomb.
However, North Korea's threat to spread carnage in Seoul with conventional weapons if it is attacked is not a bluff. The US should take advantage of the offer of negotiations.
The people of Wunsiedel in Germany prepared for a march by Nazis by arranging for it to raise money for a deradicalization charity.
Large company CEOs joined the troll's advisory councils in order to profit, and it took his explicit endorsement of Nazis to embarrass them into quitting. Just when they had all agreed to announce they would quit, he stole their thunder by abolishing the panels.
He also cancelled another advisory council (on infrastructure) that was still being formed.
The chief purpose of these councils is mutual PR benefit. If they don't yield that benefit, nobody has a reason to keep them going.
Saboteur Zinke, to boost waste in the US and make national parks more littered, has cancelled the rule against selling bottled water in them.
Takiyah Thompson could be imprisoned for more than a year for helping to pull down a monument to soldiers that fought for slavery. 200 people came to the jail and asked to be arrested too.
Some rich Americans that support the bigot-in-chief are supporters of right-wing extremists too.
Right-wing extremists publicized a faked photo which purported to show one counterprotester directly attacking a thug in Charlottesville.
No such attack occurred: the photo was taken years ago, elsewhere, and was edited for fraudulent use now.
Right-winger extremists, following the troll, care nothing about lying.
President Do-dirty isn't satisfied with sending thugs to summarily shoot drug dealers, all of whom allegedly shoot at the thugs first. He has now threatened to shoot human rights defenders who try to record those shootings — in case some of the victims didn't really shoot, didn't have guns, etc.
We recently saw thugs in Baltimore planting guns and drugs to put people in jail.
Are thugs in the Philippines so honest they would never do such a thing?
Logging in Tasmania threatens the world's largest invertebrate. These crayfish are giants by invertebrate standards, but they are only as big as a cat.
Steve Bannon has been fired from the White House.
Bannon did both bad and good. Bannon helped the troll mobilize a racist base. He also helped the troll resist the establishment Republican demands for wars and business-supremacy treaties.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach the bigot-in-chief.
He gave white supremacists explicit and unequivocal support.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: Support putting up a peace pole in Charlottesville.
Portugal has suffered from massive and deadly wildfires this year. Now a town is cut off, surrounded by fire.
Spain, France and Italy are having the same problem due to a drought that is clearly associated with global heating. As global heating continues, much of Spain and Italy will become desert.
Hong Kong democracy protest leaders have been sentenced to months in prison.
It's not as bad as what the US is trying to do to dissidents, but it shames the leaders of Hong Kong, who are carrying out the orders, and the leaders of China, who gave them.
"Centrists" that fail to oppose neoliberal dooH niboR have nothing to offer that will help the people, in the UK as in the US.
Mehdi Karroubi, who ran for president of Iran and was punished with permanent imprisonment at home, has gone on hunger strike to demand a trial of whatever accusations there are against him.
The bad science of James Damore is supported by other commentators equally ignorant of science.
The troll is trying to eliminate federal prudence requirements to build federally funded infrastructure out of range of likely flooding.
The head of the Santa Fe thug union spreads violent racism.
Many monuments to the Confederacy were set up within the past two decades.
As explained previously, few of them go back to the 19th century. They are not part of the history of the Civil War. They represent a white supremacist view of that war, one we do well to reject.
US citizens: call on Twitter to revoke the troll's account.
Antiracists were arrested for toppling a statue of Robert E Lee, but no one has been arrested for beating up Deandre Harris in Charlottesville.
Family farmers of Canada, Mexico and the US warn that the redesign of NAFTA seems intended to increase the power of corporations. The negotiations are secret again, as in the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
The fundamental nature of any "free trade treaty" that "works" too well is to increase the power of businesses over the state and the people.
Important internet companies are cutting off right-wing extremist groups.
If the result is that hardly anyone spreads right-wing lies and terrorism on the internet, that would be small loss. However, it is hard to confine effects to their intended targets. If all the major Internet communication companies (there are not so many of them, after all) combine to firmly censor right-wing extremism, that would amount to Chinese-style repression which could be turned against any form of dissent.
The CEO of Cloudflare decided to cut off its service to a particular Nazi site, but thinks that society needs to take up the question of what is allowed on the internet, rather than appoint major companies as censors by default.
Freedom of speech means respecting people's right to maintain views that we despise. It doesn't include the right to organize violence, but we have to make sure not to push the limits too tight. We must take care not to legitimize the kind of repression that inauguration protesters and pipeline protesters now face in the US.
Salafi Arabia is offering funds to "rebuild Iraq" in exchange for political influence.
If this helps Iraqi Sunnis get equal rights, it will be a step forward and might aid the cause of peace there. But Salafi Arabia will surely implant Salafi rigidism — just what Iraq doesn't need more of.
Iran is a repressive theocracy, but nowhere near as bad a repressive theocracy as Salafi Arabia
Australia has rejected two proposed river mines because they would threaten the Great Barrier Reef.
The troll decided to take another advisory council home since CEOs won't play with him any more.
American antisemites hate Jews, but support Israel for its system of racism.
Wells Fargo bank, "poster child for corporate crime recidivism", has taken the drastic step of requiring three board members to resign with no other penalty.
What? No jail time?
Brazilian Supreme Court Upholds Land Rights of Indigenous People.
This by itself does not make them safe from land-grabbers.
Michael Moore warns Americans that the troll's saboteurs in various government departments do real, permanent harm every day.
The FBI and NHS warned in May that right-wing bigots were the biggest terrorist threat in the US.
The troll is talking about pardoning ex-Sheriff Arpaio for disobeying the court order to stop unconstitutional practices.
Monuments to the Confederacy in the US are not relics of the Confederacy. They were erected chiefly in the 1910s and 1920s as symbols of bigotry, by and for the movement that set up the racist segregation laws known as "Jim Crow".
We should preserve the battlefields and other relics of the Civil War, which reflect the gravity of that struggle. They honor the abolitionist movement that defeated the Confederacy. However, as for the campaign symbols for bigotry, cities and states should take all of them down.
Many have been removed this year.
Historical Amnesia About Slavery Is a Tool of White Supremacy.
"False equivalence is a tool, not an accident of ignorance. It is a choice to focus on Lee’s reputation as a military tactician and not on what that acumen was put to use for… It was a choice to erect these statues honoring his life, just as it was a choice to keep them up for so long."
The troll has "forced the world to confront racial division in the US".
An argument against insisting on trigger warnings.
I read an article (I don't know a place to link to it) which compared trigger warnings to spoiler warnings. Spoiler warnings do a favor to some readers. It's a kindness to do that favor, if you think of it, but we can't demand that people always remember to think of it, or know where there is a reason to do it.
US citizens: call on Congress to formally censure the bigot-in-chief. He gave white supremacists explicit and unequivocal support.
US citizens: call on CEOs to quit the troll's American Technology Council.
US citizens: Tell the inspector general of the Department of the Interior: Investigate the censoring of government scientists and experts.
Right-wingers cancelled rallies because they expected counterprotests, but claimed that those were "terrorist threats".
It is a standard right-wing lie to take the things they actually do, and falsely accuse their opponents of doing the same. That's what the troll does when he calls accurate criticism "fake news" and when he pretends that counterprotestors in Charlottesville engaged in violence.
Cuckoo D'État: The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum.
US laws against acts of terrorism have a gap: they cover only terrorism that is inspired from outside the US.
That doesn't stop us from acknowledging right-wing violence as terrorism. When we come across a pile of shit, we don't need a special law or a court decision to say it stinks.
Robert E Lee was no hero as a man. He was a stubborn supporter of slavery and racial oppression.
Norway's efforts to reduce food waste at supermarkets.
The Tory campaign to destroy the NHS is entering the home stretch: doctors can no longer give basic medicines to destitute patients.
Did You Visit This Anti-Trump Site? The US Government Wants Your IP Address.
ACLU: A Sweeping Search Warrant Targets Anti-Trump Website in Clear Threat to the Constitution.
The cruel deportation of people living in the US who have little contact with any country other than the US.
The deputy chief of LA thugs says his department it works to build relationships with immigrant communities, not deport them.
I wouldn't assume black people are safe from thugs there, but the attitude of Deputy Chief Arcos is a good one.
Tech's Growing Stranglehold on the Media. It is dangerous for the independence of the press.
It threatens to make the general business domination of the media even worse.
Two ethical arguments against terraforming Mars even if it is lifeless.
Here's what various prominent Republicans do and don't dare to say about the hater's support for racist violence. Some identify him personally, while others can't get those words out.
I note that the official leaders of the Republicans in Congress are in the latter group.
Daily Kos pointed out in an email that even the Republicans who deny open support to white supremacism are still working for voter ID laws and disenfranchisement programs that stop many blacks from voting, as well as the big gerrymander that makes many of their votes ineffective.
The infant took his business councils home after several CEOs refused to play with them his way.
Everyone: call on CEOs to quit the bigot-in-chief's business and manufacturing councils.
US citizens: call on Congress to insist that the troll fire Bannon.
Everyone: call on North Carolina not to protect drivers that hit protesters with their cars.
The proposed law explicitly protects drivers that hit protesters "accidentally", but removing drivers' usual legal obligation to take care not to hit anyone would encourage drivers to drive in risky ways, killing people "accidentally on purpose". Not to mention the temptation to hit protesters intentionally and then pretend it was an accident.
The US suffers from degraded trust in other people, and this makes people more vulnerable to opioid addiction.
London is returning to having thugs search people on the street based on disliking their looks (which often means, their skin color). This makes black communities hate the thugs.
The World's Problems Cannot Be Solved by Self-Styled Heroic Leaders.
When plastic floats in the ocean for a few days, it grows a layer of algae which leads anchovies to mistake it for food.
Several Republicans condemned the Bigot-in-Chief for equating violent Nazis and white supremacists to the peaceful nonbigots that they attacked. But most could not bring themselves to criticize him by name.
Shame on those.
A photo shows Nazis in Charlottesville beating up an unarmed black man, using iron and wooden bars. They did this next to the thug department headquarters, but the thugs didn't intervene.
Kim Jong-un turned down the bombast dial in a possible invitation for negotiations. Will the troll be capable of taking up the invitation?
In New Orleans, the water pumps are mostly broken, the people who run them are not on the ball, and even if they were operating correctly they wouldn't be enough to cope with five months of steady rain.
How about starting now to move New Orleans to a place 150 ft above sea level, where we can be confident that it won't be submerged in the next few centuries? Then the only concern will be fatal heat waves.
Kenya's opposition presidential candidate will push his accusations of election fraud in the courts, rather than on the streets.
Overcrowding in Nebraska prisons causes heart attacks, blindness and mental illness, because prisoners don't get medical care.
Lebanon has repealed its marry-your-rapist law.
US school thugs like to search schoolgirls rather intimately, except for the white ones.
Britain's food banks are running low on some foods as the Tories push ever more people into depending on them.
The Tories aim to limit the public inquiry into the causes of the housing project fire to the technical failures—the direct causes—while leaving out the root causes (unjust Tory policies).
The troll has a history of refusing to acknowledge right-wing terror in the US.
It will be interesting if the Charlottesville terrorist attack enables Republicans to start openly condemning the extreme right and maybe the troll also. But many seem to be sticking by him for now.
If the troll sincerely disapproves of right-wing bigotry and violence, here is how he can show he means it.
Instead, he has shown that that statement was a throw-away line, an excuse to deny his continued support for right-wing bigotry and violence.
Bolivia Approves Controversial Highway in Amazon Biodiversity Hotspot.
Some of the troll's supporters are having doubts, as it sinks in that his racism is only a distraction from the real causes of their real problems.
What it was like to witness the racist terrorism of Charlottesville.
It is important to recognize this, and then to avoid dwelling on this. People who repeatedly watched the videos of planes flying into buildings, in 2001, were mentally traumatized. After seeing it once or twice, I sensed the danger of this; for self-protection, I made a point of avoiding television for the next few days.
Instead of dwelling on what terrorism feels like, let's dwell on how to vanquish this particular terrorist movement.
Iran retaliates individually against the expat Iranian journalists that work for the BBC.
Reintroducing recess into a school day can make the school better in many ways.
Thousands of Americans have rallied in many cities to condemn the right-wing violence.
US thugs eagerly kill blacks without waiting to see if they do anything wrong, but they are as tame as kittens towards armed and threatening whites.
Seeing that sort of behavior towards a peaceful protest is what radicalized Malcolm X.
Some Republicans condemn the right-wing extremist violence now that it has broken out, but they helped stoke it for years.
10 years after the financial crisis, the rich victors are squeezing the defeated poor ever more, and giving a boost to right-wing populists offering misguided "solutions".
It is getting harder to survive in PISSI-occupied Raqqa, but easier to leave as the liberation forces come further into the city. Those who escape pass their remaining food supplies to those who must remain, and those must pretend to be sincere and convinced supporters of PISSI or be executed.
The description reminds me of what I have read about other totalitarian states, such as the Soviet Union, East Germany, and China under the cultural revolution. It is hell on Earth.
It will be hard, in the future, for Syrians to distinguish between PISSI's real supporters (dangerous hidden enemies) and those who pretended.
Salafi Arabia has grabbed and disappeared several dissident princes, in acts which include kidnapping, treachery, or the extrajudicial cooperation of other countries.
Various companies that provide support for internet sites and communication have begun kicking off right-wing extremists such as the Nazi "Stormer" site.
When the extremists use dog-whistles to arouse hatred and violence, then claim it was only irony, they are trying to have it both ways. It is legitimate to tell them they ought to know that this an appeal to violence.
Nazis have a right to hold rallies. But not the right to incite and prepare violence in them.
In the US: call on government officials at all levels to remove all symbols that honor the rebel side of the civil war.
The purpose of their rebellion was to perpetuate slavery. The Union soldiers fought to end slavery, and sung about that as they marched.
No matter what admirable personal characteristics some southern leaders may have had, that can't redeem the evil that they fought for — not even slightly.
Protesters in North Carolina (not so far from Charlottesville) pulled down a memorial to soldiers that fought for slavery.
Defacing a statue reduces the dignity of those who do it. Pulling the statue down is more dignified. However, the best form of victory is to pressure officials to remove the statue. For a state to have a special law privileging statues that honor the war to continue slavery is an endorsement of that side, which dishonors that state.
In the US: Stand united against the right-wing extremists.
Another strike against the animal rights movement: a supporter would rather let people die than use pigs to grow transportable human organs.
If animals deserved the right to live, as humans do, we would have the duty to try to save them when they are in danger, as we have towards humans. It would follow that we ought to stop barn owls from killing mice, stop dolphins from killing fish, and stop frogs from killing flies.
Perhaps in 200 years in a totally transformed world, we could do this and keep all those animals alive without any eating any.
Cities that want to imitate New York's "High Line" must be very careful. There are few opportunities for that to succeed.
When I first saw the proposal for London's Garden Bridge, I took it as a scheme to suck money out of the state to do something useless. In the US, this is typically done with major league sports studios or weapons systems.
Chinese human rights defender Wu Gan was imprisoned for two years, but now has been given a phony trial.
Some US CEOs are now quitting the troll's "advisory council" in response to his support for right-wing extremism.
I don't think the "advisory council" is consulted for advice. It is simply a way for executives to endorse the troll, presumably hoping for some sort of reward for the company or themselves.
Another resignation from a related council.
"Who wants to live in an artificially intelligent future?"
Republicans are attacking inmates of nursing homes by eliminating the rule that prohibits the nursing homes from forcing inmates into arbitration.
The article uses the term "sexual assault" which is defined to stretch from groping to rape, and includes other things too. In general it is a grave mistake to use that term, so I have decided never to use it. In this particular case, no actual error results, since inmates ought to be able to sue the company if the management tolerates any of those acts. But I still reject that term.
Malaysian Islamists want to shut down an Atheist group. Some have made death threats. The government will investigate … the Atheist group, not the murderous Islamists.
Malaysia denies the human rights of non-Muslims already, and those of Muslims too, by denying them the right to stop being Muslims.
It would be equally wrong to deny people the right to become Muslims, but curiously Malaysia does not do that.
The troll's new hotel in Washington, DC, has brought in 4 million dollars more than was expected. Being president is quite profitable if the president's goal is to make a profit.
The FCC, run by Saboteur Pai, has filled most of its Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee with representatives of cable and wireless companies. A few others were chosen, perhaps solely so that we could not say the FCC had filled it "entirely" with such representatives.
Lawsuit accuse Wells Fargo of cheating small businesses for handling their credit card payments.
When the victims find out, they are told they must pay $500 to stop using Wells Fargo's disservice.
To Tackle Neo-Nazis, We Must Treat Its "Thinkers" like Thugs.
Neonicotinoid pesticides make queen bees substantially less likely to start a colony.
Forensic researchers claim that analysis of some of the metadata of DNC leak files shows that the files were copied first onto a USB memory, not obtained by cracking the DNC server externally.
Please don't refer to breaking security as "hacking"; the proper name for that is "cracking".
They also claim that some of the leaked files had been pasted into a template with some Russian characteristics, to make it appear that the leak was committed by Russians.
Wikileaks announced last year that received this material through an internal leak — it was not obtained by cracking.
I don't follow what the article says about Forensicator's special access to the metadata of the files, and I don't see convincing evidence that we can rely on the statements attributed to him. But I also don't see any convincing proof that Russia was involved in these leaks (though I wouldn't put it past Putin).
There are so many suspicious ties between the troll and Russia that an investigation is clearly called for; but I don't see proof that the troll is guilty of criminal plotting with Russia in what has been revealed to the public. Meanwhile, other crimes such as obstruction of justice must be investigated too.
US corporations generally pay between 13 and 19 percent federal tax, compared with the nominal 35% rate.
Many of the largest "US" corporations pay no federal tax.
"In 1939, I didn't hear war coming. Now its thundering approach can’t be ignored."
Searching blacks for walking on the street is military occupation lite, and often thugs escalate it to sexual molestation, sometimes even torture.
Poison Once Flowed in America's Waters. With Trump, It Might Again.
Electric cars won't get rid of particulate pollution, even if the electricity comes from solar and wind power. The brakes and tires make more particulates than the engine.
Australia is being forced to pull back from threats to imprison staff at its immigration prisons if they talk about abuse of prisoners.
Don't sympathize with Sessions merely because his master is attacking him. Sessions has supported cruelty and injustice for decades, and he is not stopping now.
Making enough grouse in Britain to satisfy the excessive numbers of people that want to shoot them has lead to bad land management practices that endanger other wildlife.
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu faces indictment soon on multiple corruption scandals, and Israelis are ready to vote him out.
Digital systems to keep track of which who in North Carolina had already voted malfunctioned in the 2016 election.
Some accuse Russian interference. Perhaps it was that, but other suspects are possible, too. We may never know the real cause of this, but we know a way to avoid it: use paper for these records.
The latest Wells Fargo cheating scandal: it signed home mortgage customers up to a warranty service without telling them, let alone getting their approval.
Privatizing or outsourcing government services makes those services unaccountable, inviting bad service and even injustice.
This is one of the reasons why privatization of government services should not be allowed, unless it gives the public access to a truly competitive market.
If the UK exits the EU, will it be able to pass a law so it can cancel unjust privatization contracts without paying penalties?
The troll's FCC saboteur, Ajit Pai, is trying to resuscitate an obsolete rule to allow Sinclair to become a nationwide extremist network.
The troll threatened a military intervention in Venezuela.
That's more aggressive than Dubya, who organized a coup attempt. It was defeated because the people stood firm for Chavez.
I don't know what would happen now, but if Republicans intervene they are surely up to no good.
A bombardment campaign is not a halfway step to war. It is war.
However, there is a distinction to be made between fighting on the side of a country's recognized government and fighting against it. Under international law, states are allowed to support other states militarily.
In some of the countries where the US is carrying out drone bombardment, it is aiding the more or less legitimate government. This is true in the Philippines, Iraq, Afghanistan.
In Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan, that claim is less clear, but it is arguable. In Syria it is clearly not true.
Legally permitted by international law is not the same thing as morally justified. I think that fighting against PISSI is entirely justified. Fighting against Assad, maybe not.
Meanwhile, the Salafi-US bombardment of Yemen is legalized by the support of the official government of Yemen—but it is clearly wrong.
One Single UK Aristocrat Just Avoided More in Inheritance Tax Than the Entire NHS Deficit.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
The town of Galveston was raised 110 years ago to resist hurricanes, but now due to global heating the hurricanes are gaining on it.
If we don't curb global heating, sooner or later Galveston will have to be abandoned.
Developing small ion rockets to power small and light drones.
Is anyone developing a technology to prevent tiny robots from invading our homes, then spying on us or worse?
Everyone: call for removal of symbols that honor the rebel states of 1860 that seceded to preserve slavery.
There is no scientific evidence that males are mare capable of tech work, but plenty of evidence that prejudice against women holds them back.
The troll has been working for more than a year to build up the racist movement that attacked counterprotesters in Charlottesville.
A neo-Nazi drove a car into a crowd of peaceful antifascist counterprotesters in Charlottesville, killing one and seriously injuring several more, in an act of terrorism. His adherence to Nazism was long-standing.
The Nazi group that held the meeting says it is not their responsibility because the terrorist was not a "member" of the group. We would hardly accept such an excuse from Islamist terrorists, and we should not accept it here. They willfully stirred up this violence, so they are morally responsible for it.
Some Nazis claim the rally was a victory. That is partly an instance of their troll-style policy of systematic exaggeration, but I suspect that the murder will win them more support from the violent crazies that they intentionally recruit. Other right-wing acts of violence have had this effect.
Antifascist counterprotesters met the torch-carrying right-wing bigots who marched through the University of Virginia on Friday. Many local businesses closed or put up signs telling bigots they are not welcome.
The torches reference the Ku Klux Klan, which in the 1860s burned black people's houses, and in the 1920s burned crosses as a threat.
On Saturday, the bigots held their main rally, attended by counterprotesters, with numerous thugs watching. And watch is all they did, when some of the bigots attacked unarmed counterprotesters.
The troll pointedly refused to condemn the racist violence that he helped to stir up.
He pretended that "many" sides were responsible for the violence that was repeatedly launched by the bigots.
Mainstream media did likewise, describing the violence in ways that cover up who was responsible.
The Rainforest Action Network says that Pepsico's supposed plan to end deforestation and enslavement of labor in its palm oil supply chain is just a disguise for not doing much.
An analysis of the UK labor market shows that unemployment is very low, but abuse of powerless workers is up.
Foreign investors eliminated the large animals from the Kilombero valley in Tanzania by turning it into plantations.
Young progressive activists, campaigning against racism and to stop global heating, are our last hope to avoid planetary disaster.
The Exxon refinery in Charlton-Pollard, Texas, violates the Clean Air Act by spewing carcinogens, and many of the residents in the neighborhood have got sick. The EPA settled the complaint a few months ago requiring only minor changes that won't fix the problem.
Is that ordinary regulatory capture, or is it the troll's doing?
Trump Is Ignoring the Minnesota Mosque Bombing. We Know Why.
It is the same reason he refuses to clearly condemn the violence of right-wing Nazi Christians in Charlottesville.
The troll's talk about sabotaging US medical insurance has made insurance companies jittery, so they have already started planning large increases in prices.
The troll's saboteurs are working to help the union-avoidance industry stay hidden.
Saboteur Sessions has directed the Department of Justice to support a voter deregistration law in Ohio when the Supreme Court considers it.
This would have a small effect if poor people regularly voted. Due to discouragement and obstacles, they often don't — and the difference could be crucial for the Republicans in 2018 and 2020.
Black Lives Matter has taught many Americans that racism is a real danger today, but in terms of policies, not much has changed.
Republicans are addicted to the drug of bigotry and hate, and the addiction perverts their activities.
It is right for the ACLU to defend the rights of people to hold peaceful rallies for any and all viewpoints.
I support this, even in regard to views that I despise along with other ACLU members.
I don't think this means we must allow people to systematically stir up violence, as the Nazis and bigots did in Charlotteville.
Wikileaks is slinging dirt at Robert Mueller by presenting an act of his official duties, part of official US cooperation with Russia, as if it were a private deception.
(I had fact-checking done on this article.)
I am disappointed in Assange for this.
Paris Climate Deal: US Tells Diplomats to Dodge Foreign Officials' Questions.
When any company or agency screws up your account or your orders, causing some other company or agency to claim you owe it money, you are likely to be screwed. It tends to be hard to clear up the error.
Here a British teenager committed suicide because he expected to be given a fine he could not pay. This was because court notices had been sent to the wrong address.
You may have to go to court against the entity that screwed up, and the other one (that demands payment) won't help you because it doesn't care who is at fault. When this happens, the state should hold the first one responsible for all costs, and should help you prove it.
US citizens: call on some Democratic senators to reject wall street donations in their reelection campaigns.
US citizens:
Oppose
oil drilling off US coasts.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: call on the National Football League Players' Association to support Colin Kaepernick, who was blacklisted for supporting Black Lives Matter.
'Stable' Antarctic Ice Sheet May Have Started Collapsing (in 2009).
It is now adding .16 mm to global sea level per year. That would be no disaster in itself, but it is sure to speed up melting in coming decades.
Why Does North Korea Hate the US?
A great way to protest the troll is with derision at the White House.
Comprehensive sexuality education helps young people avoid gratuitous suffering of various kinds. However, around the world, there is a tendency for sex education to omit the topic of contraception.
Bernie Sanders is asking the French government to help unionize Nissan plants in the US, through its partial ownership of Renault, which is closely linked with Nissan.
The troll's campaign was a bait-and-switch, condemning powerful corporations but now handing over power to the worst of them.
James Damore's internal Google memo was "not an unhinged rant", but it cited irrelevant scientific generalities to advocate giving sexism free rein inside Google. Here's a clear explanation.
There is good reason to fire anyone who posts an unhinged sexist rant within a company. Such rants harass, directly. I don't see that it is necessary to fire people for non-ranting postings that propose a sexist policy. The proposal itself does no harm unless it is adopted. Wouldn't firm rejection of the proposal suffice?
Reading well-veiled fallacies can be exasperating, but that is not the same as being harassed.
Once Damore had been fired, he jumped into bed with right-wing extremists that are known for unhinged rants.
Perhaps he wrote the internal memo with careful restraint, aiming to persuade Google staff, but now shows his true nature.
I can envision the possibility that a firm rejection, without firing, would have kept him restrained and avoided helping the bigots.
A plan to curb the "addiction to growth": "Curbing advertising, taxing carbon, a basic income, and a shorter work week".
I think we must also do something to curb the ability of billionaires to compete to outdo the others.
A report argues that the main drivers of inequality are certain government policies: taxation, trade, regulation, public subsidies, and expenditures.
It is clear that retraining people to take different jobs can help only a small fraction of the unemployed and the 50% of employed Americans stuck in Mcjobs.
However, technology is also an important factor. If automation eliminates 10% of jobs over a decade, there is no way that most of those people will find anything but Mcjobs, if even that.
Globalization is a crucial factor, but perhaps at a deeper level. Globalization is the driver of trade policy. Globalization-oriented trade policy gives businesses the power to knock down regulations that protects us from them, demand public subsidies, and force cuts in expenditure by dodging taxes.
The business-supremacy treaties are at the root of this.
Melting ice tends to activate volcanoes; this is happening in Alaska and Iceland. Meanwhile, scientists have just discovered 91 more volcanoes under the Antarctic ice sheet.
Eva Gollinger, who exposed the US role in the coup against Chavez, analyzes the developments in Venezuela.
US citizens: support the Restricting the First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, which would deny the president the authority to start a nuclear war.
Global heating is making toxic blooms of cyanobacteria more frequent in some lakes, such as Lake Erie.
Tools for probing sites and networks can be useful for journalists, not just for crackers.
The troll's undisguised contempt for Tillerson leaves the US unable to negotiate with North Korea or even to calm the tensions.
2016 set records for the heat in the Arctic winter and shrinkage of ice around the world.
Also a record for the height of sea level — but that was automatic, since it rises every year. Sea level is now 3.25 inches above the 1993 level. This increase is enough to push some storms and high tides over the edge of the sea wall.
Chains of "academies" — semi-privatized schools — in the UK are training teachers to read from a script instead of thinking about their students. The author says this resembles sales training rather than education.
It can't be long before they replace the teachers with something like the Eliza program, or prerecorded videos.
Elephants that have been brutalized in captivity by humans sometimes turn to self-harming, as some humans and parrots do in painful circumstances.
The UK is considering making it illegal to reidentify anonymous data.
I agree that this should not apply to researchers, but if it is limited to commercial activity and public relations or campaign activity, it would be ethical.
Would it be enforceable? If the penalties are sufficiently strong, organizations aiming for profit or other success would hesitate to violate the law.
The law needs to address the scenario where the reidentification is done in some other country but the usage is targeted at people in the UK. Usually some organization that operates in the UK will be paying for the service. If that organization can be identified and punished, that might make the law enforceable enough.
Governor Snyder's plan to pay Foxconn billions to "create jobs" is encountering resistance because of possible pollution from the factories.
However, other objections come from the same narrow-minded "more jobs in this state" thinking that makes schemes like this seem legitimate in the first place. We have to put an end to the practice of paying companies to locate here instead of there.
Right-wing fake news is backed by sophisticated profiling technology.
It must have been developed as a well-funded operation.
If the troll declares a "drug emergency", that might be used to make drug repression worse.
The troll has sabotaged the EPA's final rules for reducing automobile pollution.
Sessions is trying to relegitimize forensic "expert analysis" comparisons, which have been found unreliable and not suitable for use in trials, so that they can provide an excuse for imprisoning people in the absence of real evidence of guilt.
The bully has redirected US deportation efforts to include upstanding members of the community who have never been in legal trouble.
The mainstream media continue to propagandize for business-supremacy treaties using fallacious arguments that exaggerate small economic benefits while disregarding the sure and steady harm that they generally do.
Even when it's obvious that workers are enslaved, the enslavers are often not prosecuted.
Senator Blumenthal fed the myth that US soldiers met with hostility when returning from Vietnam. It turns out he fabricated not only the claims of a hostile reception but also the claim that he returned from Vietnam. He never went there.
"Clean eating" took simple basic nutritional advice (eat more vegetables and less meat) and turned it into a cult of rigid narrow diets that often harm people's health.
The author suggests this is the result of a generalized fear of some unidentifiable toxin in our food.
There are toxins in our food, and water. Some of them are natural, while some come from industrial pollution. In a few places, pollution taken into the stomach causes real harm to people's health. For humanity overall, we don't know.
EPA fines issued against polluters have been cut by over 50% under the troll compared with the same period in 2016.
Even under Obama the EPA suffered from regulatory capture, so the rate of fines was surely too low already in 2016.
Heathrow airport has outsourced help for disabled passengers, with the result that they sometimes have to wait a long time for anyone to help them off a plane.
I suspect that the company that does this decided to increase its profits by reducing the staff available for this job to a level that is just enough with the usual demand. Since demand fluctuates randomly, this approach ensures that the staff will be insufficient whenever demand fluctuates up. If employees are out sick, there will be a problem.
It is well known that a reliable quick service needs substantially more staff than it takes to handle the normal workload. I'm sure the managers of that bureau found out, when they took over that service, how many staff are really needed. Then someone decided to cut corners so as to increase profit.
This is one of the ways outsourcing tends to provide worse service. Also because it is unaccountable. Another thing outsourcing normally does is cut the pay of the workers. We should take measures to penalize outsourcing so that it happens less.
Salafi Arabia has sent the army and air force to destroy the town of Awamiyah where many Shi'ites live, announcing the goal of expelling them and imposing that by killing them.
AirBnB uses tax-dodging schemes to exclude its profits from taxation in the countries where rooms are rented out. The EU is looking at putting a stop to this.
Blackwater's atrocities in Iraq show that it would be the worst of all possible entities to send to fight in Afghanistan.
Hong Kong democracy activist Howard Lam was kidnapped by Chinese thugs, beaten up and interrogated.
Some daycare facilities in Germany let the children vote on many decisions which elsewhere would be made by the staff alone.
US citizens: file a comment opposing new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Al Gore said US will meet its Paris climate commitments even though the troll has formally withdrawn the US from that agreement.
I hope so, but Republicans plan to do more to sabotage this. For instance, they plan more offshore oil drilling. Meanwhile, many states have taken steps to discourage further home solar power installations.
And remember that the Paris agreement is insufficient to avoid disaster.
Paul Butler, black American and prosecutor, was arrested and prosecuted. This led him to recognize how the legal system he was part of operates, and not by coincidence, as a chokehold for blacks (especially men).
He explains how thugs systematically use gratuitous violence against blacks, violence of all levels.
In New York, Baltimore, Ferguson, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, San Francisco, and many other cities, the US justice department and federal courts have stated that the official practices of police departments include violating the rights of African Americans. The police kill, wound, pepper spray, beat up, detain, frisk, handcuff, and use dogs against blacks in circumstances in which they do not do the same to white people.
A new proposal for building large amounts of affordable housing with local control and participation.
It is aimed at the UK, but might be useful for US cities too.
Clandestine reports from Raqqa say that US bombardment is killing lots of civilians, sometimes destroying entire buildings (perhaps killing dozens of civilians) to get one PISSI sniper.
Egypt's high population growth is leading it to disaster, and the state keeps growth high by maintaining the population in a state of ignorance about sex and reproductive biology.
Action against Libyan people-smugglers, and stopping NGOs from collecting smuggled people from close to the Libyan shore, has cut smuggling to Italy in half.
People being smuggled must not be left to drown, but there's no obligation to bring them to Italy rather than back to Libya.
A poll found that half of Republicans would support cancelling the 2020 election so as to keep Republicans in power.
The movement that supports the troll is a movement to destroy the United States.
Congresscritters are supposed to report their negotiations about future employment, but they have interpreted this in a way that mostly nullifies the requirement.
Someone in Havana seems to be operating an ultrasound transmitter which has caused hearing loss to US and Canadian diplomats.
The Middle East Institute, a "think tank" in Washington, gets millions of dollars a year from the United Arab Emirates. It uses this to influence the US government on foreign policy issues that concern the UAE.
In Australia, toxic foam used to extinguish fires has got into drinking water supplies.
How Republicans and US corporations pretend that they pay high taxes.
Many large and highly profitable US corporations actually pay no federal income tax; they have arranged to locate so much of their profit in other countries (which have no tax on corporate profits) that there is nominally no profit for the US to tax.
They play similar games in the UK, where Amazon's tax-dodging gives it unfair advantages over bricks-and-mortar book stores. Amazon mistreats everyone involved with books, and in particular is a massive surveillance system.
"Trump is the real nuclear threat, and we can't just fantasize him away."
In Oregon, the high rent for housing is making poor parents go hungry so their children can eat.
In the US, "child protection" has become a totalitarian threat to families. If the state doesn't want children to be homeless or hungry due to circumstances beyond their parents' control, rather than declaring the parents "bad parents" and taking their children away, it should change those circumstances.
In the long term, the best way to enable people in the next generation to have better lives than we have is to make a lot fewer of them. The smaller population will automatically solve many of the problems that are difficult for a large population.
Foreign observers say the election in Kenya appeared honest.
The bully's threats of nuclear war contrast with Martin Luther King's campaign for nuclear disarmament.
US children today are physically inactive, partly because they are told it is too dangerous to go out and play.
There is no shortage of housing in the UK. The reason it is too expensive for poor people is that they aren't allowed to use it.
This is because the UK state, starting under Thatcher, sold most of the public housing that existed in the 1970s.
People don't need to be grateful when the state provides them housing. Rather, they should be incensed when it fails to do so.
US citizens: support Sanders' Medicare-for-all bill.
US citizens: oppose HR 2603, which would eliminate endangered species protection for species that don't live in the US.
Comparing the Democratic Party's "better deal" platform with a platform that really tries to end plutocratic austerity.
The reason Democratic politicians do this is that they are not Liberals. They stand for the center-right.
Norway's Plan to Ramp Up Oil And Gas Production in the Arctic Threatens Global Efforts to [Curb Global Heating].
Sleep-in assistants, paid to help sick and disabled people, are now entitled in the UK to pay for the time they sleep in the patient's home. Alas, the disabled people may be held responsible for this back pay for years, which would ruin most of them.
Services that test the true contents of drugs can reduce dangers caused by prohibition.
Why does the US pay more attention to the danger to democracy in Venezuela than to the total corruption of democracy in Brazil?
My theory is, the situation in Venezuela is useful to the plutocrats whereas that of Brazil only shows how dangerous they are.
Extreme heat in Arabia is forcing work to stop, damaging electric grids, and killing birds as they fly.
Nepal Outlaws Custom of Exiling Women [from the village] During Their Periods.
I support this law. There is no justice in denying people equal rights for mere superstition.
North Korea threatened to explode nuclear weapons around 30 miles from Guam.
This would, in effect, attack Guam with radioactive fallout.
2 million Chakmas, Buddhist refugees from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), have been denied citizenship in India and are treated as outcasts.
The US government's denial of global heating has led to cutting off funds to move Alaskan towns that are being destroyed by rising seas and disappearance of Arctic ice.
US citizens: call on all Democrats to support Medicare for All.
US citizens: call on US officials not to provoke war with North Korea.
Everyone: Urge Nebraska to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.
Ethiopians and Somalis are paying smugglers to take them to Yemen, apparently unaware of the civil war in Yemen, and the famine and cholera caused by the Salafi-US bombardment there.
Silicon Valley's Weapon of Choice against Women: Shoddy Science.
Human brains show great variability in the sizes of various areas, but this variability has only a small statistical correlation with the humans' sex. Thus, the brain variability among male humans, or among female humans, swamps the difference between the sexes.
A human's every thought is embodied as a change in the brain. In particular, every habit or pattern of thought and action is a change in the brain. The observed statistical difference between male brains and female brains, being so small, could represent reactions to differences in the way males and females are typically treated in any given society.
The troll's toll-road privatized infrastructure plan was used by Pence as governor of Indiana, with results that demonstrate how bad it is.
Chicago privatized parking meter revenue, with results that harm the city, but there is no way to reverse it.
Privatizing any government service is a recipe for screwing the public, except in the case that it gives the public access to a market with a lot of competition.
One UK supermarket chain has sworn off using phony farm names as brands. To me, such names reflect general dishonest tendency, which they legitimize and thus promote.
The House of Representatives budget eliminates funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In addition to protecting the wild, many national monuments have secondary benefits such as industry and jobs.
Never mind the troll's distraction tweets. Look at what his saboteurs have accomplished recently.
The troll and Congress are working hard on giving tax cuts to the rich. Because there can never be enough inequality to satisfy them.
India has blocked access to the Internet Archive, regarding it as a way to bypass censorship.
India is highly censorship-ridden. Important works are censored there.
The Internet Archive has its flaws. It distributes works with DRM, which can never be excused. It recently started requiring people to run nonfree Javascript code in order to search for archived copies of a page. These actions are wrong, but they are not a reason to block access to it.
The mayor of Salt Lake City spent three days living on the street to understand why many homeless people don't want to go to the homeless shelter. Here's what he learned.
It would not be easy nor cheap to hire the 5000 additional border thugs that the troll wants. Nor is there any need to try.
Comparing supporters of the troll to a cargo cult.
Wall Street Thieves Find New Ways to Steal From Us.
The UK's Prevent deradicalization now receives lots of warnings about potential right-wing extremists. That is good, but how much of its effort does it dedicate to right-wing extremists?
"Indigenous peoples are the best guardians of world's biodiversity."
Genetically modified salmon is now sold in stores in Canada.
Each GMO raises its own specific issues. In the case of this particular genetically modified salmon, the danger is that the genes might get into wild salmon populations.
Growing them inland in another continent might make them safe. But genes have a record of flowing where scientists said that could not happen. The flows occur through pathways that are very improbable, but they happen once in a rare while and once may be enough. Moving production to Canada would eliminate one level of barrier, a foolhardy act.
After Shakila Zareen survived being shot by her husband in Afghanistan, she was accepted as a refugee by the US. The troll cancelled this.
Perhaps that's because the husband she is fleeing is connected to the Taliban.
A bureaucracy is a machine assembled out of human parts. When the humans make it their goal to avoid even the tiniest risk in one direction, they invite horrible errors in the other direction. Sad to say, this is what's happening in many countries' immigration policies.
The opposition candidate in Kenya claims that the election was rigged.
I wonder what the exit polls say.
Portland, Oregon, is paying prisoners one dollar a day to throw away the possessions of homeless people.
Prisoners should be paid a decent wage for any work they do, other than taking care of the prison itself. To pay them a dollar a day drives down wages for non-prisoners, and that over time converts some of them into prisoners.
Then there is the issue of clearing camps made by homeless people rather than making enough housing for them. The article doesn't explain why the homeless people left their tents and photos behind, but my guess is that thugs forced them to.
Due to heat and drought in Italy, many flowers produce no nectar and bees don't pollinate them.
Global heating is slowly converting the lands near the Mediterranean Sea into deserts. Italy will be drastically changed and may not be able to support the population it supports today.
New Zealand Greens leader Metiria Turei has resigned after a campaign condemned her for lying to get enough money to feed her child rather than condemning the state for making benefits inadequate.
People who can't get enough food, in a country which has a sufficiency, are morally entitled to steal food. By contrast, this was nothing.
Danger Ahead: The Government’s Plan for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Threatens Privacy, Security, and Common Sense.
If Labour under Corbyn is voted into power, or if it seems to be headed for that, the "deep state" will try to sabotage it with dirty tricks.
This July was the hottest July ever recorded in some parts of the western US.
The official (US- and Salafi-supported) government of Yemen says that the semi-closure of the airport of Sana'a due to war has killed 10,000 Yemenis.
Monsanto Continued Selling PCBs for Years Despite Knowing Health Risks.
Many women in the UK that live in poverty can't afford tampons. Or they can't afford tampons as well as food for their children.
Unstated, but clearly part of the root of the problem, is a feeling of shame about being poor. It makes no sense for poor people to feel ashamed because other people (Tories) did something wrong to them.
North Korea seems to have nuclear missile capability. The troll threatened massive retaliation—with ambiguous words that could mean real retaliation for a nuclear attack, or could mean real retaliation for threatening an attack.
The latter would be a threat of pre-emptive war.
The former would be nothing new, in terms of policy, and not very shocking either. However, emphasizing it just now might be counterproductive for the negotiations that are needed.
Here are comments from some experts.
I disagree with the one who says that sanctions have proved ineffective. The new sanctions will not make North Korea collapse, but they can affect the outcome of negotiations.
Negotiations are the only way to convert the new sanctions into some of the changes that the rest of the world wants.
The words we use to refer to wildlife and wild areas divest them of any emotional resonance.
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose the choice of Sam Clovis to head the USDA's scientists.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on the Gap, Disney and Pepsico to quit the US Chamber of Commerce.
Giving birth is dangerous, and especially so in the US. No one should be forced to go through with a pregnancy.
Finland achieves academic excellence by trusting teachers instead of imposing standardized tests.
I suppose Finland also funds public education adequately, so that there are plenty of teachers, not overworked, and not distracted by shortages of school supplies.
Government efforts to avoid naming "global warming" and "climate change" have proved ineffective at stopping them from occurring.
Calling for more debate — fact-based debate — about the significance of events in US history.
A former employee of the FCC says that its CIO, Bray, fabricated claims that the crash of its comment-filing site was due to a DDoS attack.
The troll regime has refused to protect Pacific bluefin tuna, which is in danger of extinction if humans keep catching those fish.
A set of proposals for how to reduce inequality and poverty in the US.
The troll thanked a Twitter account for praising him over and over. Turns out the account was stolen, and the messages it sent were repeats from various bots.
Reagan's Republicans weakened US antitrust law in the 1980s in a way that blinds it to the danger of Amazon's power.
The sheer size of some companies makes them threatening to democracy, so we should stop asking whether a company's practices are anticompetitive and start making sure companies don't get too big.
US government scientists have finished a report on likely effects of global heating. Fearing that the troll's saboteurs will suppress it, some of them leaked it.
British banks' lack of security exposes customers to fraud, then the banks refuse to be responsible.
Professor Ross Anderson refuses to do online banking because, he says, banks have taken advantage of the change in technology to dump the responsibility on the customer.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject denialist Sam Clovis as head of the USDA's scientists.
Clovis is not only a global heating denialist, he's a rabid racist as well.
Using foreign aid to help women in Afghanistan, or any strongly patriarchal society, is a lot harder than one might suppose.
Syrian women are doing their own organizing for equality.
Big Tech Has Destroyed America’s Sustainable Electronics Standards.
Really important medical research should be funded by the government — so why even think of giving one company a monopoly on it?
An unusual kind of drought could ruin the wheat harvest in the High Plains, an area which only recently became a center for growing wheat.
Global heating made wheat production feasible there, but global heating also makes the droughts.
Diesel car manufacturers have cheated at many levels to cover up toxic emissions, and continue lobbying to prevent corrective measures. Under proper pollution safety standards, diesel cars would be so expensive they wouldn't sell. We might as well put an end to them.
Reporting on the Millenium Development Goals says the world has
greatly reduced poverty and hunger, but this is
exaggerated
by the way the figures are computed.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
Fossil fuel subsidies amount to five trillion dollars per year.
Everyone: call on Washington DC to fire the thugs that wore white supremacist symbols, and investigate racism in the thug department.
One of the many fantastic beliefs that religious Americans go in for is the belief that Atheists are more likely to do evil than religious believers.
How can science engage with people that are so predisposed to disbelieve science that they can't consider the rational evidence for evolution?
Some Americans, such as truck drivers, dare to start to think about retarding "progress" in automation that they see will benefit the rich and harm most everyone else.
However, they don't dare to propose strong measures adequate to the task, because they are afraid of the stigma of the term "Luddite": a stigma against saying that technology should be or servant rather than our master. They are afraid to propose that we limit technology for people's good.
All we need, to stop driverless trucks and driverless cars from putting millions of Americans out of work, is a state law in some important state to prohibit them. While we're at it, let's make Uber treat its drivers as employees and give them the benefits of employees.
If this means Uber disappears, good riddance! That will put a crimp in massive surveillance.
Blackwater Founder's "Disturbing" Plan to Privatize Afghan War Gains Ground.
Transhumanist technologies that can enhance individuals, in the context of a society organized by extreme capitalism that makes most people choose between all-out competition and abandonment, would tend to become oppressive and effectively compulsory.
Everyone: call on banks not to fund the Trans Mountain pipeline.
The troll's saboteurs have told staff at the Department of Agriculture not to use the term "climate change". They have been ordered to say "extreme weather" instead.
Ironically, the reason they used the term "climate change" is that denialist officials appointed by Dubya told them to say that instead of "global warming".
Keir Starmer, the UK's former chief prosecutor, says that human rights laws never blocked the prosecution of terrorists, while they protect everyone from oppression.
"100 year floods", that used happen on the average just once per century, will happen once per year in San Francisco by 2050, and once per month in New York City by 2100.
Economic (and thus political) inequality in the US is racing forward.
Americans, prepare for the next terrorist incident: prepare not to rally 'round the troll, who threatens us more than any mere terrorist.
The troll has cut fines issued to banks and Wall Street by 2/3, for the first half of 2017, compared with one year earlier.
Plutocratic government in the US is cutting spending on public schools, making parents take up the slack.
Police, Teachers Unions Protect Workers at Expense of Public.
Concealing a thug's past crimes, especially that of framing someone else previously, is in spirit obstruction of justice.
A printer for biological viruses will pave the way for biological ransomware.
Venezuelan thugs and pro-government groups have killed at least 73 dissident protesters, and jailed at least 5000, according to a UN investigation.
1000 of them remain jailed.
The Microsoft "Surface" laptop is almost impossible to open up, and if through heroic efforts you manage to do so, you can't replace any of the parts that a laptop usually permits replacing, such as the network card, the memory, or the disk.
Basically, it is designed for use by subject peoples.
Subcontracting enables and encourages well-known companies to employ slaves without identifying them a such.
The low pay that the subcontracted workers get tends to push out those who are not slaves.
An Indian documentarian made a movie about caste-based slavery. Showings have been banned, and the filmmaker faces prosecution, for saying things that make people uncomfortable.
An American learns to see the nationalist prejudice in US "patriotism" by living in Turkey.
Two shareholders in an Australian bank are suing the bank for downplaying the risk of losing money due to global heating effects.
US citizens:
call
on the USDA to stop import of chicken from China as long as China
doesn't maintain US-style food safety standards.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
US citizens: protect the Tongass National Forest from logging.
US citizens: call for replacing NAFTA with something less plutocratic.
In the US: call on the Boy Scouts of America to cancel the honorary status accorded to the president of the US.
Today's teenagers remain childish instead of seeking to become independent. They stay at home, communicating by smartphone, instead of seeing each other physically.
And that makes them feel lonely and depressed.
Banning the drug called "spice" in the UK has made it more dangerous.
The military government of Thailand prosecutes journalists and dissidents for criticizing the military government.
I think it is a mistake to use the vague and deemotionalized word "detain" to refer to imprisoning people.
Tom Price, the Saboteur of Health, has cut the budget for dozens of programs that reduce teenage pregnancy.
Campaigning for abortion rights in the Philippines requires overcoming the resistance of the Catholic Church.
US citizens: call on Ben Carson to block the troll's housing cuts.
US citizens: Protect the Johnson Amendment from SCROTUS.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the Sinclair-Tribune TV merger.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a moral budget.
Resurgent wolves in France have killed 3000 to 4000 farm sheep this year, as well as some cattle and horses.
Surely France can afford to reimburse farmers for the cost of losing a tiny fraction of their animals to wolves.
Chavez was both right and wrong, and some of the wrong was his response to plutocratist sabotage.
Excessive tourism is making the inhabitants of many cities very unhappy.
Taxing flights for their contribution to global heating would have the side effect of limiting tourism. It would also reduce the cost of airport expansion.
Proposed fracking in Australia would emit far more than the giant proposed coal mine.
India is losing the secular, tolerant and free society that its founders hoped for.
The current ruling party is related to the religious fanatical movement that assassinated Gandhi.
"In seven months [January through July], we emitted more carbon than the oceans and forests can absorb in a year, we caught more fish, felled more trees, harvested more, and consumed more water than the Earth was able to produce in the same period."
Can genetic engineering be used to preserve ecosystems?
I don't think eradicating an intrusive species from an area with a gene drive is significantly ethically different from doing so with traps. For safety, there must be multiple levels of safety systems to prevent the gene drive from spreading off the target area.
However, I think any scheme that involves modifying large numbers of species will not be feasible for a long time. For instance, the idea of genetically modifying coral to cope with heat and acidity is far fetched, because preserving the ecosystem would require modifying all the coral species and varieties there. How many coral species are found in any given reef? Can we be sure we have identified them all? It doesn't seem feasible.
The US government has recognized that seismic blasting to search for oil in the Gulf of Mexico harm large numbers of whales, dolphins, and other sea mammals.
Employers in California are calling US immigration thugs to grab and deport their employees that have reported violations of labor laws. California has responded by kicking immigration thugs out of the labor commission offices.
While you're using a DJI drone to snoop on other people, DJI is in many cases snooping on you.
Draconian Anti-Terrorism Measures Instill Terror.
Innocent people are charged with imaginary "crimes" detected by surveillance.
The troll's corrupt self-dealing risks branding the US as a kleptocracy.
Facebook ads targeted at people selected for high or low authoritarianism can effectively persuade them either to support massive state surveillance or to oppose it.
Such targeting gives well-funded campaigns the power to win by saying different things to different people.
The Tesla car version 2 was a tracking device. The Tesla 3 requires the driver to carry a separate tracking device (portable phone) and run a proprietary app on it.
Google's plan to correlate credit card purchasing with browsing is the target of a federal privacy complaint.
It is easy to make an informed decision about whether to pay by credit card: don't. If you pay in a way that isn't anonymous, someone will know what you bought, and give the data to someone else that will use that information against you. We don't know precisely how or when, but we don't need to know that to draw the pertinent conclusion.
Software vulnerabilities are frequently discovered independently more than once. When intelligence agencies keep a vulnerability secret so as to be able to use it, with the result that it isn't fixed, there is a substantial chance this gives someone else chance to rediscover it and exploit it.
Most Americans are fed up with capitalism as it is today.
Capitalism was not always so narrowly focused. The idea that a corporation's primary duty is to its stockholders alone was not accepted in the US until a few decades ago, and in some European countries it still is not accepted.
Chicago has ceased offering mentally ill people any help. But if they flip out, it sends a SWAT team to arrest them.
Israel plans to join Egypt in banning al-Jazeera's reporters from operating there and blocking access to broadcasts.
The UN adopted new, biting sanctions against North Korea with the support or Russia and China as well as the US.
Tillerson could perhaps convert this into a negotiating point to advance towards stability in the Korean nuclear situation.
ACLU: using face recognition on people leaving the US is a threat to everyone.
Palestine's new "cyber crime" law imposes many kinds of censorship, abolishes privacy, and represses freedom of speech on line.
It also bans using VPNs to access banned web sites.
"Perseverance porn" stories, about how someone walks 10 miles to work every day, have the effect of normalizing the big disadvantages from society that make people do hard labor that society should not need.
Are most married couples soldiering on through misery?
China is making big construction investments in Haiti, along with many other countries.
Maybe this will reduce poverty in those countries, as well as increasing Chinese influence around the world.
Wells Fargo Bank gave half a million customers automobile insurance without their consent, even without their knowledge. Some of them lost their cars when they missed the payments they didn't properly owe.
When banks do this, it is not through carelessness. It is a clever scheme for cheating customers. Wells Fargo already admitted another such dishonest scheme. Naturally, no banksters were imprisoned for it.
Beware of right-wing generals bringing "order" to the chaotic US regime.
UK thugs plan to apply face recognition to everyone attending the Notting Hill Carnival.
Everyone: tell US thug unions to stop tolerating the troll's endorsement of criminal violence by thugs.
Hackers at Defcon went to work on four different models of US voting machines, and cracked all of them within hours of seeing them for the first time.
Even if some model were totally secure against crackers, it can't be secure against the company that develops its proprietary software.
If, however, the software is free, and the local election authority can change it, then the machine can't be secure against the local election authority. There is always someone that can change the software, and we can't trust that someone.
For secure elections, we must vote on paper.
Gene editing could someday make possible the choice of improved traits for human babies. I don't see anything wrong with that, a priori; but if enhancement is available only to rich parents, they will use it to cement their families' domination of society.
This can't happen very soon. Many experiments would be needed to develop a technology so reliable that people would willingly use it on their children, outside of avoiding a bad disease. Then people would arrive at the difficult question of which genes are preferable for their children, which often begs the question, "better for what?"
Even determining whether a given combination of genes will have some horrible result is not easy. In general, it would require an advanced understanding of how various specific human alleles interact.
Today's Americans have been taught to regard surveillance of them as a sign that someone cares.
How pathetic! And how dangerous to all of us who recognize the power advantage that the surveillers have over us!
The trash collectors of Birmingham, England, are on strike to reject pay cuts.
Authoritarian President Kagame of Rwanda, running for reelection, reports winning 99% of the votes.
Kagame has brought peace and prosperity, as well as some repression, to Rwanda, and I can believe he received the majority of the votes. However, the reported 99% victory makes me suspect falsification. It reminds me of Russia, where Putin would surely win a free and fair election, but prefers to make them unfair.
Nissan defeated unionization in its Mississippi factory using illegal bullying measures.
People in Venezuela are starting to flee to Colombia. Others go there to buy everyday goods that can't be found in Venezuela.
To go to Colombia to buy goods is an ironic reversal. A few years ago, Venezuelans crossed the bridge to Cúcuta to resell goods they had bought in Venezuela at low prices subsidized by the state. These subsidies caused occasional shortages in Venezuela.
Many sectors of business operate in ways that harm most of society. These business systems are propped up by the corporate media.
The article mentions fossil fuel use and medical care, but there are more. Big agriculture, for instance.
Beyond the corporate media, we find plutocracy, the overall system which keeps business in power over society.
New technology for monitoring everything that children do, and everything that happens to them, will teach parents that they must monitor everything, and teach children to expect to be always monitored.
Profiled consumers, manipulated by marketing algorithms, are living lives comparable to The Truman Show.
An eviction company in the UK revealed what landlords really think about their tenants by calling tenants "household pests".
"This would be a great apartment building if only there were no tenants getting in the way."
The constituent assembly of Venezuela has replaced the chief prosecutor, a Chavista who opposed the plan to replace Chavez's constitution.
Extreme weather events, caused by global heating, are forecast to kill 150,000 people a year in Europe in the last third of this century.
That is using a middling climate scenario. With the worst climate scenario, it would be worse.
Of course, this does not include spreading tropical diseases, food shortages, and wars. They could kill hundreds of millions of people each year.
Singapore's government is demonstrating its repressive nature by seeking to prosecute a citizen for criticizing repression.
The private dispute this arose from is a side issue. We need not have any opinion about that dispute to condemn the repression.
Salafi Arabia is about to execute 14 people for protesting, after trying them in a Guantanamo-style kangaroo court.
That the autocratic state responded shows that campaigns of criticism are making progress. If we keep on, we can make Salafi Arabia too toxic for other countries to ally with.
The Chinese government's organized astroturf messaging on social media does not present political arguments. Rather, the messages praise China and the Communist Party in general ways.
It appears that their purpose is to distract the public from events that might arouse a wave of criticism of the state.
As thousands of refugees sneak into Canada to have a chance to ask the authorities for asylum, Canadians are going to court to make the government accept refugees that passed through the unsafe United States.
Progressive organizations insist that the Democratic Party and its candidates stand firm for abortion rights.
The Department of Homeland Spoilage plans to disregard environmental laws to build the border wall near San Diego.
As the troll admitted on the phone with the president of Mexico, the wall is of no importance to the troll except to give the impression that there is one thing he didn't lie about.
Private medical insurance plans to use AI to figure out which clients to accept and which to chase away.
The weaknesses of Fair Trade for helping farmers.
Around the world, authoritarian regimes are rewriting history to justify themselves.
Distorting history for political purposes is not new. See the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, for examples from American history as taught in the US. However, the existence of past lies does not excuse new lies.
US citizens: support the bill to legalize marijuana at federal level.
US citizens: oppose S.263, the Smoggy Skies Act.
SCROTUS plans to make college more expensive in the US.
In Austria you can watch the glaciers shrink, half a meter or more each year.
Drug gouger Martin Shkreli was found guilty of fraud for acts unrelated to price gouging.
Sessions says he will threaten journalists in order to prosecute leakers.
Bipartisan Senate and House Bills Tackle Abusive Shell Company Practices.
The troll is reportedly considering choosing John Bolton, an advocate of bombing North Korea, as national security advisor.
Greenpeace Report Shows Risk of Spills from Proposed Tar Sands Pipelines.
Of course, the big danger of the pipeline is the increased fossil fuel combustion that will be economically hard to stop as a result of the pipeline's existence.
The NAACP has issued a travel advisory warning blacks to stay away from Missouri.
Kenyan thugs raided the opposition's campaign headquarters a few days before the election.
Industrial Meat Production Is Killing Our Seas. It's Time to Change Our Diets.
Black Americans are disproportionately likely to be homeless.
Verizon Wants You to Give up Web Privacy — in Exchange for Movie Tickets.
Refugees sent to Manus Island by Australia lay down on the ground to block thugs who aim to force them out of the one place in Papua New Guinea that they are safe.
The rich owners of expensive empty apartments in London are unable to present any sensible argument against letting the state requisition them as housing for the homeless.
Requisitioning empty apartments to lease to people without homes is justifiable as an emergency measure. However, in the long term there should be no need for this, because there is a more gentle and less controversial way to solve this problem: to adjust the tax on real estate so that buying apartments and keeping them empty ceases to be profitable.
Australia's repeal of the carbon tax has been followed by a substantial increase in greenhouse emissions.
South Korea's National Intelligence Service has admitted to meddling in that country's elections in 2012 to help conservatives win.
A foolish choice of vending machines in France means that you can't pay cash for fresh oysters.
I dislike oysters, but I know that if we don't fight these surveillance sales systems when they first appear, the fight will get harder.
Well-off people tend to believe that they earned and deserve their success. The many American children that grow up in poverty discover, when they graduate from school, that the deck is stacked against them and they would need to be superheroes to succeed.
Many Americans can't afford a doctor visit, so they buy and use antibiotics sold for use with fish.
In addition to the problem of unaffordable medical care in the US, the article mentions that these people are guessing what medicine they need. With a proper medical system, they would at least get a doctor's educated guess rather than their naive guess.
Use of antibiotics in animals needs to be controlled, and greatly reduced, to avoid generating resistance.
Syria executed internet freedom activist Bassel Khartabil in 2015, but kept the fact secret from his family until recently.
Based on the quotations, I speculate that if someone had clearly presented to him the difference between free software (barmajiyat horrah) and open source, he would have supported the former.
White House staff admitted that the troll lied when he claimed to have received congratulatory phone calls from the Boy Scouts of America and the president of Mexico.
That the troll lies is hardly news to us, but when he is given the lie by White House staff, that may convince the people who cling to a positive fantasy vision of him.
A new site tracks attacks on journalists and freedom of the press in the United States.
Saboteur Sessions will direct the Department of Justice to sue universities to abolish programs to recruit students from minority groups.
These suits will aim to alter Supreme Court precedents, but they might succeed, given the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court.
Some want the future of education to include continuous psychological profiling of every student.
You can be sure companies will propose schemes to feed the profiling data to them so they can "better serve" these students (and their whole families) by targeted persuasion.
Vicariously Offended: The Dawkins Controversy and the Absence of Muslim Voices.
Banksters know what they are doing when they force customers into arbitration: in general, class action lawsuits are better for customers.
Repression of journalists trying to cover the constituent assembly election in Venezuela.
US citizens: oppose the Republicans' Pharma Monopoly Extension Act.
It is justified to hate executives such as Martin Shkreli who gouge sick people, but our strongest hate should be for the plutocratist politicians of either party that give those executives the power to do so.
California finds it necessary to regulate marijuana production, to protect the environment, endangered species, and water resources.
Trial-discovered documents show how Monsanto corrupted research as well as state agencies to conceal the danger of glyphosate.
South Carolina utilities have abandoned two unfinished nuclear power plants because their cost had risen to unacceptable levels.
The UK has perfected schemes for businesses to rip off the public with state support.
The troll asked the president of Mexico to lie for him: it's ok if Mexico doesn't really pay for the troll's planned border wall, but just don't say so.
Compared with the troll's extreme example of dishonesty and contempt, the less flamboyantly contemptuous and cruel Republican politicians might appear acceptable.
Genetic editing of embryos can save people from fatal or debilitating hereditary diseases.
Is your mother stalking you, maintaining digital control over your life?
The EPA has dropped its plan to postpone the regulation to reduce ozone pollution, which causes smog.
However, Saboteur Pruitt will continue his attack on our bodies. He has ordered EPA staff to pursue, among the thousands of suggestions received, only the suggestions from business to eliminate regulations.
Amnesty International says that Nicaragua is repressing opponents of the proposed canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans.
The idea of "emotional intelligence" has been rendered obsolete by advances in understanding of the brain.
EFF: Internet Censorship Bill Would Spell Disaster for Speech and Innovation.
"Sex trafficking" is a weasely term. Nominally it means forcing people into prostitution, but I've seen articles which seem to use it to include voluntary prostitution (which is, after all, trafficking in sex). Those articles try to take our proper condemnation of enslavement and misapply it to prostitutes in general.
The distinction between prostitution and enslavement is crucial, so we should reject any terms that blur the distinction, such as "sex trafficking". Laws should not use that term.
The article also uses the term "content" which treats all publications as a fungible substance or commodity. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html.
Oil extraction in the Peruvian Amazon has poisoned the land and the people, but the companies that profited have no intention of spending the billion dollars needed to clean it up.
UK thugs prosecuted a prostitute rather than go after the people who robbed her.
Mexican human rights lawyers were hit by malware designed to spy on their portable phones.
Human activity is implicated in the three extreme droughts that the Amazon rainforest has suffered in the past 12 years.
The United States is becoming a failed state. Does that mean the United States has to invade the United States?
The UK's National Health Service isn't given enough funds for wheelchairs for all the disabled people, so many are stuck at home, unable to go out.
The War America Can't Win: How the Taliban Took Back Afghanistan.
Yury Dmitriyev is accused of making child pornography, apparently because he helped identify the mass graves of people that Stalin murdered.
Condemning Stalin is not criticism of today's Russia. Stalin died 64 years ago. Rather, this behavior towards historical investigation is what leads to condemnation of today's Russia.
Liu Xia, widow of Liu Xiaobo, has been held incommunicado since July 15.
Brazil's Congress voted to keep President Temer in office and ignore corruption charges against him.
They previously voted to expel President Rousseff from office for lesser accusations. Perhaps her corruption wasn't sufficient to satisfy them.
US citizens: call for decriminalizing use and possession of recreational drugs.
Here are arguments for doing this.
To sign this petition without running non-free JavaScript code, enable LibreJS.
Congress is considering a bill to legalize marijuana, and help those convicted of possessing or using marijuana.
Paul Nungesser was exonerated of rape charges at Cornell, but his accuser Emma Sulkowicz has continued with support from the university to paint him as guilty.
A progressive critique of Chavismo and its opposition.
An experiment succeeded in eliminating a fatal gene from human embryos, operating at the time of conception.
It is important to eliminate genetic diseases, and this may provide a better way of doing it. However, in general we should avoid going to great lengths to help people reproduce who otherwise would have refrained from doing so.
Obama tried to resist getting involved in the war in Syria, but eventually ceded to the pressure.
The Democratic Party has decided to support candidates that oppose abortion rights, in districts where any people hold such views.
I can follow the party's logic, but it stems from the party's decision not to try to inspire the people with a strong progressive stand. If it did that, it would get far more support, and wouldn't need to consider supporting candidates that are right-wing on the abortion issue.
When the troll called for thugs to attack and injure their captives more, the applause of the thugs in the room with him reflects the sadistic side of US thugs in general.
A court ordered the EPA to enforce the methane rule adopted under Obama.
The Yes Men strike again: presenting the "Democratic Party program" that the party ought to have.
US citizens: counseling workers that help National Guard veterans work for a contract company rather than for the government. A substitution of one company for another just gave them a pay cut of almost 50%. Call on the Senate to reverse this.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the bill to prohibit advocacy of a boycott aimed at Israel.
I also oppose any bill that would prohibit participation in any such boycott.
Everyone: call on Erdoğan to drop charges against journalists.
To sign that petition with LibreJS active, use this add-on.
The troll wants to exclude Democrats completely from power, in effect abolishing democracy.
Walter Shaub, who resigned as federal ethics enforcer, says that the troll is a national embarrassment, and invites the judgment that the US is a kleptocracy.
Queensland (part of Australia) is considering authorizing itself to use back doors to remotely convert "smart" appliances into listening devices.
This is, of course, presented as a way to stop "terrorism", but experience shows that the state will not limit its use of new surveillance powers to cases of enormous crime. In the UK, the old law for warrantless surveillance was used to catch people who were putting out too many garbage cans. That was before Theresa May replaced it with an even nastier law.
You need not have committed any crime to be investigated this way. Any appliance or device that is called "smart" makes you vulnerable to this and other abuses.
I refuse to have any connected appliance in my house. The only thing I have that talks to the internet is the computer on which I am writing this message.
Paying for gasoline with a credit card makes you vulnerable to credit card skimmers in the gasoline pump.
It also makes you vulnerable to surveillance by Big Brother, and tracking by companies. Don't be tracked — pay cash!
The EU-Canada agreement about data about air travelers has been ruled illegal by the European Court of Justice.
The EU's agreement with the US might be illegal too.
Dubai sentenced a couple to prison for having sex while not married.
Don't be a fool — stay away from Dubai. Don't even make a connection in the airport of Dubai.
The UK will not identify the housing projects that have failed a fire safety study, because of some sort of "intellectual property" law.
That term is overbroad, since it is used to refer to various disparate and unrelated laws. It is very rare that one can make any valid statement using that term, and any time you find yourself tempted to use the term, you should rethink what you ought to say.
Here's an example. I could say that no "intellectual property" law could possibly justify keeping information secret that the people need to see. That an instance of being led to make a substantive error by the term "intellectual property." What I ought to say is that no law could possibly justify such secrecy.
The shortage of housing in New York City is putting non-rich residents in jeopardy.
Many can only remain in their homes due to rent control, so landlords use every possible trick to force them out, legally or illegally.
The troll's opioids panel recommended declaring a "national emergency".
I'm afraid that proclamation would give the troll power to carry out various injustices to people who are weak. I expect Congress would be glad to pass a law to increase support for treatment; there is no need for an "emergency".
In the long term, effective measures could include changing the way the drugs are packaged — replacing the large "one pill per day" dose with smaller doses to be taken three or four times a day — and economic measures that Bernie Sanders would enact to reduce the economic stress that non-rich Americans live under.
The opposition in Venezuela boycotted the election for the constituent assembly because Maduro had imposed the outcome through gerrymandering.
Two opposition leaders, previously under house arrest, have been jailed.
Now that the election has been held, Maduro seems to have succeeded in his power grab, democratic in form but undemocratic in substance. Rather like Erdoğan, I'm sad to say.
"Taking on Adani (about its proposed giant coal mine) is not just about climate change. It's taking back power from corporate plutocracy."
Jordan bans rapists from escaping justice by marrying the victim.
There are other places which still permit this.
In areas where powerful interests are involved, the troll is being converted slowly into an irrelevant noisemaker. Tillerson said, in effect: Don't listen to the president — the US wants talks with North Korea, not regime change.
This means the troll can say whatever makes his fanatical supporters happy, while Tillerson states actual US foreign policy.
This may be an improvement over actually carrying out what the troll says.
A million children in Yemen are in danger of catching cholera, all because of the US-supported bombardment by Salafi Arabia.
If global heating proceeds unchecked, fatal humid heat waves could kill 3/4 of the population of India by the end of this century.
The first fatal heat waves could start much sooner than that. It only takes one of them to leave a city or even a region empty of humans.
People who are old, weak, or sick could be killed by lesser heat waves.
I wonder whether filling a bathtub with cold water and getting into it could protect a person during a fatal heat wave. It may depend on having access to refill the bathtub with more cold water when the water warms up.
Extreme inequality in the UK: people without homes alongside homes without people.
Maduro lied about the number of votes in the Constituent Assembly election in Venezuela. It follows that the vote totals can't be trusted either. However, if the election was rigged in advance by gerrymandering, even honest totals wouldn't reflect a free and fair election.
The State Department has just eliminated the mission of promoting democracy from its statement of mission.
Don't think of Tillerson as the good guy to the troll's bad guy.
The troll is leading Republicans to oppose freedom of the press.
EPA career manager Elizabeth Southerland has quit, denouncing Pruitt as a pro-pollution saboteur and saying his policies are likely to kill people.
One of the troll's saboteurs plans to let nursing homes force patients into arbitration if they have been cheated.
US states that restrict abortion also impede medical care for women and children.
How a [Cracked] Amazon Echo Could Secretly Capture Your Most Intimate Moments.
Even worse, Amazon can do this and it doesn't even have to break security to achieve it. And so could the state.
Republicans Try to Take Cheap Phones And Broadband Away from Poor People.
Kochs and Trump Team Up to Cut Billionaires' Taxes.
If future education involves being profiled by an AI, we must make sure it can't pass any information about the student to anybody.
The cult of motherhood tells women, "You have a baby so you are obligated to be happy, and you are required to find that taking care of baby all day is the most fulfilling activity you have ever experienced."
It would be useful to puncture this myth for people before they have children.
The US contracted with a company to train Afghan army intelligence, in 2010-2013. That company failed completely to do the job; then it massively cheated the US government, but the officials weren't bothering to check and it took them almost a year to stop paying false bills.
If someone tells you that the private sector works more efficiently, remember this example.
The company failed to keep complete records to justify its supposed work, and so did the subcontractor it hired to actually do the work. Meanwhile, I am sure two levels of private business, each of which had to tack on a profit, increased the cost substantially. That is what privatization of a government service typically does: it costs the public more, skimps on doing the job, and usually pays employees less, "because we have to make a profit".
Criminalizing activities associated with prostitution does not eliminate prostitution, but it does make life dangerous for prostitutes. You can count on thugs to stretch and twist the law in order to harass prostitutes.
"If you want to reduce prostitution, demand better social housing, childcare, healthcare, an end to benefit cuts and humane immigration reforms."
Salafi Arabia frequently attacks civilian infrastructure in Yemen, and this helps cholera spread.
Homeless people in Sydney have set up a tent city in a central square as a protest to demand construction of public housing.
The state has offered housing to many or all of them — for 10 days only, and often located in faraway places with little public transit, from which they could not travel to their jobs and doctors in the city. That useless offer is more an excuse for repression than real help.
Saboteur of the Treasury Mnuchin faces accusations of lying to Congress about fraudulent foreclosures by his bank, in his confirmation hearings.
Alas, Republicans don't object when Republicans lie in order to get power.
US citizens: support the constitutional amendment to overrule the Corporations United decision.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security and Medicare.
The latest twisted argument for banning prostitution: claiming that anyone who is paid for sex didn't really consent to sex.
Try telling your bank, "I got money from accepting this mortgage so I didn't really consent to make payments." Then try telling your tenants, "I got money for leasing this apartment to you, so I didn't really consent to your living in it."
There's no room in India for wildlife and the increasing number of humans.
Wiping out natural ecosystems is a disaster.
Greedy corporations chop down forests and destroy other wild ecosystems. They ignore land that isn't suitable for a plantation. However, in the last desperate years, hungry humans, regarded as superfluous by the plutocrats, will destroy every remaining wild place. They won't succeed in surviving very long that way, but what they have destroyed will not come back once they are dead.
To avoid that, we must stabilize the global population and maybe leave some of those wild places alone.
Meat Industry Blamed for Largest-Ever 'Dead Zone' in Gulf of Mexico.
We Americans need to eat less meat, for our own health, for the ocean's health, and for the ecosphere's health.
Eating a lot of meat is dangerous because it gives us high cholesterol levels. Current meat production methods, using antibiotics, promotes antibiotic resistance which can kill people.
The massive plantations that we use to feed the animals cause deforestation, which promotes global heating.
Insult to Injury: How Trump's 'Global Gag' Will Hit Women Traumatised by War.
The Koch brothers and 400 other selfish rich people meet every year to plan to buy the next election and make themselves completely masters of the United States of America.
Three Forces Fighting Local Renewable Energy and Three Ways to Fight Back.
The troll apparently committed obstruction of justice by dictating his son's false statement about meeting with Russians, according to a former government ethics lawyer.
Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to make jobs for a million American youths.
Replacing private cars with a great system of public transport would save money, fuel and pollution.
Indonesia executed a prisoner whose appeals were not finished.
A genetically modified variety of corn can be made into a contraceptive jelly.
Nissan is pressuring and threatening workers in Mississippi to make them vote not to unionize.
The governor of Mississippi is trying to compete with other states to give companies the biggest opportunity to mistreat workers. We need federal laws to stop states from competing in ways that are detrimental to all of them.
It's easy to get millions of people's browsing histories, "anonymized" as to whose histories they are, and then easy to figure out who most of them are.
In the chaos of the revolution in Iran, people were executed for the pamphlets they possessed. Others, for no apparent reason, some were not executed.
In the US and the UK, people are not executed for the books they have, but they may be imprisoned. To criminalize possession of any publication is tyranny.
The biggest mass extinction in Earth's history appears to have been caused by greenhouse gases.
In that case, they greenhouse gases seem to have been produced by magma hitting underground deposits of carbonaceous rocks and coal, rather than by human activity (since there were no humans then).
Money can buy you happiness if you spend it on being nice to other people.
It is disappointing that the author chose "the latest iPhone" as the paradigmatic example of what you would want for yourself.
A leak from the White House says that the cheater dictated a misleading statement for Trump Jr to make about his meeting with Russians.
The troll fired his communications director 11 days after hiring him. This is the most extreme example of a general problem: the troll is a backstabber, so working for him is almost unbearable.
US citizens: Call on Congress to reject the border wall; among many other reasons, it would not be effective for the foolish War on Drugs.
The suicide of 60,000 farmers in India have been linked through statistical reasoning to global heating.
Poland will continue cutting down Europe's biggest old-growth forest in defiance of the European Court of Justice.
Democracy and human rights are under attack world-wide, and no government champions them strongly.
"Efforts to repeal CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure continue but the odds of success are growing longer."
Hormone-Treated Beef and the UK-US Trade Talks.
Business-supremacy treaties generally offer opportunities to do something nasty, and plutocratist politicians such as Trump and the Tories are sure to take take advantage of them.
A Manual for a New Era of Direct Action.
The US in December expelled 35 Russian diplomats. Russia retaliated by expelling 755 US embassy staff, more than half the total.
Under someone other than the troll, the US would have responded by increasing its expulsions to match.
On current trends, there is a 95% chance of global heating more than 2C by the year 2100.
Why the Arrest of IT Trainers in Turkey Affects Us All.
It is part of an international attack on privacy and freedom to communicate.
Homeless mother Megan Doudney regularly receives insults and threats from people inclined to blame the poor for their poverty.
The first half of 2017 makes it almost the hottest year ever recorded. Only 2016 was hotter, and that was because of El Niño.
Attacking North Korea would be a disaster, and the rulers know this. The US must turn to negotiation.
Clinton set up a nuclear deal with North Korea, in which it froze its nuclear program. If Dubya had not cancelled the deal, it might be working still.
Tony B'liar has been protected yet again from prosecution for the crime of aggressive war.
It is a scandal that the US and UK leaders can get away with the most heinous crime of all, despite its recognition by international law. Dubya and B'liar deserve to be tried in The Hague.
Gaza's sewage treatment no longer functions properly, so raw sewage has polluted most of the sea shore.
Apple's Capitulation to China's VPN Crack-Down Will Return to Haunt it at Home.
The absurdity of Republican rule outraces satire.
Family foundations with billions of dollars exert unending political influence in the US, unchecked by any sort of democracy.
There is a push to pledge to continue the war in Afghanistan forever. Supposedly it would be until the Afghan government can stand on its own. But that will be forever, as I've explained before.
My Life as a Pro-Putin Propagandist in Russia's Secret "Troll Factory".
The Federal Reserve's full employment mandate was won through a great struggle in which the Civil Rights Movement participated. Now SCROTUS want to get rid of it.
A clue to the cause of the global decrease in sperm counts: many endocrine disruptor chemicals, which get into people's blood from household products including food wrappers and toothpaste, have been found to damage sperm.
We should reject the idea that there is a sperm count "crisis". The real crisis is that the human population is still increasing even with the lower sperm counts — after all, it takes just one sperm to make a baby. The decrease in sperm count could be beneficial, if it reduces the birth rate, but it clearly isn't enough to solve the problem.
The Republican governor of Massachusetts is making a 4-million-dollar gift to giant cable companies.
Thugs want the power to look at databases of all Americans' prescriptions without a court order.
There shouldn't be a central database of everyone's prescriptions. That is intrusive surveillance of everyone.
The US misspends a trillion dollars per year on "national security", which doesn't achieve such great security.
And that's not to count the freedom that we sacrifice to massive surveillance in the name of "security".
The Democratic Party has announced a program to help workers.
That's what it ought to do, but these proposals are very weak.
Contrast this with the People's Program.
Technology can now falsify any person's voice saying anything whatsoever.
Maduro is holding an election to choose members of the constituent assembly that will write a new constitution, although most Venezuelans are opposed to the whole plan.
The opposition is boycotting the election, suggesting it regards the election as lost. Perhaps they think it will be rigged.
Poland's government adopted one of the three laws designed to abolish the independence of the judiciary.
A new idea for propagandizing for the "global war on terrorism": erect a memorial in Washington for the US soldiers that died in those various ill-advised wars.
Whether to remember them is a secondary issue compared with the danger of remembering the conquest and occupation of Iraq as a "war on terrorism".
Under Democrats and under Republicans, the US government is soft on criminal corporations.
The Keystone XL pipeline may be canceled due to lack of investors.
The low price of oil discourages investment in future oil extraction. That is good. However, it also tends to encourage more use of oil, which is bad. Whether the overall effect in good or bad depends on what other factors might tend to keep the demand for oil low.
Why is the oil price so low nowadays? Can anyone tell me?
The troll now has a plan for how to provoke war with Iran in October.
As the US and Russia continue to "modernize" their nuclear weapons, we must remember that 50 fairly small nuclear explosions would be enough to cause a nuclear winter and several years of mass starvation.
London thugs arrested two black men in recent weeks, each of whom mysteriously died shortly thereafter.
Google is artificially excluding the World Socialist Web Site from searches.
The WSWS has a political slant, of course, but I would be surprised if it engaged in the intentional blatant throw-away lies that "fake news" refers to.
Trump Supporters Furious That They Still Have Health Care.
Uber and Lyft are putting pressure on the taxi business in New York City, on the income of drivers, and of course on the privacy of customers.
The Republican Party has become a political faction, such as the founding fathers feared.
An interview with Al Gore about global heating and the planet roasters' denialist campaign (covered by his new film).
Tobacco companies appear to be subsidizing some cheap cigarette brands to keep users addicted, while charging more for other brands.
Young people often keep an article of clothing for mere weeks before throwing it in the trash. What a wasteful practice.
There's nothing wrong with recycling fabrics if someday we develop the technology to really do it. However, it is easy to recycle garments: just sell them to a used clothing store, or give them to a place that will pass them on to poor people.
What excuse could there be for failing to do this?
Plastic straws are a significant contribution to global waste.
The Koch brothers are planning a well-funded astroturf campaign to demand tax cuts for them. (And other rich people too.)
Humans still kill whales by accident, and the rate may be enough to cause the extinction of some species of whales.
Bannon proposes to treat some internet services, such as Google Search and Facebook, as utilities — regulated monopolies.
In principle, I think this is a good idea. However, I expect Republicans' regulations would include censorship, which would be unjust.
Senators have introduced a bill to ban chlorpyrifos. This pesticide is linked to brain damage.
The troll called on thugs to disregard the rights of prisoners.
A pro-Israel group in Australia was joined by an Israeli embassy officials in pressuring to censor some Australian journalists.
Foxconn says it will open US factories and hire 15,000 workers. But even if it really does so, that won't be worth the 3 billion dollars in subsidies Foxconn will receive for doing so.
Wisconsin cities and towns will have to pay hundreds of millions more. Plus, Foxconn will get special permission to pollute water supplies and drain waterways.
No wonder the saboteur-in-chief loves this deal.
Stories of men and women, around the world, who have been enslaved.
See the enslaved workers page.
Do-dirty's murder campaign, ostensibly aimed at all drug users, turns out to be effectively aimed at anyone and everyone in the slums. Thugs plant guns on those killed, in order to frame them.
The example of Libya, which gave up nuclear capability and 8 years later was bombarded by the West, taught Kim Jong Un that North Korea must never give up that capability.
A powerful campaign of civil disobedience helped kill the Dontcare bill.
World's richest person escapes scrutiny from his own paper and its rivals.
A Koch front group is putting out misleading attack ads on electric vehicles.
At Defcon, patriotic hackers demonstrated the vulnerability of US voting machines to cracking. But US politicians are frozen in the headlights of crackers, who may be either foreign or domestic.
See "On Hacking" for explanation of the difference between cracking and hacking.
There is simply no scientific backing for TSA's "behavioral detection" program.
The UK legalized homosexuality 50 years ago after imposing a law criminalizing homosexuality on its colonies around the world. Many of those colonies now defend this gratuitous imposed cruelty as their "indigenous culture".
Spanish investors have ripped off Argentina for $300 million using the "investor-state" provision in a business supremacy treaty with Spain.
All "investor-state" treaties must be torn up.
Two prisoners in Guantanamo, declared guilty of bogus charges, were freed after many years of torture once they got an actual Habeas Corpus hearing.
It turns out that the US government had no evidence against them whatsoever. The accusations were nothing but fabricated excuses for torture.
Senator Hirono of Hawaii, flew to Washington, interrupting her treatment for advanced and probably fatal cancer, to vote against the Dontcare bill.
The troll and his saboteurs are already trying to make medical insurance collapse.
Some Republican senators admitted that voting for "skinny repeal" was a plan to impose some other bill that would be drawn up and voted on secretly later.
(This plan was defeated.)
The troll threatened to punish Alaska because one of its Republican senators voted against the Dontcare bill.
The troll and his servitors didn't want to learn what the Department of Energy does, especially in regard to nuclear weapons (US and foreign, real or possible) and nuclear waste (contained and leaked).
Why put that work inside the "Department of Energy"? It has nothing to do with the energy supply, unless you count the energy released by an explosion as energy supply. That was some previous president's attempt to discourage Americans from paying attention to the danger of nuclear weapons and radioactive wastes.
Stiglitz: tax cuts and deregulation won't fix any of America's problems. They won't increase economic growth now, because they never did in the past.
Facebook's "free basics" uses a special app (proprietary, I expect) which reports the user's activities to Facebook. Not just which sites the user visits, but what the user says, to Facebook.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the ban on transgender soldiers.
The troll wants to roll back Obama's regulation entitling more US workers to overtime pay.
Vietnam veterans were welcomed home by Americans that opposed the war, but a few have made claims about being met by protests whose existence is unsubstantiated by any evidence.
Several global disasters are coming at once, and humanity had better confront the question of how it will cope with them.
If this requires living more simply, that's better than dying or reverting to a world without high technology.
However, I think that improvements in batteries will solve the intermittancy problem in a decade or so.
Several of Brazil's environmental protection investigators were killed in an unexplained plane crash.
A few months ago, a judge in the Lava Jato anticorruption investigation was killed in a plane crash which some suspect was due to sabotage of the plane.
The troll says Obama's insurance system will now implode. Is he right?
How a single-payer US medical system would operate, why it would provide better medical care, and why it would cost less.
The Emoji Movie is a series of commercials with a thin veneer of story.
Why Anti-Imperialists Should Support Trans Soldiers.
We should proclaim our disgust for the troll, with a coherent argument about why his contempt for everything important is bad for the US (and the whole world).
In my view, the worst thing about the troll is his denial of global heating. He is making future disaster worse.
When the EPA discovered that testing company IBT had done bogus testing of many chemicals, it decided to accept many of the test results anyway, because redoing so many tests would have caused a big scandal that would have hurt the chemical industry.
US citizens: Tell Congress you support the People's Platform.
More information about the Justice is Not For Sale Act and the Inclusive Prosperity Act.
Arguing for the Goldwater rule.
I see both sides of this. The rule could prevent psychiatrists from smearing people by exaggerating quirks into grave mental illnesses. It can also silence psychiatrists from pointing out that an official is grossly twisted.
The world needs to pony up the money to pay the people who live near forests to stop deforestation.
The US Senate voted to impose additional sanctions on Russia and Iran, plus North Korea.
This may be a very bad idea.
The State Department's Office of Global Criminal Justice is hypocritical because it turns a blind eye to human rights abuses by the US and its allies.
To close that office would be a step in the wrong direction. When an entity's bad actions don't match its good principles, which one should it change? The actions, of course. Dropping the principles eliminates the hypocrisy but in the way that makes the entity worse.
Global heating is changing the fish species in the waters around Britain.
In particular, just as cod are recovering in the North Sea, the heat is starting to chase them out.
The relatives of Raoul Wallenberg are suing Russia, demanding more information about his fate. The Soviet Union admitted imprisoning him and said that he died in prison of a heart attack at age 44.
To die of a heart attack that young is unusual. It seems unlikely that a political prisoner of the Soviet Union would become obese. So if he did die that way, it raises the suspicion that some kind of maltreatment caused the heart attack.
The head of the Boy Scouts of America apologized for the troll's politicization of his address to a meeting of scouts.
The cheater's nominee for Saboteur of Government Ethics has shown an attitude of contempt for ethics rules.
The US military will not repress transgender soldiers for the time being, insisting that tweets are not a valid way for the president to change a policy.
The troll's proposed policy is cruel, manipulative, and harmful to the US military.
Apple has refused to deny the troll's false praise.
"John McCain is the perfect American lie, a man who professes to be noble and fair and just while being none of those things."
A court ruled that the troll and his saboteurs cannot arbitrarily delay the application of a regulation already approved.
Outsourcing data means a risk it will leak. Sweden leaked the database on all the vehicles in the country.
Economists that advocate bogus theories keep their jobs even when those theories lead to economic disasters.
The real unemployment rate in the UK is around 14%, about three times the official level.
It is around the same in the US. No wonder so many people are poor.
Undercover UK thugs have infiltrated more than 1,000 dissident organizations since the 1960s.
The troll wants to follow Reagan with deregulation and tax cuts for businesses. As they did under Reagan, these will make the US poorer and worse off.
"I'm an NHS doctor: understaffing is putting my patients at risk."
Theoretically, the Tories have not cut the staff levels in the National Health Service. Rather, they mistreat the staff so badly that it is hard to find anyone willing to work there.
That's the typical dishonesty of the right wing.
Doctors warn that lives will be lost if cuts to US funding for family planning, cancer screening and antenatal services go ahead [in Uganda].
US citizens: call on Congress to make Medicare negotiate drug prices.
US citizens: call on Congress to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
China invests heavily in fossil fuel development in other countries, in many cases oppressing indigenous people that are kicked off their land.
The US refuses to explain to a British couple why they were refused entry to the US for their honeymoon, despite having approved them in advance.
I don't think any country is obliged to accept all visitors that wish to enter. There are various legitimate reasons to keep someone out. But the US demonstrates unreliability as well as incompetence by giving people visas and then blocking them by surprise at the airport.
Why take a foolish risk? Don't visit the US. Go somewhere else which won't screw you over.
A lobbyist for oil companies is now the Deputy Saboteur of the Interior.
The UK's Supreme Court has eliminated the fees that made employment tribunals too expensive for most workers to use.
Such fees made it easy for employers to steal the wages of low-paid workers (a very common practice) and cheat them in other ways.
The Girl Scouts have obtained a restraining order requiring the pussy grabber not to come within 300 feet of any Girl Scout meeting.
An anonymous US deportation agent says that, since the troll took power, agents are on a power trip and behaving with arbitrary cruelty.
Here Comes The Big Push For A Really Shitty New Net Neutrality Law.
Constant supervision and monitoring of children today results in prolonged infantilization.
Perhaps this is part of the reason why so many young men hide in their parents' basements playing proprietary video games.
Hong Kong's puppet government plans to invite Chinese thugs to patrol part of the station on a new train line to China.
It is a very small piece of Hong Kong, and the only people there will be those travelling to or from China. However, the Chinese state is quite skilled in slipping in the thin edge of the wedge and then pushing it in further.
President Do-dirty has threatened to bomb indigenous people's schools in Mindanao.
Several California counties are suing several large oil companies for the damage that will be done by the sea level rise that they have already caused.
Arguing that the troll won't be able to appoint a replacement for Sessions that is worse than Sessions.
Ireland's Staggering Hypocrisy on Global Heating.
Israel has denied entry to US religious leaders that support boycotts against all or some Israeli products. The freedom to boycott Israel is threatened in many countries including the US.
I hope the event that they were going to attend arranges for them to participate remotely.
Senator McConnell was treated for polio by the March of Dimes. Now he refuses to meet with the March of Dimes (or any other charity concerned with medical treatment).
Electric utilities in the US were warned about the danger of global heating as early as 1968, but they ignored it.
Plutocratist Democrats are offering the same "new ideas" for minor changes that they offered in recent years.
Verizon appears to be violating the still-active US network neutrality rules.
Canadians are murdering indigenous people from racism.
"Hate speech" should not be a crime; people have a right to say they hate someone. However, calling for someone's murder ought to be a crime, inciting to violence.
The newest SCROTUS plan for attacking US medical care is called "skinny repeal".
This would allow businesses to stop providing medical insurance to their employees. It would also allow other Americans to go without insurance.
A US anti-abortion group has funded the anti-abortion lobby in El Salvador, which has made abortion totally illegal there. This has gone on since 2000.
With luck, resentment at this interference will help pass the bill to legalize abortion in some circumstances.
Patriarchy visible in all its ugliness: an unofficial court in Pakistan punished a rapist by ordering the revenge-rape of his sister.
The basic idea of patriarchy is that women are the property of men. Given that twisted starting point, the idea of punishing a rapist by damaging his property seems natural.
The Pakistani state is trying to put an end to this way of doing things.
Toxic chemicals sprayed to fight fires are contaminating wildlife.
Al-Shabaab is cutting off the people in its occupied areas from food aid, starving them to death.
Israel threatens to expel al-Jazeera for its coverage of riots in Jerusalem.
I don't know enough about these riots and their specific causes to say anything about them.
The troll is considering expanding the war in Afghanistan in order to mine its minerals.
The American Psychoanalytic Association has given its members permission to make public statements about the mental health of political figures.
The leaders of the now disarmed FARC guerrilla movement face assassination threats from criminals who I suspect are another form of the murderous paramilitares.
The paramilitares, right-wing gangs supported by the army, were always the worst terrorists in Colombia.
Employees at a certain company will now be offered the "option" of getting the employer's RFID implanted in their hands.
This will gradually convert itself from an option into a virtual requirement for many employees, if we don't take action to prevent that. Suitable action would be to pass laws prohibiting employers from implanting RFIDs into their customers or employees.
Jared Kushner was supposedly going to solve all the world's diplomatic problems, but when confronted with false filings about meetings with Russians, he pleads that he's an inexperienced beginner so he should not be expected to do these things right.
High-pressure standardized tests pressure students into suicide, in the US as in Korea and China.
US thugs have been caught planting drugs and guns to make false excuses to arrest people. We need to regulate thugs more tightly.
Now that no lie is too flagrant for a Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith is bringing back the old planet-roaster claim that global heating is beneficial.
US citizens: call on the FBI to investigate whether Ivanka covered up meetings with Russians when she applied for a security clearance.
SCROTUS have voted to begin debate on the Dontcare bill. This means they could bring any version of the law up for a final vote.
US citizens: phone both your senators to oppose any possible version of the Dontcare bill. If they are Democrats, ask them to delay the bill by whatever means possible.
Delay is vital to give people a chance to persuade some Republicans to vote no.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
KPFA cancelled a planned speech by Richard Dawkins, accusing him of having "offended and hurt" Muslims.
It is fundamentally wrong to judge a person's statements by whether others take offense at them. People often take offense based on a misunderstanding, an invalid reason, or being on hair trigger due to other experiences. It does not automatically follow that the last statement was wrong, or even that it was inherently offensive.
Dawkins condemned Islam, but did not condemn Muslims. If some Muslims (or anyone else) took offense at what he said about Islam, or felt hurt by it, that doesn't mean Dawkins did anything wrong.
However, Dawkins came close to stretching the truth when he said he had "never used abusive speech against Islam". He certainly made a harsh statement against Islam, quoted in the article. His claim has to rest on the subtle difference between harsh and abusive. He would be on solid ground if he said he "never used abusive speech against Muslims".
The troll has closed the office in the State Department that concerns itself with war crimes.
The troll has nominated a science-denier to head the scientific division of the Department of Agriculture. This nomination violates the law which says that nominee must be a distinguished scientist in the agricultural field.
All Democrats in Congress must join the American people in supporting single-payer Medicare for All.
The US should not meddle in Venezuela.
The number of terrorist attacks world wide, and the number killed, decreased in 2016.
A girl of five years in the UK was fined for running a lemonade stand.
Tillerson should resign for violating the US sanctions against Russia.
A new agricultural agreement between the US and China benefits mainly agribusiness giants.
Uri Avnery: Netanyahu finds right-wing antisemites in Eastern Europe natural allies against Liberal Jews such as Soros.
Human Noise Pollution is Disrupting Parks And Wild Places.
Promote homeopathy awareness! Once people are aware of what homeopathy really consists of, they will see it is ridiculous.
In the US: join a rally to oppose the Dontcare bill.
US citizens: Call on Albertsons supermarkets (including Safeway and Shaws) to stop selling toxic household products.
US citizens: Tell Congress to stop Trump and Perry's reckless clean energy cuts.
US citizens: Call on Democratic senators to reject Republican "financial reform".
DeVos's model of a school system, that of Florida, is facing financial collapse because of diversion of money to private schools.
Meanwhile, it oppresses children with nondisclosure agreements.
Right wing agitators are calling on their followers to kill Americans that disagree with them.
Senator McCain's cancer casts light on how the Dontcare bill would hurt Americans less well off than he.
The UK has a vicious law that denies welfare support for a family's third and subsequent children. Now this is to be applied in Northern Ireland, where abortion is banned under criminal penalties.
To punish the children of large families by keeping them in poverty is evidently unjust, because they are not responsible for their birth. Furthermore, it tends to stunt their physical and mental development in such a way that it is difficult for them ever to get out of poverty.
If the UK government wants to discourage poor women from having more than two children, it should do so by giving them birth control and abortion gratis.
Pseudo-public spaces appear to be squares or parks, but they are private property ruled by private whim.
I expect that journalism and protests are first things likely to be banned.
Macron's first act of austerity is to cut housing benefits for poor people.
People are making baseless bigoted accusations against the thug that killed Justine Damond, based on his national origin and his religion.
These accusations are implausible and have no basis other than supposition. We must not let them distract attention from the real issue: how to make US thugs less dangerous.
The EFF's lawsuit to block the troll's voter suppression panel from asking for voter records was defeated, but most states still intend to reject the requests more or less.
Jane Crow: for black and Hispanic mothers, the slightest anomaly is seized on as an excuse to take their children away to "protect" them.
Even once their children are returned to them, they face various sorts of continuing punishment, harassment, blacklisting, and pitfalls, which serve only to uphold the pretense that there was a reason for action.
The way to help those children is to give the mothers aid to lift them out of poverty. Poverty makes life more difficult, so that minor anomalies are more likely. It also causes emotional stress, which leads to mishaps too. (Not to mention that it stunts the children's mental and physical development.)
The troll is drifting into the camp of the theocratic Christians that want to impose their religion on the US.
Distracted Americans worry about Muslims, instead of the truly dangerous Christians.
El Salvador has begun arresting war criminals from its civil war … starting surprisingly with guerrillas accused of killing wounded US soldiers who had fallen into their hands.
It seems plausible to me that the guerrillas were not in a position to hold prisoners. During World War II, it was considered legitimate (though regrettable) to kill enemy soldiers that had surrendered, if it was unfeasible to take prisoners there and then. What do today's treaties say about this situation?
iRobot plans to make its cleaning robots make maps of customers' homes, so that iRobot can sell them.
A robot with nonfree software in it is ready to betray you.
The troll's saboteur of public lands wants to eliminate a rule that frackers must publish the chemicals they inject.
Supposedly this is because the rule duplicates state protections, but it is clear that is false.
Hundreds of progressive American protesters face grave felony charges fabricated by right-wing thugs and prosecutors. Sometimes the thugs watch passively as neo-Nazis beat up unarmed antifascists, then they arrest the antifascists.
Vicious, slimy thugs!
Corbyn called for public laws rather than private whim to govern what people can do on privatized parks and squares.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has greenwashed a proposed natural gas pipeline by simply ignoring the associated greenhouse gas emissions.
The FERC essentially never rejects a pipeline. It has been captured totally by the industry it is supposed to regulate on our behalf.
Congress is considering weakening the Freedom of Information Act.
Nairobi faces running out of water in a few months.
Turkey's leading opposition journalists are on trial, and the charge amounts to "journalism".
Poland's president will veto the bill to give the right-wing government control of the supreme court.
Homeless people on the street face a constant stream of cruelty, including being pissed on or beaten up by passersby.
The author reports that some food stores refused to sell food to people who are buying for the homeless. I have never encountered that sort of refusal when buying them food, but I trust the reports. Perhaps that happens only in the UK.
Center-right Democratic donors want to choose newly elected senator Kemala Harris as the 2020 candidate for president.
We have been there before. In 2008, the Democratic Party ran a first-term black senator who used vague slogans such as "hope" and "change" but didn't match them with substance. I smelled something fishy and didn't vote for him. I chose well, because once elected he turned out to be the plutocrats' pet. He didn't lift a finger to stop banks from defrauding millions of Americans out of their homes.
(I'm not exaggerating when I use the word "defrauding" — the banks went to court using falsified documents.)
We should not rush to put faith in a "savior" just beginning to hold a major office. Instead we should choose, as candidate, an official that has spent decades firmly resisting the plutocrats:
Bernie Sanders.
As for Senator Harris, let's wait and see what she does in the senate. In 10 years she will have a record we can judge by. If by then she has stood firm for democracy, human rights, and the good of the non-rich, I will support her.
Imprisonment without limit is dehumanizing for refugees, just as it would be for anyone else.
The word "detention" fails to do justice to what it is like to be jailed, so I don't call it that.
Past mass extinctions killed up to 96% of all species, and what we see happening now can easily cascade up to there.
Porn is a special case of the instant gratification fantasy promotion business. Becoming habituated to that sort of thing can harm people regardless of what field it happens in.
I disagree with the writer where he thinks it is wrong for 15-year-olds to have sex.
The Democratic Party has allied with neocons for a new cold war with Russia.
The troll's proposed tax cuts for the rich would make the US more unequal than Greece.
US citizens: phone your senators at 888-659-7351 and urge them to vote against any version of the Dontcare bill.
Any one of them would cut off medical coverage for tens of millions of Americans.
US citizens: save the US funds for saving African wildlife.
US citizens: oppose the AT&T-Time Warner merger.
US citizens: call on the NOAA Fisheries department to protect whales and sea turtles from drift gillnets.
A US appeals court upheld the secrecy of PAT RIOT Act massive data collection.
This puts everyone in the US in danger.
Crowdfunding the cost of medical treatment can be necessary, but it's not a good way for society to fund treatment, since it requires the patient medical situation to be published.
Trump's EPA Chemical Safety Nominee Was in the "Business of Blessing" Pollution.
Pepsico, Unilever And Nestlé Accused of Complicity in Illegal Rainforest Destruction.
Privatizing public housing, like privatizing almost anything else governments do, leads to unaccountability.
"Enjoy cod's revival, but the extent of our ruination of the sea remains unknown."
Indonesia has followed the Philippines in shooting alleged drug dealers on the street.
People will be killed for all sorts of reasons, and lumped in with the drug dealers.
The troll's deregulatory saboteurs aim to help businesses endanger the environment, public health, and workers.
How President Temer quashed indigenous people's legal rights so that they can't resist the deforestation business.
To Save Rural Iowa, We Must Oppose Monsanto-Bayer Merger.
Studying the culture of jihadism, which is what attracts many of its recruits.
The resemblance between jihadi culture and Salafist culture confirms that Salafism fuels jihadism. Spreading Salafism around the world, which Salafi Arabia spends millions doing, contributes to terrorism.
A list of the provisions that would have to be removed from the Dontcare bill in order to pass it as a budget reconciliation measure with just 50 votes.
A reported intercepted conversation between the Russian ambassador and his superiors contradicts Sessions' claims about not discussing the troll's campaign and policies with the ambassador.
Who do we trust less? A Republican official, or a Russian official?
A California bill that would have aided prosecution of murderous thugs was defeated.
Russia has banned VPNs.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
On several big political issues, where some businesses' interests conflict directly with what most Americans want, the problem is not political polarization between Americans. It's polarization between Americans and those businesses' lobbies.
Exxon Oil has been fined for violating US sanctions on Russia while Tillerson was its CEO, and was reportedly aware of the violation.
On the correct pronunciation of "Exxon".
For some fairly safe drugs, prohibition greatly increases the danger.
The Dontcare bill, like cholera, never entirely dies. SCROTUS can bring it back for a vote any day.
Invasive plants and human activities endanger the survival of the tortoises of the Mojava desert.
The troll continues putting supporters of torture into crucial government positions.
Leaving the EU will give Britain the opportunity to escape from the political power of business. Corbyn aims to take advantage of this.
The troll is looking for a way to sabotage the investigation of his ties with Russia.
It is another example of the Republican attitude: "By hook or by crook, we will make democracy into a fraud and hold control of the US.
Erdoğan has imposed a blanket of Islamist self-promotion on Turkey, threatening mob murder against dissenters.
Even when a fish population is managed at a stable level, some modern fishing methods cause lasting damage to the sea bottom and other species. True sustainability requires curbing those methods.
Residents who escaped the London public housing fire confront the right-wing local council about its general callousness towards undesirable poor people.
When facing global disaster, we must not be afraid to show people the "doom and gloom" that will result from inaction.
Conjecture: the Russians that the cheater met with a year ago are the people that have financed his business activity since many years before, and he is in their pocket.
Widows of the soldiers of PISSI face retaliation from the triumphant Shi'ite militias and soldiers that have captured Mosul.
Saboteur Sessions is trying to make all Americans fear robbery on the streets — by thugs.
Uber and AirBNB are considering using India's monster biometric population registry to identify people.
Once a data base of citizens exists, all sorts of organizations will tend to index their databases by it.
Those who voted for the troll: here's a list of the promises he broke or even reversed.
Warning: an arms race in AI-driven autonomous killer drones may start soon.
The obvious way to avoid this is with a treaty.
We must not excuse the killings of people other than Justine Damond just because they are not perfectly innocent people like her.
The troll claimed that a coal mine in Pennsylvania created 45,000 jobs, but it's actually around 70 jobs.
One defiant journalist recorded and posted the troll's "press briefing" at which recording was forbidden.
It is good to defy the troll, but that doesn't mean that the recording is worth actually listening to. The troll's "press briefings" are meant to distract and confuse the public and to diminish the press. We should not treat what is said in them as significant.
I suggest that news media start sending apprentices to these "briefings", tasked with making brief notes about the topics, and start calling them "distraction events" or "lie sessions'.
Then organizations can start demanding that the troll hold real, serious press briefings.
Children of disabled American parents face the danger of being put into foster care.
I don't believe that anyone is entitled to a right to have children, but we must treat children with regard for their well-being. Unless parents are quite abusive, taking children away from them will hurt those children.
The US government seeks to ban mention in Reality Winner's trial of all leaked material that newspapers have published.
This would eliminate any chance of her contesting government claims about the significance of material that she is accused of leaking.
Congress is on the verge of jailing Americans that participate in the Palestinian boycott of Israel or even Gush Shalom's boycott of products made in Israel's colonies in occupied Palestine.
The ACLU is campaigning against the bill.
Here's the ACLU's letter to senators, which gives more details about what the bill would prohibit. It is shocking.
SCROTUS have stretched Senate rules trying to pass the Dontcare bill as a budget reconciliation bill.
That's the Republicans for you. They don't recognize anything whatsoever as being above their partisan aims.
Some social networks regularly help government agencies track people that use the networks.
Paying people to preserve trees near their villages is a very efficient way of reducing CO2 emissions and preserving the environment.
However, the fact that deforestation continued in areas covered by the trial program — albeit more slowly than elsewhere — suggests that we need more than this if we are to protect the world's forests.
Internet "personality tests" are a clever trick to get people to answer personal questions and be profiled.
US citizens: call on Saboteur of Commerce Ross to protect marine national monuments and sanctuaries.
US citizens: Reject Republican budget cuts.
Everyone: call on Macy's department store to drop Ivanka clothing line.
Everyone: call on AARP to quit ALEC now for real.
US citizens: call for ending civil forfeiture at the federal level.
Google imposes confidentiality requirements on staff, and this hampers them from reporting discrimination.
Inequality is not inevitable, it's a policy choice. For proof, look at Namibia.
New Zealand MP Metiria Turei explains how New Zealand keeps children in poverty — by confessing how, as a single mother, she was compelled to lie to get enough benefits for her and her daughter to live.
Pakistan has quietly lowered the criteria for "blasphemy" as a campaign to crush all dissent.
China has disappeared Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo's widow. Thugs blocked reporters from her apartment, while claiming they never heard of her.
Global heating is wiping out the last of Africa's wild dogs. They can't hunt when it gets too hot.
A thug is trying to excuse the killing of Justine Damond by claiming the killer thought he had entered an ambush.
We can't tolerate armed thugs on our streets that are likely to kill people whenever they get jumpy. They must not be so quick to "protect" themselves from nonexistent threats.
The ban on abortion in Sierra Leone is killing girls that get pregnant and get illegal abortions.
However, the babies that are not aborted carry their own danger: being trapped in poverty.
Germany has warned its citizens to stay away from Turkey, where they might be falsely accused and used as bargaining chips. Germany will also retaliate in other ways.
I don't know what other countries can or should do to improve Turkey's lousy human rights record, but at least Erdoğan richly deserves this.
Nothing About the Trump Presidency Is Normal. Keep Remembering That.
There is only one proper way to normalize the troll: to multiply him by a coefficient that will adjust his magnitude to 1.
The unremovable president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has amassed so much money in 16 years of rule that the country is too poor to hold an election on his successor.
Nine protesters blocked Detroit water shutoff with their bodies, and embarrassed the Republican government of occupation into stopping the policy.
The state prosecuted them, but found a way to quietly dismiss the case when it became clear that the jury would acquit them.
These protesters used nonviolent resistance because it is their principle, and won a victory. However, let us not think that only nonviolent resistance can ever be justified. An imposed nondemocratic government is illegitimate. Governor Synder and the Michigan Republicans have no more moral authority than King George.
Wealthy country governments are funding the new coal-fired power plants in Indonesia.
Squatting, and squatters' rights, deserve our support.
Desertification in Africa is forecast to force 60 million people to migrate, within three years, because they can no longer survive where they are.
I think that they will have trouble finding any place to go, especially as population growth all around Africa will fill up the places they might have gone. A few million might survive for a while by moving into wildlife areas and killing the wildlife.
What can we do about this? For the most part, nothing. Serious efforts to curb global heating would take more than three years to make a difference.
However, a strong contraceptive program could easily avert a few million births among the affected populations, even in three years. This won't prevent that regional disaster, but would make it smaller.
Clinton is even more unpopular than the troll, because Democrats are fed up with center-right plutocratist Democrats.
Plastic Pollution Risks "Near Permanent Contamination of Natural Environment".
I suppose most of the plastic objects will be filtered out of the ocean in a few millennia, as various animals swallow them, and later die and fall to the bottom and become part of sediment. But that is a long time.
Local campaigns aim to persuade stores to use less plastic packaging, but for real effect we need laws.
Humans reached Australia at least 65,000 years ago, and probably over 70,000 years ago.
This could imply that modern humans first migrated out of Africa earlier than the usual estimate of 75,000 years ago. But not necessarily. A few thousand years could have been long enough for humans to spread across Asia.
Ralph Nader: we can all avoid the actions that give abusive leaders a clear path to tear our society apart.
I have to point out that the word "consume", when applied to publications of any sort, discourages critical thinking about them. Please join me in shunning that usage.
Amnesty International says Cameroon is torturing prisoners accused of supporting Boko Haram.
US and French officials may be participating in the interrogation of these prisoners.
The troll has stopped trying to arm "moderate" rebels in Syria.
This program was a joke, since it ended up arming jihadis that were more of a threat to the US than Assad is.
Cod in the North Sea have recovered enough to allow fishing.
I wonder why the Grand Banks cod have not recovered. One article I read says that the protection measures are inadequate because some fishing is still permitted.
One of the Koch brothers spent millions to make a plutocratist anti-tax economic ideology ascendant, so that it is now used to suppress democracy in the US and elsewhere.
China's Ocean Burial of Liu Xiaobo Backfires as Activists Stage Sea Protests.
It would be good to put up a memorial to him in Hong Kong.
Republicans want to pass pre-emptive federal laws to eliminate many state laws that protect people's rights against business and the plutocracy.
US citizens: call your senators as soon as possible to oppose the dirty energy bill.
The Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017 (S.1460), would put fossil fuel expansion on a fast track, locking in decades of dirty energy.
US citizens: call your senators to oppose the bill, passed by the House of Representatives, that would jail teenagers for 15 years (mandatory minimum sentence) for sexting.
If you wish, you could add that sexting should not be a crime at all.
US citizens: oppose fossil fuel extraction in Sequoia National Monument.
US citizens: call for revocation of Kushner's security clearance.
One reporter published his phone metadata so the public can see how much that reveals about a person.
This is one of the reasons why portable phones threaten the freedom of whoever carries one. The other is that they can be ordered to listen to and transmit all the conversations around them.
US pharmacists are required to discard drugs that have reached their sell-by dates, even though nearly all of them are still potent enough to be effective.
The Tory policy of cutting social services millions depend on seems to be responsible for ending the rise in life expectancy in the UK.
The troll's "plan" to renegotiate NAFTA is so vague that we can't tell whether it would become better or worse.
Welcome to 2050. The 'Climate Monster' Has Arrived, and people have adapted through radical changes.
Republicans want to repeal the direct election of US senators. If they do this, their state-level gerrymandering and voter suppression will translate into permanently assured control of the Senate.
No wonder they also want to cut the funds the Election Assistance Commission, whose job is to ensure elections are run securely.
For Republicans, anything that protects election integrity is an obstacle to their cheating.
McCain's blood clot medical procedure costs more money than most Americans get in a year. I don't begrudge him that operation, but this example illustrates why it is crucial to maintain medical insurance coverage for more people, not fewer people.
We could push the prices down by switching to a single-payer universal system, aka Medicare for All.
Pence has a record of ridiculous political lies for 15 years.
They are not as many lies as the troll tells, but some of them are of the same magnitude as his lies.
Construction companies are defeating fire safety regulations by fraud.
The article reports on Australia, but I expect the situation is the same in the US and any country where the state dismisses regulations as mere obstacles.
You can fool the legal system, but you can never fool fire into not burning.
Saboteur Kobach, when he was a Kansas official, managed to block 1/7 of applications to register to vote in that state.
That alone may have caused Governor Brownback to "win" the election.
The troll met secretly with Putin and didn't bring his own translator.
Linda Tirado got unexpectedly transferred from the struggling working class into the connected elite, so she explains the difference, which people in the connected elite are mostly unaware of.
The troll has been thwarted on sabotaging US medical insurance, but he is making substantial progress sabotaging the environment, internet rights, and equality.
The troll says he wants to "let Obamacare fail". However, any such failure would not be inherent; it would be due to Republicans' intentional mismanagement.
The authoritarian Polish government is trying to fully abolish the independence of the judiciary.
Senator Wyden To FCC Chair Pai: Hey, Stop Lying About What I Said To Undermine Net Neutrality.
Brazil's corrupt extractivist government has, by now, allowed miners and loggers take over the Amazon rain forest.
A member of the Republican National Committee assented when another Republican said that Senator McCain should "just die already".
McCain is for the most part just another cruel and heartless Republican, but there are a few issues where he disagrees with them. For instance, he has sometimes publicly opposed torture even when most Republicans were in favor of it, because he experienced being a prisoner of war and retains the rational recognition that the US must treat prisoners decently so that captured US soldiers will be treated decently.
It is due to localized scruples such as these that many Republicans consider him an obstacle to their plans.
The UK demands power to snoop on anyone, abolishing all right of privacy, in the name of never missing any evidence of terrorism. Meanwhile, it doesn't spend enough money to follow up all the reports of terrorism that it gets.
Remembering Eugene Debs, the great democratic socialist leader of the US a century ago.
Republicans want to delay new US regulations to reduce ozone in humans' direct environment.
Ozone kills a lot more Americans than terrorists do, but protecting Americans from ozone is not an excuse to deny our human rights. It's just one of the thousands of useful ways the state can protect people from being harmed by business.
The Republican idea that Americans should decide thoughtfully which medical tests to take accept (when recommended by their doctors) is impossible: clinics won't tell patients what any test will cost them.
That is one more reason for a universal national medical system, also known as Medicare for All.
26 Greek chemical workers took over a piece of their factory when it shut down. They now operate a cooperative business, protected by the local community from raids by the owners that want to take and sell the equipment for a small value.
A company wants to mine gold from protected conservation land in New Zealand.
The company would profit greatly from that gold, but the world as a whole won't benefit particularly from mining more gold.
Two more Republican senators have come out against the current Dontcare bill, which means it cannot pass in its current form.
SCROTUS have lost a battle but they won't give up yet.
Tobacco companies, like oil companies, mining companies, and drug companies bully governments using business-supremacy treaties, after lobbying governments to sign such treaties.
The neoliberal arguments for those treaties simply disregard this effect.
The UK will ban ads that teach sexist gender stereotypes.
It might do some good. I do not object to this policy, because the human right of freedom of speech does not apply to corporations.
Two Democratic congresscritters have introduced a motion to impeach the troll.
He continues providing many grounds for impeachment. I've seen various arguments about whether that would be tactically desirable (supposing SCROTUS were willing to permit it to be done).
Amazon: 1984 at the Grocery Store.
As air travel increasingly contributes to global heating, global heating is starting to make air travel unreliable.
US citizens: submit comments to oppose the proposed coal export terminal.
US citizens: call on Congress to repeal Dubya's authorization for use of military force.
It was meant to cover fighting al Qa'ida but has been stretched to cover many other regional wars.
US citizens: state your personal commitment to the Paris climate agreement.
US citizens: call on Democratic senators to block the Republicans' anti-immigrant agenda.
The US sustains permanent war by covering up the dead, the wounded, and the crushed.
The troll is killing a lot more civilians with bombing raids than Obama did.
Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan War at Record High, Says UN. The Taliban are killing civilians, too.
The troll promotes "made in America" while himself choosing to resell foreign-made products.
Neoliberalism Has Conned Us into Fighting [global heating] As Individuals. That is because the political philosophy of neoliberalism opposes application of democracy. The idea of democracy is that the many non-rich band together to be more powerful than the rich. The "don't work together" ideology makes the non-rich powerless because each tries to contend, alone, with the rich.
The usual suggested ways to "reduce your footprint" are a distraction, but there is one substantial way to reduce your contribution to greenhouse gas emissions: by not having children.
You can encourage others to have fewer or no children by openly disagreeing with natalist pressure. Social pressure pushes many people to have children, on the blind assumption that children will make their lives delightful and stress-free.
Jailing teenagers as sex offenders to teach them not to sext is as useful and justified as burning down their houses to teach them not to play with matches.
Sexting should not be a crime, period. Perhaps pressuring others to sext should be the subject of some kind of disciplinary measure.
Japan is planning to force evacuated inhabitants of Fukushima back to their old homes, by cutting off funds for them to live elsewhere.
The article does not give us enough information to deduce that they would be in real danger.
The article has gaps in its understanding of the physical issues: a high level of radiation inside the destroyed plants does not necessarily imply danger to people in surrounding towns, though it might. People are still developing thyroid cancer from radioactive iodine that they ingested years ago, but the article does not address the current level of radioactive iodine in those towns. It might still be dangerous, but we lack the information here.
Tenants March [In Washington, DC] to Stop Giveaways to Wall Street Landlords.
The first segment of the troll's pointless wall against Mexico will destroy a wildlife refuge.
Disneyland pays low wages and many employees are homeless.
The troll is rumored to want to appoint an official to oversee wage law enforcement who has been sued for not paying for work done.
Just like the cheater himself.
Spain's ruling right-wing party legalized outsourcing which knocked hotel cleaners' wages way down. They are are forced to work extra hours unpaid. They are organizing a union and plan to shame the culpable hotels.
For the rank and file Republicans, global heating denial is an example of surrendering to fear by denying the danger. It's like refusing to go to the dentist, or to get tested for AIDS or cancer.
The name "Winnie the Pooh" is banned in China because the great dictator has been compared to him.
Conservatives governed Sweden and cut taxes for the rich, leading to increased inequality. Now the Social Democrats are working to reduce the inequality.
A uranium mine near the Grand Canyon could contaminate the Havasupai tribe's water permanently if anything goes wrong.
The company will promise in court that it will bend over backwards to prevent contamination. Then, having won permission, it will cut corners to the max — because corporations are psychopaths and that's how they operate.
Macron publicly pressured Israel to stop building colonies in occupied Palestine, and condemned the siege of Gaza.
That is a good thing to do, and shows more courage than the US has had for a long time. However, each one of these colonies violates the Geneva Convention. To stop making more of them is not sufficient.
Justine Damond in Minneapolis called the thugs because she heard suspicious noises outside her home. They shot her dead, and managed to make no recordings of why.
Body cameras should not depend on thugs to turn them on or off.
The latest Senate Dontcare bill would deny people with preexisting conditions effective medical coverage.
Major US medical insurance sellers say that this makes it totally unworkable.
The goal of the Dontcare bill is to cut a large piece off the carpet that now covers (but only barely just) most Americans. So it won't be big enough. Each version of the Dontcare bill reflects a different scheme to pull the diminished carpet over various places to make it appear to cover us, but that can't be done. The shortfall has to be somewhere.
The UK's National Health Service is short of basic equipment such as oxygen masks.
The Tories have been slowly starving the NHS of funds. It can't continue to give its previous excellent (and efficient) service under such conditions. The Tories' ultimate goal is to point at these artificially induced problems to "prove" that they should move to a system like the US, that hardly serves the poor at all, and provides a lot more profit to private interests.
Former US diplomats say that negotiation is the only way to stop North Korea from developing long-range nuclear missiles.
Despite some concessions, the new Senate version of the Dontcare bill still provides a big tax cut for the rich and insurance companies.
The troll appeals to the grifter/hustler tradition of America.
Texas defunded Planned Parenthood "to reduce abortions", but the effect was to increase abortions.
This reflects the fact that Planned Parenthood provides contraception to far more women than abortion. Of course, the religious fanatics that rule Texas want to eliminate contraception, too, though they mostly tried to keep this quiet, others waited until the troll's success emboldened them.
In effective provision of medical care, the US comes last among the wealthy nations. In the UK, despite years of the Tories' undermining the NHS, only 7% of poor people reported that they couldn't afford needed treatment. In the US, it is 44%.
Yet the US spends far more on medical care than the UK does.
Without government inspection, you mustn't suppose that the products you buy contain the amounts they claim to contain.
You can't even assume they contain the things they claim to contain.
The Senate Dontcare bill would exempt senators (and their families) from the reductions in coverage that they plan to impose on everyone else.
75% of Americans agree that the richest have too much power.
This is a great potential political base for progressives that campaign to take that excess power away from them.
Hong Kong inhabitants held a march in honor of Liu Xiaobo.
California's Governor Brown advocates strong long-term CO2 targets, but the measures he proposes are not strong enough to achieve them.
After Desiree Fairooz was ejected for laughing at Sessions, she shouted in anger, and was then convicted of disorderly conduct for that. Now a judge has tossed out the conviction because the prosecutor told the jury that laughing alone was grounds for convicting her.
The troll's voter suppression commission published the email addresses of the people who wrote to object to its plan to collect and publish private information about all US voters.
The US is developing a self-perpetuating class divide between the upper middle class and those below. The children of upper-middle-class parents receive such advantages in upbringing that they can usually claim all the advantages afterward.
Social mobility is important, but offering a decent life even to poor people is even more important. That would also reduce somewhat the perceived importance of making sure your children don't end up with somewhat reduced social position — it would not doom them to poverty that strikes upper-middle-class parents as horrible.
The Shi'ite victors of Mosul are building up sectarian hostility of the sort that helped PISSI get in.
The next episode of Shi'ite-Sunni strife will not be quite like PISSI, but it is likely to be very bad. Shame that no one has the leadership to lead Iraq away from that.
[PISSI] May Be on Its Knees But It Will Rise Again If We Don't Break the Cycle.
Meteorologists: there is a significant chance that weather will cause large global crop failures that would cause famine across the world.
An analysis of the political situation in Brazil, where the whole political class is corrupt more or less, and businesses aim to profit from the shock.
The allied victory in World War II was the demonstration that state planning can work very, very well.
A judge has reduced the troll's partial ban on Muslims by expanding the list of family members that can give a visitor a valid connection to the US.
A UN investigator says that thugs in Sri Lanka routinely torture suspects to make them confess. Especially those suspected of terrorism.
This means many of the confessions are false.
Sri Lanka has also kept some suspects in prison for many years without trial.
In this area, the US sets a bad example, from Guantanamo to Chicago.
Americans, if you love your country, strive to make it deserve the world's admiration instead of the world's fear.
If we don't curb global heating, many coastal areas of the US will face so much flooding by 2100 that people will be driven off them. This includes parts of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Mutilated, bound corpses of young men have been floating down the river from Mosul for months, and especially since April.
It appears that the Iraqi army or militias are torturing and murdering prisoners.
There is nothing wrong with shooting PISSI fighters that are still at loose, however.
Republicans that control state governments are planning to cancel the minimum wage increases that cities have adopted.
Republicans will do anything to make non-rich people poorer.
Congress Trying To Sneak Through Major Giveaway To Defense Contractors.
Protecting parrotfish could save coral reefs for some additional years.
Burma is imprisoning people for all sorts of critical or discomfort-provoking postings on the internet.
The troll has set up several sabotage teams to search for regulations to eliminate in order to aid their employers to profit more. These profits will be at the expense of their customers, or the general public.
Brazilians have launched a campaign to pressure Congress to remove corrupt President Temer.
The US is being sued for denying asylum seekers at the Mexican border their legal right to ask for asylum and get their requests considered.
The Tories propose giant bill to disconnect British laws from EU laws and plan to use it to eviscerate human rights in Britain in the process.
SCROTUS are hard at work to cancel the CFPB's new rule ensuring cheated bank customers can file a class-action suit instead of using bank-imposed arbitration.
Fossil fools congratulated the US for the prospect of greatly increased natural gas and oil exports in the next decade.
The fossil fools failed to commiserate with the Earth for the disaster this is going to cause.
Legal requirements, including fire safety codes, must not be copyrighted. They must be available without hindrance to everyone.
The troll's proposed FBI head has a bad record of supporting more surveillance.
No, AT&T, Comcast, And Verizon Are Not Suddenly In Favor Of Net Neutrality. They are covering up how they have fought against it, and proposing ways to implement net neutrality that can't work.
Australia is planning to force messaging companies to decrypt customers' messages, with no specific rule about how to do that. Perhaps by not really encrypting messages at all.
I have a bad feeling that a requirement is coming to make every computer a jail.
Economists are gradually rejecting the dogma that business-dominated globalization is good for society.
I've posted many times about why it is not, including here. The logic for globalization disregarded its side effects, including the lost of democracy.
A subservient Hong Kong judge has excluded all the pro-democracy legislators from the Hong Kong parliament. In the future, supporters of democracy will have to take their oath of office insincerely.
That is legitimate. Pledging loyalty to a tyrant is wrong only if you mean it.
Recycling is good, but the "circular economy" is not just recycling — it means that people can never own anything, only rent everything from a company.
It could be efficient, even reduce pollution. But unless we are very careful about it, it will leave you with no autonomy.
War veterans often end up in the gutter from their experiences. When this happens to US veterans that are not citizens, they face the danger of deportation to countries they haven't seen for decades.
Precarious workers deserve all the rights of other workers, not a tiny fraction.
As activists rebuke China for keeping effectively prisoner Liu Xiaobo as he died, and perhaps for making sure he couldn't be treated, the troll praises the tyrant of China instead.
This is surprisingly consistent, for the troll. He sincerely admires tyrants, and sincerely despises those who defend human rights that often get in his way.
The tobacco company Philip Morris is running a worldwide campaign to harass states that adopt regulations to reduce smoking.
Tobacco companies are buying influence in the US too, finding Republicans eager prey.
The greatest US story never told (or hardly ever) is about the replacement of democracy with an oligarchy (I call it plutocracy).
The UK government has buried the report on foreign terrorist funding, apparently to protect Salafi Arabia.
The reasons given are absurd. If there are personal names that ought to be protected, it's easy to do so and still release the politically important info about what countries are doing.
Even if Salafi Arabia is not funding terrorism as such, it is funding radicalization through its version of Islam.
Someone seems to have funded jihadi violence in Syria while Syrians were trying to hold nonviolent protests, I've seen suggestions that some of the Gulf states did that.
Current forms of biofuel do not help avoid global heating disaster. They are as bad as fossil fuels and they drive up food prices.
The US approved oil drilling in Arctic waters, where spills could not be cleaned up and could take many decades to clean themselves up.
Any new oil extraction project is harmful because it will make the path to disaster easier.
Donald Trump - not his son - is the real protagonist of the Russia drama
A video appears to show Iraqi soldiers murdering a prisoner in Mosul.
China kept Liu Xiaobo in prison even in hospital until he was dead.
Perhaps it killed him too, by denying medical care.
The US "countering violent extremism" program is intended to head Muslims off from being radicalized and becoming terrorists. Its first flaw is that nobody understands how that goal could be achieved.
Its second flaw is that it ignores the right-wing racist terrorism which is equally dangerous, or perhaps more dangerous now that the troll encourages it.
A US citizen was held for 10 hours, in handcuffs, with no food or water, as he tried to enter the US from Canada.
The border thugs refuse, as always, to explain or present any charges. They punish arbitrarily. However, they can't legally do so to a US citizen.
The troll's apparent collusion with Russia is shocking, but his indisputable collusion with US oligarchs and corporations is the bigger danger to Americans.
The Tories are getting strong condemnation for covering up the role of Salafi Arabia in funding terrorism.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has made a rule to stop banks from using forced arbitration clauses to get away with cheating their customers. Naturally SCROTUS are trying to cancel this.
The massive pro-democracy rally in Istanbul compelled Erdoğan to permit it to occur, which has enabled Turkey to recognize the support that still exists for democracy and human rights.
The cholera epidemic in Yemen has infected roughly 300,000 people and is still spreading.
This epidemic was caused, purely and simply, by Salafi Arabia's bombardment campaign, carried out with direct US assistance.
The US had no grounds to fight against the Houthis, and no reason to regard them as enemies. By deciding to fight them, it gratuitously made an enemy, locking itself further into the series of wars that it has no plan ever to end.
Five people have been convicted in Russia for killing dissident Boris Nemtsov for pay, but there has been no progress in unmasking whoever paid for the assassination.
Apple will use a Chinese data center to hold the data of its customers
in China. That will make it as easy for the Chinese government to
snoop on them as it is for the FBI to snoop on other Apple users' data.
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
The FBI's snooping works through PRISM. The Chinese suppression agencies will surely set up something similar.
Ralph Nader: leaders of American society, stand up now to preserve democracy and justice in the US.
The troll's voter-suppression planning commission (to call it what it really is) has dropped its request for data about all voters.
This is clearly due to the strength of the resistance.
The London housing project fire is merely the most shocking single example of systematic right-wing disregard for housing as something everyone needs.
Starting under Thatcher, the Tories converted it into a scheme for dooH niboR, and B'liar's New Labour continued that.
Google provides millions of dollars in sponsorship to research on public policy issues, and most of the researchers don't acknowledge they are funded by Google.
Even if the Campaign for Accountability does something similar, that doesn't make it ok for either one.
Sanders might consider running for president in 2020, but urges people to focus on fighting Republican sabotage.
Just 100 Companies Responsible for 71% of Global [Greenhouse Gas] Emissions, Study Says.
Naomi Klein: how power profits from disaster.
ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.
To appreciate global heating disaster, don't think of a hot summer day. Think of disease, flooding, food shortage, dying oceans, smog, war, and poverty.
It's not guaranteed all these things will happen. (I am skeptical that unknown diseases from the past would be able to attack humans.) But if most of them happen, it will be a terrible global disaster that could kill billions of people.
Even if we can't prevent the disaster, we can make it smaller.
Rising seas are swamping an Australian island.
The economic war against Qatar is really about al-Jazeera.
Former Brazilian president Lula was convicted of taking a million-dollar bribe.
I am disappointed in Lula for this.
If Brazil is going to prosecute its corrupt politicians and kick them out of government, Lula should not be exempt. Kick them all out.
However, if Brazil is going to allow corrupt right-wing politicians such as fill Congress to remain in power, then Lula, who is innocent by comparison, should be allowed to run against them.
A study confirms: the biggest thing you can do to reduce global heating is to have fewer children.
How about having no children? Your life will be tremendously easier, and if you would like to care for children, there are many options, ranging from adopting a child to running activities for children, which won't increase the world's population but will make children's lives better.
You can also operate at large scale by campaigning for progressive politicians which will help spare children the stunting effect of growing up in poverty (and thus stress).
Having fewer children in the US is very important because Americans emit so much greenhouse gas per person.
Having fewer children in Africa is very important, even though the emissions per capita there are much smaller, because Africa is on track to have more population than it can grow food for.
Global birth control efforts are faltering.
Social media is a big help to resurgent socialism.
A Bangladeshi dissident activist was kidnaped for 12 hours, then released, after nothing much worse than being slapped many times.
This is peculiar, since most of those who are kidnaped and released are afraid to say what happened to them.
The Indian state wants to censor a documentary about Amartya Sen to cover up his criticism of the ruling party's religious ideology.
The cheater said he would resign from direct participation in many businesses, but that was bullshit — he didn't actually do it.
Rakuten has agreed to stop selling ivory.
US citizens: call for protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
US citizens: oppose the Republican "tax reform" (i.e., tax cuts for the rich).
When Reagan did this, he needed to fool Americans with his "trickle down" theory. Nowadays, Republicans don't bother trying to convince Americans with an imitation of rationally, they just intend do impose their will.
Louisiana thugs jailed peaceful civil rights protesters, then threatened them with violence; denied them medical care, tampons, toilet paper, even drinking water; subjected them to freezing cold; denied them a phone call; did not let them sit or lie down; and strip-searched them as harassment.
The ACLU explains how the Espionage Act should be changed so that it respects and supports democracy.
SCROTUS want to eliminate genetic information privacy laws, which are terribly inadequate to start with.
US citizens: call on state governors to defend DACA.
US citizens: call on Congress to place a few specific requirements on military spending.
US citizens:
phone your senators to
oppose
plans
to cut off funds to Planned Parenthood.
[First reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
The latest version of the Dontcare bill would deny women coverage for contraception. That would mean an increase in the birth rate and many women trapped in single parenthood. (Also some more abortions, perhaps illegal ones.)
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
SCROTUS are attacking Clean Air and Climate defense in a budget bill.
A US tricking company, Morgan Southern, makes drivers sign expensive lease-to-own agreements, which require them to save a lot of their pay in the company. They lose it all if the company fires them for any reason.
Drivers can't refuse to drive illegally long shifts, or they would get fired.
Drivers can't testify about this illegal practice, or they would get fired.
Just this year, right-wing Americans have mostly concluded that college education is harmful and bad for society.
This demonstrates how the Republican Party is becoming a kind of cult.
In the US, the high cost of the student loans can ruin a person's life, but the education is still a good thing even if perhaps not worth those loans.
The European Parliament is considering requiring all goods to be repairable.
A bullet wound is a "preexisting medical condition", so if the Dontcare bill passes, anyone who was ever shot won't be able to get usable medical insurance.
Surveillance is especially intimidating to young people and women.
I suppose that is because some of those people lack the sense of entitlement that adult men often have.
US immigration thugs have sent Iranian cancer researcher Mohsen Dehnavi back to Iran, notwithstanding his visa and his job at Children's Hospital.
Since they won't tell either him or us the supposed reasons, they are asking us to take their word that there are good reasons.
Lots of forests are being cut down in Australia near the Great Barrier Reef, and the runoff is endangering the reef ecosystems.
Qatar has offered the US a plan to block terrorist funding, which challenges Salafi Arabia and the UAE to do likewise.
Macron cited Africa's excessive population growth rate as a grave problem. In response, people with an axe to grind are distorting his statement and hurling insults at their distortions.
For instance, the author rebukes him for blaming only women, but recognize he didn't. The author seems to have an axe to grind.
It is easy to find parties to blame. The troll is one. Churches are another. But the crucial question is not "Whose fault is this?" but "What can we do about this?" Those to blame are relevant only in looking for ways to overcome them.
I am no supporter of Macron in general. He wants to reduce workers wages and rights in the neoliberal name of "reform" and "flexibility for businesses".
Ending the Ronald Reagan Lie (that the government can't help people).
Reaganites began destroying the effective government systems that helped people (though some, such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid still operate).
To make sure that we could not bring these back, Reaganites imposed their bogus "trickle down" system of tax cuts for the rich, which has redistributed wealth to the rich ever since. Their "free trade" business-supremacy treaties were put into practice by Reagan's successors, driving down wages and working conditions around the world. Now non-wealthy people can't afford to live, and the government hasn't got the money to do many the jobs that we need it to do.
Amnesty International says the US-backed Iraqi forces committed war crimes in recapturing Mosul by failing to try to protect civilians. For instance, they fired lots of unguided and inaccurate rockets at civilian housing.
Willard Scott was killed by a thug. The autopsy says the thug shot him in the back.
The Senate majority leader has kept the senate in session for three extra weeks to pressure Republicans to vote for the Dontcare bill.
They are desperate to deliver the big tax cut to the job exporters.
British American Tobacco and other companies are trying to stop many African countries from adopting US-style regulations on tobacco use and sale.
The company says it is in favor of regulating tobacco, just not in ways that might reduce the use of tobacco.
Tobacco addiction has decreased greatly in the wealthy countries which have taken steps to reduce it, but world-wide tobacco use is increasing as the companies steamroll public health campaigns in poor countries.
Caste Hindus believe Dalits are supposed to be ignorant, and that they should be forbidden to learn Sanskrit. When Dalits insist on studying Sanskrit, they face cruelty from their classmates and teachers.
Some New Age superstitions kill people who choose them instead of effective medicine.
Don't fill your mind with newage (rhymes with "sewage").
A meta-analysis finds that family income is closely associated with a child's successful cognitive, social, educational and physical development.
This confirms what we already know: growing up in poverty tends to handicap a child for life. It is a moral responsibility to make laws that ensure no child grows up in poverty. If we want to "leave no child behind", forget high-pressure testing and give schools and families adequate support.
UK thugs are more reasonable than US thugs and prosecutors in dealing with sexting.
It should not be a crime at all to send people sexual photos of yourself, but perhaps it should be a crime to pressure (or coerce) anyone else to do so.
However, what we most need to do in this area is to teach other adolescents to stop condemning the adolescents that do this.
Advance of technology is harmful to the public in many cases. It is not clear that technological advance is beneficial overall under plutocratic rule.
US citizens: call on the UN to negotiate a treaty to ban weaponized drones.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject anti-worker nominees to the National Labor Relations Board.
US citizens:
New York State is
trying
to undermine public schools for the benefit of charter schools by
helping charter schools pretend to train teachers.
Charter schools, many of which are commercial, claim to offer a better
education, but
the
evidence says they don't.
Troll Jr.'s attempt to collude with Russia
could
put him and his father in legal trouble.
One of Dubya's ethics lawyers said that Troll Jr.
committed
treason by negotiating to buy the results of Russian spying, and
the fact that ultimately there was nothing to buy doesn't alter that.
How bizarre, to be down so low that even the Bush regime is ethical by
comparison.
Other Republicans join with the troll in
attacking
government ethics enforcers.
Rural Americans overall are not poorer than urban Americans, but they
tend
to have less compassion for those who are weak or suffering. They
are more religious, but that religion is a form of Christianity which
has forgotten about charity.
West Mosul has been mostly destroyed, and the surviving civilians have
no
food, no water, no place to live.
As humans squeeze into every conceivable niche, wildlife conservation
gets second place to human agriculture, so endangered species are
kept
down whenever they get in the way.
China says it will permanently
ban
use of VPNs.
This will finish imposing a virtual reality of total state-controlled
falsehood and manipulation on nearly everyone in China.
Plutocratist politicians
always
have extra billions for weapons, even weapons like the F35 that
hardly work.
The activities that help people, and reduce conflict and violence, are
the ones that they can't find money for.
Licensing requirements
exclude
many ex-cons from nearly all good jobs, forcing them into
precarious low-paid work — or into crime.
A thug shot two family dogs that were
not
threatening. The thug was investigating a burglar alarm.
Do burglars bring dogs to a heist? Obviously not.
I can understand being scared of friendly dogs that show their
friendship with too much enthusiasm. That is how I feel. But a
person who feels that way and expresses it with violence is unfit for
a job that includes carrying a gun while entering other people's
homes.
Pentagon and CIA propaganda has
altered
800 movies and 1000 TV programs. The Pentagon also blocks the
production of movies it does not like.
"Anger is
simmering
worldwide" — will it attack upwards at the elites who cause
it, or sideways at minorities and others weaker than most of the weak.
Mexican government phone snooping was
directed
at the foreign experts who were investigating the still unsolved
disappearance of 43 student protesters in a bus.
The sixth mass extinction, the one caused by human activities, has
already
started.
After defeating PISSI militarily there is the challenge of
making
peace in Iraq.
In the past, secular Iraqi Sunnis that resisted the (Shi'a-dominated)
Iraqi state accepted al-Qa'ida as a friend because it was fighting the
same enemy. Maybe they will learn from the experience with PISSI that
Islamists are never their friends.
Misogynist abuse of women that show their heads above the political
wall is
directed
at women of whatever political persuasion, and from both left and
right. In all cases, it's wrong.
Such abuse is wrong if directed against straight white men, too, but
they are less likely to be targeted.
When people say things that you disagree with, criticize their actions
— don't make threats or stupid insults.
Misogyny is also
part
of what makes men become terrorists.
After Hua Haifeng
investigated
abuse of workers in the factory that makes shoes for Ivanka Trump
to sell, he was arrested. He believes China did that as a favor to
the troll.
A
court
case to stop the UK from selling arms to Salafi Arabia was
defeated.
The decision was based on secret evidence, considered in a secret
hearing. There is no reason to suppose that the secret agencies were
telling the truth. It is a whitewash and nothing more.
Zuckerberg advocates a universal basic income, while Facebook
strains
to avoid contributing to the cost.
Anaheim California has
removed
the benches from its bus stops because homeless people were
sleeping on them. The city government says this has nothing to do
with being next to Disneyland — it's only to make sure bus
riders have a place to sit.
If that's really the motive, they can achieve it by putting other
benches in a reasonably convenient place (perhaps not on the main
avenue). That would be cheaper than what they are doing, and would
not hurt the homeless people.
ALEC is systematically using local utility companies to repeal the
state laws that promote home solar power by
making
utilities buy extra power the homes generate.
The arguments presented by the utilities are based on the unstated
false premise that it is safe to go on using fossil fuels as we have
been doing — that we don't have an urgent need to reduce it.
This is surely related to the
funding
ALEC gets from planet roasters.
Many Americans
reduce
themselves to destitution to pay for medical care for their loved
ones. That's what Republicans stand for.
I applaud the views of the author, a Democrat running against such a
Republican incumbent in the Virginia state legislature. However, I
disagree with him when he says that the Republican is not evil.
I think he has construed the word "evil" to mean "acting from hatred",
but that definition is too narrow. To knowingly or callously crush
innocent people for private or partisan ends is evil, regardless of
the motive.
On the other hand, it may be that the Republican does hate them after
all. Since most people do have a sense of compassion, mobilizing
people to crush another group often relies on dehumanizing the
intended victims by stirring up hate. That's a
standard
right-wing tactic, which they standardly apply to anyone who can't
afford per needs.
I don't know for a fact that that Republican has demonized Americans
who are sick and without good medical coverage, or their spouses, but
it would fit the rest of the description of that person.
Why did the New York Times revise a story about the troll to
omit
some facts that criticize him?
Harassment of employees (usually women) in tech companies is hidden
because of the widespread practice of
making
employees sign non-disparagement agreements.
Many of these companies also mistreat their customers and sometimes
the general public. The same non-disparagement agreements mean that
ex-employees can be sued for blowing the whistle on these practices.
These contracts should not be allowed — we need a law to block
the enforcement of them.
Some companies have
tried
a form of non-disparagement with their customers, too, and there
are now
some
laws against this scheme.
Life Without Social Media Has Taught Me the
Virtues
of Being Social.
In the free world we have social media that aren't designed to be
addictive. So it is easier to use them as much as you really want to
and no more. They are also not designed as a massive surveillance
system.
Brazilian state
plans
to reduce the defense of the Amazon rain forest appear to be
related to criminals' attacks on inspectors and campaigners.
Meanwhile, the agency that is supposed to protect indigenous peoples
has been
starved
of funds and can no longer carry out its job.
Hundreds
of thousands of Turks protested Erdoğan's repression in
Istanbul.
When Walmart builds a store, it
causes
hundreds of smaller stores to close and the loss of many jobs.
When Walmart closes its store, that doesn't bring those stores back.
Instead, the local economy collapses, people can't get jobs, and they
have little money to spend. And they die many years younger than most
Americans.
Perhaps we should require large stores to put up a bond of millions of
dollars to reboot the local economy if the large store were to close.
However, it's more likely that the local people will respond by voting
for Republicans who will act to make things even worse.
Maybe we should just tax Walmart to cover the cost of all the public
assistance that its workers need because Walmart pays so little. (Of
course, not only Walmart — this should apply to all large
businesses.)
US-Russian Ceasefire
Holding
in Southwest Syria, Say Rebel Sources.
A mother was arrested, in Connecticut,
for letting her child play
with other children and their mothers, more than 10 feet away from her.
Those mothers were paranoid and called the
thugs
to arrest her.
Redneck Revolt —
anti-racist, anti-plutocracy, feminist, but pro-gun
— hopes to make it acceptable in the white working class to stop serving the cause
of rich bigots.
I hope they succeed. I do wish they wouldn't call people like Clinton
and Pelosi "liberals".
The danger of a house fire
falls much heavier on the poor,
as a result of dooH niboR.
Dubai is deploying
mobile robots with face recognition cameras.
If there aren't some in the US, I expect there will be.
But we should not allow this. We should prohibit all systematic
imaging of people in areas where the public may enter, and all
systematic automated biometric recognition of people except
those specified individually by court order.
Germany is
using the black bloc violence in Hamburg as an excuse
for
various repressive measures against leftists, violent or not.
Meanwhile, the violence provided the mainstream media with a useful
distraction from the real issues at stake, such as global heating and
globalization of low wages. Whether they are sincere but benighted,
or thugs in disguise, they did the progressive cause no good.
The progressive organizations should declare the black bloc persona
non grata at important peaceful protests.
The troll
gets lots of money
direct from each new member that joins one of
his golf courses.
Even from foreigners — which is unconstitutional.
Why Politicians From Both Parties Ignore the Poor.
Atlantic City and other parts of the New Jersey coast
are being
inundated by sea level rise due to global heating.
Slightly higher costal areas, owned by rich people and businesses
are getting seawalls to protect them for some more decades.
The lower-lying poor people's houses are being left unprotected.
While in one sense that is unfair, it may necessary; sea walls
could not protect the low-lying homes for many more decades.
It might be better to buy them out.
A British right-winger who made death threats against political
activist Gina Miller
has been convicted and will be jailed.
Republican senators
deny that Troll Jr's behavior verges on treason,
and even that it is grave.
It may be criminal
but not literally treason.
It has been clear for months that Republicans are traitors to the
United States, in a deeper broader sense that is different from
definition of the crime of treason. They are trying to destroy or
pervert every democratic institution in the US, to crush them down so
that the people will have no way to resist whatever Republicans rulers
might subsequently do.
From eliminating filibuster against Supreme Court nominees, to
nullifying ethics rules, to sabotaging federal agencies, to fake news,
to violent threats, to eliminating network neutrality, to
gerrymandering, and then to voter suppression, the Republican attitude
toward the United States is, "We will grab power and never let go of
it. By hook or by crook, we will."
US citizens:
phone key
senators' offices to oppose any FBI nominee chosen by the troll.
This probably has to be done only on working days.
Thugs have repeatedly
attacked peaceful anti-fracking protesters
in the UK.
Sanders is visiting Republican states to
campaign against the
Dontcare bill.
EME stands for
"Evil Malware Entrance".
A proposed law in Colorado would
forbid state agencies from keeping
the money from fines.
Just as the Bureau of Land Management was starting to apply a new
planning process that invited more participation from people who live
near the land in question, the troll's saboteurs
cancelled
the process. Why?
The plans in the Paris climate agreement assume that we will soon
start growing giant tree plantations, burning the wood chips to make
electricity, and sequestering the CO2. But
this
technology doesn't exist.
A few years ago, a company in Australia was developing a bioreactor
system in which photosynthetic algae would generate electricity while
removing CO2 from the air. If deployed widely enough, this
could do the job. But we shouldn't bet on that.
Activist Rearrested in Bahrain
at
High Risk of Torture, Says Amnesty.
Calling
for a public inquiry into foreign support for Islamist extremism
in the UK.
A journalist who used a drone to monitor the construction of the
Dakota Access pipeline has been
arrested
and charged with "stalking" some of the pipeline's repression staff.
Analysis of Google search term frequencies reveals the
prejudices
and anxieties of large numbers of Americans.
Many peaceful Hamburg protesters have
condemned
the violent "black bloc".
Young people in Kashmir are
using
the internet to organize against Indian rule, some militarily and
some through protests.
When India took over Kashmir with the accord of its last raja, India
promised the people of Kashmir a
referendum
about whether to be part of India. India has delayed the
referendum for over six decades. While India delayed,
an
Islamist (i.e., oppressive) opposition developed out of what had
been a secular movement for independence.
But that can't justify using military repression to maintain an
annexation of a unwilling people.
Vietnam's leading political blogger has been sentenced to
10
years in prison.
Many young people only have access to precarious jobs:
short
term, part time, or even unpaid. Then others put the blame for
this on their attitudes.
It is natural and proper that they have as little loyalty towards
their employers as their employers have towards them.
Privatization magically solves all problems, according to
right-wingers, so they
present
any present problem as a reason to do it.
US citizens:
call
on the Federal Reserve to choose a Richmond Fed president who
represents working folks.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the Orphan Product Extension Now Act.
Many businesses are constantly seeking monopoly power to gouge the public.
Whenever any problem exists, they propose the "solution" to give them
more monopoly power.
Pharma companies have
far
too much monopoly power already, so we need to reduce it.
US citizens:
support
the ACLU and denounce the troll's sham election commission.
US citizens:
sign this
petition against Senate Bill 1460, which would reduce the
regulations on fracking and new fossil fuel pipelines.
Everyone:
Tell California
Governor Brown to stop supporting Chevron's position on fossil
fuel issues.
One doctor in the US
continues
to aim to treat people's chronic pain, rejecting the pressure to
take as his goal to "get them off opioids" and tell them to live with
the pain.
A trumpette wrote false flag death threats against the troll
in a school,
hoping
that progressives would be blamed.
That is the attitude of today's Republicans: no trick is too dirty.
50 failing pubs in the UK have been converted into
thriving
cooperatives.
The troll
wants
to cancel aid for people to cool their homes in heat waves.
This is entirely consistent with other Republican policies that
prolong and increase global heating. They will cause more heat waves
in the future, which Republican leaders know will get rid of some of
the "superfluous" poor people. To give them aid that could save their
lives during heat waves would defeat the purpose.
Among the many harmful provisions in CETA is one that
threatens
Europe's pesticide regulations.
The troll regime has
imposed
iris scanning on suspected border crossers.
Once it is standard practice for possible unauthorized immigrants
near one border, they will try to extend it and extend it until it is
imposed on everyone in the US. Unless we stop them.
The newly appointed saboteur of the Center for Disease Control
previously advocated a
"partnership"
with Coca Cola Company to reduce childhood obesity.
Uri Avnery:
What
if [Israel] announced to the people in the Gaza Strip: the
Palestinian Authority in Ramallah is now paying for only two hours of
electricity a day. But seeing your suffering, Israel has decided to
provide you with electricity for 24 hours for free.
G20 Leaders
Must
Demand That President Erdoğan Release the Istanbul 10.
For Putin, the troll is making America weak — not "again", but
as
it has never been since 1900.
For the US to be "strong" is not an unalloyedly good thing, as people
in countries from Haiti to Yemen can attest. Dubya weakened the US
for the long term by using its power for inexcusable cruelty, and
Obama continued this in less blatant ways.
However, if US weakness makes it easier for Chinese tyranny to get
stronger, that is a change for the worse.
Snapchat's "track your friends" feature will help millions of people
recognize
how
much portable phones track them for companies and governments.
The author made an excuse to put the issue out of mind, but people
can also learn to organize to put an end to this.
Even a non-"smart" phone is tracked by the phone company and the
state, all the time it is "on". (And it may be "on" all the time
if it was modified remotely to do listen.)
Massive peaceful protests in Hamburg
blocked
some of the participants in the G20 meeting. That is good because
it makes the participants aware of the popular disgust.
Other protesters rioted, which is wrong and harms the cause.
Reportedly thugs escalated the violence.
At a similar international meeting in Genova in 1998, some of the
"black bloc" rioters were unmasked as thugs — provocateurs. I
wonder if that is the case today in Hamburg.
Remember Hobby Lobby? Its owner set up a scheme to secretly import
ancient cuneiform tablets from Iraq, and tried to cover his tracks.
Instead of prosecution, he only had to
pay
a fine and hand them over.
The US government had a scheme to promote the confused concept of
"intellectual property" by
arranging
a staged conversation on Twitter. The government would post, and
various entities with an interest in spreading confusion would
"respond". The government proposal called it a "fake Twitter feud".
Whatever they say using the term
"intellectual
property", it spreads a gravely misleading idea about real laws:
the idea that they fit that term.
That term was chosen as propaganda in the 1960s and pushed hard
starting in the 1970s. Law schools didn't use it much until 1990.
I refuse to use it, and so can you.
80%
of refugees trying to reach Europe by sea are fleeing war or
violence.
The University of California has
found
excuses to keep right-wing speakers off campus and close a satirical
newspaper.
I disagree deeply with Ann Coulter, some of whose statements are not
designed to make sense when studied for more than 30 seconds. But
that is no reason to refuse to let her speak on campus.
The director of the US Office of Government Ethics has resigned 6
months before the end of his term, saying that the troll
has
made the job hopeless.
Any system to enforce ethical standards can only function if it ges
political support from above.
France's target for banning sale of fossil fuel cars is
so
distant it would hardly change anything. Norway and the
Netherlands have banned it for 2025.
Interesting
views about freedom of speech issues in academia.
I agree with the author on all but the first of these points.
I reject the idea of "cultural appropriation" as a wrong
because everyone has the right to comment about any issue.
The one thing you cannot do, in regard to a group you don't
belong to, is claim to speak for that group.
The troll's commissioner for voter fraud is the leader of the
biggest
Republican program for fraudulent disenfranchisement.
Macron bends the knee to banksters, inviting banks to move from London
by offering them lower taxes and deregulation.
Lower taxes for banks means
states have to tax people more and still can't do their job.
Deregulation of banks means banks have
more ways to cheat people.
New Orleans is trying to set a good example by
cutting greenhouse gas emissions
in half by 2030.
Alas, New Orleans has to share the same atmosphere and the same ocean
with the rest of the US, which is going all out to maximize fossil
fuel combustion. The city can't save itself. But the example may
do some good.
More than 120 countries agree to
a treaty to ban all nuclear weapons.
The hard part is to get the countries with nuclear weapons to sign on.
The deeper cause of the big London housing project fire is a state
determined to shrink and downgrade public housing.
Why a 'Cashless' Society Would Hurt the Poor: A Lesson from India.
It takes time for the economy to adjust to fewer low-paid foreign
migrant workers.
In the short time, this causes dislocation.
Over a few years, Americans will adapt to taking the jobs migrant
workers used to take, when these jobs are offered at decent pay rates.
This is what the market is good at.
One adaptation needed will be to change the habits and laws that
exclude a substantial fraction of Americans from so many kinds of
jobs.
A journalist published where the troll got the video he used to
threaten CNN with violence,
and now the journalist is receiving
death threats from neo-Nazi supporters of the troll.
The troll tried and
failed to sabotage G20 support for the Paris
climate agreement.
However, the US under Obama sabotaged the agreement itself. How about
making a new, stronger one — without US participation — then
pressuring the US to join it?
The troll's treasury department recommends
changes in tax regulations
so as to please the large companies that fund the US Chamber Of Commerce.
I've posted some
writings (mostly science fiction) by my friend Bob
Chassell who recently died.
Bob helped launch the Free Software
Foundation and wrote the Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp.
The W3C has given final approval to standardization of DRM
as part of the WWW standards,
barring an appeals procedure that has never been successfully invoked.
Berners-Lee and the W3C should be ashamed.
The Free Software Foundation started its
campaign against DRM
around
2002 and has lead the campaign to pressure the W3C.
The EFF's also campaigns against DRM, though mostly refusing to
mention our campaign. On this issue it weakened its stance by
proposing compromises that included standardizing DRM, and would only
have made an exception for security researchers.
The rejection of those proposed compromises shows how hostile to
society are the companies that the W3C obeys when they demand
obedience. Their acceptance, however, would not have made things
much better.
In a long-term campaign, if you envision the current issue is the only
issue, then a compromise which is only 90% defeat might seem better
than losing.
The reason that is false is that the compromise has a long-term cost:
it takes impetus out of the campaign. The FSF's position is that DRM
is an injustice and it is never excusable.
Florida passed a law to make it
easier for parents censor books in
schools,
for instance if they have too much sex or too much science.
Erdoğan took total practical control over Turkey's judiciary
by purging a quarter of all judges.
Now judges decide cases however
Erdoğan tells them to.
Some judges have been imprisoned for most of a year without formal
charges, awaiting review by another puppet board. Often the supposed
evidence against them is secret —
something that the UK has also
begun dabbling in.
I have no idea whether any Gülenists were involved in the coup
attempt. Maybe some were, or maybe Erdoğan fabricated that entirely.
What we can be sure of is that the Gülenists are far less dangerous to
Turkey than the Erdoğanists.
When companies are
caught releasing illegal pollution in Texas,
they hardly ever face any consequences.
There is a
drug-resistant strain of gonorrhoea
which has no known
treatment.
Philippine thugs want to
require Muslims to carry ID cards.
The only way this would make it easy to identify Muslims
is if everyone else also has to carry an ID card.
Republican congresscritters bought medical insurance stocks
just before they voted for the Dontcare bill.
Thus they arrange to fill their own pockets a little
as well as filling their billionaire masters' pockets a lot.
Protesters at the G20 meeting in Hamburg want to stand up for
Democracy, but they find
their rights have already been crushed.
Some countries that hate Iran are
supporting the Mujahedeen-e Khalq,
hoping it will destabilize the semidemocratic, semitheocratic regime
in Iran.
The Mujahedeen-e Khalq started out running a guerrilla war against the
Shah. Depending on details, maybe that was admirable,
since the Shah
was a US-imposed tyrant.
Eventually the Mujahedeen-e Khalq entered a guerrilla war against
Khomeini's murderous theocratic regime, which at the outset was as
bloody as PISSI. Depending on details, maybe that was admirable.
Nowadays, though, the organization is an authoritarian cult that is
even religiously more strict than the Iranian regime. It is funded by
enemies of Iran as an instrument of destabilization.
An analysis of populism and how to respond to it.
This includes
how it responds to social liberalism and business neoliberalism.
One confusing aspect: the article doesn't always distinguish those two.
Poland's right-wing lliberal government has advanced to
hampering
freedom of the press.
Like the Republican Party in the US, they want to stay in power by undermining
the democracy that would give people the option to remove them.
The US, at the G20 meeting, is once again trying to
undermine world
action to curb global heating.
Weakening the G20 statement to get the US "on board" is a pointless
exercise since the US does not take such commitments seriously anyway.
Unesco has designated the old Palestinian city of Hebron a world
heritage site.
This means Israel will be reprimanded for its specially repressive
occupation of Hebron, which includes
inserting Israely colonists and
kicking Palestinians out of a substantial part of the city
to keep them
away from the colonists.
Why Grassroots Activists Should Resist Being "Professionalised" into an NGO.
Be an NGO,
"Democracy vouchers" give citizens some funds to
direct to the
candidates of their choice.
Bolivia is considering a
substantial liberalization of its abortion law.
How Climate Scepticism Turned into Something More Dangerous.
It is unfortunate that the author has used the popular but weak term
"climate change".
Right-wing "centrist" Democrat Bill Clinton drove down the Democratic
Party
by not being as progressive as the American people.
The Saudi-American-Iranian-Russian-Qatari-Syrian Conundrum.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass H.R. 1447, the Fair and Equal Housing Act, to
protect LGBTQ people across the country from housing discrimination.
Everyone:
Call on
California to ban chlorpyrifos.
A
leaked
recording shows what the troll says to rich supporters.
It includes insulting other Republicans, and siding very strongly
with Salafi Arabia.
Why it is
important
to publish such recordings.
Some of the troll's falsehoods
might
be delusions rather than lies.
NPR posted the whole Declaration of Independence as a series of
tweets. The Trumpettes responded with condemnation,
calling
it an attack on their great leader.
Here's
the
text. that was tweeted out.
Superficially, they made an embarrassing mistake. At a deeper level,
they were not mistaken. The troll is the enemy of the United States
of America, and the liberty and democracy it stands for, at the
deepest level. Any restatement of these principles really is an
attack on he troll.
Volvo says that, starting in 2019,
all
its new car models will be electric or hybrid.
In the UK, young workers with unpredictable work situations have
worse
health than workers with stable work.
An Italian thug in Rome held a British singer at gunpoint threatening
to shoot him.
All
the singer did was stand there.
Even if we stabilize the level of CO2 in the atmosphere,
the temperature of the air and sea
will
continue rising for centuries.
This is not the crucial problem, however. If we cap the
CO2 level get through this century with technological
civilization intact, we will be able to reduce the CO2 level back to
the preindustrial level.
The hard problem is the "if". And if technological civilization is
destroyed, and the surviving humans have little influence over what
happens next, that secondary heating will occur.
A pro-Maduro militia attacked the Venezuelan congress and injured some
of the representatives, as the special police that were supposed to
protect congress
looked
on.
When the troll makes impossible threats against North Korea, he
invites
Kim to make a fool of him.
Israel
plans
to build 1800 apartments for Israelis in part of the West Bank.
Israel occupied most of the West Bank and annexed some parts, calling
them part of Jerusalem. Both moves are illegal.
The troll and the Saboteur of Veterans Affairs have a
plan
to gradually privatize medical care for veterans.
Zillow
withdrew
its complaint against the real-estate blog after the EFF sent it
an explanation.
Oil companies that want to drill near the mouth of the Amazon river
say there is a
30%
chance that an oil spill would damage a unique coral ecosystem
recently discovered there.
Under a statesmanlike government that focuses on what really matters,
the decision would be clear: don't drill.
To avoid global heating disaster, we
need
to leave 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. So
any reserves that cause some particular risk should be among those
left in the ground.
When that is not the case, it shows that the planet roasters have a
dangerous level of power.
The US
has
no plan in Afghanistan. This reflects the fact that there is
no
path to victory there in the absence of fundamental changes in the
situation, and they are not likely.
The US can either keep propping up the Afghan government ad infinitem
or let it fall.
Macron wants to reduce the French deficit
at
the expense of the poor, through spending cuts, rather than at the
expense of the rich, by increasing their taxes.
He also explicitly advocates competing to attract businesses. That
generally means
allowing
them to treat workers worse than in other comparable countries.
The main evil of business-driven globalization, as explained by Naomi
Klein in No Logo, is this competition between countries that hurts
workers in all countries.
Some ethicists
find
excuses to try to ban sex robots.
Until these robots have human levels of mental capacity, they won't
offer full emotional relationships of love or friendship. They will
provide sex and no more.
People with a healthy imagination won't need these robots because they
could use a fantasy instead. Those who can't generate the fantasies
on their own would find the robot a useful substitute.
Unless evidence is found that sex robots lead substantial numbers of
people to force themselves on others, which there is
no
clear evidence for, they should not be censored. The other path
leads to trying to censor fantasies.
(That article uses the silly idea that people
"consume"
video recordings. I imagine somebody eating one. Please don't
encourage that twisted propaganda term.)
Papua New Guinea, acting as Australia's proxy, is forcing refugees out
of the camp where they feel safe. (Originally it was a prison but not
any more.) This
forces
them to live near the natives, who violently hate them.
Big companies are
evading
over 2 billion dollars a year of taxes in Australia.
A series of
human
irrationalities, plus some factual errors, enable privileged
Americans to believe that poor people are bad or stupid and deserve
their poverty.
One point not mentioned here is that growing up in poverty and stress
tends to
reduce
children's intelligence and to
teach
them bad habits for making decisions. When poor people make
mistakes that keep them in poverty, that is partly because they grew
up in poverty under a system that stressed them so they couldn't
develop the capacity to decide better.
Millions of English children today live in situations that tend to do
that.
The last-ditch protest march in Turkey: marching for three weeks, from
Ankara to Istanbul,
for
human rights in Turkey.
A woman in El Salvador has been
convicted
of murder for not getting prenatal care when she was pregnant.
The fetus was stillborn.
This shows the reign of religious oppression that Republicans aim to
impose on the USA, if we don't stop them.
Why We
Need
to Get Contraceptives to Teenagers.
The world's nuclear weapons arrangements assume that the US won't use
nuclear weapons irresponsibly. But we
can't
count on the troll to be more responsible than Kim Jong Un.
A foreigner living in the UK, who supports Britain First,
called
for murdering Angela Merkel for letting other foreigners into
Europe.
He apparently believes people like him should be deported from the
UK, and he may get his wish for making this threat.
Corbyn:
businesses
must pay more tax to fund education.
Hear, hear! But not only for education.
Female Islamic judges in India say that much of the inequality they
suffer comes not from the Qur'an but from
the
way men habitually use it.
I am sure they know their subject, but I've read that some of the
gender inequality in Islam does come from there. For instance, the
rule that women's testimony is worth half a man's testimony.
Protesters at the G20 meeting in Hamburg encounter a "dystopian
nightmare" of
crushing
security.
G20 meetings are now a useless exercise. In some areas (global
heating) that may be a change for the worse; in others
(business-supremacy treaties) it has to be an improvement.
The Dutch bank ABM Amro announced it
will
no longer lend money to tobacco companies.
London's gay pride march has been
dumbed
down into a commercially sponsored parade in which the message of
equal rights has been overshadowed by vague commercial feelgoodism.
Turkey has
arrested
the local director of Amnesty International as well as other
participants in a workshop.
The workshop was about "digital security and information management",
and those arrested included foreigners who had come to teach those
subjects.
I used to visit Turkey to speak, and even mentioned the freedom of
speech issue of prosecuting people for describing the genocide of the
Armenians, as well as the
mirror-image injustice in
France of prosecuting people for denying that genocide.
However, because of the mass arrests that followed the coup attempt, I
consider Turkey too dangerous. I urge everyone to stay away from
Turkey unless there is an urgent humanitarian reason to go there.
And spread the word!
For instance, if you are talking with a travel agent about a vacation,
and the agent suggests Turkey, inform the agent that you consider the
state repression too dangerous.
Gentrification eventually hurts even the gentry, when it
crushes
the interesting spirit that attracted the gentry to the city. It
is happening now to some cities famous for their music.
San Francisco used to be a great city for artists of all kinds, but I
don't think many artists can afford to live there now.
The preference of gentry to live in cities, rather than in the suburbs
they preferred 60 years ago, has made city housing scarce. The
shortage makes thousands homeless and drives millions into poverty.
So US cities need lots more housing space. It needs to be dense and
accessible to mass transit.
Large
methane
explosions in Siberia show that a lot of methane is leaking out of
the ground.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call your state representative to object to
H.1266,
which would make it a crime to use or make a car with any hidden
compartment.
This is part of the "war on drugs" that we need to end.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Overprotective parents don't stop with children, or even adolescents.
Now they are demanding their offspring as college students shrink from
the world of college.
"Don't spend time with people that drink to excess" is the main rule I
would ask my children to follow.
Turkish teachers, imprisoned for planning to talk to the press, are on
the verge of irreversible harm from 118 days of hunger strike.
Global heating denial is unscientific, bad risk management, bad for
the economy, and immoral.
The Polish government is bussing its supporters to Warsaw from all
around Poland to give the troll a phony welcome.
The air on the deck of a cruise ship can be much more polluted
than on a heavily trafficked urban street.
The passengers only get this for a few days, but crew may be exposed
for months.
Germany is investigating whether Facebook is pressuring people into
making privacy concessions they do not understand,
That's what lots of web sites do, and it would be good to stop them
all.
Increased restrictions on how Facebook uses the data it collects about
people would perhaps reduce Facebook's power to manipulate people, but
a real solution requires that neither Facebook nor any other entity
get so much data about people.
ALEC's Covert War on Democracy. It includes stopping poor
people from voting.
Quitting smoking may become more difficult in the US if the FDA
bans most or all e-cigarettes.
I don't think this proves they should not be regulated at all. They
should be regulated rationally.
The core philosophy of Republicans is to blame the poor for their poverty,
and the ill for their illness.
They believe that the god they worship wants those people to suffer,
so they do their best to impose more suffering.
Howard Zinn on US independence day: US wars to conquer and colonize other
peoples are no more legitimate than any other country's conquests.
Precarious work on unpredictable schedules is associated in the UK
with worse health.
The Tories have been starving the National Health Service for years.
Doctors are reduced for begging for funds to treat particular
patients.
The richest 20 countries gave 4 times as much money to fossil
fuels as to renewable energy, in 2013-2015.
One hopes they are shifting this ratio, but we can't take their word for it.
China, bowing partly to pressure, has invited foreign doctors to visit to treat Liu Xiaobo's cancer.
This is literally "too little, too late".
Prejudice against Dalits pervades life in Indian villages, and the few
who overcome the barriers to get a place in a university find that it
has followed them there.
Since the Tories continue working to eliminate (or ignore) the
regulations that protect people from businesses, they have designed
the inquiry into the housing project fire so it won't pay attention
to this fundamental cause of the fire.
Tillerson called on countries that employ North Korean forced laborers
to stop doing so.
I agree. Forced labor is slavery. In addition, when people are compelled
to work very cheap, whether they are North Koreans sent abroad or Americans
in prison, that drives down wages for everyone else.
The US imprisoned Canadian Omar Khadr in Guantanamo at age 15 and
pressured him into confessing to killing a US soldier.
Such methods reliably produce false confessions. There is no reason to think
Khadr really did anything like that.
But even if he did kill a US soldier, killing enemy soldiers in a war
is not a murder, not even a war crime.
Canada will pay him compensation for having been imprisoned in Guantanamo
and then in other prisons, after having been made a soldier as an adolescent.
The grounds for giving Omar Khadr that money is as compensation for
the
US
torture that Canadian officials participated in.
The idea that dead soldiers' families can sue the enemy soldiers that
killed them seems rather absurd to me.
The troll's sabotage of environmental rules is certain to kill thousands
of Americans.
Its consequences some decades in the future could easily kill billions.
Some people, after months in a coma, wake up from a long dream that
was more realistic than ordinary dreams.
Syria's 'Disappeared': Families Demand to Know Fate of Their Loved Ones.
Veli Saçılık has been arrested 17 times for peaceful protests in Turkey.
On one occasion the prison thugs cut off his arm but that didn't stop him.
Now Erdogan has accused him of being a member of a terrorist group.
When governments arbitrarily designate groups as "terrorist" with no
need to prove it, any group could be unjustly labeled that way.
Perhaps Professor Saçılık is guilty of being a member of a "terrorist
organization" which isn't terrorist. People can be convicted unjustly
in that way even in the US.
To designate an organization as "terrorist" is fundamentally unjust
without a trial to determine whether it really is one.
Trump's Next Attack on Democracy: Mass Voter Suppression.
The Republicans have been doing this for years, of course, and expanded it for 2016.
The numbers affected in Wisconsin were enough to alter the outcome there.
EU citizens:
call
your MEPs to oppose a ridiculous new copyright restriction.
Copyright law is too restrictive already. People must be free to
share any published work. ("Sharing" means noncommercial
redistribution of exact copies.)
To
ensure
that this right is not denied, commercially publishing or
importing works with DRM should be a crime, and EULAs that ban sharing
should be declared void.
US citizens: phone your senators at 866-583-2908
to oppose Senate Bill 1460. That bill would reduce the
regulations on fracking and new fossil fuel pipelines.
If I understand the announcement right, when you call once you will be
connected to one senator's office; when you call again, you will be
connected to your other senator's office.
Everyone:
urge
White House reporters to resist no-recordings "press briefings."
Russian protesters blocked the headquarters of the Russian internet
censorship agency Rozcomnadzor with cardboard blocks.
How to begin reducing the generation of plastic waste?
The American Chemical Society is suing to demand ISPs block access
to Sci-Hub, which redistributes paywalled papers from organizations
that sabotage science including the ACS.
The Egyptian state tries to equate the Muslim Brotherhood with PISSI,
and carelessly and casually accuses people of supporting PISSI.
The troll warned that Assad would launch another poison gas attack, but US intelligence sources said they didn't know any reason to think so.
The troll replied to that saying his outburst convinced Assad to
cancel the attack. It could be true, or he could be "keeping the
elephants away".
Colombia has allowed three men to marry.
This should not be limited to same-sex marriages. Any group of adults
should be allowed to marry.
I hope that one-person marriage will be legalized some day.
Raising the minimum age for marriage would avoid a lot of money
and slow population growth.
However, calling people of age 17 "children" is a very bad idea.
It leads to treating them as generally incapable of responsibility,
and encourages repressive sexual policies towards adolescents.
One solution to the problem of unemployment is for the state to hire
everyone at minimum wage. Everyone else that wants a job done will
have to pay more than that, and will not dare to steal workers' wages.
I am not sure how to deal with unauthorized immigrants, though. If
the program hires them, people from around the world will try to pour
into the country, overloading it. But if the program doesn't hire
them, they will be easy for employers to exploit, which will undermine
the intended effect.
Correcting for some biases in satellite temperature measurements made
them fit climate models consistently with other kinds of temperature
measurements.
Britons have not given up on resisting the experimental fracking site.
13 protesters have locked themselves up to block access.
The troll doesn't really have an administration. He doesn't care enough
to set one up.
I think the article is mistaken about why we call some governments a
"regime". It's not because they don't bother to govern. (Most of
them do govern, though perhaps in a cruel way.) It's because they are
autocratic and trample people's rights.
I gather that part of the reason so many positions remain unfilled is
that lots of people don't want to work for the troll. Only people
eager to achieve some private goal (typically, sabotage on behalf of
business) would work for him.
Tory policies have made millions of people in the UK destitute for at
least part of 2015. That means they lacked the basic necessities of
life.
When statistics for 2016 arrive, I expect they will show an even
larger number.
Tens of thousands protested in London against Tory policies that drive people
into poverty.
Bravo, but people being pushed into destitution have no obligation to
limit themselves to peaceful protests. Such conditions justify
rebellion. Why let your rich masters crush you without fighting back?
People who can't legally get food, in a land with enough food for all,
are entitled to take food.
A lawsuit demanding Facebook stop tracking people's browsing through
Like buttons was dismissed.
Perhaps current law doesn't prohibit Facebook (and others) from
tracking people's browsing. If so, we should change that law.
To base privacy law on whether there is an "expectation of privacy"
means it is totally ineffective for resisting the transformation of
society into a panopticon.
A court blocked the EPA's plan to delay the regulation of methane leaks.
The Pentagon has been unable to fix the readiness problems of the soldiers
that operate nuclear missiles, so it is covering up the reports of their
state of readiness.
Survivors of the London fire in their housing project demand an
honest, rapid and full inquiry, going beyond the direct physical
causes.
An official in the Justice Department, whose job was to make companies
follow ethics rules, has resigned saying that the spirit of dishonesty
and corruption emanating from the troll has made her job impossible.
Shkreli wooed investors saying he would hold sick people hostage by
raising the price of their unusual medicines. He did that, but he
didn't give the investors much of the profits. Now he is on trial for
cheating them.
Too bad that ruining non-rich people by gouging for medicines they need
is not a crime.
The more military equipment a town's thugs have received, the more
they kill civilians and pets.
EPA Saboteur Pruitt
wants
to hold a debate within the EPA about whether global heating
danger really exists.
The unstated purpose of such debates is to
present
an image that denialism is just as legitimate as the scientific
consensus.
Campaigns against racism have adopted the racist philosophy that
identifies
specific cultural practices with biological descent groups.
The troll's partial ban on Muslims has
kept
the Afghan girls' robotics team from visiting the US.
The US is a bad choice of country for international meetings if it is
feasible to hold them in places that are less exclusionist.
Arguing that reporters
ought
to publicly identify anonymous sources that lie.
A US appeals judge ruled that democracy in the US is "broken" since
they are
not
allowed to adjudicate alleged war crimes.
Privatization of utilities in the UK allowed businesses to invest very
little, raise the prices, and
extract
lots of money from people who can't afford to pay it.
If you think some utilities could use investment, arrange a vote on a
bond issue to pay for it. That will invite the public to make the
investment, or not, as the public prefers. But never privatize
a natural monopoly!
Arkansas put up an unconstitutional religious monument next to the state
capitol. A man
drove a vehicle into the monument,
destroying it.
The ACLU condemned the attack and said there is only one right way to
remove the monument — by going to court, which it has already done.
Plutocratic Democrat Cory Booker is being paid by the pharma business
for his vote
not to allow Americans to import drugs from Canada.
Copyright Office Proposes
Modest Fixes to DMCA 1201,
Leaves Fundamental
Flaws Untouched.
More about the development of
the gangs that have forced hundreds of thousands
to flee some Central American countries
, ordering them to run away or die.
The UK thugs will
stop monitoring some registered sex offenders
who are very unlikely to commit a sexual crime in the future.
If only 0.13% of the people in the list ever commit a sexual crime, you
could conclude that the list is very effective. Or you could conclude
that most of the people on the list were put on it through hypercaution
and it is mostly useless.
We know that in the US people have been
put on the sex offenders list
for bad reasons.
Residents of the Grenfell Tower housing project approved a more
fire-resistant metal cladding, then the local government
quietly
substituted another that was more flammable
in order to cut costs.
The local government behavior was culpable, and so was the pressure to
cut costs, which came from the Tories in Parliament.
China has unilaterally cancelled its agreement with Britain about
the status of Hong Kong.
Like a somewhat more urbane version of the troll, China calculates
that Britain will eat humble pie because it is desperate for Chinese
business.
If You Think the EU Should Stand Up to Trump,
Then It Must Stand Up to China.
24 states resist the troll's
demand for everyone's voting histories.
However, in any states that yield to this demand, Republicans will
use the data for their benefit, as well as to formulate methods
of voter suppression.
The Yazidi religion has reduced its patriarchical attitude towards women
enough to
stop exiling women who have been raped.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor
now faces personal reprisals
for accusing
the state's suppression forces of human rights violations.
Rather more harsh than what the troll did to Comey.
If Democrats want to win, they must join the American public in
supporting
public education.
Democrats that Worship the cult of the invisible hand won't have much advantage over Republicans that do likewise.
Detroit thugs make a habit of
gratuitously killing people's dogs.
A lawsuit says they do this intentionally to punish people for insisting
on their fourth amendment rights.
The EPA asked its scientist, Dr Swackhamer, to
change the testimony she
was going to give to Congress.
She refused.
AT&T will
resume charging its customers extra not to
track their browsing
and insert its own ads into what they get.
A simple VPN will defeat this malicious feature.
Having a "smart" phone nearby, even if it is (supposedly) switched
off,
reduces people's cognitive capacity.
The phone's deleterious effect is least when the phone is in another
room.
When many jobs in an area are lost,
students there find it harder
to go to college,
for both economic and emotional reasons.
New projects to mine Alberta's tar sands have ceased
and there will
probably be no more. The question is whether to let the existing
projects pump every last drop of CO2 into our atmosphere.
There is bipartisan support in Congress for
repealing the vague 2001
authorization for use of military force.
The New York Times and MSNBC are bringing in right-wing commentators
to join their center-right supporters of Clinton and co.
They have a
few progressive commentators, but no one that explicitly supports
Sanders.
The idea of the "Liberal media" is a right-wing fabrication. They
call centrist politicians and media "Liberal" to make some
not-so-extreme right-wing views appear to be "the center".
Politicians like Sanders, that most Americans agree with, they call
"extreme".
US citizens:
call on your
state to refuse to give voters' personal data to the troll's voter
suppression commission.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to pass the Disarm Hate Act.
The troll is
escalating
several wars at once, apparently with no strategy (except to
increase the income of arms companies).
Onward Toward Socialism: America's Demise, and
One
Way to Survive.
A UK representative went to China for a "human rights dialogue" at
which apparently he
talked
only about the weather.
SCROTUS passed two pollution-promoting bills
through
a House committee.
The troll's
new
"surge" in Afghanistan can't win, for the same reason the previous
one couldn't win 10 years ago.
Gayle Newland has been convicted of "sexual assault"
because
the woman who willingly had sex with her had been led to think Newland
was male.
Is using a dildo instead of a real penis "assault"??? How absurd.
I can imagine a progression of absurd cases in the future:
2021: "I had not really consented to sex because he pretended to be
unmarried and that wasn't true. I found out the truth by looking him
up on the internet.
Put him in prison!"
2025: "I had not really consented to sex because she pretended to be
blond and that wasn't true. I found out the truth when I saw her
pubic hair roots.
Put her in prison!"
2017: "I grabbed her pussy, but it turns out she was a man.
How dare he mislead the President of the United States?
Put him in prison!"
Republican senators may think they can
get
away with destroying Medicaid because bigots will support them
anyway.
The bigots may not be a big enough bloc, though.
The troll proposed
a
large arms sale to Taiwan, despite expected resentment from China.
To reduce the effect of China's intimidating global financial power is
a good thing. Now who will defy the even more intimidating global
financial power of the Koch brothers?
The Tories considered a
plan
to eliminate cash in the UK, and track all payments by everyone.
Labour supporters, now is time start organizing to defned cash and
privacy when Labour wins an election. This is not one of Labour's
basic principles, so we can't take it for granted.
A reduced version of the troll's
partial ban on Muslims
is now in
effect.
Since people actually coming from one of the six singled-out countries
would have applied for a visa anyway, it mainly blocks European
citizens that originated in those countries.
With a new treaty,
states pledge in war to protect objects and
structures of cultural heritage.
In Russia, thugs arrest people apparently at random, then they are
bullied into signing confessions.
A TV show presents an audience
engaging in hate orchestrated by a leader,
like a Trump rally.
Burma has denied entry to
a UN mission investigating attacks against
Rohingyas.
This reminds me of how Israel has
denied entry to UN investigators concerned
with the bombardment of Gaza.
Several climate experts say that
we must reduce CO2 emissions by 2020
or it will be too late to keep ultimate global heating down to 1.5C.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights warns that
the troll's support
for torture in the US is likely to encourage other countries to do it.
With Nation's Attention Elsewhere,
Trump Quietly Intensifies War on Workers.
Venezuela's top prosecutor charged the former guard chief with human
rights violations, saying that
the suppression forces are to blame
for those killed during the protests.
US citizens
protested
against the Dontcare bill.
Republican strategists are even now trying to make minor changes to
get the few additional votes they need. It won't be any less deadly,
just a little different.
Congress
fails
to comply with disclosure requirements about foreign lobbying
agents and congresscritters' government-paid travel.
SCROTUS are offering various Republican senators a little
pork-barrel
spending in exchange for voting for the Dontcare bill.
Anyone in Ireland that wants a driver's license will be required to
get the new
biometric
ID card.
In effect, Ireland is
introducing
a national ID card "by stealth".
If Irish people don't organize to defeat this, I predict that in a few
years they will require everyone else to get one.
A progressive Democrat is running to unseat Paul Ryan, and now that
Republicans have shown their true tentacled face, he
might
succeed.
US student loans, actually from private banks rather than from the
government, have put many former US students into a
debt
trap they can never escape on their own. The nominal size of the
debt keeps growing due to penalties.
Plutocratist politicians attached the last wall to this trap around 15
years ago when they made it impossible to get out of student loan debt
through bankruptcy.
The idea of "meritocracy" has served as an
excuse
for making life harsher for most poor people. The fact that a few
— those who are exceptionally hardworking, gifted, and lucky
— win a better life provides an excuse for the elite to claim
that the harsh life for the rest is their own fault.
In most cases, those few are competing for a limited set of slots.
Even if everyone were as hardworking, gifted, and lucky, they couldn't
all get the rewards.
But even the slots were plenty, we can't demand that everyone to be
gifted and lucky. We don't live in Lake Wobegon, where all the
children are above average. We ought to make a decent live available
to everyone, even those who are less capable, or unlucky.
Palo Alto has made an artificial law to
harass
people who live in recreational vehicles.
San Francisco completely banned parking RVs on the street, several
years ago. The wealthy are showing their heartlessness.
Californians, how about campaigning for a California law establishing
the positive right to park an RV you live in on any public street, and
to leave it there as long as you like, except for daytime no-parking
zones?
US citizens:
call
on the FTC to block the merger of Amazon and Whole Foods.
Everyone:
call on Trader Joe's and Northgate to stop selling
Mexican shrimp, if either of them has a store near you.
US citizens:
submit
a public comment against the Dontcare bill.
Countries with more social and economic inequality make
more
pollution.
Indian women ask:
are
cows in India safer than women in India?
US citizens:
call
on Congress to refuse to reauthorize section 702 spying.
US citizens:
oppose
the Republicans' dirty energy bill.
It would
US citizens:
call
on Congress to end the NSA's Section 702 power to spy on
Americans.
US citizens:
call on
Democrats in Congress to support single-payer medical care, also
known as "Medicare for all".
A leaked conversation between two people in the US security apparatus
flat-out
asserts,
as a certainty beyond question, that Assad didn't launch a sarin
attack this year, and that the US security apparatus knows that for
certain.
I am not sure what to make of this dialogue.
On the one hand, I have some respect for Seymour Hersh, who published
this. The idea that the troll lied about the sarin attack, having
lied about so many other things, is not a priori implausible.
On the other hand, this is supposedly a leaked conversation between
two people, but it doesn't read like a conversation. It reads like a
two-speaker joint presentation to an audience.
As a result, I feel unable to judge what part of this is true.
The OPCW announced some
more
evidence that the poison was Sarin and that it spread from a Syrian
munition.
Millions of people in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have been
driven from their homes by the
massive
violence of organized crime.
It appears that Obama helped trigger this by deporting 300,000 people
with criminal records back to those countries. I don't think it was
wrong on principle to deport them, but those countries' governments
needed help to handle them.
Speaking of those governments, those countries suffered from
US-supported
right wing repression some decades ago. That's why so
many refugees fled to the US in the 70s and 80s. This may be part
of the reason for the current organized crime and violence.
Walgreens drug stores works together with a company that runs tricky
snooping web sites, which
figures
out who has what medical condition in order to target them for
marketing.
The marketing letters as such don't bother me. What bothers
me is that these data get into data bases and circulate around.
The iPhone Is the Crack Cocaine of Technology.
Don't
Celebrate Its Birthday.
Readers of my political notes probably know that "smart" phones are
unjust because of nonfree software (even Android phones), and unjust
because they track and spy on their users in many ways. Their apps
are similarly unjust. Have you got the strength to refuse to carry
one?
Field
experiments show that crops grown with neonicotinoids harm honeybee
colonies and wild bees.
There is no rational doubt any more, so will governments opt for
survival and stop this threat to bees?
Global heating
will
make the US substantially poorer, especially in the south.
Trump
Wants
to Kick Out Grandmothers. Why Am I Not Surprised?
New York City's investigation found that thugs
frequently
harass people that make videos of their activities.
Now the question is what the city will do to put a stop to this
flagrant and repeated illegality.
India's biometric identification system does not achieve the useful
goals it was sold on, but it is great for massive surveillance, and
will
be used to crush dissent.
India is now
requiring
a biometric ID for tax ID numbers.
What will they do to people that are willing to pay taxes
but don't get a biometric ID?
UK thugs face
criminal
charges for the Hillsborough disaster.
Their bad policies caused the death of almost a hundred people, and
then they
lied
to cover it up.
Cory Doctorow: Australia is
pushing
for a ban on secure encryption in the US, Canada, UK and New
Zealand, as well as Australia.
The article argues that insecure systems would be vulnerable to "bad
guys" as well as the governments of these countries. I am not willing
to presume that these governments are "good guys". The UK thugs
(Special Branch) spied on Jeremy Corbyn and other admirable
politicians. The US government has spied on admirable political
figures including Martin Luther King, Jr., and others more recently.
I think our privacy deserves protection especially against
these five governments.
If the troll gets his way, the US will treat all opponents of
Republican repression as enemies.
Real estate web site Zillow
shut
down a blog by making bizarre copyright claims about photos it
doesn't hold the copyright on.
We refer to computers that impose manufacturer-controlled censorship
as
"jails".
It is vicious and inexcusable.
These events show that the same censorship system can be exercised by
states as well as the manufacturers.
The Thai military tyranny
told
YouTube to block a clip from Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
The US
blocked
Daniel Stenberg, free software developer and author of curl, from
flying to the US. He was given no explanation, of course.
Occasionally there is a valid reason to deny someone entry to a
country. But there is no excuse for being mysterious about why.
That the US so often approves a visit in advance, then turns the
visitor away at the time of the flight, suggests that the US is doing
the initial checks carelessly. Whatever checks they want to make, if
they were competent they would make those checks when the visitor
first applies, not later.
The last-minute denial inflicts a big loss, often a thousand
dollars or more, for the price of nonrefundable airline tickets.
It teaches them that the US government cares as much about them
as about an ant.
New York State
wants
to allow thugs to carry out warrantless searches of data on
drivers' phones.
The article doesn't make it clear what "resisting" consists of.
Refusing to tell the thugs your password?
It won't affect me. I don't have a portable phone.
Yahoo's anticompetitive behavior: users of Tumblr and Flickr (and many
other services owned by Yahoo)
will not be
allowed to use email addresses hosted by AT&T. Those whose
accounts use such addresses will be cut off from them.
If the US had proper enforcement against anticompetitive behavior, as
it did in the 1960s, Yahoo would be paying fines of millions of
dollars a day.
Floating
wind turbine generators, now first being deployed, could make
possible a great increase in wind power generation.
In 2017, Facebook is once again
closing
accounts of people who go by unofficial names.
The US has
lost
Dr Khaled Almilaji due to the troll's partial ban on Muslims.
Some countries and states have achieved
75%
recycling of plastic drink bottles based on a small deposit that
is returned in exchange for the bottle.
25% of the plastic drink bottles discarded in the environment is still
far too much. It bespeaks an insufficient will to solve the problem.
How about increasing the deposit to a dollar per bottle? Maybe then
90% of the bottles will be recycled.
Banks
Should
Disclose Lending to Companies with Carbon-Related Risks.
A Japanese airline
stopped
disabled Hideto Kijima's friends from carrying him up the boarding
stairway, and tried to stop him from crawling up it, but he
ignored them.
I think that stopping his friends from aiding him was a sharper wrong
than not having an elevator. To lack facilities is a sin of omission,
but intervening against mutual aid is a sin of commission.
It is good that the airline will install an elevator, but it
absolutely must promise never again to stop passengers from helping
other passengers to board.
Putting a monetary value on nature is
absurd,
because we can't compare the values of unique and irreplaceable things
on a linear scale.
The Bangladeshi state has
disappeared
over 200 people. The state ignores demands from their families
and lawyers, and from members of parliament.
Some in Venezuela speculate that the
helicopter
attack was a government distraction operation.
The troll has appointed a
pipeline
and drilling lobbyist as saboteur of water safety at the
Environmental Poisoning Agency.
Male cockatoos of the Major Mitchell's species
make
drumsticks to improvise complex percussion solos to impress
females.
A bipartisan bill would
prohibit
anonymous shell companies in the US.
This bill would shut one of the avenues by which (mainly) rich people
dodge taxes. There are many others that need to be closed as well.
How San Francisco Is
Leading
the Way out of Bottled Water Culture.
Bravo!
Here's the wrong way to do it: with a cr…app that tracks who
refills bottles, where, and when. If public places to get water are
plentiful enough, no one will need this.
The UK
requires
all restaurants and cafes to refill bottles with water. All
places should adopt such laws.
I make a point of filling my water bottle in an airport after
security. If there are no water fountains or sinks with potable
water, I ask a cafe.
Canada has
ordered
Google to censor searches world-wide.
The accusation against Datalink makes no sense to me. What is wrong
with buying products and reselling them under another name? And
"acquiring trade secrets" is not in general wrong — and whether
it is illegal depends on how it is done. If it's done by taking them
apart and examining them, that reverse engineering, which in general
is lawful.
Be that as it may, to allow any country to impose global censorship
for any reason is unacceptable.
Google pulled out of China to reject its censorship requirements, but
that was long ago when it still had the motto, "Don't be evil." What
will it do with Canada?
For internet search to be run by a company (Google, in this case) that
does business globally makes it vulnerable to global censorship at the
orders of any country. The overall lesson is: search engines must be
run by organizations that do business only in one country so that they
are safe from being sued in other countries.
The Pentagon claims that Assad's air force is
preparing
another poison gas attack.
I wish the Pentagon were honest enough that I could presume this to be
the truth.
Venezuela's President Maduro
threatens
to hold power by force if defeated in elections.
Venezuela may be on the verge of fighting now. A Venezuelan ex-thug,
operating a helicopter belonging to the thug department,
used
guns and grenades to attack government buildings.
He stated that his motive was opposition to Maduro's regime. It's not
clear what kind of government he wants, but I would guess he is
right-wing.
What a sad end for Chavez's movement. Chavez never had to worry about
losing an election — most of Venezuela supported him, for good
reason.
People criticize Chavez for making Venezuela depend on using oil
revenue to subsidize people's needs. What they don't mention is that
previously
the oil revenue was diverted to wealthy foreigners and did no good
a all for Venezuela.
Donations to Gianforte's campaign
increased
after he physically attacked reporter Ben Jacobs.
I suspected that something like this was the case. The other
Republicans who, shortly after, hinted at endorsing such violence
did it because they understood what sort of fanatics support them.
Many Republicans are itching to commit violence for the cause of
abolishing democracy in the US. The are unwilling to live in a free,
democratic and peaceful society;
they
want a violent tyrant to follow.
The Emirates ambassador to Russia
suggests
applying some measures against funding terrorism to his own
country as well as to Qatar.
That might be a good deal for all the countries in this dispute to
make.
Note, however, that it is useful in the service of peace that Qatar
allows organizations such as the Taliban to maintain offices there,
because that offers a way to negotiate with those organizations.
Chris Patten, last British governor of Hong Kong, says he
should
have done more to establish democracy there.
He also objects to abjectly closing eyes to China's crimes in pursuit
of Chinese business.
Maybe the UK should leave China's hegemonic sphere rather than the EU.
George Monbiot: investigate
possible
campaign funding illegalities in the UK's referendum on leaving
the EU, and annul the result if there were substantial illegalities.
An investigation into discrepancies of climate models illustrates
the
difference between skepticism and denialism.
Skepticism helps science progress. Denialism tries to get rid of
science.
Scientists
need
to do a better job of checking papers for bad statistics before
they are published.
Paywalled journals often mean that the only version we the public can
see is a preprint, which will never receive whatever corrections
reviewers may suggest.
As we fill up the seas with plastic bottles, we
need
to measures to impose recycling.
So much paranoia has been built up in the US about the fictional
danger of stealing children in public, that people who try to help a
child are in real danger. A man found a lost child and asked people
nearby if they could help find her parents; when her father showed up,
he
insisted
the man was a kidnaper and beat him up.
The father may be sued for this, but shouldn't he be prosecuted for
this?
After the Crime:
Why
Employers Should Give Ex-Offenders a Working Chance.
In the US, laws make it almost impossible for anyone who was in
prison. They are legally excluded from education and housing aid as
well as from many fields of work.
Traditional raw fish in Thailand spreads
liver
parasites that make people ill, and cause cancer in a fraction of
them.
In the US, restaurants freeze raw fish before serving it. The
parasites are multicellular organisms, and freezing kills them just as
it would kill a human. I trust US public health enforcers to make
sure restaurants do this, so in the US I do not worry about eating
sushi.
In Brazil I don't eat sushi; I don't feel confident that Brazil's
restaurant inspection system will ensure it is safe.
New Labour aimed to increase social mobility in Britain. The Tories
have
cut
social mobility way down. But the amount of social mobility is a
side issue — it is no substitute for giving everyone a good
life.
Why
Africa Is So Poor. It starts with the slave trade and western
investment in it.
The article mentions "unfair intellectual property laws", but
that generalization
is a mistake. I think the laws that are pertinent are copyright
law and patent law, but they have almost nothing in common aside from
unfairness.
The article cites "structural adjustment", but many readers may not
know what that term means because it has been replaced by other terms.
It means cutting the state's spending on the public good (for
instance, education and medicine) so as to increase profits for the
rich. The argument for this policy was "trickle down", which didn't
work in Africa any more than it did
in
the US.
US citizens: see how your congresscritters and senators responded when
the troll pulled the US out of the
Paris
climate agreement, then
phone them and insist
that the US must do its share to prevent global disaster.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to Protect medical marijuana from Sessions's war on
drugs.
Everyone:
call on
Rakuten to stop selling ivory.
Saboteur Pruitt met with the CEO of Dow shortly before
cancelling
the plan to ban the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos.
Time Magazine
demands
that the troll stop displaying fake Time covers (with his own
photo) in his clubs.
I find it plausible that what the troll is doing violates trademark
law because he is doing it commercially.
Burmese journalists will be prosecuted for displeasing the state under
a
tyrannical
all-purpose law first imposed by the British empire.
The new owners of a building in Toronto
paid
the troll millions of dollars ransom to take his name off the
building.
That's an interesting line of business: name ransom.
CNN
apologized
for publishing a false accusation against one of the troll's
associates, and three employees including the author have resigned for
this.
Compare this with the real outlets of fake news, which never apologize
because they have rejected the idea of truth as a standard to follow.
Almost Half of Trans Pupils in UK Have
Attempted
Suicide.
In two US states that pay for private school vouchers, the students who used
them had worse grades for two years, then returned to the usual public school
level. Overall, the vouchers
provided
no benefits to the students.
Thugs have been indicted for
covering
up facts in the killing of Laquan McDonald.
Hooray! Let's make blue lies matter!
Americans report to the Democratic Party: what concerns them most is
support
for progressive economic policies, not Russia.
Some planes have been grounded by the
heat
wave in Arizona.
This was the result of a temperature of 52C. By the end of the
century, we will see temperatures of 56C, maybe even 60C.
EPA Saboteur Pruitt has
launched
"reevaluation" of the rule that protects bodies of fresh water
that supply drinking water for 1/3 of the US.
More about the
Clean
Water Rule that the troll wants to eliminate.
Public
resistance has compelled Senate Republicans to delay the Dontcare
bill.
McConnell announced the intention to make changes in the bill. I
expect they will shuffle the damage around, so that the new bill is
equally harmful but in different ways.
Then they will announce the evils they have removed, downplay the
replacement evils, and try again to ram it through before people can
figure out how they shuffled it around.
Cigarette companies kill people for around
$10,000
in profit per death.
Europe fined Google over 2 billion dollars for
search
bias against its competitors.
Ralph Nader explains how the Democrats have weakened themselves by
not
fighting for important ideas.
Dubya's campaign leader in Florida, Katherine Harris,
arranged
to rig the election in Florida.
This was reported by Greg Palast.
His article was published in London in January 2001, but appeared in
the US only on September 12, when most Americans were distracted by a
more blatant but not as ruinous attack on the US.
Activists try to hold a Gay Pride march in Istanbul and were
repressed
heavily by thugs.
Urging companies to make their digital disservices a little less
addictive.
I basically reject all the addictive ones anyway.
Macron
committed
France to stop issuing oil and gas exploration licenses.
Poland has made another effort to force women to have babies by
requiring
a prescription to obtain a morning-after pill.
I hope Polish women will organize smuggling so as to defeat this law.
Amazon has so much power over the US retail economy that it
imposes
its power over all participants.
If it is going to be a monopoly, it should be regulated like other
monopolies. Or perhaps more.
An Insider's View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America.
The author asserts that a substantial fraction of (mostly rural) white
Americans are white supremacists and believe in a perverse
Christianity that has replaced charity with cruelty. They answer all
rational arguments with "God told us this". They ignore the
contradictions of their position by
denying
all the facts that get in their way.
If the Dontcare bill starts killing their relatives, perhaps they
will learn something.
The UK "special branch", a division of thugs, had undercover thugs
snoop
on several Labour MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn.
Reportedly, spying on him was no rogue operation — it was
approved by the chiefs of the special branch.
Everyone:
urge
the Chicago City Council to eliminate from the contract with the
thug union the provisions that protect them from prosecution when they
kill or brutalize people.
US citizens: phone your Democratic senators at 1-866-665-4470
and urge them to fight hard against the revised Dontcare bill
that SCROTUS will propose in July.
Sekulow, the troll's lawyer,
raised
millions of dollars for his own relatives under the guise of
"donations" to a Christian organization.
Dubya sent US special forces to 60 countries. Obama to 120 countries.
Now the troll has extended that to
137
countries — about 2/3 of the countries in the world. They
win battles, but they never win a war.
It seems the troll is
looking
for an excuse for war against Assad in Syria, and then against
Iran.
I wouldn't put it past Assad to launch a chemical attack. But I have
no reason to believe he will do so. The troll's assertion means
nothing.
Calling on China to allow Liu Xiaobo to
go
home for treatment or to go get treatment outside China.
The US has never figured out how to get Pakistan to stop supporting
the Taliban in Afghanistan. The troll
plans
to try an unsubtle approach.
Plastic debris in the ocean doesn't all stay in the ocean.
It also
washes
up on the shore and endangers wildlife there.
A large fraction of the world's food shipping passes through a few
"chokepoints" which are
vulnerable
to global heating.
A Catholic bishop in China has been
disappeared.
Engineers present
further
arguments that World Trade Center 7 could not have collapsed as it
did without inside help, and that the official investigation skipped
over that part of the issue.
I don't have the expertise needed to reach any conclusion about this.
I can't judge the arguments of the various sides. The only conclusion
that I can reach is that we should have a full, complete and honest
investigation of what caused the World Trade Center towers to
collapse.
One thing we can be sure of is that
the
actual investigation was corrupt. One of the members quit and
said so.
US citizens:
phone
Republican senators that might oppose the Dontcare bill.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to defend press freedom.
US citizens: Senate,
reject
torture designer Steve Bradbury.
Brazil's corrupt president has been
formally
charged with taking bribes.
The UK's National Health Service outsourced its mail handling, and
guess what?
Over
700,000 letters with medical information for patients went
undelivered.
The Senate's version of the Dontcare bill would cut off medical
coverage for a mere
22
million Americans instead of 23 million.
Some "smart" meters
send
information as often as once every minute. That's plenty for
monitoring people in the home and what they do.
The troll as rendered the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
inactive by
not
appointing a quorum of members.
Theresa May's contempt for human rights laws gives
aid
and support to tyrants.
The Supreme Court
permitted
a part of the troll's partial ban on Muslims to take effect
temporarily, but it will not make any final decision until
October.
In the mean time,
many
court cases will be required to work out the precise boundaries of
the temporary rule.
Around 400 buildings per year collapse in Egypt because they were
built in a shoddy way,
due
to widespread corruption.
The FERC, as usual,
made
a biased decision to approve a pipeline.
Women in Afghanistan are treated so badly after a divorce (if they can
get one) that they
turn
to suicide to escape from violent husbands. Some try to burn
themselves to death.
Aisha is quoted as praying for death. Did she want treatment, or did
doctors pressure her to accept it? If she really still wanted to die,
compassion requires us to cooperate with that.
Smoke inhalation probably hurts a lot less than burns. A woman might
be wiser to set the violent husband on fire, then inhale the smoke.
A UK court
overturned
a government order banning local governments from participating in
divestment and sanctions against Israel.
The Koch brothers have
cut
off the pay of the Republican Party until they pass some sort of
medical care sabotage.
Republicans would sell their own children to get their pay — and
Americans' children too. They know voters will hate them for this,
but they will think they've already given up public approval. They
are now owned by their corrupt masters, and will have to bet that
their masters' money (plus
voter
suppression) overcomes public memory.
Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has been
nominally
released from prison. This occurred a few years early because he
is dying of cancer.
Prisons are known for denying prisoners needed medical care. Often by
refusing to believe the problem is serious.
US
prisons do this,
Australian
prisons do this, and Chinese political prisons are probably even
worse.
Activists say that China
systematically
(though deniably) limits political prisoners' medical care, hoping
that prisoners will get sick and die.
They may not have knowingly refused to recognize Liu's cancer until it
was too advanced to cure, but they shut their eyes just in case.
Shall we call this Chinese Prison Roulette? It is a form of murder
(though without actually breaking a law).
His supposed release from prison may be a sham.
His
hospital room may be a form of prison. Things the Chinese
government says often have as little relationship to reality
as things the troll says.
The US government ought to be a shining beacon of contrast to China's
repression, but that is ever less the case.
Correlating the different systems that have been used to measure
temperature in various parts of the oceans, and overcoming various
biases, a study
confirms
that oceans have been getting hotter.
The residents of London housing project that burned down were
concerned about the danger of fire, but the Tories had limited legal
aid funds so that there was
no
way they could demand action.
A report assigning the Great Barrier Reef an economic value of 56
billion dollars
If the Dontcare bill kills people, will that be
murder?
When discussing whether something is or isn't murder, outside the
context of a legal accusation, to cite laws is to miss the point.
The word "murder" has multiple related meanings. In law, it is the
name of a crime, with a definition that varies between jurisdictions.
Courts, trying someone for murder, should follow these definitions.
The word also has an everyday meaning that is more basic than laws,
and is independent of the details of the laws of one place or another.
It means knowingly killing people in the absence of certain morally
valid justifications.
Unless "crushing the poor to give to the rich" is a morally valid
justification, the Dontcare bill's killings will be murder by the
ordinary meaning.
The UK is
demonizing
anyone that imports a sex doll with a childlike body shape.
It would be ludicrous to claim that some child was harmed by making
the doll, so they don't bother offering any justification for the
prohibition. The mere idea that these dolls are "sickening" is
supposed to justify making it a crime.
Here's an Idea:
Guarantee
Every Child an Excellent Education.
Half the coffee-producing land in Ethiopia
will
become unsuitable as a result of global heating.
Worst of all, the wild strains will die out. Their genetic resources
will be forever lost.
Progressives say that candidate Ossoff lost to a Republican, despite
millions in support from the Democratic Party, for the same reason
Clinton did:
failure
to stand for progressive change.
The progressive candidates for Congress lost too, but they got little
support from the Democratic Party — because they were
progressive.
Philando Castille made every effort to comply with the thug's orders
and assure safety. The thug's response — first incompetent,
then violent, then dishonest — turned it into
murder.
Video that was kept secret until after the trial shows this
clearly.
The thug's acquittal shows the bias of our legal system on behalf of
thugs. It bows down to them with more respect than we give ordinary
citizens. That respect enables them to get away with murder.
How can we change that? One way is by setting a visible example of
denying them the excessive respect they claim. That's why I call them
"thugs". It is not just a way to vent emotions. It is a way to teach
not to give them so much respect.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to preserve the Johnson Amendment: don't allow
churches to spend money on election campaigning.
A proposed US mandate for all cars to transmit information about
their movements would make it easy to
track
all cars' movements, all the time.
The article explains why we must fight each new proposed surveillance
system no matter how many others already exist.
A universal basic income, in today's economic conditions,
would
not replace state-funded medical care or support for the disabled.
In a hundred years, if we avoid global disaster and we end human
population growth, and if medicine advances so far that no treatment
is very expensive, that may change.
Meet
some
of the Americans SCROTUS are trying to kill.
A mosque in Berlin that aims to reform Islam will not close even
though its founder receives
thousands
of death threats.
Her relatives in Turkey fear they will be used as hostages, but she
courageously refuses to let that defeat her.
Corbyn inspires activists
in
Mexico.
Should You Be More Afraid of Carjackers — or the
Zippers
on Your Pants?
English "fishing villages" are
turning
into theme parks; there are few real fishermen, and the
tourist-oriented restaurants don't buy fish from them, so fishermen
cannot afford to live there anymore.
This is a world-wide pattern that every place that is interesting or
special becomes more and more like a theme park.
Mélenchon's party's small bloc in the French Assembly is
going
all out to oppose Macron's labor "reforms".
These "reforms" are intended, in France as elsewhere, to enable
business to pay workers less and send plutocrats more.
High rents and insufficient welfare benefits are projected to push
a
million British families out of their homes by 2020.
North Korea is not the only place where prisoners wind up in a
permanent coma. It happened this year
in
New Jersey.
North Korea says little about how Warmbier got
into a coma. New Jersey likewise says little.
North Korea should come clean, and New Jersey too.
The California single-payer medical system bill passed the California
Senate, but was
quashed
in the lower house by the speaker.
Previously I thought it had been passed by both houses and that it was
on the verge of becoming law. Sorry for the mistake.
In Yemen and Eritrea, forces of the United Arab Emirates torture
prisoners to
get
them ready for US agents to interrogate.
Then the US agents say, "We didn't see any torture."
People are becoming concerned about "smart" meters as a
surveillance
system.
I understood the idea of a "smart" meter to include allowing the
utility to query total energy usage at any time. That would allow
moment-to-moment monitoring.
If French "smart" meters report electric usage only once per day, they
are not much of a privacy threat with that limitation. The utility
could determine whether someone was home, perhaps estimate how many
people were home, but nothing more.
Are "smart" meters in other countries designed with that limitation?
The Republican Party is the
party
of ungovernment.
The troll
reportedly wants to
get rid of special investigator Robert Mueller, but that
would require a complicated procedure.
Remember when the troll "saved" jobs at Carrier by giving it a tax cut?
The were not saved for long: they are
being
offshored now.
A black thug, off duty, came to assist a white thug. The white thug
shot
him.
Apparently no black is safe around white thugs.
Protection of the Siberian tiger since the 1930s has enabled its
numbers to increase by 20 times. But the total is still
only
500.
A thug
killed
a teenager by shooting at a violent dog.
A biting dog is dangerous, but wouldn't a taser have done the job?
Why did they pull out guns first?
Google's blacklists give it tremendous power. It
can
cut off any website from being visited by nearly all internet
users.
A list of all the troll's lies
since
his inauguration.
US citizens:
tell
Senator Schumer to stop supporting pro-coal Senator Manchin with
pro-coal ads.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to handle infrastructure development the progressive
and useful way, rather than through privatization giveaways.
UNESCO says that local efforts can't save coral reefs;
curbing
global heating is the only way.
Senator Paul proposed a Senate rules change to require a pause before
voting on a bill, of
one
day for each 20 pages of the bill's length.
I think it is a good idea.
A thug was given "qualified immunity" by a US court even though it was
proved he
lied
about facts to try to convict an innocent man.
That decision was perverse. Tentatively disregarding some discrepant
facts is sometimes justified, but lying about them can never be
excused.
After a thug killed Philando Castile, prosecutors
got
his girlfriend's phone records to try to throw dirt on her for
criticizing the thug.
Despite President Temer's surprise veto, the Brazilian Amazon is
not
safe yet from loggers and miners.
Parents of badly disabled children have brought them to Congress to
show the staff what medical care those children need. The Dontcare
bill
would
cut it off.
Medical care,
Republican
style: give them less and make them think it's more.
Ireland is effectively
sneaking
in a national ID card.
The troll and his staff are
illegally
deleting their communications, which by law must be preserved.
If CREW wins its lawsuit, is there anything it can do to make the
troll and his staff follow the law?
Reportedly the CIA told Obama about a range of Russian attempts to
interfere with the 2016 election, and Obama
waited
for Republican cooperation in responding.
These reports come from intelligence organizations that have their own
antidemocratic agendas. The facts may not be 100% accurate. Recall
that Assange said that some DNC email leaks came from insiders, not
from Russian crackers. But let's assume they are broadly correct.
What then?
Obama, as usual, asked Republicans to cooperate. When they showed
their usual attitude, aiming to take control of the US by hook or by
crook, he didn't understand the idea of fighting back. He waited for
their cooperation until it was too late. What a sap!
Russian interference with the election was hostile to the US, but the
damage it did is far less than what the Republicans did on their own:
the
big gerrymander and
voter
suppression. That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
That was also hostile to the US, and it still is.
"Clean coal" is now even more mythical, as an experimental
CO2-extracting power plant turns out to
have
to burn only natural gas.
A substantial part of the greenhouse gas emissions of using natural gas
come from
methane
leaks before the gas gets to a power plant.
Mexican journalists were
spied
on through their portable phones, which were turned into listening
devices (as commonly occurs).
There is no proof of who did this, but the obvious suspect is the
Mexican state.
2C of global heating will spread deserts around the Mediterranean.
The beginning of this is
already
visible. Other parts of the world face other broad disasters that
are already starting.
Tall buildings for public housing don't have to be dangerous. It is
plutocracy
and its child, dooH niboR, that make them dangerous.
Everyone:
call on UNESCO to protect world heritage sites
by pressure against locating coal mines near them.
A private blacklist database,
accumulated from complaints that are hardly
verified at all, causes activists to be denied jobs and bank services.
The troll wants to increase US military spending by 10%, by
gutting activities that Americans depend on.
Since the US spends as much on the military as the eight other most powerful
armies together, it could do with transferring a lot of this spending
to activities that are really useful.
Sessions wants America to forget
about the Tuskegee syphilis study,
in which blacks were left to suffer untreated syphilis even after we
had a cure.
Protester
Ken Ward was sentenced to two days in jail
for turning a value to shut down a tar oil pipeline.
Missouri is moving a bill to allow employers to
fire women for using birth control.
Women could also be evicted for using birth control or for not using
birth control (i.e., getting pregnant).
The bill also hampers abortion with pointless harassment requirements.
Women will have to lie to employers and landlords about their birth control
and abortion practices.
Elsevier reaffirmed the injustice of today's copyright law
by winning a lawsuit against the article-sharing site Sci-Hub.
But it can't collect the 15 million dollars, since the site's operator
isn't operating for a profit, and it can't shut the site down.
Please be careful not to use the term "pirate" to describe sharing.
It requires special attention to avoid following someone else's example,
such as after reading an article like that one.
Banning VPNs is dangerous,
in Russia or anywhere else.
The Senate's Dontcare bill opens a sneaky method for insurance companies
to
gouge Americans with preexisting medical conditions.
The troll is pushing to increase surveillance of the US and everyone
in it,
for the sake of deportation.
Chinese censorship descends openly on Hong Kong:
signs criticizing
China's repression or its repressive ruler have been banned from his
parade route.
Dark Money Turns Elections Into Trench Warfare.
When the Theater of Security Agency makes travelers remove papers from their
bags, that will lead naturally to
unofficial censorship of reading material.
Italy has a fairly efficient system of
monitoring and discouraging
potential ideological terrorists.
Killing People For Tax Cuts
(for the rich only).
The West must respect the nuclear deal with Iran,
or that deal may
fall apart.
In particular, this means no more military provocations.
Turkey has surrendered to ignorance as well as tyranny:
schools will no longer teach evolution.
China is turning Xinjiang into a totalitarian system of repression.
This is presented as a scheme to crush Islamist terrorism (and Uygur
separatism, which is not the same thing). But this sort of repression
is much worse than terrorism.
Americans, take this as a lesson of what the US will be like
if we don't stop it.
The heat wave is
causing physical injury to homeless people
in Arizona.
A century from now, with higher temperatures everywhere, such injury
could cover large parts of the US. In some places, heat waves
could be
fatal to all humans not protected by air conditioning or
underground shelters.
Ralph Nader:
[plutocrats are] Closing Democracy's Doors Until the
People Open Them.
House Logging Bill (HR 2936) Guts Federal Environmental Laws,
Literally
Privatizes Public Lands, Creates Logging Free-for-All.
Senators
Drafting Secret Health Care Bill
Backed by Insurance and Pharma
Campaign Money.
The US should
do an "autopsy" on a specific retired nuclear power
plant,
to see what flaws the other similar plants may have.
US citizens:
call for justice for Charleena Lyles,
killed by thugs after
she called for help.
Almost half the accounts
tweeting in Russian about politics are
pro-Putin bots.
The US is drifting towards
war with Iran,
encouraged by the troll.
Some survivors from the apartment building fire in London are afraid to go
to the hosptal
because they fear they will be deported.
Saboteur Pruitt of the EPA has
fired most of the real scientists
from its
scientific advisory committees, and made them inactive.
The Department of Homeland Subjugation has
illegally started submitting US citizens to face recognition
as they board some international flights.
US citizens:
phone your senators
to oppose the Dontcare bill.
It is useful to urge them to delay the vote until after the July 4
recess. More time, more public scrutiny of the bill, will improve
our chances of blocking it.
The Senate's Dontcare bill is basically
just like the one passed by the House of Representatives.
Its cuts to Medicaid start slower but eventually go deeper.
Hong Kong's non-democratically elected chief says that China can arrest
or kidnap publishers whenever it likes.
It's fine with her.
Some of Clinton's fund raising leaders are
now lobbying for oppressive Republican policy proposals,
such as abolishing network neutrality.
Given Clinton's pro-business (plutocratist) leanings, this doesn't
surprise me. When I was young, we had a name for politicians like
Clinton: "Republicans".
Natural gas is not a safe replacement for coal — to avoid global
disaster, we will have to
cut its use fast.
Instead of investing in use of natural gas, we should invest in
renewable energy.
Just as the apartment house fire occurred, the UK was studying a plan
to "get rid of red tape" by
eliminating the fire-safety regulations
about materials to use in construction.
In the UK, fire is potentially a far bigger danger than terrorists.
It is not a bigger danger in practice today, simply because
regulations have done a pretty good job of preventing fires.
Guardian: Germany to Quash Convictions of 50,000 Gay Men under Nazi-Era Law.
A nuclear power plant operator is squeezing various states for
billions of dollars to
keep some nuclear plants operating.
If we spent the money on batteries to store solar power, we would be investing
it in a better future.
The main business of Amway is not getting people to resell real
products to their friends. It is
getting people to pay high prices for seminars,
that will supposedly teach them to be a success in
reselling products to their friends, but really just say how to push
their friends to pay for seminars.
It sounds like EST and its descendants.
A high school valedictorian's speech was terminated by cutting off the
microphone when
he criticized in a general way
some of the school's personnel.
He said the opposite of what he meant to say, by using the wrong word
"authoritative" when he should have said "authoritarian". However,
everyone understood the intended meaning.
What shocks me most is the comments that rebuke him
for his mild criticism of the school authorities.
Is this a sample of the authoritarian follower personality?
The troll's plan to deal with the unpayable high prices drug companies
charge for medicines is to
let them do whatever they like.
Norway will
eliminate
its foreign aid to Brazil if Brazil does not stop deforestation.
That was on Friday. Perhaps that's why President Temer
decided
to let a model convince him not to sign the bill that would allow
a lot more deforestation.
The copyright industry
want
to use the renegotiation of NAFTA to increase copyright oppression
in Canada, Mexico and the US.
You can tell they are up to no good by their use of the
confusion-spreading term
"intellectual
property".
The Pentagon
keeps
its eyes firmly shut in regard to civilian casualties from its
bombings, then reports that it has seen no evidence of any.
Lessons
of 2016 for U.S. Election Security.
Given the resistance that Jill Stein encountered when trying to get
recounts in the 2016 election, we can't trust computerized optical
ballot counters in the US.
The troll admits that his talk of taping conversations with Comey was
a
lie for intimidation's sake.
Too bad. Those tapes could have inculpated him.
The beginning of the end for PISSI's territory in Syria and Iraq has
unleashed a
conflict
between the US, Russia, Iran, and their various local clients over the
spoils.
I would guess that the US participation in Salafi Arabia's
bombardment of Yemen, and the provocations between Salafi Arabia +
supports and Iran + supporters, are part of this.
I feel no sympathy for any of the groups of plutocrats that want to
fight about this. It is not worth a war.
Seattle's law that raises the minimum wage has
not
led to reduced employment.
The carbon tax measure supported by polluters
disguises
a plan to eliminate their liability for all the damage they have
done.
The US and Russia
continue
military provocations.
The thug that
killed
helpless Sylville Smith was acquitted.
There was no need to shoot Smith again, since he had thrown away his
gun. But since he had been a real threat less than 2 seconds before,
perhaps the verdict was justified.
The world's human population is
predicted
to reach 8 billion, just 6 years from now.
It is a good thing that one billion of those people will be over 60
years old, thus too old to reproduce further, but that by itself won't
end the population increase. With population increase squeezing from
one side, and global heating effects from the other, humanity and the
natural world are both likely to be crushed.
How foolish of the article to refer to decline of population as if it
were a problem.
When Palestinians attack Israeli occupation forces,
that
is not "terrorism". Terrorism means making war on civilians.
We must
change the US law that protects killer thugs
as long as they
say they thought the victim was a threat to them.
Even
absurd reasons for feeling threatened are accepted
when they come from a thug.
As long as the law remains this way, uniformed thugs will be able to
murder blacks with impunity.
And
injure protesters
with impunity, too.
Republicans make it standard practice to undermine civil government
and honesty in order to get their way. They have been doing this for
decades, and it
gets worse over time.
A few notes are required:
• I won't take US intelligence's word that the email leaks of the
Democratic National Committee were arranged by Russia — though that
may have happened.
Whoever was behind those leaks, what matters most
is that they served the public by demonstrating how the DNC had
sabotaged Sanders' campaign in favor of Clinton.
• It should be noticed that most Montana voters had already voted
when
Gianforte attacked reporter Ben Jacobs.
Also,
Gianforte apologized
and pled guilty.
However, other Republicans alluded to the attack by
inciting more violence.
• ALEC does not "bypass" state legislatures. Rather, it helps
corporations organize legislators and sometimes to buy their votes.
• Republicans recently banned using the term "climate change",
but 15 years ago they told government employees to say "climate change"
instead of the clearer and more concrete
"global warming".
Guardian: Over 170 Years After Engels, Britain is Still a Country That
Murders Its Poor.
The troll has said nothing about the terrorist attack on Muslim in
London,
tacitly expressing his acceptance
of random violence against them.
Don't think of war as
a remedy for the death
of Otto Warmbier. War would be much worse.
It is clear that the North Koreans did not kill him intentionally. If
they had done that, it would not have looked like this.
We don't know why he died,
and — most strangely — his family has
forbidden an autopsy.
Exxon and several other large companies endorsed a carbon emissions tax, but
in exchange they
demand abolition of other policies
designed to reduce
CO2 emissions.
Whether the tax would do a better job depends on whether the tax is
big enough. I have no way of judging that question.
Brazil's corrupt president Temer decided to veto a bill to unprotect a
2300 square miles of the Amazon rain forest, after
an appeal from a supermodel.
New corruption evidence
against Brazil's President Temer offers once again a possibility he
could be removed from his ill-gotten office.
The survivors of the London fire feared having their
welfare benefits cut
for missing their jobcenter appointments.
That's not an unreasonable fear after the absurd excuses Tories have used
to punish people. Indeed, it occurs to me that perhaps the Tories
would have punished them for missing their appointments, if not for the
publicity that the fire has drawn.
The US is shooting down drones that are
flying over Syria,
presumably by Assad's forces or their allies.
The drone's approach did not mean it was about to attack, so the US
attack was preemptive — begging for a war which could still be
avoided.
Where the Amazon rain forest still exists, loggers are degrading it
by cutting down trees that are
hidden by the upper canopy.
Rating
the world's big banks about how much they finance fossil fuel
projects.
Scientists have taken a core sample from a glacier in Bolivia that is
expected
to disappear entirely due to global heating.
Technology combined with neoliberalism adds up to replacing all public
services with
massive
surveillance systems that work for dooH niboR.
We must defend the public services, to reduce inequality and in some
cases to defend our privacy.
Some refrigerators and some TVs
use
a lot more energy in real life than their energy ratings claim
they use.
Be suspicious of Samsung and LG.
The Kellers, convicted in 1992 of supposed satanic murders and child
abuse, have been
declared
innocent — these crimes never happened at all.
The US State Department, run by Tillerson,
condemned
Salafi Arabia for its blockade of Qatar.
This comes after the Pentagon, run by the troll's appointee Mattis,
agreed to sell fighter planes to Qatar.
Either some executive branch agencies are simply disregarding what the
troll wants, or the troll's statements in favor of Salafi Arabia were
lies.
That the troll would lie to us is in no way surprising.
Lying to the Salafi Arabian monarchy is another matter. They are
disgusting by our standards, but they are not fools that beg to be
lied to.
A
series
of Chinese billionaires have been secretly arrested. One of them
either jumped or was pushed out a 12th floor window.
I don't have a basis to judge whether these arrests were justice or
injustice. Anyone that rich is likely to have done something very
nasty, whether or not it is illegal, and in China I would guess that
corruption played a part. There may be good reasons to investigate or
prosecute those billionaires.
By the same token, I would expect China to be so corrupt that the
state would never bother billionaires unless they start becoming
dissidents.
The latest White House "press briefing"
banned
reporters from recording anything.
Since what they say is pure bullshit, let's not be distracted by them.
Many US states exclude ex-prisoners from many kinds of jobs. This has
the measurable result of
forcing
them to go back to crime.
The air inside airplanes is contaminated with toxins, and a
substantial
fraction of flight crew have illnesses that might relate to this
pollution.
In the US:
participate in a
Resistance Summer Community Cookout.
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-334-5514 and say they should
not have
imperiled the nuclear deal
with Iran by voting for more sanctions.
This applies to all senators except the two, Bernie Sanders and
Rand Paul, that voted against the sanctions.
For more info:
http://act.moveon.org/go/10694
Otto Warmbier has
died
from the injuries he sustained in prison in North Korea.
The troll is against torture when it's done by North Koreans, but
in
favor of torture by US government agents.
A special coat for homeless people
converts into a
sleeping bag.
Republican fanatics, given leave by the troll and other officials,
have
directed
death threats at many US theaters.
The Republican Party is the Party of the Lie. Republican activists
are proud of "creatively"
spreading
deception.
The iman of Finsbury Park mosque helped to catch and then protect the
terrorist murder suspect. As a result, the murderer will stand trial.
The iman also
calmed
down the crowd.
The Dupes of PISSI: they
attack
Muslims and thus help PISSI radicalize a few of them.
A study of nine countries found that
propagandists
were successfully manipulating Twitter and Facebook to spread
propaganda.
Iran and Salafi Arabia are
at
the brink of war.
I distrust both of them, and I won't presume that either one has
honestly reported its claims against the other.
US citizens:
call
on Senate democrats to do all they can to block the progress of
the Dontcare bill.
To do this all the time would be sabotage, and wrong. As a response
to the sabotage manner that Republicans are using to push the Dontcare
bill through fast without scrutiny, using this approach for a few
weeks is justified. Once people have a chance to confront them on
what the bill says, and what it would do, the Democrats could go back
to usual practices.
1/3
of the human population faces deadly heatwaves. By 2100 it will
be half, or more.
The UK describes
bigotry
against Muslims as "extremism" and called an attack on British
Muslims with a van "terrorism".
By joining together to condemn all the flavors of violent hatred,
we can stop them.
But do remember that hatred for the poor — manifested in Tory
and Republican policies — is far more deadly in the west than
all the terrorists put together.
The corporate mainstream media are
working
hard to disparage Bernie Sanders.
This attack by big business (through its media) shows they think
Sanders will really try to protect us from them. Sanders for
President!
It was
wrong
to convict a person for killing someone by means of repeatedly urging
the person to commit suicide.
For decades, rural Americans have been getting screwed
much
like poor Americans in cities. Towns are dying, and everyone has
to drive a long way to find groceries, gasoline, clothing, or any sort
of job.
They already blame corporations, and business-subservient government.
Many voted for the troll but don't expect him to do them any real
good. I see a great opportunity here for progressives that can
propose realistic solutions.
The loss of most of these towns may be inevitable; the economic reason
for them has disappeared. However, the secondary suffering might be
reduced greatly by feasible policies. I can think of two right now:
(1) funding schools from the state budget rather than local property
taxes, and (2) helping people move closer to the remaining towns.
South Korea's new president
plans
to get rid of nuclear power and coal power, though not in a hurry.
When workers aren't replaced by robots, they are often
run
like robots.
Cockroaches have been turned effectively into robots with
brain
implants that make them go one way or another. The difference
between that and what is done to workers today is substantial but it
may not alter the injustice much.
The article is mistaken in saying that the state can't legislate
against this. Use your imagination!
Will the troll allow neocons to launch
the
war with Iran that they have wanted for many years?
North Korea accused US agents of
stealing
a diplomatic package from North Korean representatives to the UN.
You don't have to admire North Korea to see that such behavior attacks
the UN and international peace.
DeVos wants to make civil rights protections for students inoperative
by
cutting
the funds for enforcing them.
One part of this change, that concerning "sexual assault" accusations,
might be an advance — it seems that school procedures
deny
the accused the legal rights that anyone accused of a crime is
entitled to.
The rest is entirely bad.
In the US:
tell Kroger to stop
food grown with neonicotinoids.
The troll's saboteurs are working with Big Pharma on
a plan to deal with high drug prices
— but the measures they are discussing would not help.
A Republican has called for Democrats to be arrested and
the Democratic Party to be banned.
Sessions is unfit for the office of Attorney General
because of his failing memory.
David Brin argues that impeaching the troll would be a tactical
mistake, because
it would enrage his base,
and Pence would be just as bad.
He has valid points, but I see one on the other side. The troll's
bullshit seems to be necessary to keep some of his base from waking up
to the truth. I don't think Pence could do that the way the troll does.
Also, Pence may avoid doing some bad things out of stupidity or wild idiocy.
Some UK stores now "randomly" search people leaving. Of course, it
isn't really random — it is
based on their ethnicity and how they look.
Right-wing US quilters
organized secretly to try to harm
the careers
of progressive quilting artists.
Some "nonprofit" charter schools are effectively business owned by
their founders, and their founders
get paid lots of money
in direct and indirect ways.
The Kensington and Chelsea council squashed its poor residents so hard
last year that
it had a surplus
— which it divided among the wealthy residents. This is not
unrelated to the fatal fire.
The author of the article donated per rebate to charity, feeling it
was blood money.
Greece blocked the EU from
condemning China's human rights violations.
I agree this is a dishonorable vote, but Greece had to bow to China
because of the EU terrible wrong the EU did to Greece.
In the US:
join
a rally in favor of Planned Parenthood on June 21.
More events:
https://resistancenearme.org
Also, keep phoning your senators to oppose the Dontcare bill,
even if you phoned before.
Women plan to hold
sit-in
protests in Republican senators' offices.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the CARERs Act, which would stop federal
prosecution for marijuana-related activities that are legal at state
level.
US citizens:
Free
Fate Vincent Winslow — sentenced to life in prison for
agreeing to carry $20 of marijuana from a seller to a buyer.
US citizens:
call on
more representatives and senators to join those suing the troll
about his unconstitutional foreign income.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban former members of Congress from becoming
lobbyists.
One concrete example
is concrete proof that the Dontcare bill would
destroy Americans.
As the ACLU encourages cities to limit thugs' snooping equipment,
only thugs are opposed.
New "dockless" bike rental schemes admit that they
track the user's movements
all the time with GPS.
These schemes would work even better, and without spying on people, if
the bikes allowed anonymous use limited to a certain area.
The Supreme Court and other courts have given US thugs
unchecked power to mistreat anyone,
effectively at will.
A new US law redirects NOAA's funding
towards weather forecasting.
Since it doesn't give NOAA more money, this money has been taken
away from something. What, I wonder? Could it be climate science,
perhaps? Is the idea to make good 2-month and 2-year forecasts,
at the expense of the 20-year and 40-year forecasts our civilization
will live or die by?
Privatization of UK woodlands is
happening by the backdoor.
Might this be Tories at work?
Surveillance by internet businesses is dangerous and the
chilling effect applies to most of what people do.
It is misleading, however, to treat commercial surveillance and state
surveillance as seriously distinct. Under the PAT RIOT Act, the
databases companies accumulate are immediately and totally accessible
to the US government. I consider the companies to be data collectors
for the corporatist state.
Resistance against the troll is mounting and has
thwarted most of what he wants do.
This is not complete success, however. Resistance has not thwarted
putting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court,
nor the
deregulatory sabotage
of
many agencies.
Pulling out from the Paris climate agreement
is purely symbolic, but the troll has already canceled
the measures that the US was using to
carry out its inadequate pledges.
I am not confident we can stop the
Republican election-rigging
that
enabled the troll to "win" the election.
Sheriff Clarke has
decided not to accept a post
in the Department of Homeland Suppression.
Here's why he aroused so much opposition.
I speculate that public pressure and investigation had something
to do with his decision.
The big fire was the crowning event of a long history of contempt for
poor people
by the Tory-run local council of Kensington.
And, behind them, Tory
deregulationism and unwillingness to redistribute wealth
to the poor.
PISSI has
captured territory in Afghanistan near Tora Bora.
Maybe the US should make an informal alliance ally with the Taliban
to keep PISSI out.
Techdirt: Australia's Attorney General Says The Public Will Be
Cool with Encryption Backdoors
Because They Use Facebook.
The argument is fallacious, but it might appear rational to someone
who squints at it hard enough. You can pull the rug out from under
this fallacy by getting off Facebook.
You ought to do it anyway!
US customs seized lockable travel bags,
calling them "drug paraphernalia".
Some US stores demand customers show a photo ID to return merchandise.
This is not just to know who the customers are. The stores scan the
ID, and all the data goes into the
database of Retail Equation.
This is an unjust surveillance system. While it is less than the surveillance
of an online retailer, it is still too much. Before you buy anything you might
want to return, verify that the store does not use Retail Equation, at least
if you have the receipt. (You can keep the receipt.)
Republican senators are
totally
at a loss when asked what benefits the Dontcare bill is supposed
to give the US.
Women
dressed
as fictional handmaids are protesting against abortion rights and
medical care for women.
Sweden's largest pension fund has
decided
to divest completely from six important fossil fuel companies,
including Exxon and the pipeline company TransCanada.
The Dontcare bill could cause
27
million Americans who get medical coverage from their employers to
lose it, or find that it covers less.
The Espionage Act
needs
to be reformed so it can't be used against reporters. Sessions is
itching to try.
A proper reform ought to protect whistleblowers, too.
Another dangerous merger:
Amazon
and Whole Paycheck.
Simply making companies so large gives them more lobbying power and
more power to defy enforcement of regulations and laws.
ACLU: The US Intelligence Community
Can
Share Your Personal Information With Other Governments, and We're
Demanding Answers.
Several US states
plan
to make it impossible for the public to get thugs' body camera
videos.
Access to the images should be limited somewhat, so that neither the
public nor the state can see it unless there is a specific
justification. But when the justification is good enough for the
state to look, it is good enough for the public to look.
A new Japanese "anti-terror" law would
treat
sit-in strikes as "terrorism" and make it easy to snoop on
dissidents.
Such laws are far more dangerous than terrorism itself.
The thug that killed Philando Castile was
acquitted.
Unconscious racism leads many thugs to immediately suppose their lives
are in danger, when confronting a black man is armed, even if he acts
in the most calm and reasonable way. As long as juries accept that
irrational and unjustified fear as a get-out-of-jail-free card, thugs
will get away with unjustified killings. To put an end to this reign
of terror, we have to change the system. Where can we change it?
Polls show that Americans
mostly
support positions that are typically called progressive.
Democrats that call themselves "centrist" are actually moderately
right-wing. Only progressive candidates represent Americans.
The European Parliament is
on
the verge of either protecting digital privacy to some extent or
destroying it completely.
The US had a program to try to discourage recruiting by violent
white-supremacists and Islamists. The troll has canceled it and
plans to redirect it only against Islamists.
The troll and his supporters openly support right-wing violence; naturally
they don't want this program to get in the way.
A Republican senator ordered journalists to get permission from
one specific Republican staffer
for interviewing any senator in the halls of the senate.
I suspect that the staffer will give permission to interview
Republican senators, not Democrat senators.
Republicans condemned a production of Julius Caesar in which Caesar
looked like the troll,
misconstruing it as advocacy of assassination
(which is not what the play says).
For Republicans, the truth is unimportant since they they lie with
impunity and no shame.
U.S. has only acknowledged a fifth of lethal drone strikes,
a new study finds.
US border thugs followed border-crossers to a well-known camp
that provides medical care and water,
in order to arrest them there.
The camp has been rendered unsafe; border-crossers will die as a
result.
The fire that engulfed a tall building full of poor people shows
clearly how the various cruelties of neoliberalism
came together fatally.
Dare to rebuke the Tories with words that do justice to their nature.
Dare to believe that you can change the rules that keep the plutocrats
on top. I suggest that protesters dare to chant, "Lower than vermin!"
A US appeals court
blocked the FCC's efforts
to stop prison phone companies
from gouging on prisoners' phone calls.
The EU will
move to regulate Bisphenol A
to reduce people's exposure to it.
The Tories
drastically cut the funds
for fire safety inspection of
buildings.
Houston is hit often by big floods, and
global heating will make it worse.
A bipartisan bill could stop US cities from
using tax-free bonds to finance stadiums.
This would tend to interfere with the harmful practice of subsidizing
stadiums, which overall hurts the public around the world.
Gas drilling near the Frisian coast
may cause sand banks needed by migratory birds to sink out of
existence.
US prosecutors are
trying to recover 1.7 billion dollars
stolen from the Malaysian state's funds by its prime minister.
The apartment building fire has made many people homeless in London,
adding to thousands already homeless. To house them,
seize the empty apartments that were bought as investments.
In Rhode Island, some schools think they have
the right to spy on
students
with school laptops.
Let's not forget to mention that other companies,
including Google,
also think they have the right to spy on students.
The troll is making US "aid" to countries in Latin America
increasingly military and increasingly secret.
People convicted of drunk driving are being ordered to install additional
proprietary software in their computers (mobile phones): specifically,
the nonfree apps for Uber and Lyft.
The one for Uber
spies on the user.
I wonder what the judge would do when the defendant has no mobile
phone. I fear this judge might order the person to carry a mobile
phone. Mobile phones' movements and usage
can be tracked and monitored
by absolutely anyone, so being required to carry one is a big
injustice.
There are occasions when it is legitimate for a court to require
someone to wear a tracker, but such an order should always be explicit,
not camouflaged behind "always have a mobile phone."
A British arms and surveillance company
secretly sold massive surveillance gear to Salafi Arabia
and some other repressive countries.
The IMF backed down and let the Euro-banksters impose terms on Greece
with little or no debt relief.
For Greece's creditors there will be an additional bailout. For
Greece, there will be increased cruelty, lasting at least 5 years,
together with even more debt that will be as impossible to pay as the
existing debt.
Maybe Greece should start printing its own 100-euro bills.
That would be a more effective defense.
Gene Simmons filed an application for a
trademark on the "rock hand" gesture.
Israel's legal trap for the Palestinians of Al-Amniyr: to keep their
land they need water, but Israel
destroys
their cisterns and water pipes.
12 of Erdoğan's bodyguards
face
arrest for their violence in Washington, DC.
The use of flammable insulation materials has
created
a danger of big fires in apartment buildings.
We had better make sure insulation is not flammable.
In Chicago, arbitrary confiscation by thugs
tends
to hit low-income neighborhoods most.
A court has
blocked
operation of the Dakota Access pipeline, saying that the study of
the effects of a potential oil spill was inadequate.
Of course it was inadequate. That's how the machine works: when
wealthy interests want a project done, public agencies tend to try to
cover up the harm it will so, by making shoddy reports that close
their eyes to the unpleasant truth.
Tropical waters are losing their fish populations, as they become
too
hot for most of the fish species that live there.
Republican officials work with petroleum interests to fill
schoolchildren's minds with petroleum. They have been doing this for
decades, with the help of ignorant teachers that love to get any
"educational"
videos.
The children being mistaught today are very likely to die prematurely
from the consequences of global heating, which seem headed to include
disease,
famine, and war. If that happens, the disinformation campaign
described here will be partly responsible for killing them.
After the troll was criticized for a couple of ineffective military
actions that he ordered, now he has
told
the generals to do whatever they wish.
The troll is sending 4000 more troops to Afghanistan, supposedly
to train the Afghan army better.
I expect that they will participate in the fighting, too.
This added support might push the Taliban back, but that effect will
be only temporary.
To defeat the Taliban, better training for the Afghan army is not
enough. Better artillery or air support is not enough. What's needed
is better morale in the Afghan army, and really caring about victory.
The corrupt Afghan government is
not likely ever to inspire such loyalty.
The Republican definition of "freedom"
is "Free to buy any product —
if you have money. And if you're destitute, you're free to live on
the street, starve, and die if you get sick."
The Republican party serves the rich, and that's what the rich want
everyone else's life to be like.
Wall-Street Democrat Cuomo, the governor of New York, wants to
privatize Penn Station.
Privatizing anything tends to result in bad service for the users and bad wages
for the workers, but some rich cronies will profit.
Democratic politicians are more hawkish than the voters that support
them. Democrats should start pushing for
diplomacy instead of war.
Macron pledges
to cut 120,000 public jobs, reduce spending by 60
billion Euros, jettison the 35-hour workweek, raise the retirement
age, weaken unions’ negotiating strength, and cut corporate taxes.
All the standard neoliberal "trickle-down" policies that really
represent dooH niboR.
This will lead to more unemployment and more inequality in France.
The rich will get richer, but nothing will trickle down to the poor.
Youth unemployment, the lack of a future to hope for, tends to be
concentrated in minority groups. In France that means Muslims.
That's the exact opposite of what is needed to discourage Islamist
radicalization.
Let's hope it is Mélanchon rather than Le Pen that gets the support
of the victims in the next French election.
Telegram is cooperating with Iran on censorship
of certain topics
including "anti-religious" material. Maybe stallman.org.
Isn't Telegram supposed to offer end-to-end encryption?
If that works, how can it tell whether messages are anti-religious?
How can it tell whether they are pornography?
Business wants to
expand fracking in the US,
and export the gas in ships to Europe, to make plastic.
This is so wasteful it is crazy.
The oil that is made into plastic is not burnt; it doesn't turn into
greenhouse gases. But fracking leaks methane, so it adds to the
greenhouse effect.
Since plastic gets into the ocean and kills sea life, we need to make
less of it. A higher price would have that effect.
The UK made a political decision not to prosecute a thug that
shot an unarmed man dead.
The government admitted its decision was made to avoid disapproval by
other armed thugs. If that is accepted as a reason not to prosecute,
it will give thugs carte blanche to kill.
Everyone:
call on the new president of South Korea
to start
negotiations with North Korea about nuclear disarmament and peace.
Naomi Klein warns that Republicans will now try to
equate all opposition activities,
such as protest and resistance, with murder.
US citizens: call on Senator Richard Burr to
stop interrupting Senator Kamala Harris.
Saboteur of Education DeVos
sabotaged the new rules
to protect students
from for-profit colleges.
Not surprising that the troll wanted this, since he owned such a
school. He
settled with the students who were suing him
for cheating them.
The "education" offered by such colleges
is often lousy and useless
for any career.
The saboteurs of land management arbitrarily
delayed the new limits on methane emissions
from oil and gas wells.
The troll's saboteurs are doing permanent damage to the US and the
ecosphere by
selling more fracking leases.
This sort of sabotage is very hard to undo.
WIPO is still trying to set up a super-copyright
covering any group's cultural traditions.
Culture is for appropriating. The injustice is that companies such as
Disney can for such a long time stop people from appropriating
commercially generated important parts of world culture.
The Democratic Party can only win if it becomes Liberal again
instead of following the phony "center".
This requires defending the word "Liberal" instead of attacking it.
That is why I refuse to call plutocratist politicians such as Clinton
"Liberal", and why I disagree when people attack "Liberals" (which
includes me) based on what right-wing Democrats do.
Those who argue that firing Comey wasn't obstruction of justice
are
focusing on minor details
and then stretching their significance.
Republicans want to allow banks to
gamble with our money,
dump the
losses on us, provoke new global financial crises, lay traps with
mortgages, commit fraudulent foreclosures again, and disguise their
racial bias.
In Denmark, riding a bike to school alone is not merely permitted,
it's
an explicit goal of urban planning.
The troll regime is now
deporting authorized immigrants,
Christians from Iraq, back to Iraq where they face almost certain death.
Governor Snyder
evaded possible prosecution for Flint's poisoned water
by refusing to talk to investigators.
Forensic psychological profiling is unscientific, and useless for
finding criminals,
according to psychologists
who have studied the practice.
American student Otto Warmbier visited North Korea and was imprisoned
for some meaningless "crimes". Recently he was allowed to return to
the US, and it was discovered that
he has been in a coma for a year.
I am no neurologist, but I get the impression it is unlikely he
will ever be conscious again.
Were you thinking of visiting North Korea? I am curious about it,
but I won't take the foolish risk of going there. I can learn about the
place from what others write, and I recommend you do the same.
This sort of treatment is not limited to North Korea. US prisons have
practices that systematically
deny prisoners needed medical care,
such as saying it is too dangerous/inconvenient/whatever to let
them see a doctor, refusing to believe they are sick, or insisting
they have only minor ailments rather than cancer until it is too late.
But they don't go as far as covering up for a year that a prisoner is
permanently unconscious.
The US mainstream media are trying to convince Americans to
regard Corbyn as unclean and suspect.
They don't want is influence to help Sanders.
A decades-long right-wing campaign has produced a
perverse variant of Christianity
that cites the bible to argue for contempt for the poor.
The European Court of Justice gave a
victory to the copyright industry
by equating torrent trackers with actual redistribution of copies.
The result might be to enforce blocking of torrent sites. That would
be very unfortunate for people in Europe.
Aside from sharing copies between people, the only form of
distribution of movies today that is not oppressive is by sale or
rental of DVDs. That is just barely not oppressive, because there is free
software that can play a DVD.
Some parts of
the US just got a taste of very hot weather
that will be
common a few decades from now.
The troll's planned EPA cuts will
hit America's most vulnerable.
Millenials were taught to take initiative and not trust their
employers.
Naturally, they keep leaking.
The US will sell fighter jets to Qatar, after the troll
just endorsed the Salafi Arabian blockade of Qatar.
The Republicans, led by the troll, have
encouraged political violence
against Democrats since almost a year ago.
One suggested using guns to do it.
They are also repeatedly
violent against reporters,
too.
Today someone who opposes the Republicans shot at some SCROTUS, and
some Republicans have
the gall to claim Democrats fomented this.
It's clear what must have happened, though. The shooter loathed
Republican policies, and had violent tendencies; after seeing plenty
of right-wing violence and Republican incitement, he turned it around
at them.
If Republican leaders have human decency, they will learn the lesson
to stop inciting political violence.
Gianforte's humble apology
set an example that others can follow.
I don't expect many will do this, because it would require a complete
reversal of attitude.
Republicans have rejected the Golden Rule, dehumanized everyone else,
and set out to take and hold power no matter what damage it does to
America and Americans. Probing how far they can go in violence is
just one part of that.
Everyone: call on the Golden State Warriors sports team
to refuse to visit the troll
at the White House.
But they shouldn't simply stay away. They should hold a protest
across the street!
US citizens:
sign this petition
calling on Senate Republicans to show us their revised Dontcare bill.
Everyone: call for
full pursuit of justice
against the thugs involved in killing Jordan Edwards.
In the UK, officials often tell homeless immigrants their children can
have housing
if the parents give them up.
When the same officials are confronted about this, they deny it, but
it's clear they are lying.
Many of these immigrants can get permission to live in the UK, after a
lengthy process during which they have to
starve on the street.
This is the standard Tory pattern of
kicking weak people while they are down:
rather than make a careful decision, seize any excuse to be
harsh, and
inflict cruel punishment.
US citizens:
phone your senators
to object to the Republicans' secret Dontcare bill.
Guns are dangerous,
to the people that carry them and to others who
are near them.
Considerable fractions of the troll's supporters are
having doubts about him.
If this continues, it will encourage SCROTUS to protect him less.
Every Democrat should
support Medicare for all.
US citizens: Call on all US elected officials to
defend press freedom.
New York rushes to enact terrible
right of publicity law.
Australia will pay any amount of money to cover up its
cruel treatment of boat people.
Deporting foreigners before they have a chance to appeal
has been ruled illegal in the UK.
Michigan officials have been charged with involuntary manslaughter
for poisoning the water in Flint.
I suspect Governor Snyder was equally involved, and that the lower
officials are protecting him.
Tory austerity was
part of the cause of the fire
that raged through a
large apartment building in the UK.
Tory
"ripping up red tape"
was another part.
Turkish opposition politician
jailed for 25 years on spying charges.
He helped publish the news that Turkey was sending arms to jihadis in
Syria.
We see that the US disapproval of countries that "support terrorists"
is essentially arbitrary.
Some stores want to
use vision systems to personalize ads
according to demographics.
In terms of the threat of massive surveillance, this peculiar system
might be acceptable, if we could be sure that no one (not the state,
not crackers) could have access to collect its images.
Senate Republicans are secretly developing their plan to
drastically cut medical care
for millions of Americans.
The Soviet Union developed disinformation
as a form of attack in the 1920s
and practiced it intensively since then.
Ignoring sanctions against Russia,
European countries are building a pipeline to buy gas from there.
Analysis of leaks from banks shows that rich people are hiding around 30%
of their wealth. This implies that
inequality is bigger than was formerly believed.
Families in England
go without beds, cookers, clothes, even meals,
because of debt. Many of them consider suicide.
US citizens: Tell Saboteur Pruitt
not to cancel proposed regulation
of toxic pollution from exhaust and waste from power plants.
"If we stopped poaching tomorrow,
elephants would still be in big trouble."
It looks like the
US artillery is using white phosphorus
as an incendiary weapon in Iraq.
Sessions avoided inculpating the troll by
not really answering most of the questions.
Tillerson said that
Cuba has to improve its respect for human rights.
I agree that Cuba should respect human rights more. However, for Cuba
to be as good as the US on that issue, it only needs to wait a few
years for Republicans to bring the US down to Cuba's level.
Astroturf social media campaigns, to make bullshit appear accepted,
are
so cheap that any political group can use them.
The Secretary of Defense admitted
that the US is not winning in Afghanistan.
To recognize the facts is a step forward, but he can't possibly come up
with a strategy to defeat the Taliban, because the corrupt Afghan government
lacks the capacity to win no matter what the strategy. The US can prop it up
by continuing to fight there, but that will not lead to a victory.
The Taliban are perverted enemies of human rights, and I wish it were
possible to defeat them conclusively, but we have to recognize that we
can't.
Navalny was sentenced to 30 days jail
for launching a protest in Moscow.
Hundreds more were arrested and some face prosecution.
Getting permission for a protest in Russia is not easy.
Democrats
have proposed a bill
to tax businesses to cover the costs of any public assistance their
employees are eligible for.
I hope it covers indirect employees and supposed "independent
contractors". If not, it will encourage uberization.
The right-wing double standard:
supporters of the troll demand that
nobody insult him, and exaggerate the slightest reference to call it
"incitement." Meanwhile, they flaunt their own threats, and actual
violence.
The troll is making Republican officials give him
personal public obeisance.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to demand an independent
commission to investigate the connections between the cheater
and Russia.
With reports that the cheater is
thinking about firing special investigator Mueller,
this is absolutely necessary.
Worldwide use of coal declined 1.7% last year.
If it continues at this rate, in 20 years coal use will decline 30%.
I don't think that's enough to rejoice about.
The Tories' "assessments",
to determine whether disabled people are really disabled,
are idiotic and ignorant.
The idiocy makes sense when you understand it as one of many means
intended to advance the Tories' unstated goal: every penny less for
the disabled, the poor, the homeless, and the hungry is one penny more
for the elite.
Factories that make rayon in countries without effective laws
poison the air and water
because they don't bother to prevent this.
One possible partial solution is through import regulation. If all
importers of rayon are required to tell customs when they make an
order, and then every shipment is held until a certain period of time
has elapsed from the order, there would be no more pressure to speed
delivery. If a tax is imposed on every order of rayon, and it goes to
antipollution measures in factories that make rayon, the pressure to
cut costs would no longer boost pollution.
In order to be able to do this, and a thousand other things, we need
to replace plutocratic government with democratic government. We need
officials who are prepared to tell businesses, when they say they
"need" to be cruel in order to compete with other cruel businesses,
"For all we care, you can go broke. You're the 'risk-takers', right?
When you take a risk of making people sick, you henceforth take a risk
of going broke."
Oslo is
eliminating street parking in the center city
with the idea of
getting rid of most car traffic, to reduce CO2 emissions.
If this is accompanied by good enough public transportation, all
usable anonymously with cash, I'd be in favor.
US citizens:
Protect Bristol Bay salmon
from new giant mine.
Children growing up in poverty in the US find it hard to afford to see
a dentist.
Occasionally one dies from this.
Lesser disease problems are widespread.
What the working conditions are like
making clothing for Ivanka Trump
to sell.
France and the UK both want to
force tech companies to impose censorship
according to their specifications. This time the specific target is
Islamist ideology, but the use of words such as "inflammatory" shows
they aim to suppress more.
They also want to work together to abolish privacy of communications
world-wide.
Once privacy and freedom of speech are rejected as principles, what
target will be next? Corbyn? Quoting
Aneuran Bevan?
Will saying that global heating is likely to kill billions of people,
and that the victims have the right to fight to prevent killing them,
be forbidden too?
There could be one good effect. Since global heating denial promotes
mass murder, that too could be censored. Austerity policies kill far
more people, in the US and UK, than terrorism. (It may not be true in
France because it is not so right-wing — but Macron may establish
that.) If publications arguing for austerity and neoliberalism were
banned, it might become more difficult to radicalize people to become
Tories or Republicans.
Even so, I am still opposed to censorship. Respecting freedom of
speech includes letting people say things that we despise.
Maryland and Washington DC have sued the troll
for violations of the Constitution. They demand release of the
troll's tax returns so that the violations can be measured.
Democrats in Congress are suing too.
Jeremy Corbyn has won the first battle
in a long war against the ruling elite.
US citizens:
Phone
certain key Republican senators to oppose
the Dontcare bill.
The US military is
trying a secret briefing
to convince senators to support arms for Salafi Arabia to bombard
Yemen. Doing it in secret means they can present a one-sided picture
and no one else will be able to call them on it.
By its secrecy,
the FBI blocks us from judging
whether through incompetence it allowed the massacre in Orlando to
occur.
Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Russia,
after Navalny.
Ben Jacobs responds
to Greg Gianforte's sentence and apology for
attacking him.
The Tories plan to continue
crushing the NHS to their last gasp or power.
Britons are dying from this. I suggest to their families and friends:
don't mourn, organize!
Argentine women whose fathers murdered dissidents in the 1970s
have condemned them publicly,
to counter a wave of support for the military
government.
Gianforte pled guilty to a fairly minor crime. Should immigrants be
deported for such crimes?
The UN special rapporteur has criticized Japan
for political pressure on journalists.
The UN recognized once again that
Ireland's abortion laws violate human rights,
specifically in the case where they apply to a fetus
that will be born dead.
In many countries, including the UK, women riding bicycles
frequently face condemnation and violent attacks.
Several European countries want to
force companies to censor the public.
Fearing huge fines, they will censor in the strictest way they can
imagine.
EU citizens: The European Parliament is considering a directive that
could attack computer users' freedom in several ways.
Please call your MEPs!
Records show girl begged for her life as officers
dehydrated her to death.
It's standard practice for US prisons to find excuses to deny prisoners
medical care, then lie about it when that results (as it sometimes does)
in death or permanent injury.
Facebook's app listens all the time, to snoop on what people are
listening to or watching. In addition,
it may be recognizing their conversations.
The troll admitted in court that he made a practice of telling
journalists — falsely — that he was taping their interviews, and said
it was to "intimidate" them.
I don't think it is wrong for the interviewee to tape an interview.
After all, journalists generally do so. If you worry about being
misrepresented, taping the interview is an effective precaution. I
don't see why this should intimidate, but that's how the troll saw it.
Amazon delays order processing
for customers that have not paid a subscription fee for "prime"
delivery.
Cars concentrate toxic pollution, often to a level ten times that in
the outside air. Thus, being driven to and from school
harms children's health,
and their ability to concentrate.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to repeal PAT RIOT Act Section 702
which allows for mass surveillance, in practice even of Americans.
Russia arrested Alexei Navalny
half an hour before his protest rally was supposed to
start. Meanwhile, they couldn't rent a stage and PA system, because
the government told every company to refuse to rent to them.
This sort of contempt for democracy has been standard practice for
Putin
since 10 years ago.
A Republican senator tried to pretend that if you say "I hope" when
trying to stop an investigation,
it isn't obstruction of justice.
Paul Ryan said
we should forgive the troll because he's "new to this".
However, bullying and threatening is nothing new for him.
The troll threatens to wipe out iconic species
by allowing development in their migration corridors.
People connected with the oil industry
just don't get the point.
Analysts think they are predicting a good future when they forecast .5%
annual growth in use of oil.
Spreading paranoia to American parents keeps getting more and more
exaggerated —
including fear of totally nonexistent dangers.
Excessive weight, even when it doesn't reach the point of obesity,
kills millions of people each year.
If only it were not so hard to avoid.
The Tories say that only they are "strong and stable" enough
to fix the messes they keep making.
A year ago, the richest 8 men owned as much as the poorer half of
humanity.
As inequality grows,
the richest 5 men now own almost as
much as the poorer half of humanity.
Those men claim to deserve this great wealth because of the benefit
that their work has provided to humanity, but the benefit is not so much
and they depended on others (some of whom they ripped off).
The article embodies confusion and ignorance where it uses the term
"intellectual property".
I think the events in question involved
copyright, and only copyright.
Finland works, quietly, to
bury its nuclear reactor waste.
Texas prison thugs killed a prisoner
by boiling his brain, as the heat
in his cell gave him a fatal fever.
The water in the prison is unsafe to drink, so drinking more to stay
cool is dangerous too.
Statistics from a few years ago showed that around 50 people a day died
from effects of heat.
Fishing and and toxic wastes (including CO2) endanger species that live
in the deep ocean.
Soon mining may do that too.
One mine, at a volcanic vent, could wipe out a species that lives only
there.
Deep sea mining can be very useful — it could end some of the wars
over "conflict minerals" and reduce the pollution of the land.
But only if it is done safely.
Perhaps we should limit deep sea mining to collection of nodules by
robots that can pick them up one at a time. Not by dragging nets
along the sea bottom!
US citizens: Support
the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The UN special rapporteur condemned Australia
for "inhuman" treatment of boat people.
Don't let Islamists, even nonviolent ones, go unchallenged
in speaking to or for Muslims in general.
Tillerson called for an end to the blockade of Qatar; immediately after,
the troll spoke in favor of it.
I don't suppose Tillerson liked this. If this continues, he might
resign, or turn state's evidence.
The troll
meets the standards for impeachment charges
that were asserted against Nixon and Bill Clinton.
How the troll's active supporters post blatant lies and
then spread them around the internet.
This is what protects the body of his supporters from all the scandals
the troll regularly produces: they don't believe the truth.
Those supporters include crackers, who
steal the Twitter accounts of real people
and use them to spread their lies, attributing them to
other real people.
Please don't use the word "hackers" to refer to people that break
computer security.
Facebook's new patent suggests that Facebook may be planning to use
the computer's camera
to detect its useds' emotions.
It might already be doing so.
US citizens:
tell the Senate
to reject the Poison Our Waters Act.
Massive surveillance enables the few real potential terrorists
to hide in a haystack of data.
This injustice is sold to us as a way to catch terrorists, but even if
it really worked it wouldn't justify the offense against our freedom.
Since in fact it doesn't work, let's end it with no further ado.
The sensible way to find the few terrorists
is to listen
when their friends and relatives warn that they are dangerous.
Puerto Ricans voted almost entirely to request statehood in the US,
but since only 23% of them voted at all,
it doesn't really signify much.
Right-wingers think freedom of speech includes
freedom to intimidate others
into silence.
On Saturday there were rallies in the US to condemn Shari'a law.
Some civil rights groups denounced the marches.
Here's an idea for another response: suggest that other people join
the rallies to condemn, more generally, religion-based denial of human
rights. Then it would cover the intolerant Christians, Hindus and
Jews as well as intolerant Muslims.
There could be more of these broadeners than the number of right-wing
division-spreaders.
For Labour to win the next UK election, the "right-wingers" that tried to
remove him as leader must accept him as the leader, and his policies
too, and
stop trying to find fault with him.
If they had given him support before, Labour might have won this time.
They have now more or less recognized he can lead the party, but some
of them are still attacking his traditional Labour policies and
demanding more right-wing policies. Corbyn can surely judge better
than I, but it seems to me that they will never really support the
revived Labour party.
We have a similar problem in the US, with the right-wing "centrist"
establishment Democrats. Sanders says
they have learned nothing
from their defeat, and are still fighting to keep Wall Street in
power.
NAFTA has a special provision
that says Canada cannot reduce its oil exports to the US.
Saudi Arabia is destabilizing the world.
And especially Indonesia.
I call it "Salafi Arabia", for spreading the harsh and rigid Salafi
form of Islam.
Why the UK
should not allow the bully to visit.
It is misguided, though, to worry about danger to the "special
relationship" between the UK and the US. The name of that kind of
relationship is "submission", and it facilitated Dubya's conquest and
occupation of Iraq.
British condemnation
was too much for Trump,
who has put the visit to the UK on hold.
The sex offender registry treats any sexual crime as
far worse than murder.
US citizens:
call on the Senate
not to cut off US medical care funding.
US citizens:
Oppose anti-abortion nominees
for federal judgeships.
Naomi Klein's latest book aims to show people
how to fight the troll.
She previously explained the way plutocrats exploit economic and
social shocks. The troll makes his own shocks every day, to give them
something to exploit.
A study of many body camera recordings
show that Oakland thugs are generally polite to whites, and generally
much less so to blacks. Although circumstances affect their behavior,
that starts from the racist base.
A team of thugs in Georgia entered a high school with no warrant,
locked 900 students into rooms, then
sexually assaulted many of them.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to demand answers from Sessions about
his relations with Russia and his involvement in the Flynn scandal.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to start now to impeach the saboteur-in-chief.
Thousands of families in Flint are
threatened with eviction
because they
can't afford the high prices charged for water that made them sick.
This is what Republicans do when they get a chance. It was Governor
Synder and Michigan Republicans that imposed a non-accountable
government of occupation on Flint, and the occupation officials
poisoned the water to save money. Now they plan to make families
homeless to save money.
Delaware has repealed
all state-level restrictions on abortion,
including allowing teenage women to get abortions without anyone
else's approval.
Chicken processing companies claim that
their own inspections
will maintain safety better than government-run inspections. But
they evidently are not confident of this statement, since they want
the fact that they run their own inspections to be secret.
I think that the US government is putting the fox in charge of our
hen house. Note that this started under Obama. While he wasn't a
bully and a bigot like the troll, he was no great shakes for defending
people against abuses by businesses. I am proud not to have voted for
him.
The troll could commit a crime
if he keeps trying to punish
or intimidate Comey.
A Pakistani man has been
sentenced to death for a statement
that supposedly insulted Muhammad. I wonder what he actually said.
Can anyone send me an English translation? If you encrypt it to my
GPG key (stallman.org/gpg.html), and mine alone, and put something
irrelevant in the Subject field, no one in Pakistan will be able to
tell what you sent me.
People should stay away from Pakistan except for vital humanitarian
missions.
Cambodia has
charged Australian documentarist James Ricketson with spying.
Oil and gas companies
must stop burning the fossil fuel that isn't
worth collecting.
We should require them to collect all the hydrocarbons that come out
of the well, and if that makes the well too expensive to run, they
should shut it.
Of course, we should charge them a lot more than that.
We need a carbon tax.
People in the US that don't have government ID are
locked out of many
aspects of life. Even visiting government offices to try to get
replacement ID.
To require people to prove a permanent address to get ID is a direct
and intolerable injustice to homeless people. But the injustice here
is deeper and broader than that. The US is being converted, step by
step, into a state where everyone must be identified. To fix this
problem we must eliminate the ID requirements for many of these
activities — starting with visiting government offices.
The US government is leaving it up to big IT companies to decide
the
future of computing — to their advantage over us.
The article doesn't go far enough. We need to do more than just
participate
in the development of AI, through our democratic state (as it ought to
be);
we need to legislate to stop it from being used to subjugate people.
As British Muslims pour out anger and rejection at the few terrorists
in their midst, the Britons in general must seize the opportunity to
solidify an alliance with them against extremism.
Turkey now blocks Wikipedia
— a sign that tyranny is consolidating its grip.
Venezuela's suppression forces
are now gratuitously violent,
shooting tear gas containers and metal marbles at protesters' heads
and killing them.
They are acting much like the US
suppression forces
that were used against pipeline protesters,
and
like Israeli soldiers against Palestinian protesters.
I think they all reflect the attitude of
authoritarian followers
towards anyone who doesn't bow down to the master.
Sad to say, Maduro is right in saying that the US wants to enable
multinationals to exploit Venezuela's resources. However, Maduro is
also exploiting them.
Venezuela needs another opposition, a Chavista opposition.
Election campaigns in the UK (as in the US)
are based on lies
told privately to one potential supporter at a time.
It isn't always successful, but it is always dishonest.
Political campaigning organizations should be required to publish
anything they send or show to supporters who are not paid staff.
If the Tories depend on the extremist, theocratic Protestant party of
Ulster,
it could re-stimulate Ulster terrorism.
A high school in New Jersey
censored student artwork that mocked the troll.
The student who appreciates the publicity this got him is not mistaken
about its useful consequences, but if he wants to build resistance to
the troll, he's making a mistake about how to go about it.
What these students should do is publicly denounce the school and its
principal, and demand to confront those who operated behind the scenes
to pressure for their work to be censored.
It might also be effective to replace their art works with big "This
piece was censored" signs.
Corbyn's huge advance
shows that progressives can win on a progressive
platform. Democrats must stop aiming for "centrist" right-wing
positions.
Those that do so are not simply choosing the position they think
people will vote for. It's also a question of getting funds from
various businesses and rich people: corruption, in other words.
Even when they see that progressives can win, they may continue
to oppose the progressives for the sake of their paymasters.
We will have to push them out.
If Trump is
too ignorant to be guilty,
he's too ignorant to be President.
More suspicion about Sessions' actions
in relation to Flynn and Russia.
Brazil's corrupt President Temer
escaped from corruption charges.
This is a bad blow to all hopes for Brazil. Temer and his corrupt
allies seek to cut down the Amazon rain forest and crush the poor.
The troll wants to deport 1300 people
whom courts had already decided not to deport.
US citizens:
file a comment with the FCC for Net Neutrality
if you haven't done so already.
White House Releases Transcript of Trump and Comey Dinner Meeting (not).
The troll acts like a mafioso,
but not like a competent and successful one.
Sanders: Corbyn surge in UK shows world
rising up against austerity, inequality.
US citizens:
tell the Senate
not to let the troll pick a new FBI director.
Sessions wants to prohibit secure encryption
in the name of ending enslavement of prostitutes,
but this is a red herring. When the government looks for enslaved
prostitutes, it finds few of them. What Sessions wants is to crush
what remains of privacy in the US.
Students at Evergreen State College are competing to take anti-racist
campaigns
to the most extreme possible degree.
Comey's testimony says
he believes Pence lied
when he said he didn't
know about Flynn's meetings with Russia.
In several states,
prisoners are forced to work unpaid
for the
personal convenience of elected officials.
It is pointless to condemn Clinton personally for accepting in the
1980s a practice which was not controversial at the time. Instead of
that distraction, it's better to focus on the practice itself. We
should stop coercing prisoners to work on anything other than running
the prison, and if they do do such work they should get the same wage
as free labor. They should also be allowed to join the union for such
work.
Russian Parliament moves ahead with
banning anonymity on messenger apps.
The troll's
plan to privatize highways and everything else
would give companies a free hand to run them into the ground.
The deals would probably be set up so that there is no way to undo
them without paying the companies 10 times what they put in. We might need
a constitutional amendment to make it easy to undo them. Or perhaps
a new form of eminent domain can be established for taking back anything
that was privatized, in which the temporary private owner would get
back the amount that it paid, minus however much it has extracted
from the property since then.
Funny how right-wingers say you can't trust the state to do anything right,
except what it comes to
imprisoning people based on their ethnicity.
Naomi Klein: we must take the offensive
against the plutocrats' agenda,
which would drive most Americans into poverty and sickness as corporations
tread people underfoot, using every possible shock as an excuse.
Reporting on
the pros and cons of privatizing air traffic control.
I am sure the main airlines will abuse their increased power.
Miami's thugs tried to pull a fast one by getting approval for some
new surveillance in a very vague way. Then it was discovered that they
wanted to fly planes over the city to track everyone all the time.
Efforts to reverse the vote
have a chance of success.
Give those weasels an inch, and they take a mile.
Large fishing companies have
agreed to protect fish stocks
and put an end to slave labor on fishing boats.
Turning this into real change will not be trivial.
Salmon farmers are trying to use wrasse as cleaners to eliminate the
sea lice that plague farmed salmon. They are catching so many wrasse
that
they are putting that species in danger.
Uncrewed cargo ships may reduce accidents.
On the other hand, they will pass by sailors in distress without any way
to notice and aid them.
The EU wants to set up
its own version of PRISM,
which is how the FBI gets personal data directly from companies' servers.
"The cloud" is just a way of saying "Don't ask who, where, or which
agencies have has access." Don't be a fool — don't trust anything so
cloudy.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to say, don't let Sessions off
the hook for
plans to fill up private prisons.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
On every anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, The Chinese
state
arrests
survivors and their families. It is hard for people in China to
learn, or even remember, what happened there.
The Tories will try to rule with the support of a Northern Ireland
party of
religious
fanatics that consort with terrorists.
One of the fanatical party's ministers is
trying
to bully a museum into promoting denial of evolution.
The troll's "infrastructure plan" means
more
toll roads, more privatized water systems, and more Enrons. To
the extent it is actually possible.
The head of the NSA
refused
to tell Congress how many Americans the NSA spies on.
Danish ISPs will
no
longer disclose subscriber identities to copyright trolls.
It is a step forward, but we need to legalize sharing.
Missouri's voter ID law says that the state will fund giving all
eligible voters ID so they can vote. But the state
didn't
do so.
Corbyn's "centrist" detractors called him a radical and predicted he would
cause big losses for Labour. He has
proved
them totally wrong.
They may have convinced themselves of their claims, but it was obvious
to me that they were
straining
the truth, and making foolish assumptions, to discredit Corbyn.
The right-wing media also
couldn't
stop him.
Corbyn's success shows that it is
possible
for Sanders to win.
Russia is
considering
a bill to ban VPNs and Tor, and make ISPs block access to them.
This means Russia is trying to make censorship of foreign sites
essentially impossible to violate.
Labour made big gains in the UK election and has
stopped
the Tories from having a majority of Parliament.
This advance is due to
Corbyn
and the anti-austerity Labour manifesto, as well as to the lousy
Tory campaign which revealed its shortcomings.
Although Corbyn's Labour didn't win a majority, it achieved an
almost
record fraction of votes.
Previous Labour leaders were
"convinced
that if the public saw their true political nature they’d lose that
election that they ended up losing anyway."
Either Trump or Comey is lying. The idea that it is Comey is not credible.
Why Trump's So-Called Infrastructure Plan Is Good for Wall Street But Bad for
America
President Maduro is splitting Chavistas between those that are loyal
to Chavez' legacy and those that are more concerned with keeping power.
SCROTUS in the House of Representatives passed the CHOICE Act, which gives banksters the choice to cheat Americans and cause
another financial disaster.
Republican senators' highest priority, as Comey testified, was to defend their
megalomaniac point man.
US minimum wage workers can't afford to rent a one-bedroom apartment.
The minimum-wage increases some cities and states have approved won't
fix the problem.
Right-wing liars game Google Search so that their false news articles
fill the search results, pushing everything else down out of sight.
Kansas Republicans voted to undo their right-wing "experiment" in tax
cuts that proved disastrous for the state and its people.
A former EPA official is under investigation for colluding with
Monsanto to pervert the decisions about glyphosate. The official was
the head of the committee in charge of judging whether glyphosate should
be banned as carcinogenic.
Dallas has paid compensation to Robert Groden, for trying to harass him
to stop handing out leaflets in Dealey Plaza stating claims about
the assassination of President Kennedy.
The troll's nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs has shown an inclination to try to block regulations to
protect Americans' health.
Hundreds of American women are shot each year by their husbands/lovers.
It's a much bigger danger than terrorism.
Virus-writers are passing commands to a virus in
comments on photos on Instagram.
I'm afraid this will lead to shutting off commenting across the net.
Over 7% of the babies whose mothers catch zika early in pregnancy have
birth defects.
At present, the only known way to prevent those birth defects is not
to have a baby under such circumstances.
Saudi Arabia's real priority in the blockade of Qatar is to close al
Jazeera.
UK thugs have been unable to stop terrorist plots, even though they knew
of the participants as vaguely leaning towards extremism. There was no visible
difference between those few who became real terrorists and thousands of other
who have not done so.
Moreover, the methods that Theresa May proposes to "get tough" would not help.
US citizens: phone your senators at 202-224-3121 to oppose the sneaky
Republican attempt to destroy Medicaid and Obama's medical coverage
plan (and give the rich a big tax cut).
The UK and US have supported jihadi groups in Syria and Libya, as well
as states such as Salafi Arabia and Qatar that have supported jihadis
elsewhere. The result is
terrorism.
The head of Australia's human rights commission warns of
government
threats to freedoms of speech and advocacy.
Israel lied to the US about the start of the six-day war,
claiming
that Egypt had started bombarding Israel, according to someone
that was a CIA analyst at the time.
Egypt had in fact attacked Israel, by blockading the port of Elath.
Theresa May wants to impose
broad
censorship of undesirable political opinion, as well as impose
something approximating incommunicado house arrest without trial.
The Theater of Security Agency hopes to reduce its failure rate for
identifying weapons and bombs
turning
airport security into a slow and difficult procedure for everyone.
Will we be required to remove all paper money from our bags?
That would cause lots of theft.
Trump is very much like Mussolini, and
could
impose fascist power in the US.
Verizon tries to make customers move to fiber communications by
refusing
to fix copper wire facilities. In Pennsylvania the state forced
Verizon to agree to fix them.
Fiber allows faster internet connection, but it also means that your
phone will stop working some hours after a power failure.
Lawyers disagree about whether the troll's conduct, as reported
by Comey, goes far enough to amount to
obstruction
of justice.
Comey has testified about how the bully
tried
to pressure him to let Flynn off the hook.
A summary of the
important
points.
The full text of his
testimony.
Several current high officials
refused
to testify to the senate.
However, one had told other people that the troll had asked him to
try
to make Comey pull back on his investigation.
The troll has nominated a new FBI director with
ties
to the troll's election campaign.
350.org's
plan
to defeat the global heating denialists.
The Tories have used dishonest and deceptive ads
to falsely criticize Corbyn.
With constantly growing warehouse space, the Inland Empire of California
is getting more and more polluted
with increasing truck traffic.
How about building a railroad to carry cargo to the Los Angeles area?
The big bully is inspiring students all around the US
to bully students from all sorts of minority groups.
Schools should tell students that Trump is a bully, that it's wrong
to do what he does, and if he were a student he would be told to stop
or else be sent home.
An armed rebellion in England 200 years ago was provoked by an
undercover government agent
sent by contemptuous Tories.
It's amazing how many things are still the same today.
Gianforte apologized at length
for attacking reporter Ben Jacobs.
It is chilling to realize that many Republicans today
wouldn't apologize for attacking a reporter or a dissident.
Just after Iran suffered an act of Islamist terrorism,
the US plans
to put more sanctions on it.
Iran supports terrorism through the fatwa against Salman Rushdie,
but compared to what Salafi Arabia does, and has done, that's minuscule.
In South Sudan, teenage girls are
sold by their families as brides in exchange for cows.
Once married they are subject to violence.
Nothing will enable all the children to survive in a violent place
where families have seven children. It's up to rich countries to
provide women in South Sudan with the birth control they need to avoid
that.
The tracking dots code that identifies printers
gives the US government tremendous power
to identify people for any reason. Since this power was established
secretly, we have to worry that other kinds of devices have secretly
been redesigned to spy on everyone.
Snowden explains how the Espionage Act
unfairly stacks the deck against Reality Winner.
Brazilian tribal leader tours Europe to plead for help
to stop killings and land grabs.
The troll's lawyer
demands an investigation of Comey
for "leaking" with his testimony.
The troll's overall response is a general campaign of blackwhiting.
(See 1984 for the definition of "blackwhiting".)
US citizens:
call
on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
US citizens:
call
on plutocratist Democrats to give away the campaign contributions
they received from Kushner and anyone else connected with the troll.
Venezuela's opposition says that thugs are
robbing
protesters.
I believe the accusations, but they probably have nothing directly to
do with President Maduro. Thugs in Venezuela have been crooked since
long before Chavez. He was unable to make them stop, but neither
could anyone else.
While Chavez was president, the head of a state agency I worked with
told me he had been (in effect) held for ransom by thugs, who stopped
him as he was driving and made up charges against him on the spot.
The fact that he was the head of a state agency didn't help him to
escape.
The infant caused a lot of trouble by
insulting
the ruler of Qatar while a major US base is located there.
Civilian casualties from US bombing in Syria and Iraq have
gone
way up due to the troll's changes in policies.
Indeed, we don't really know how many they are, only a lower bound for
them.
A charity that feeds people with rejected food
faces
prosecution for using food that has past its sell-by date.
That's an absurd excuse: food does not become unsafe after that date,
nor even unpalatable.
The NSA made the world vulnerable to WannaCry by
saving
up bugs to use for attack rather than getting them fixed.
Humans need nature
both
biologically and psychologically. But we are wiping it out.
Stop Legitimizing 'Conservatism': It's Not an Ideology — It's a
Goddamn
Death
Machine.
I have to point out that many of the Western ideas of human rights are
not thousands of years old: they were formulated in the 1700s, or even
later. However, that doesn't invalidate the point.
A scheme to compensate victims of bank fraud in the UK is so
sloppy
that one of the victims says it is a "sham".
The US under Obama
knew
early on that cholera was introduced to Haiti by the UN
coup-maintaining forces, and covered it up to shield the UN from
criticism.
US thug departments photograph everyone they arrest, and often publish
the photos directly to sites that use them for a sort of
extortion.
An example of the
total
confusion and nonsense that results if you suppose that the term
"intellectual property" has a concrete meaning.
Here's why it
doesn't have
one.
US agencies say that Russian crackers planted a false news story
which
led to economic warfare between Salafi Arabia and Qatar.
It seems that the US agencies want to avoid the economic warfare,
while the troll desired it.
The Malaysian state has disappeared foreigners
that were trying to preach second-class religions in Malaysia.
Malaysia is definitively opposed to religious freedom,
in particular for anyone who was at one time a Muslim,
or for anyone of Malay descent (since the state presumes they
are all Muslims regardless of what they say).
The troll's fast-track deportation court, inside an immigration
prison,speeds deportation by
making it difficult for the prisoners to get legal representation or advice.
Their families can't find them, let alone find them lawyers, and
they don't know whether their relatives are alive or dead.
Many women in Central America flee to Mexico
to escape husbands
that want to kill them. They have no other place to look for safety.
Erdoğan has
arrested 23 lawyers,
including the local head of Amnesty International, on the vague
accusation that they have ties with Gülen.
The claim seems implausible in the case of someone who works for
Amnesty International, but that's a side issue. Merely having some
sort of relationship with Gülen's system of religious schools would
not be valid grounds to arrest someone.
Israel has blocked electricity for Gaza,
so its wastewater treatment plants are shut down. The intense
pollution of the Mediterranean by untreated sewage has spread to
Israel's coast and is making desalination plants shut down, thus
leaving Israel short of water.
British Muslim clerics are
showing their disgust for Muslim terrorists
by refusing to carry out funerals for them.
The US government persecutes even legal whistleblowers,
because the laws against retaliation have gaps and are hard to
enforce.
A leaked document shows that
the NSA investigated apparent Russian attempts
to take control of some US voting systems before the 2016
election.
Assuming this document was not intended as a red herring, it means
that the NSA is sincere about suspecting Russian sabotage attempts.
The person who leaked the document is
Reality Winner,
who will probably be imprisoned for 10 years for it.
If it takes the knowledge and careful planning of a Snowden
to leak documents to the public and not be imprisoned, we won't
have enough whistleblowers, and
that turns democracy into an empty shell.
Snowden: prosecution of an alleged source for journalism on a charge
of "espionage" is
a threat to the free press.
Maybe that's why the troll did it. He is against almost everything
that protects Americans from his own power.
I think The Intercept showed bad practices in handling the letter it
received. It should have shredded the envelope before reading what
was inside.
UK thugs picked someone out of a crowd
using automatic face recognition. We are one step closer to an
irresistible tyranny.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate fossil fuel tax breaks.
Planet-roaster governments are spending less on renewable energy, but new capacity is increasing fast because the construction costs have dropped.
We now produce 24% of electricity using renewable methods, but we need
to produce around 100% that way. That means an increase in capacity
of 300% of the present total. And since electricity is only a part of
our use of fossil fuels, we need to increase capacity even more to
replace fossil fuels for trapsport.
That means we have a long way to go, and we don't have a long time
to do it.
We need to smash the dominion of the fossil fools before they kill us.
Thailand has put Burmese migrant workers on trial for complaining about the
horrible working conditions imposed on them.
By accusing them of theft of a timecard, which they presented as evidence,
the Thai state shows it is a state of repression that has no shame.
I urge people not to visit Thailand except for important humanitarian
reasons.
The troll wants to privatize state assets, so that companies can put tolls on their use.
The Republican Party did recruiting at a right-wing extremist rally.
In the UK, 1/3 of workers have insecure working situations and don't know if they will be able to pay their bills the next week. This is what unethical eployers want.
The US arms industry effectively buys the votes of senators
deciding
whether to approve an arms sale to a repressive theocratic regime
such as Salafi Arabia.
Should we condemn individual senators for selling their votes,
or the system that pressures them to do this?
Both! Of course, both!
We can forgive people who are in positions of weakness for yielding to
the pressures of the system, except when they do something egregious.
However, someone as powerful as a senator can never plead, "the system
made me do it."
Colorado is doing lots of good with the
100 million dollars of tax
revenue from marijuana.
Tobin Smith, formerly on the O'Reilly program on Faux News, says
that
the "debates" were always rigged,
and that the shows were
calculated for emotional manipulation of the audience.
The troll wants to authorize
using explosions in the Atlantic Ocean
(the sound from which will deafen whales at great distances) to find
oil to extract,
thus helping to wipe out most ocean life and replace
it with plastic.
That's typical extractivist behavior — use up the world as fast as possible
and never mind what does or doesn't remain afterwards.
The troll, and Republicans, are
waging war against our children.
Even children can see this.
Tariq Ramadan:
We Will Not Tackle Extremism by Stigmatising Muslim Citizens.
California State University was given an endowed chair of Middle East
studies in the name of Edward Said,
but decided not to appoint anyone
due to pressure from supporters of Israel.
We know this from the dean that had the courage to resign in response.
The troll wants to privatize US air traffic control.
The company will cut corners, such as using less skilled people as
controllers, and the result will be fatal from time to time.
Google's ad-blocker creates an opportunity for Google to
block any ads
not sold by Google.
Doctors compare
Australia's possible new giant coal mine
to tobacco.
Hooray!
But Europe still needs to kill
the business-supremacy treaty with Canada.
The troll's incompetence
fits with his leanings toward autocracy.
The incompetence can ruin the US, and its political system,
but won't
stop him from getting what he wants most.
Barrett Brown reports how
US government agencies habitually twist or
disregard the laws they are supposed to follow.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement,
it makes climate action
desperately urgent
to avoid incredible heating.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that
invading Iraq was unjustified and would
provoke terrorism.
Just recently he pointed out that we had better
stop doing more of the same.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when
they hit.
The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run
them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If
he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans.
That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there
goes through a disaster.
The Democrat running against Republican Stephen King
has withdrawn
due to death threats,
as well as Republican budget cuts imposed on the
state agency she works for.
Once Republicans see that this is effective, they will do it over and over,
in effect stealing elections by threats. Surely there is a way to
find funds for protecting her.
Apple faces trial in Australia for
bricking devices because they had had
an "unauthorized" repair.
The leader of UK's Liberal Democrats
condemned massive surveillance
as a foolish and dangerous response to occasional terrorism.
"Theresa May's 'enough is enough' risks making the extremist threat worse."
Salafi Arabia and some other Arab countries have
cut off trade and
relations with Qatar.
The troll's regime seems to be pushing Salafi
Arabia to do this.
Reportedly this is because Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood which
Salafi Arabia' monarchy hates. The other countries involved are
obeying Salafi Arabia, except perhaps for Egypt's military rulers that
hate the Muslim Brotherhood for other reasons.
Maybe it is really about the campaign to demonize Iran.
Any form of Islamist rule shows contempt for human rights. All the
regimes involved in this dispute are unjust, though the details vary.
But is there any rational reason for Americans to consider the Muslim
Brotherhood or Iran worse than Salafism? I don't see one.
Israeli leaders in 1967 had
no intention of ever letting go of the
West Bank
that Israel had just conquered. The first colony there was
set up just months after the war.
In regard to launching the war, even though Israel did not know
whether Egypt and Syria would attack, that danger was real. If Israel
had waited to be attacked, by enemies with much larger armies, it
could have lost. By attacking first, Israel took the benefit of
surprise away from its enemies. Under the circumsances, that was
justified.
A Chinese billionaire
donates to at least two rival Australian
political parties.
One senator seems to take a friendly stance
towards China in exchange for donations.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white
bigots complain that
their freedom of speech is being denied.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to
join in investigating
Exxon for climate fraud.
US insurance companies offer customers gratis "smart" security and
economy devices,
but you should not trust them.
When a product is marketed as "smart", read "treacherous spy."
Evanston's library board wants to fire librarian Lesley Williams
for criticizing the library's discriminatory practices. The community is
rallying to protect her.
Mylan, maker of the price-gouging Epipen, cheated the US government by
claiming it was a generic drug.
If we had a national health service and it negotiated the price with
each company, we wouldn't get gouged on drugs. Americans, support the
candidates that advocate this change.
Right-wing bigots are threatening lynching, by
leaving nooses as tokens of their hatred.
Speculating about corruption that might have motivated Kushner to pursue
a secret channel of communication with Russia.
A teenager who got rid of social networks
is delighted to have time
for other activities, and glad not to be bothered by "friends" that
didn't really like him.
Citizens of France: ask your candidates for elected office
to
sign the Pacte du Logiciel Libre.
A survey in Indonesia
found that nearly everyone believed that per household
was near the median income. They gravely underestimate the inequality that
really exists.
This causes real harm because people don't demand that the state act to
reduce the inequality.
They also overestimate their chances of getting wealthier than they are.
However, social mobility means that some get wealthier and some get poorer.
Increased social mobility is no excuse for leaving some people in poverty.
What we need is not more reshuffling of people on the income scale,
but to make the lives of the poorest better.
Floods in Missouri
illustrate the damage
that global heating is
already doing.
Residents of Louisiana, near chemical plants,
often get cancer.
The troll will surely help companies make more generations sick.
"Do you love your interpretation of the second amendment
more than you love your kids?"
The
"circular economy"
would mean systematically reusing products instead
of turning them into waste.
Tackling the reproducibility crisis in science.
It is of course an oversimplification to say that the state of science
at any particular time gives us "the truth". What science does is
provide a systematic method to correct errors over time. As an area
becomes heavily studied, for example global heating and (even more so)
evolution, the remaining errors get to be fewer and smaller.
I think we need universities to stop judging people by how often they
publish in "high-impact" journals.
EPA staff says that the troll's saboteurs have
effectively wrecked its efforts
to curb global heating.
US citizens: call on Congress to
keep
funding campaigns against bigotry.
As white bigots try to silence anti-racists with threats, other white
bigots complain that their freedom of speech is being denied.
A Chinese billionaire donates to at least two rival Australian
political parties. One senator seems to take a friendly stance
towards China in exchange for donations.
Americans need NOAA to track hurricanes, and FEMA to help out when
they hit. The troll has not bothered to nominate a saboteur to run
them, and instead wants to cut their budget.
The states where hurricanes tend to hit usually vote Republican. If
he causes a disaster there, he will alienate lots of Republicans.
That would be a good outcome, but it's a shame if the path there
goes through a disaster.
Corbyn, in 2003, warned that invading Iraq was unjustified and would
provoke terrorism. Just recently he pointed out that we had better
stop doing more of the same.
As the US fails to carry out the Paris agreement, it makes climate action
desperately urgent to avoid incredible heating.
Everyone: call on California's attorney general to join in investigating
Exxon for climate fraud.
EU citizens: some MEPs are trying to make the proposed internet
censorship directive
even
worse.
MEP Julia Reda talks about
how to
oppose this.
A sculpture of Theresa May was full of surveillance cameras.
A passerby attacked it with a hammer, and was fined
statue-tory damages.
Spread the word!
US citizens:
Call
on Congress to support the Improving Access to Affordable
Prescription Drugs Act.
A little
more
information about it.
Resist
the troll by divesting from fossil fuels.
The
Tories plan to sell all state-owned forests in the UK.
"This includes many royal forests, state-owned ancient woodlands,
sites of special scientific interest, heathland, campsites, farms and
sporting estates."
"Tories" and "trees" sound similar but are actually opposite.
Leaked documents
appear to say what Macedonia's intelligence agency
has learned about Russia's efforts to interfere in its politics.
The goal has been to keep Macedonia out of NATO and away from the West.
Companies such as Dow and Corning
try
to have it both ways on global heating.
Mining the ocean bottom
could
destroy ecosystems if we are not careful.
Trawling
the bottom for seafood already destroys ecosystems, and we have
not made much progress in stopping that practice.
A
new Montana law is a step forward in limiting the state's access
to people's digital messages stored in service providers.
However, it doesn't apply to metadata, and it won't protect whistleblowers.
This approach is fundamentally inadequate.
We need systems to be designed so they don't collect personal data.
US citizens: call on the Federal Election Commission to
investigate
illegal campaign contributions from a private prison company.
US citizens:
Support the
bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
We need to
stop
making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
"Lying on the floor for hours awaiting help, unable to afford both
incontinence pants and food ... This is the reality of
[Tory]
disability cuts."
War causes
moral
injury, the result of being responsible for something that turned
out to be a terrible wrong. Often this leads to suicide.
Irish Police Phone Tapping
Undermines
Citizens' Rights.
Political parties now show
different
messages to different people, based on profile. These parties are
two-faced, or perhaps three-faced or ten-faced or fifty-faced.
Leaks prove that private thugs explicitly
treated
pipeline protesters like jihadists. That's the word the thugs
used.
Idaho started using proprietary software to decide how much support to
give to Medicaid patients. It turns out that the program used a
bogus
algorithm based on a subset of the historical records, with bogus
results.
World leaders should treat the troll as a child,
not
as an adult.
Tory politicians received
luxurious gifts from Salafi Arabia. Perhaps that is the
mysterious reason why they support the Salafi
war
of aggression in Yemen.
Berta Cáceres has won a posthumous victory: the sponsors of the
dam she tried to stop have
withdrawn
funding.
Even
supermarkets
are starting to demand different prices from different customers, based
on secret algorithms.
I wonder what they will do to people like me, that don't carry a
portable tracking device.
I wonder what will happen when customer A sees price P on the price
display on the shelf, because customer B is nearby at that moment,
then gets charged a higher price.
Raimundos Oki, a journalist in East Timor, has been found not guilty
of
defamation.
It is an injustice to make defamation a crime, because that chills
journalism. The prosecutors seem to be trying to achieve that very
result.
Journalist Mohamed Adan Dirir was
imprisoned
in Somaliland for asking an inconvenient question in a press
conference.
Somaliland is a part of what was once Somalia. It avoids the Islamist
terrorism that plagues most of Somalia, but that doesn't mean human
rights are respected.
In the US, people convicted for having copies of child pornography
tend to get
longer
prison sentences than those convicted of having sex with children.
Mere possession of child pornography
should
not be a crime at all. To prosecute people for possessing
something published, no matter what it may be, is a big threat to
human rights.
The troll
tried
to eliminate US sanctions against Russia as soon as he got into
office. The effort was blocked by some employees at the State
Department.
They were joined by SCROTUS, which supports the neocons that want too
much hostility with Russia.
The troll told some federal agencies to return to the senate their
copies of the secret Senate report on CIA torture. This is part of a
plan to
destroy
it and make sure that its conclusions are forgotten.
This would be impossible if the report had been published, as it
should have been.
Exxon and Tillerson
Accused
of Defrauding Investors Over Climate Risks.
A victim of a drive-into terrorist attack is
suing
the rental company from which the vehicle was rented.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with
the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help
such people is through the National Health Service, not through
lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed
help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to
make the NHS do its job again.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship
on children,
they
teach those children that computerized surveillance and censorship are
normal.
US citizens:
tell
the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
Everyone in the US, or those who can receive the MSNBC channel: tell
the channel that you
object
to its hiring right-wing hardhearts.
The
strange
bias of US politics: by tradition, many officials are "supposed"
to be Republicans, even under Democratic presidents. As a result,
Republicans regularly have the power to intimidate Democrats, while
thumbing their noses about their own crimes and corruption.
America's Toxic Prisons: The
Environmental
Injustices of Mass Incarceration.
The idea of recognizing microexpressions to determine what people are feeling
is
based
on unverified suppositions.
The troll
mis-cited
MIT climate researchers. They insist that the Paris climate
agreement can do a lot of good, by keeping the opportunity open to do
make the larger effort that might prevent disaster.
Muslims in Burma were
arrested
for praying in the street.
How strange for that to be a crime?
Black Lives Matter activists are
becoming
concerned about being tracked by their phones.
Finally this injustice is being noticed.
Republicans are already smearing Elizabeth Warren
to
try to stop her from becoming president.
They don't hesitate to stretch the truth, or lie outright.
Over
200 noncitizens served in the US military, expecting to receive US
citizenship, and were subsequently deported.
SCROTUS plan a suite of repressive practices that will fill up federal prisons
with immigrants, most of whom won't have been any danger to anyone, and
spend
billions to keep them there.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools,
have
done
away with periods for free play. The result is that children
suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
US citizens:
Support the bill to aim for 100% renewable energy by 2050.
When panicked parents impose computerized surveillance and censorship
on children, they teach those children that computerized surveillance
and censorship are normal.
We need to stop making and using plastic — at least making it as we do now.
The company cannot be held responsible for what the renter did with
the vehicle. The victim does deserve help, but the right way to help
such people is through the National Health Service, not through
lawsuits.
After what the Tories have done to the NHS, I suppose that the needed
help is not available there. The right way to deal with that is to
make the NHS do its job again.
Denmark has repealed the law against blasphemy.
Many other
countries
still need
to do this.
Disgust for the troll used to be mixed with derision.
Now that he is carrying out his evil plans, it is hard to laugh.
The author errs in suggesting that Macron should have acted
submissively. The bully interprets that as a sign of that he can go
further and demand more. He will do this until he confronts people
that won't kowtow to him.
I suggest that other countries now negotiate a binding agreement
to supersede the nonbinding Paris climate agreement.
It should include the possibility of sanctions on non-signatories
that don't comply.
Comedian Kathy Griffin is getting death threats, as well as
cancellation of gigs, from fanatical supporters of the troll,
because
of a video in which she had an imitation of his severed head.
I don't think things have degenerated to the point where civilized
people should reply in kind to the violence and threats of the
supporters of the troll. Griffin clearly agrees, and didn't intend to
make a threat.
Making a statement that is misunderstood is not something that calls
for a humble apology: all humans sometimes speak unclearly, and there
is no need to be ashamed of that. It would have been better for
Griffin to say she regretted the misunderstanding and would take care
to avoid it in the future — while restating the intended point in
some other way that would not be misunderstood.
If you are faced with a wave of hatred from people who are offended
for an invalid reason, don't give in to the urge to apologize. The
apology harms your reputation in a way that others' threats cannot.
Salman Rushdie tried apologizing to the fanatical Muslims who
condemned The Satanic Verses, misinterpreting it based on second-hand
reports.
They did not stop trying to kill him.
Chelsea Manning disappointed me greatly when she apologized for her
act of heroic whistleblowing.
It might have got her a shorter sentence,
we can't know, but it let down the cause of other whistleblowers
that also deserve our support.
The troll has told various federal agencies to
reject congressional
Democrats's requests for information.
It's Congress's function to oversee federal agencies. They are not
human beings with a right to privacy.
When stores can identify customers, and change the price
either systematically
or at random,
there is no such thing as a price for the item.
One virtue of the market as a system for commerce is that it determines
"the right" price. If there is no longer "the price", there is no longer
a "right" price.
It is another reason to (1) resist profiling and (2) buy in physical
stores, not on the internet.
Stiglitz calls for
sanctions on exports from the "rogue state", the USA.
That's the very least other countries should do.
Others have referred to the US as a rogue state
because of its wars
and
its support for dictators around the world.
The new Left-Green government of British Columbia has announced
plans for several good changes,
and we can expect more.
Bill McKibben: The Paris climate agreement, inadequate on its face,
had a chance of building momentum that would lead to a real curb on
global heating.
Now, thanks to the troll and his stubborn idiocy, it
could unite the world in doing enough.
He also thinks that it will help defeat every denialist politician.
When Will Exxon Be Worthless? Not If.
In the US:
call on the Kansas City Royals team to
stop promoting an
antiabortion group.
Some Democratic senators
suspect Sessions of perjury, for giving false testimony to the senate during his confirmation hearing.
US public schools, forced by bad laws to compete with other schools,
have done away with periods for free play.
The result is that children suffer more stress and don't learn as well.
US citizens:
Tell the troll, "take your hands off my birth control".
The US, under Obama's half-hearted support for climate protection,
weakened the Paris climate agreement at every level.
The world would have been better off kicking the US out at the beginning.
Now the revulsion of the rest of the world may be enough to lead to
sanctions on the US fossil fuel companies, or even the US. I hope so.
With pressure from the rest of the world, we Americans may be able to
redirect our government towards protecting civilization.
On the average,
the richest .01 percent evade 1/3 of their taxes.
US visa applications will
demand so much information
that hardly anyone could get it right. Thus, everyone could be
deported for the slightest mistake,
unless the Supreme Court rules to
limit that.
The social media info is
supposedly voluntary,
but people will be scared not to provide it.
Welfare is not consumption, and taxation is not a burden.
The troll proposes to
cut a large fraction of welfare for families.
What's worse, each state could make more cuts.
The reason welfare is now called "temporary assistance" is that
President Clinton's "welfare reform" put a maximum limit on how long
each family could receive assistance. "If you're still poor after
five years, starve on the street."
Establishment Democrats continue undermining Sanders-backed progressive candidates;
then plutocratists claim it's their own weakness at fault.
"Trump asked when the world will start laughing at the US.
It already is."
For kids safety, they should slide down the playground slide alone.
Riding on a parent's lap is dangerous.
A new Green/Left government in British Columbia
vows to block a pipeline
for exporting tar sands oil.
A TV in the bedroom for a young child
tends to lead to obesity.
California's single-payer medical insurance will
increase take-home pay
for just about everyone in the state, while providing medical care
to those who don't have it.
Thugs in Salt Lake City have become less thuggish
thanks to de-escalation
training. They have not shot anyone since almost two years ago.
Texas Republicans
voted to make it a felony
to help a woman go to an
abortion clinic to get an abortion that was illegal.
When asked to reconsider, they voted for it again.
The shareholders of Exxon voted to require the company to state how
necessary future regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
will
affect the value of its assets.
This will make Exxon encounter stockholder resistance if it is reckless.
The UK's nuclear missile submarines run Windows.
Someone could crack the system while the sub is in base, and set it
up to do something later, such as launch missiles.
Just imagine ransomware in a nuclear missile submarine.
The troll's latest attack on contraception:
any employer would be allowed to pretend to a moral objection to
birth control as an excuse not to cover it.
SCROTUS passed a
bill to put teenagers in prison for 15 years
(mandatory minimum) for sexting.
Sexting should not be a crime at all.
Ketamine seems to be an effective treatment for depression,
even for patients that nothing else helps.
China's ivory ban has cut the price in half, but this has
failed to reduce the killing of elephants.
The UK Greens advocate a universal basic income.
I like the idea, but the first and crucial battle is to defeat the
plutocracy and tax the rich adequately. With that done, it would be
possible to adopt policies such as the universal basic income.
The US economy convinced 600,000 people to give up looking for work
in April and May.
The saboteur-in-chief declared that the US will not follow the Paris
climate agreement, and received
world-wide
condemnation.
The US has never been a real leader in stopping global heating
disaster:
the
planet-roasters have had too much power.
To pull out formally requires three years, but he has already
sabotaged the practical US measures needed to carry out the agreement.
Donald Trump Has Ditched the World
in
Favor of Big Oil's Titans.
Amazingly, the CEO of Goldman Sachs
condemned
the troll's decision. What's amazing is that the troll dared to
disobey Goldman Sachs.
Vicente Fox (himself unpleasantly right-wing): the troll is
"declaring
war on the planet itself". Too bad it's an
understatement.
The French environment minister said that the troll may face charges
of
crimes
against humanity for this.
I think all the paid denialists, and their paymasters, should face
such charges. Furthermore, their ill-gotten gains should be
confiscated from them or their heirs. Let them face the result of
their crimes just as everyone else will, without the advantage of
wealth deriving from committing the crimes.
US citizens:
call on the
Federal Election Commission to investigate possible Russian
meddling in the 2016 election.
US citizens:
call
on large US companies to continue covering birth control in their
health plans.
It is now possible to
electrically
stimulate internal areas of the brain using equipment outside the
head.
Am I the only one who sees a danger here?
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Georgia is telling its subscribers that they
won't
be covered if they go to the emergency room and it isn't a real
emergency.
It would be a good thing to move care for non-emergencies out of the
ER, but surely there is a way to do that which is less harsh. Can't
the ER triage nurse direct those patients elsewhere?
Congress Pushes Nuclear Energy, but Has
No
Clear Plan for Radioactive Waste.
When teenagers use mobile devices at night, they get less sleep, and this
often
results in depression.
The history of Brazil's giant corruption investigation,
Lava
Jato.
A study estimates that Tory underfunding of the NHS and social care
killed
30,000 people in the UK during 2015. That was around 86 people
killed per day.
As both of those systems have continued to deteriorate since then, I
would guess that the number killed in 2016 was considerably larger,
and that the underfunding is now killing more than 100 a day.
Here are details about 79 specific people who were
killed
in specific ways by harsh Tory policies. Clearly the list
includes only a tiny fraction the the victims.
Don't get distracted by the occasional terrorist when your country is
under attack by truly dangerous Tories all the time.
New York [State]
Forces
Women Like Me to Carry Nonviable Pregnancies to Term.
Cory Doctorow: Technology is
making
the world more unequal. Only technology can fix this.
I put my hopes on political resistance, not technology per se.
San Francisco Mulls Ban on
Delivery
Robots.
I am in favor of it. America needs jobs more than it needs
efficiency. Increases in productivity are no use to American workers,
because since 1980 that no longer gets them a raise.
The troll's budget would make America the
land
of no opportunity.
Government policies to encourage people to take out mortgages to buy
houses
often
do overall harm — such as increasing the prices of housing,
without even increasing the fraction of people that own houses.
Erdoğan's family got a
20-million-dollar
gift from a billionaire in 2008. The deal was covered up by
passing it through Malta.
Under Tory cuts, UK schools
cannot
even afford paper, let alone textbooks.
Even aside from starving the schools themselves, the
expense
of housing and the cuts in welfare for the poor are destroying
children's education.
The Republican Party's
Sickness
of the Soul.
55,000
people are now homeless in Los Angeles County.
Women journalists in Afghanistan
work
to change patriarchal society despite threats to their life.
Labor rights activists in China,
investigating
the factory that makes shoes for Ivanka Trump's brand, have been
arrested.
I wonder what the troll did to get this sort of support from China.
The Tories agreed to investigate the source of funding for Islamist
terrorism, but now
doesn't
want to publish the results. Suspicion is that the report traced
the funds to Salafi Arabia.
Disappointingly, Labour would continue with almost 80% of the
further
welfare cuts that the Tories have planned.
EFF: Chromebooks are still spying on students.
I don't think Google — or any other company — should be allowed to
collect data on students on the grounds that it is "necessary" for
something or other. When schools invite a student to use a certain
computer, that computer should not send any data about the student to
anyone.
Erdoğan has
decided
to arrest another 3,000 dissidents, supporters of
Fethullah Gülen.
It is absurd to accuse 47,000 people of participating in a coup plot.
So many people can't keep a secret, the coup plotters knew that.
China
will develop a state-approved encyclopedia, a propaganda
counterpart of Wikipedia.
In effect, Gandapedia.
Russians protested by reading the Russian constitution aloud
in Red Square. They were arrested.
Could there be a clearer admission of tyranny than this?
Kansas Republicans
require
women to sign a form printed in fairly small print in order to get
an abortion, apparently just to harass them.
Sanders: Americans,
unite
to free our country from oligarchic rule.
The troll feels threatened by the investigation of Russian ties, so he
and his staff now
refuse
to answer any questions about the issue.
No country should be saddled with a president that clams up because of
an investigation of possible crimes. He should resign, and then we
will have no objection when he exercises his right not to incriminate
himself.
Australia
must
put an end to clearing of land in order to cut greenhouse gas
emissions.
Since rising temperatures are increasing many natural CO2
emissions, we need to cut human emissions enough to get ahead of the
game.
A woman died walking into Canada
before
she could reach Canadian officials to ask for asylum.
The article is misleading when it says that Canadian thugs "intercept"
these people. They do not want to live in Canada secretly. Once
across the border, they
seek
out officials to apply for asylum.
A New York City thug faces murder charges for
shooting
a schizophrenic woman in her own home.
Thugs are supposed to know how to subdue people without killing them.
Even US government officials can't escape
persistent
debt collectors who harass them about debts owed by someone else.
The UK is trying to make unauthorized immigrants leave by
starving
them.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a
big
boost.
They use some of the same methods that Islamist terrorists use,
so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise led immigration thugs to seek the
outer
limits in cruelty, while also trying to cut off legal aid to those
they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably
gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited
to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too.
The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
With Trump, A
Full-Scale
Assault on Protections for U.S. Public Lands.
The US Supreme Court
ruled
against trying to use patents on ink cartridges to stop independent
commercial refilling operations.
The article falls into a common confusion when it describes copyright
law, patent law and trademark law as
"intellectual
property". Those laws are totally different, and trying to
generalize about even two of them will surely lead you to false
conclusions.
The Theater of Security Agency
plans
a lot more harassment regarding carry-on baggage.
With global heating threatening to destroy coral entirely,
conservation is
forced
to consider a big strategic retreat. To preserve any coral reefs
at all will be hard enough.
US prosecutors
claim
that they never prosecuted any low-level drug criminals, and no such
people have been in federal prison.
However, Obama found almost 2000 of them and pardoned them.
When parents use mobile devices often, they can't pay their children
the attention children need. It's called "absent presence". The
result is that the children show bad behavior which reflects
psychological
harm.
How Liberals
lost
touch with middle America and thus lost political power.
The groups have grown apart so much that they don't know how to relate
to each other, and feel contempt for each other.
I certainly don't know how to relate to people with the usual tastes
and attitudes. I can talk myself out of thinking that mine make me
better than them, but I still can't see how to find common social
ground with them.
Most of the UK political parties now say they agree on
replacing
neoliberalism with "an economy that works".
I don't think the Tories are serious about it, though.
Black Americans are less interested in voting for Democrats because
they have become
Republican
Lite.
Although tens of thousands of blacks would probably have voted for
Democrats last year if they hadn't been blocked by
Republican
voter suppression.
Even though asbestos is known to be very dangerous, the US has not
banned it, and the
death
rate from asbestos-caused disease continues to rise.
The troll is trying to make it worse, by denying the danger
and encouraging more use of the poison.
He is trying to make more Americans sick, while leaving them without
medical care. That is the cruel way to reduce our population.
Wouldn't it be better to pay for birth control for everyone?
Comparing the
housing
policies of the three main UK parties. The Tories say vaguely
they will break from their cruel past, the Labour policy is much
better but not bold, and the Lib Dems offer interesting ideas.
The Supreme Court
overruled
one of the few ways citizens had to put a check on thugs that do
illegal searches followed by gross violence.
A Tory politician understated the need for food banks, saying it was
for "cashflow problems". In other words, transient problems.
The manager of a foodbank explains how they are
due
to long-term problems created by Tories.
Democrats, stop listening to
Rahm
Emanuel's right-wing advice.
"Centrist" Democrats (including Obama as well as Emanuel) are in fact
considerably right wing
compared
with the views of most Americans when asked about specific issues.
Dubai envisions a "smart city" system that would
track
everything about everyone.
This complete data base is suppose to make it possible to ensure
everyone is "happy". Except those for whom happiness involves having
human
rights.
US citizens: Demand that NAFTA renegotiations benefit
working
people, not corporate power.
Everyone:
call on the
press to start scrutinizing Pence for inconsistencies and denying
facts.
US citizens:
call
on the troll and other officials to respect the Paris climate
agreement.
It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster
somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid of
it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
Also phone te White House switchboard at 202-456-1414 and ask for the
comment line.
The troll wants to cut taxes on corporations. Here's how they are
dodging
taxes and sabotaging the US.
UK charities know that planned Tory cuts will kill some of the people
the charities help, but
Tory
laws ban them from talking about this.
They should do it anyway, defying that law, then openly dare the
Tories to fine them since that money too will be taken from the poor.
The EU is
struggling
to put an end to emissions cheating software in cars.
The Democratic Party establishment
wants
to continue with Clinton's useless identity-based politics,
instead of taking up the causes that Americans want.
The commander of the Indian army
defended
use of human shields in Kashmir.
How disgusting.
When India took over the princely state of Kashmir, it promised the
people of Kashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India.
India should give them that referendum.
Goldman Sachs bought Venezuelan bonds for
under
1/3 of face value. (The bonds were issued by PDVSA, which is the
state-owned oil company.)
Whichever government is in power in the future, it will suffer from
the consequences of this.
Egypt has adopted a law that
will
make human rights organizations shut down unless they follow the
state's priorities (become useless).
India's theocratic ruling party is
making
it very hard to sell cows for slaughter. Especially cattle that
were used as farm work animals.
There were protests against this in various parts of India, and in one
of them a protester was
attacked
by religious fanatics and seriously injured.
With global heating plus increased urbanization, many cities could be
8C
hotter by the end of this century.
The US military continues to cover up
civilian
casualties from bombing raids.
It's impossible to fight a war and perfectly avoid civilian
casualties. It is possible to make a real effort to avoid them
— and it is possible to admit them when they happen.
Republicans are in favor of policies that redistribute wealth, as long
as it's
redistributed
to the rich. But they disguise this redistributive effect behind
some other motive, so that they can pretend to "oppose
redistribution".
The article sets a bad example in one point: it uses the
propaganda
word "protection" in reference to copyright, and to patents. A
deeper error in that same point is that it
groups copyright and
patents together as if they were similar issues.
Some US Christians cheer Gianforte's violence and call for a
"more
violent Christianity".
Other religious fanatics call for a more violent Islam, and look at
how much harm they have done. These could do even more.
200 students on a school trip were invited to give Paul Ryan a photo
op. Half of them
refused
to participate.
Bravo! They are learning what America means.
Interview:
Crackdown
on Media Ahead of Kenya's 2017 Vote.
Global heating is
destroying
Hawaii's coral reefs despite efforts to protect them.
Russia is
far
more powerful than PISSI, but Putin is less hostile: his aim is to
secure his authoritarian rule of Russia.
In today's capitalism, the customer is
beneath
contempt. What's more, treating other institutions like
businesses (for instance, schools and hospitals) means they treat the
customer with contempt much as businesses do.
US gun nuts oppose a bill
to make hearing aids cheaper simply because Senator Warren supports
it.
The troll conspicuously refuses to denounce right-wing terrorist murderers,
while other Republicans call for using armed militias for "security".
Moderate Muslims have a duty to campaign against Islamist terrorism.
Likewise, moderate right-wingers have a duty to campaign against
right-wing terrorism. It's the same situation, and the same duty.
Corbyn defended Labour policies well
in a pseudo-debate, and clearly rejected Tory austerity.
It is disappointing that Labour does not intend to undo all the Tory
cuts in aid for the poor and disabled, but stating opposition to austerity
is the first step.
A Texas Republican legislator
threatened to shoot
a Democratic legislator.
I am not surprised.
The troll can unite Europe —
against his contempt.
To carry out the Paris climate agreement, we need a carbon tax, and it
has to be preplanned to become quite high.
However, the Paris climate agreement is
insufficient.
Therefore, to avoid global heating disaster, the tax must be even
higher.
Renegotiation of NAFTA would be
an opportunity to make it somewhat less bad,
by eliminating the option for companies to sue national governments.
However, it would still be bad for the US (industry moves to Mexico)
and for Mexico (peasants can't make a living).
Facebook developed algorithms
to detect teenagers that are in a vulnerable or susceptible state, to
target them with ads.
Restaurants are using bigger wine glasses,
which
leads many people to drink more wine and get drunk.
How SCROTUS defends the Dontcare bill:
falsehoods, euphemisms, and deleting criticism.
US citizens:
call on the troll and other officials to respect the
Paris climate agreement.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Even US government officials
can't escape persistent debt collectors who
harass them
about debts owed by someone else.
The UK is trying to make refugees leave by starving them.
The troll has given right-wing terrorism a big boost. They use some of the same methods
that Islamist terrorists use,
so I expect they will copy the other methods as well.
He has likewise lead immigration thugs to seek the outer limits in cruelty,
while also trying to cut off legal aid to those they have arrested.
The thugs are killing the woman with the brain tumor. They probably
gloat about that.
Once the troll has built up high pressure cruelty, it won't be limited
to unauthorized immigrants. He will direct it at US citizens too.
The first targets may be blacks, but it won't stop there either.
US citizens:
call on
candidates to pledge to take no fossil fuel money.
US citizens:
call on Paul
Ryan to keep Gianforte out of the House of Representatives.
US citizens:
call on
the Department of the Interior to preserve all US national
monuments.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to block arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
US citizens:
call
on Democrats to refuse to lend legitimacy to the troll's proposed
voter suppression commission.
Thug unions in Alaska are
lobbying
against a law that would prohibit thugs from pressuring suspects,
crime victims and witnesses to have sex with them.
This law applies to more than just situations where prostitutes face
arrest for prostitution. Anyone who is attractive and facing arrest
by a thug is vulnerable to being forced into prostitution by the thug.
The troll might be planning to
privatize
US infrastructure and sell it to Salafi Arabia.
Veterans for Peace will rallied on Memorial Day to move
beyond
remembering war dead. Their idea is to reduce the number of
future war dead.
Uruguay has legalized marijuana, but for those who
register
for a license to buy or grow it.
That adds up to a government registry that could prove dangerous, and
in any case is unjustified surveillance.
Making people work until age 70 could be acceptable, but
what
about when their pay isn't enough to live on, or they are
disabled?
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid. The one
permanent doctor in Sudan's Nuba mountains
explains
the situation there.
Most of the world's major states give little foreign aid.
With so many rich people and companies demanding tax cuts, little is
left for starving people far away.
Food Stamps: A Lifeline for America's Poor That Trump
Wants
to Cut.
A few right-wing hate spreaders have been kicked off mainstream media
by
the hand of the increased corporate power they have fought to make
possible.
Meanwhile, progressives remain excluded from the mainstream media.
Tens of millions of Americans want single-payer medical care, and each
one thinks, "I must be the only one. Am I a an extremist?"
The troll's bizarre antics are
very
effective distraction. Keep an eye on the Republicans' other
hands!
Joy Buolamwini thinks it is an injustice that face recognition
works
better on white faces than on black faces.
I agree; but I am puzzled that she wants to make it recognize black
faces better. I think that's backwards. It should recognize white
faces just as badly as black faces.
The Tories are refusing to talk about their use of sensitive personal
data, which
appears
possibly to be illegal.
Islamist terrorists attacked civilians for being Christians.
Christians say the Egyptian government was
not
very interested in investigating.
It did use the opportunity to
bomb
terrorist camps in Libya. But they belong to a different group.
The UK is
lobbying
to undermine EU-wide energy efficiency measures which would take
effect after the UK has left the EU.
This shows that the motive must be sabotage — of civilization's
hope of surviving global heating disaster.
The way to deal with possible price increases from electricity
suppliers is to pre-empt them with a carbon tax. If they get windfall
profits anyway, apply a windfall profits tax. This money can be used
to solve other social problems.
The troll's repeatedly announced War on Journalism
targets
journalists, but especially leakers.
Blacks moving to America's small cities face
systematic
harassment by thugs. The previous inhabitants, nearly all whites,
suppose (falsely) that crime is going up and they blame it on the
blacks who are moving in.
A
Colombian grad student was finally cleared of criminal charges
for posting an academic article online.
All scholarly articles
should be free.
The latest fashion in education
is total monitoring of children
to teach them to accept total surveillance when they grow up.
The troll's saboteurs love science, but they want to
gut the EPA Science Office.
Gianforte's attack on a journalist
has unleashed the inner Republican spirit:
violent hatred of whoever gets in their way. Republican politicians are
encouraging it.
I can see this leading to a wave of terrorism.
Palestinian prisoners have ended their hunger strike
in exchange for an Israeli concession about family visits.
The article fails to mention that many of these prisoners are not
serving sentences imposed after conviction for a crime. They were
imprisoned arbitrarily without trial.
A German draft law would
require social network companies to do censorship,
deleting many sorts of works that are considered
deplorable.
Multinational companies have found a screw in EU treaties
that would enable them to claim back around $80 billion in taxes that
they paid in the UK many years ago.
Maybe exiting the EU will enable the UK to refuse to ever pay them.
There are hopes that Ecuador's new president will reduce Correa's
practice of prosecuting
journalists and leakers.
What if
getting help for mental illness
were as easy as going to the dentist?
The "war on drugs" is a failure world wide, but even worse, it accustoms the
world to
massive murder.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to reject the troll's budget.
US citizens:
Support
the financial transaction tax.
US businesses
often
cheat low-wage workers, and retaliate with blacklisting, threat of
prosecution or deportation, even violence against workers that
complain.
Right-wing bigots have adopted a camouflage of irony and humor. It
enables them to make bigotry seem normal while
recruiting
support in a deniable way.
The author recommends treating anyone that jokes about support for
bigotry as a serious supporter regardless of denials.
Another method that some clever people might be able to apply is to
inject other ideas, not bigoted, into the group. If they won't admit
they are really bigots, they might have trouble explaining disapproval
of this. To succeed at that would take skill, and I doubt I could
pull it off, but a group of clever progressives might get somewhere.
White racism in the US is
ready
for murder once again, with encouragement from the troll and his
saboteurs.
The troll
wants
to cut food stamps by 25%, and dump another 20% of the cost on
states.
When states can't pay that, the result might be no food stamps for
some people in that state. This could serve a an indirect excuse for
even bigger cuts.
If that's not bad enough, new fees would be imposed to discourage
small stores from accepting food stamp payments.
Don't respond to loss by avoiding
things
you love that remind you of the loss.
The troll stated
admiration
for Do-dirty's death squad campaign.
Republicans opposing net neutrality are
using
a script written by cable company lobbyists.
A court victory for the EFF: the NSA is
required
to give surveillance plaintiffs all the necessary evidence to
determine whether they personally have been snooped on.
The troll wants to put a polluters' advocate in charge of
administering
the Superfund for cleaning up polluted industrial sites.
The Superfund problem, like so many others, can be traced to letting
businesses get out of paying taxes.
Hoosick Falls should have a local newspaper called "Hoosick Today?"
A group of nazis in Florida were planning to explode a bomb to spread
radioactive material. Then one of them converted to Islam and
murdered
two others.
It is interesting to see how close right-wing bigotry is to Islamist
bigotry.
Automation
threatens
to divide humanity into the enhanced elite and the impoverished
masses.
The progressive movement fights against the continued advance in that
direction. Please join in.
Taiwan's highest court has
ordered
the legalization of same-sex marriage.
China has brought its birth rate down, and some say
India
now holds the shame of being the world's most populous country.
Unfortunately, those fools claim that population increase is a good
thing and China should produce more babies.
Global heating could cause changes in ocean circulation which would
eventually
wipe
out large whales.
Software
is being developed to let thugs use body cameras to identify the
faces of everyone their bodies point at.
They should not be allowed to have this capability without limits.
A film made by Armenians depicting the genocide of the Armenians faces
organized
harassment and business sabotage.
One
Pennsylvania
legislator defends to the bitter end his right to receive gifts in
exchange for votes.
In the UK even schoolteachers are
in
danger of living on the streets.
This is due to Tory policies that have
eliminated
public housing and
driven
rents up. Meanwhile, Tory dooH niboR policies squeeze them from
the other side.
The troll's budget plan, for ten years, "sacrifices
public health, environmental protection, reproductive rights,
international aid, social safety nets, farm subsidies, the arts,
student aid, and public education"
for military and the rich.
It
cuts
scientific research drastically.
Tories Say They'll
Exploit Manchester's Dead to Ban Working Crypto
in the
UK.
The plan appears not to be a ban on using encryption, but rather to
require companies to put back doors in their products.
Theresa "Snooper" May has campaigned for years
to eliminate all
possibility in the UK for people to have a private conversation. She
must have been waiting for an opportunity like this one.
Ralph Nader:
end the War on Drugs and handle other dangerous addictive drugs
the way we handle alcohol and tobacco.
The bill S.1127 would do this.
A "Russian intelligence document", erroneous and possibly fake,
complicated
the investigation of Clinton's private email server.
The US and its allies in Syria have agreed to cover up the civilian
casualties they cause.
These casualties are increasing.
Keep in mind that PISSI conscripts local men, often as soldiers. As soldiers, they are legitimate targets in war, but their relatives
should not be. In any case, making war on civilians is terrorism, and
the US must not engage in terrorism.
The PISSI-controlled area of Syria, including Raqqa, is a battle zone. There is no way assure safety for civilians in a battle zone. But the
US has an obligation, morally and by treaty, to make strong efforts to
avoid civilian casualties. Covering them up is reprehensible.
If Congress were doing its job, it would require honesty and protection
of civilians as a condition for authorizing the war.
US right-wingers now understand the danger of the Deep State.
Will they recognize that Snowden's fight to diminish it is heroic, and help do so?
Most teenagers don't have basic financial literacy,
and it's worse for those
who have a bank payment card.
This confirms that paying cash makes people more aware of how much money they are spending. So there are two reasons to pay cash: to resist tracking
and to understand your budget and spending better.
With the troll mostly hated, and
Sanders the best-liked politician in
the US,
Democrats have a clear path to victory: follow Sanders.
Strange that few Democratic politicians actually do that.
The partial ban on Muslims
is a test for the US Supreme Court.
The US subsidizes fossil fuel companies an effective
7 billion dollars a year
for their use of public lands.
Comcast has decided not to sue the site comcastroturf,
at least not
for the moment.
That's because the suit would be frivolous and Comcast knows it.
Comcast's excuse, supposing it is the truth, is really no excuse.
Many companies hire trademark lawyers that regularly try to intimidate
anyone that uses the company's trademarks in discourse, without asking
themselves crucial questions such as "Is their use fair use" and
"would demanding they stop constitute bullying?" Such trademark
lawyers are, in effect, acting like robots even though they are human
beings.
The company that chooses to employ such robot-imitators to bully
people indiscriminately is morally responsible for the mistreatment
involved.
The battle to stop a proposed giant coal mine
has given the environmental movement in Australia
a clear way to focus attention on global heating
and the threat to the Great Barrier Reef.
A journalist in East Timor faces imprisonment for mentioning the wrong company in an article.
The newspaper has already published a correction.
The injustice starts with the existence of a law making "defamation" a
crime. Prosecution for "defamation" is a tool for repression.
Leaks about surveillance of the Russian ambassador
say
Kushner the
troll-in-law discussed with him how to set up unmonitored communications with Russia.
The troll says it would be too hard to
keep track of whether he's
getting money from foreign interests
through his business.
This means he must truly divest from his business.
US reactors of the same type as those at Fukushima have been left
vulnerable to running out of water in the spent fuel pools.
It's not
worth fixing, say regulators. In the event of a Fukushima-style
accident, that could lead to a much bigger disaster.
Republican politicians think
the idea of attacking reporters will appeal
to their core supporters.
It's the same thing the troll discovered in his campaign rallies:
every time he bullied someone, his supporters loved it.
They
get a vicarious feeling of strength by identifying with him.
Before Gianforte attacked a reporter,
he attacked the citizens of Montana,
trying to stop them from fishing on public land near his
house.
That attitude typifies the Republicans' attitude towards the public.
In Libya, the failed state that resulted from the ouster of Qadhafi
opened up room for PISSI to recruit people angry at the state of their
country.
It wasn't exactly the fault of the US/European intervention,
but anger at other US/European interventions gave Islamist extremism
the force to succeed in recruiting some of the disaffected.
A man who harassed Muslim women on a train in Portland, Oregon,
murdered
two other passengers who tried to protect the women.
Do-dirty "jokingly"
encouraged soldiers to rape women
in Mindanao.
Corbyn: the UK must recognize that its warlike posture has
helped provoke terrorism,
and must change that posture.
The EU's
plan to spread WiFi
access throughout Europe must not promote big business that spies on users.
If it requires people to log in and identify themselves, it might
eliminate the convenient systems in cafes that don't require this.
In 1967, when Israel was at war with several Arab countries, its
planes
attacked
the USS Liberty, a radio listening ship. The survivors and other
witnesses say that the attack was intentional — and some testify to
hearing radio surveillance recordings in which Israeli pilots asking,
"Are we really supposed to attack an ally's ship?"
Paraguay has done a great job of giving rural population
access to clean water.
Tricks
that Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat use to make people feel anxious and spend time there.
Car owners are
suing General Motors
accusing it of using "defeat devices" to cheat on emissions tests.
Meanwhile, Diesel cars that were found to spew lots of pollution are still being sold.
Humans are
wiping out seabirds
through many practices that are deadly for them.
The job-killing mogul Greg Gianforte won the election in Montana
despite
attacking a reporter.
Or was it because of attacking a reporter? Republicans assume the
reporter must have done something horrible to deserve being attacked.
I hope Gianforte starts his congressional term in jail.
Libyans in Britain
warned the state
repeatedly about jihadi recruiters operating among them.
So don't complain that moderate Muslims don't try to stop terrorism.
They do try.
The inspector generals report that US agents were
directly involved
in the raid in Honduras that killed four Miskitu people.
The US thugs shot at them, then stopped them from getting medical
aid which might have saved some of their lives. Then the thugs lied about it,
naturally.
The coup-installed Honduran government is giving them a runaround instead
of justice.
36 US states do
face recognition
on drivers licenses. In some states, they violate state law by doing so.
Let's make it illegal everywhere!
Is California's
single-payer medical system
too expensive? It's cheaper than the present system, provides better
care, and doesn't leave millions out.
Right-wing Democrats led by Bill Clinton paved the way for
DeVos's
extreme privatization campaign.
It's not enough for Democrats to win. We need progressives in Congress,
progressives who won't support privatization.
The ease of switching from
neo-Nazi to Islamist
shows that for some people the direction of extremism is just a
detail.
The psychology of jihadi radicalization: to counter it, neighbors and
media must
help young Muslims
feel they are welcome as part of the society around them.
Weak encryption
is worse than no encryption, so business operating in countries that
don't allow effective encryption should offer no encryption and loudly
say why.
The troll is personally responsible for
encouraging violence
against journalists in the US.
The US
finally admitted
that bombing one house in Mosul killed more than 100 civilians.
It's impossible to fight a war without mistakes. The US should have
admitted the mistake quickly; trying to deny the facts only adds to the wrong.
The US should stop using 500-pound bombs to attack a few people
in a roof. And it should stop assuming that a house is empty just because
it doesn't know of anyone inside. Those practices invite causing civilian
casualties.
Thugs in Brazil
shot at protesters
that demanded the resignation of the corrupt president.
The troll-in-law, Jared Kushner, owns a rental housing company that
aggressively
squeezes money
out of former tenants — even when they don't owe any, his
lawyers pursue them for years.
A Republican congresscritter wants to
cut food stamps
for some Americans to be "fair" to other Americans that don't get
them.
Following that logic they will eventually give zero welfare benefits
to all non-rich Americans.
A right-wing extremist
murdered a student
in a Maryland university that he didn't know. The only idea for a
motive is bigotry.
Oil spills are
not a rare occurrence
where pipelines are concerned. The companies downplay the spills in
the press, which spreads a mistaken impression that they will
generally be safe and spills will be unlikely.
Egypt has
blocked
more foreign news sites, saying they publish lies.
"Lies" is Egyptian for "criticizing the state".
The PISSI offshoot in Libya has mostly lost its military power but
can still
organize terrorism abroad.
We must remember that the harm it can do is small compared with the loss
of our freedom.
Just as the Saboteur of the Interior begins considering whether to
abolish some national monuments,
he has
shut down public lands local
advisory councils around the US.
Of course, the troll's saboteurs get their orders from a powerful few.
Naturally they don't care what everyone else thinks; but it's surprising
when they expose that so clearly.
Carson, Saboteur of Housing and Urban Development, said that
poverty results
from having the wrong mindset.
Mindset does play a role, but getting out of the gutter without help
takes exceptional ability and a lot of luck.
The point of government welfare programs is so that the rest of the
poor people can have a decent life.
It should also be noted that growing up in poverty teaches most people
a bad mindset.
A poll of 8 important greenhouse-emitting countries found
most people
are willing to change the way they live to avoid global heating
disaster.
These countries are the US, China, India, Britain, Australia, Brazil,
South Africa, and Germany.
The Dontcare bill would result in
loss of medical coverage for 23
million Americans.
That's one million less than the version they rejected. A small step forward, on top of a big step back.
Millions of other Americans would lose out also,
just not quite as much.
Cannabidiol made from marijuana is an
effective treatment for epilepsy
in some children.
The US needs to change the legal status of marijuana to make it possible
to sell drugs made from that plant.
Suicide bombers attacked thugs in Jakarta.
They were surely Islamist, since there is no other plausible candidate.
This is the result of
Salafist indoctrination funded by Salafi Arabia,
and
encouraged by the blasphemy law.
A truly tough response to terrorism would be to
deny the terrorists
the reaction they seek.
The damage to Africa
from global heating effects and from stripping
and hiding wealth abroad far exceeds all the aid Africa receives.
A turncoat in the EPA, linked to pesticide companies, seems to have
persuaded the European Food Safety Authority to
ignore evidence that
glyphosate is dangerous.
Britons, don't go off the deep end when there is a bombing.
Cars are far more deadly.
In the UK, over 100 people are killed each month by
car collisions. (112 per month, for 2015.)
Each of those deaths was a loss to the world, and left relatives and friends bereft. But you don't ruin your free society over those
deaths. Don't do it over these!
Don't let it make you regard Muslims as enemies.
A former prisoner of PISSI says that his captors were delighted every
time westerners responded to a terrorist attack by proclaiming general
hostility to Muslims.
That supports their recruiting strategy.
The Union of Concerned Scientists: Trump Budget Disregards Science,
Puts
Public Health, Innovation at Risk.
The plutocratist wing of the Democratic Party seems to want to fight
just hard enough to get back in power,
not
to really win for the non-rich.
Watch out for Ancestry.com and its
rules
for who owns scans of people's DNA.
Comcast is using a frivolous but dangerous trademark lawsuit to
try
to shut down a web site that criticizes it.
The troll's proposed budget includes the already announced
cuts
for the EPA and endangered species.
If this goes through, it will cause an irreparable loss.
The UK will have
stricter
security at concerts.
That could be useful, and I don't criticize it. It isn't wrong to
search people entering concerts for bombs or weapons, as long as the
thugs don't take note of anything but bombs and weapons.
The Oakland prostitution scandal has led to many thugs' resigning or
pleading guilty. One is actually
on
trial.
My ethical analysis of all this:
It wasn't wrong for Celeste Guap to do sex work,
and it wasn't wrong to be her customer.
If a thug compelled her to have sex by threatening to arrest her if
she didn't, that was a form of rape.
If a thug convinced her to have sex by offering her information about
operations, that was in effect taking a bribe from her, paid in the
form of sex. It was wrong for the thug to take that bribe, and wrong
for her to pay it; but those wrongs are overshadowed by the bigger
wrong of arresting people for prostitution.
The troll's proposed budget would
cut
hundreds of billions from support for poor people.
A paid family leave plan would give back a
tiny
fraction of that. "Ivanka Trump's family leave plan is a fig leaf
for her father's worst policies."
As for the tax cuts, we know that hardly anything will "trickle down"
to the non-rich.
Before Tony B'liar helped Dubya attack Iraq, UK intelligence
warned
it would provoke terrorist bombings in the UK.
In the long run, we can best reduce the danger from Islamist
terrorists by (1) ceasing to attack other countries (particularly
Muslim countries), and (2) making Salafi Arabia reduce its efforts to
spread a cruel form of Islam.
Uber has
repeatedly
underpaid its drivers.
Vietnam is
recognizing
the harm that rising sea level will do.
Google has
found
a way to track most credit card purchases in the US, even those
not done through a phone, and correlate that with people's online
actions.
Google can't do either side to me, since I pay cash and don't carry a
mobile phone, and it doesn't know what web sites I look at.
Illinois is considering bills
requiring
web sites to tell users what information they hold about them and what
companies they have distributed it to.
I'm in favor of this, but I don't think it will do much to protect us
from surveillance by web sites. And that's not to count the
surveillance of bank cards, pharmacies, toll booths, phone companies,
license plate cameras and face recognition cameras.
The last old forest in Europe is
being
destroyed by illegal logging and legal logging.
A public toilet in Beijing
requires
using a face recognition system to get toilet paper.
Some governments will spend lots of money to surveil people in the name
of stinginess.
If there's anyone in Beijing that can't afford toilet paper,
the city government should give out toilet paper for them.
Why not put a box of rolls next to the toilet?
I have a hunch that that toilet does something else even worse:
that it is a pay toilet. The idea of charging people to use a toilet
offends me so much that I absolutely refuse to use a pay toilet.
Please join this campaign, and spread the word.
Britons,
don't
react to terrorist bombings with fear and vindictiveness!
The biggest danger to the UK comes not from the terrorists, but from
tearing up their own freedom in the vain pursuit of absolute security.
George Monbiot: "Don't let psychopathic murderers suppress our
common
humanity."
A Chinese student praised US freedom of political discussion as she
addressed other students in graduation from a US university. She was
subjected
to orchestrated smears in China.
It is a shame that she undercut her defense of freedom by apologizing
for it.
Banning neonicotinoid pesticides will be facilitated by a
report
showing that other solutions do as good a job.
The Supreme Court
rejected
racist gerrymandering in North Carolina.
Republicans aimed, in their usual way, to create a handicap against
Democrats.
The EFF reports that
HTTPS
is making it difficult for states to impose selective censorship via
filtering, which leads states to turn to demanding that companies
such as Facebook carry out the censorship for them.
Unfortunately, it ends with an inadequate recommendation for companies
to be "transparent" about their censorship. That's hardly enough
to qualify as trying to resist.
The article also uses the term
"content"
to refer to publications, which ought to be avoided since it
deprecates them all.
UK doctors say many of the children they treat suffer from
bad
health caused by Toryism and the poverty it campaigns for. This
harms children's health by way of bad housing, bad food, and stress
about financial insecurity.
The excessive demonization of Russia has interfered with removal of an
unconstitutional California law
barring
Communists from state jobs.
Communism sounds nice in the abstract, but when implemented it turned
out to be just another system of dictatorship by an elite. China and
Vietnam today, and to some extent Cuba as well, show that this outcome
was not limited to the Soviet Union.
9
ways Iran is more free than Salafi Arabia.
Regarding item 4, electing from a list of candidates handed down from
on high is a parody of democracy, and that's where Iran falls short of
democracy.
Item 10 is irrelevant to the question of freedom in Iran. However, I
don't think Iran's support for Assad is any worse than US support for
a variety of comparably vicious regimes.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to oppose the troll budget.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to block the troll's cruel budget.
When Erdoğan's bodyguards attacked protesters in Washington DC,
the world got a glimpse of
Turkey's
standard repression.
One of the troll's cabinet saboteurs
stated
his admiration for the absence in Salafi Arabia of any protests
against the troll's visit.
A report on business surveillance of employees, and
avenues
to limit such surveillance.
In general, we should not allow any businesses to excuse
surveillance of the public based on nominal "consent". To protect
privacy and democracy we
need
to get rid of most of the existing massive surveillance.
Business surveillance of employees can be oppressive even when they
are on the job. For instance, if they are not allowed moments to rest
between calls, or if they are impeded from going to the toilet.
Oxfam finds that opening new coal mines will only worsen [global heating]
and
drive
poor nations deeper into poverty.
US retailers may replace
7.5
million sales clerk jobs with automation in the next 10 years.
I refuse to use self-checkout machines in stores, but I do more than
just avoid them. When I pass those machines, I shout, "If you use
those machines, you are putting Americans out of work!" Then I go to
the human sales clerk.
If I have to wait for the sales clerk, that's ok. I always have a
book to read. (I don't go out without a book and a computer.)
Please join me in doing these things. It's not too early to push back
against socially harmful automation.
Of course, buying on line is even worse, and it records in a data base
who you are and what you bought. You can join me in rejecting that
too.
Two Turkish teachers went on hunger strike 10 weeks ago after being
fired for political reasons. Now they have been
arrested
for not eating.
Over 100,000 people in Turkey have been fired and blacklisted for
political reasons. Some (all?) of them have had their pensions and
passports taken away so that they cannot get asylum.
The claim that 100,000 people were involved in the coup attempt is
absurd. Coup plotters know better than to tell so many people their
plans.
How
the peace activists can try to end proxy wars.
The FCC received lots of
comments
opposed to network neutrality generated by bots, not submitted by
human beings. Saboteur Ajit Pai suggests he will treat them as valid.
This sort of two-step falsification is the essence of astroturf. One
party creates a lot of smoke. Another sees the smoke and claims
there's a fire. In effect, they combine to promulgate a lie, but
neither of them can be held responsible for lying.
100
students walked out on Pence as he addressed the graduation at
Notre Dame.
Iranians just
voted
for better relations with the US. Too bad
the
troll wants to support the warlike Sunni murder-states instead.
The UK Green Party calls for
strong
measures to help the non-rich, including a universal basic income.
The war and famine in South Sudan continue, stirred up by
rivalry
between several meddling US client states.
Egypt,
Ethiopia
and Sudan
are ruled by tyrannical regimes that are willing to kill large numbers
of people. Uganda does not have free and fair elections, but I don't
think it is as repressive as those other three.
Ethiopia intervened in Somalia to get rid of an Islamist but not
aggressive government that had unified the country, and it has been
wracked by civil war ever since; this intervention had to have
US
support.
Corbyn has made the Labour Party relevant again by
making
it stand for something that can inspire people.
Islamist bigotry in Jakarta:
140
men arrested at a sauna party.
I'm afraid it is only a matter of years before the Muslim majority of
Indonesia starts a civil war by trying to impose its rules on other
ethnic groups. This is all the fault of Salafi Arabia, which has
funded the inculcation in Indonesia of repressive forms of Islam in
place of the tolerant forms that were widespread in Indonesia before.
Salafi Arabia's many evils,
collected.
Chelsea Manning
shows
the heroism required to be a whistleblower in a country that
doesn't respect whistleblowers — and why we need whistleblowers
tremendously.
Secret New European Copyright Proposal Spells
Disaster
for Free Culture.
When the international situation permits it, it will be
possible
to prosecute those in the Assad regime who are responsible for the
torture and murder of thousands of prisoners.
Getting abortion pills and advice in using them online proves to be
quite
safe.
Iran, Salafi Arabia, democracy, and the
troll.
Twitter has implemented new non-privacy settings;
the default
is substantial surveillance, if users don't turn it off.
Sabotaging the 2020 US census would
help
Republicans get away with gerrymandering.
Republicans want to build US infrastructure through "public-private
partnerships", which means the public
pays
more and gets less control.
In Salafi Arabia, the troll
talks
about the need to defeat Islamist extremism.
As if it weren't Salafi Arabia that spends millions per year to
spread
Islamist extremism.
The troll also strained to equate Iran's repressive state with
terrorism. However, Iran's repression happens overtly, in Iran.
Stay away
from there and you're safe from it. And Iran's repression is only
a fraction of that of Salafi Arabia.
Canada has
removed
most of the requirements for supervised facilities for addicts to
take opioids.
El Cenizo, Texas, is
suing
to overturn the Texas law that forces all local thugs to obey
orders from US border thugs.
The Republican governor of Maine has
prohibited
posting signs to lead people to the Katahdin Woods and Waters national
monument, which he wants to eliminate.
He hopes to keep visitors away so he can claim people don't want to go
there.
This reminds me of how New Jersey officials (surely directed by the
Governor Christy)
punished
a Democratic mayor by closing lanes on the George Washington
Bridge. (The governor says he didn't tell his aides to do this.
If you believe that, maybe he will offer to sell you that bridge.)
This shows the scheming and dishonest attitude of today's Republican
Party. They will degrade any institutions they get their hands on,
and use it to spread lies, merely to deny their rivals a chance to
point at any sort of success.
US journalists
denounce
the practice of imprisoning journalists, which was expanded under
Dubya and Obama and is getting worse under the troll.
In January, Flynn
convinced
Obama's national security advisor to put off a plan to arm the Syrian
Kurds to capture Raqqa. Flynn had taken pay from Turkey during
2016.
The troll has since reinstated the plan.
Democratic congresscritters
wrote
to Pence in November to warn him about Flynn's employment by
Turkey.
Pence claimed he didn't know about this.
The thug that shot Terrence Crutcher
lied
about many aspects of the killing, and then was acquitted of
charges.
Thugs
assumed
Crutcher was dangerous before they approached him. They didn't
bother to notice that he was unarmed and had his hands up.
Unconscious racism may have played a role, and surely the assumption
did too. That is no excuse for what they did.
Here's an idea: put up posters showing that thug, in uniform, with the
caption "Armed, Dangerous Liar." Each word can be proved.
The US government
organizes
the arrest of hundreds of sex workers every year, under the guise
of releasing enslaved minors — except that it finds hardly any
minors and none are enslaved.
Sheriff Clarke wants to put thousands of Americans — perhaps as
much as a million —
in
prison without trial based on suspicions he appears to exaggerate.
What Facebook gained from buying WhatsApp was to
associate
nearly every used of Facebook with a phone number. Facebook lied
about this when it bought WhatsApp.
Brazilian president Temer
says
the audio recording which had him discussing hush money for Eduardo
Cunha was faked.
The Australian government is disappointed that environmentalists have
defeated coal mining plans in court, because they would harm
endangered species. Instead of making mines respect wildlife, the
government has decided to block environmentalists from taking such
issues to court.
Future mining projects will get away with destroying endangered
species, because the extractionist state doesn't care, and
everyone
else in Australia will be powerless.
The troll's saboteurs have
blocked
a plan to measure greenhouse emissions from cars and trucks.
EFF: since stingrays always snoop on everyone in a neighborhood, the
usual criteria for a search warrant are not enough for using a
stingray. They
should
be used only in cases of major crimes.
Pence is a Christian theocrat and plutocratist, but that is no reason
to hold back from
impeaching
the troll.
Some US agency
reports
listening to a Russian agent boast of plans to interfere with the US
election of 2016, to punish Clinton.
If true (those agencies do sometimes lie), it is not proof that the
troll's staff colluded with Russia about the matter. But it confirms
the importance of a full and trustworthy investigation.
The troll tried to erase concern for global heating from the nearly
finalized
Arctic
declaration.
After the final defeat of North Carolina's voter suppression law,
Republicans
there vow to try again to stop Democrats from voting.
A British woman is on trial for going to a park and
inviting
teenage boys to have sex with her there. Her husband acted as a
lookout in case someone else passed by. One teenager allegedly
visited her at her house repeatedly to have sex with her.
None of these acts would be wrong in any sense, provided they took
precautions against spreading infections. The idea that adolescents
(of whatever sex) need to be "protected" from sexual experience they
wish to have is prudish ignorantism, and making that experience a
crime is perverse.
The Tories plan total
state-controlled
censorship of the internet in the UK.
The FCC's nonuniformed thugs
grabbed
a reporter in a meeting where the press was invited, and
physically threw him out.
Other reporters, who knew him, were shocked.
Most Republicans don't care what nasty, criminal or treasonous things
the troll does; they will
construct
excuses to support him regardless.
This may explain why Republicans tell blatant absurd lies all the
time. The falsehood is easy to expose, but they know their supporters
have chosen to disconnect from reality and will treat the lies as
truth.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to protect the EPA's budget.
New Orleans has
finished
removing its memorials to the Confederacy.
The troll has appointed a sheriff that
notoriously
hates Black Lives Matter as liaison with local thug departments.
The troll's choice for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior Department
is a saboteur indeed: a
walking
conflict of interest".
If US intelligence about al-Qa'ida in Yemen is imperfect, the result is to
kill
lots of the wrong people.
If the members of al-Qa'ida are a tiny fraction of the population, it
doesn't take much of an error rate for drone assassinations to kill
more bystanders then enemies.
Trying to explain
why
do the Tories' victims plan to vote for Tories.
I think politicians that will try to do good things and might fail are
preferable to politicians that can be relied on to implement policies
that will crush lots of people.
The Tory state contracts with charities to implement state
responsibilities to help the poor, but
doesn't
pay for the costs. The charities need to use other money.
This can't go on much longer. In a year or two, the charities will
cease to bid for these contracts. Then the Tories will say, "Oops,
there's no money to help the poor, we have to stop!" But there will
be no election scheduled for several years, so Britons will be stuck
with it.
That's if they are suckers enough to vote for Tories now.
These charities should cancel now to give voters a sign of
what they'd choose
if they vote
Tory.
If We Cared about Peace We Would Be
Talking
to Hamas.
Hamas's new charter demonstrates that there's a real possibility for
Israel and Hamas to make peace. If you would like negotiations to
succeed, it makes no sense to demand more than that as a precondition
for starting negotiations. When the US demands more than that from
Hamas, and doesn't
make
similar demands on Israel, it supports Israel's unstated
intentions to continue the occupation and siege; to reject peace.
Without Action on
Antibiotics,
Medicine Will Return to the Dark Ages.
The seed vault in Svalbard had a
close
scare from global heating effects.
Svalbard is heating faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. If we
don't curb global heating soon, it will be above freezing all the time
for several months of the year.
Globalized industry pressures countries to
compete
to allow the highest levels of pollution.
If we want to change this, "rewarding social responsibility" is a weak
intervention. We should prohibit import of goods that polluted where
they were made.
The Tories are systematically borrowing Republican techniques to
suppress voting by the poor. Next step:
voter
ID.
The Tories are also imitating the troll's
contempt
for reporters that are not subservient.
Plutocratist parties operate governments of occupation on behalf of
the conquering global rich. They may use democracy while it exists,
but they aim to
deny
the people to any real control over their destiny. In the process
of doing so, they become
ever
less legitimate as governments. They deserve their power no more
than any other government of occupation.
Sweden has dropped charges against Julian Assange, rejecting the
option of bringing him to Sweden with a commitment not to send him to
the US.
However, Assange still can't leave the Ecuadorian embassy, as the UK
has found a minor crime to arrest him for, and the troll regime says
it
plans
to prosecute him somehow.
It appears they intend to make him spend the rest of his life in
the Ecuadorian embassy.
I conjecture that Sweden dropped the charges because the US no longer
had any need for them.
Do-dirty has
decreed
a ban on smoking tobacco in public in the Philippines.
I wouldn't expect that a president has the legal power to do that
alone.
Democratic Senators demand information from the troll's companies, now
operated by his sons at thumb's length from him, to
see
whether they are passing through foreign money to him.
Uber collects data about passengers, then uses the data to
profile
them in various ways.
A careful survey suggests that
1/4
of the US population may be atheist, but many of them fear to let
this be known.
Ships emit so much air pollution that they
may
cause 60,000 deaths per year.
Progressive candidate Rob Quist has a chance to get elected to
Congress from Montana, but the
national
Democratic Party has given him almost no support.
The DNC works for the Wall Street Democrats, like Clinton, against
progressives such as Sanders.
Clinton and the Wall Street Democrats want to bring opposition to
plutocratic Republicans under
their
Plutocratic aegis.
In July 2016, I posted a petition on MoveOn
calling
on Clinton to stand aside so Sanders could defeat the troll. Too
bad she didn't do it.
Wall Street Democrats want to go on and on, along the same path of
dooH niboR. If we want to go in the right direction, we must not
reject their attempts to lead us astray.
In addition to the special criminal investigator, we
need
an independent commission to investigate wrongdoing by the troll
that isn't a crime.
The troll and DeVos want to
gut
federal support for public schools and college student loans, and move
most of the money to private and religious schools.
DeVos wants to
eliminate
the program that forgives student loans for some students.
If you were rich enough to matter, in her judgment, you
wouldn't have needed any student loans.
The troll
wants
to cut 70% from support for renewable energy in the Department of
Energy.
Some US companies offer maternity leave to full time corporate
employees, but most of their workers are part-time or employed by
contractors or franchises, and
don't
get those benefits.
If there is any doubt about how you can afford to raise a child,
you shouldn't expose it to the risk of being born in that situation.
It took a series of lucky breaks to expose Nixon's conspiracy and
remove him from office. We
can't
count on that to happen again.
However, with the special investigator we have at least traveled a
step further down the path.
There are plans to store and transport renewable energy in the form of
liquid
hydrogen or ammonia.
Iceland could export energy from the
heat
of underground molten magma.
These could help avoid global disaster, but only if they are ramped up
soon.
Careless treatment of intelligence information is
not
as important as unjustified war.
So You Want to Share Intelligence with Russia ... There Are
Less
Risky Ways to Do It.
I wonder: would Russians have been able to deduce that the information
came from a spy working for Israel, from the information they got?
Or did they get that info from the US media?
Meet Aristotle, the Robot Nanny That Can
Raise
(And Spy on) Your Child.
I am glad people are starting to recognize that these products are
fundamentally bad.
EU citizens:
object to plans
to require web sites to impose mechanical copyright censorship that
would reject parodies and other commentary.
The page raises two issues. I think the copyright censorship
issue is the most important; if I were an EU citizen I would
respond put that one first.
I would also avoid using the word "content" to refer to works of
authorship in the text I wrote.
US citizens:
state
your opposition to snooping robots for children.
I think they are just as bad when offered to adults.
The wrong is an outgrowth of the nonfree software in the device.
The troll's ghost-writer says his behavior pattern now is the same as
in 1985:
no
empathy, no conscience, no shame, and no respect for truth. Every
other person is a rival he needs to dominate.
US citizens:
call
on Sessions to rescind the new prosecution policy of always aiming
for the maximum sentence.
US citizens:
call
on the UAE to back out of planned bombardment of Hodeida or its
state-owned airline, Emirates, will face a boycott.
US citizens:
call
on Republican congresscritters to sign the discharge petition for
an independent investigation of the troll's relationship with Russia.
The US air force bombed
some
of Assad's allies in Syria.
Saboteur of the Treasury Mnuchin advocates bringing back all of the
Glass-Steagall Act,
except
for the Glass-Steagall Act.
Iowa Republicans
cut
off funding to Planned Parenthood for contraception and tests for
cancer and diseases.
Many women on Medicaid will have trouble getting those services from
anywhere else.
Refugees Australia dumped on Manus Island are subject to
constant
intrusive surveillance. Guards take notes about how they look
each day and about who talks with whom. When they make phone calls,
the guards listen.
They are threatened not to talk with journalists, and their supporters
have been arrested and deported without seeing them. All this is at
the behest of the Australian state.
Sooner or later, the Australian state will arrange to waterboard them,
or stick burning cigarettes into their testicles. Or behead them
— videos of that would sure scare any would-be refugees away
from Australia.
Thugs arrested an autistic 7-year-old in school and
jailed
him for a week, and his parents could not find him.
He hadn't committed a crime. He had only made a nuisance.
Wall-Street-supporting Senate "Democrat" Manchin challenged
progressives to vote him out. Paula Swearengin is
trying
to do that.
McCain called for
expulsion
of the Turkish ambassador, and prosecution of his bodyguard for
attacking peaceful protesters in Washington DC.
I agree.
Apple Is
Lobbying
Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records
Confirm.
Recorded phone calls show the corrupt president of Brazil is
involved
in paying hush money to convicted official Eduardo Cunha.
An investigation has been
launched.
Everyone already
knew
Tener was corrupt; that was the motive for installing him.
Press freedom in Bangladesh is being
crushed
by prosecution of unwelcome points of view, and arbitrary
intimidation of advertisers.
A whole neighborhood was evicted for the Rio Olympics, and many of the
inhabitants are
left
without a community even though they have more valuable houses.
I don't think the Olympic games will be held very much in free
countries any more. The people know what a swindle the games are and
will campaign to keep them away. The games will be held in tyrannical
countries like China, where the people can't resist.
This raises the question of whether to hold Olympic games any more.
Typically each sport has an annual championship. Those are held at
different times of year, and they don't put a burden on the cities
where they are held. They also don't provide an opportunity for big
profits for a few businesses — and that is good.
Children
need
to play on their own. Not playing is bad for their health.
Delta wants to use
face
recognition for checking luggage.
I'm afraid that in a couple of years they will force this on everyone.
Since the Tories can't squeeze much more money out of the poor, they
have announced
plans
to hit the middle class, especially
old
people and ill people that can't live on their own.
I suppose they will continue hurting the poor more anyway.
Germany Is
Showing
the World What's Possible with a Sufficient Investment in
Renewable Energy.
Facebook
deleted
posts that presented evidence of individuals' use of shell
companies, evidence coming from the Panama Papers.
This resembles Amazon, which famously
shut down
Wikileaks' virtual server because Wikileaks didn't have US
government authorization to publish leaks.
Proposing a
commission
made up of physicians and psychiatrists to judge whether the US
president is incapacitated or unfit to serve.
Conjecture: US parents
demonize
non-overprotective parents in a futile attempt to convince
themselves that they can guarantee nothing bad will ever happen to
their own children if they take enough precautions.
Some US states
criminalize
driving with even minimal amounts of marijuana drugs that are too
little to impair driving.
It's not clear that marijuana is a significant factor for whether
people can drive safely.
A report says the troll's pet wall would
threaten
93 endangered species.
Birds can fly across a wall, but building the wall would destroy some
of their habitat. Habitat destruction is typically an important
factor in pushing species towards extinction.
UK thugs who accused four British man of plotting an act of terrorism
have been caught in
perjury
and other crimes.
SCROTUS plans to impose huge budget cuts
without
saying what spending will be cut. Of course, the cuts will be
aimed at non-rich Americans, but they will pretend not to know that.
A judge in Texas has been punished for
urging
the public to lynch someone.
Lynching was traditionally done mostly to blacks, and racism may have
been part of this judge's motivation for advocating it, but the wrong
of this judge is fundamental and not a matter of who the target is.
It is unacceptable for a judge to support lynching, and this one ought
to be dismissed.
Students at a Texas college
fended
off a plan to invite a Republican senator as their graduation
speaker.
I wish MIT students would organize to
reject the CEO of Apple as a graduation
speaker. And I wish Harvard students would organize to
reject the CEO of Facebook as a
graduation speaker.
A challenge that right-wing antiabortionists can't beat:
provide
benefits to make life easier for women that have babies.
Alas, in the actual world we must not do that, because it would
encourage population growth, and that threatens to destroy
civilization. What we can and should do is systematically provide
reliable contraception gratis to every woman that would choose to
abort a pregnancy.
The DOJ has appointed a special investigator to head the investigation
of troll. This will include his
relationship
with Russia and whether he committed
obstruction
of justice.
The head of the investigation is
independent
within certain limits.
The Australian government is
concealing
the details of an oil spill in the ocean, to protect the company
responsible from criticism and protests.
A
riot
of looting occurred in a part of Venezuela where there is a major
crossing to Colombia.
When I was there, my friends told me that people bought subsidized
goods and took them to Colombia to sell at market prices, and this
resulted in
shortages.
The Venezuelan government subsidized those goods without limit, rather
than subsidizing limited amounts per person or family.
Don't lionize Comey — remember the
injustices
he was involved in.
He did show integrity in dealing with the troll, but that was just one
good thing among many bad things.
Erdoğan's bodyguards
kicked
and strangled protesters in Washington DC; then Turkish state
radio told lies about the attack.
Erdoğan's actions repeatedly insult Turkey and Turkishness, and
they attack all citizens of Turkey, regardless of ethnic background,
that want freedom for their country.
The Trump News You Missed: He
Asked
Comey to Jail Journalists.
Australia
schemed
to make the Manus Island refugee camp more painful, to pressure
refugees to leave.
Apparently that didn't work well enough, so now Australia is
closing
the camp.
The reason refugees don't leave is that the native population won't
tolerate them.
Congress should
demand
a copy of the private transcript of what the troll told Russian
officials.
"Pay
Trump bribes here" projected on the troll's hotel in DC.
A SCROTUS
got
a bank employee fired for actively opposing his campaign.
The troll's
release
of secrets to Russia shows how unfair was his criticism of
Clinton's email server.
Here's
how
Paul Ryan put it.
Clinton's email server was a red herring, an molehill blown up by
Republicans into an apparent mountain. I rejected Clinton because of
her loyalty to Wall Street against America.
The troll's release to Russia could conceivably have been worth while,
but we can't trust someone like the troll to judge that.
In the US:
call
on the Saboteur of Homeland Security not to appoint Milwaukee
Sheriff Clarke to any sort of position.
Here's
more
about why.
US citizens:
insist
on continued protection for grizzly bears in Yellowstone National
Park.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to protect the Endangered Species Act.
US citizens:
call
on SCROTUS to join in releasing the troll's tax returns.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the COAST Act
to ban offshore drilling on the Atlantic coast.
Chelsea Manning is
out
of prison.
I was worried that the troll would find some excuse to prevent this.
The US and Russia have
both
decided to support the Syrian Kurds, and told Erdoğan to
get lost.
I consider this good news. It is good when the US and Russia have
good relations and cooperate, when what they do together is good. The
US government has
stirred
up lots of hostility towards Russia for no good reason.
Putin remains a
tyrant
and a
trumpish
liar. Other governments ought to condemn this, but that doesn't
call for international hostilities.
Various US cities show the same
decrease
of the middle class.
A few of those who cease to be middle class become wealthy. Most
become poor.
Media consolidation means that many Americans will have a
choice
between right-wing propaganda news and right-wing propaganda news.
Video shows that Connecticut thugs
shot
a teenager dead while he was handcuffed, then lied about it.
To celebrate Mothers Day, how about thinking about
the
needs of working mothers?
An esteemed Mexican journalist has been
murdered,
apparently by narco gangsters.
Australia is tightening the rope around the boat people that it dumped
onto Manus Island, by closing the place they live.
Those who have been judged to be refugees will have to live among a
community of people that
hate
them and violently attack them.
The rest are likely to be deported, though they may face punishment
there.
The WWF
calls
on Mexico to ban gillnet fishing in the Gulf of California to
protect the nearly extinct vaquita porpoise.
Israel prefers continued occupation of Palestine to peace. There will
be
no
peace until outside pressure changes that preference.
The USDA hardly bothers to punish companies that import non-organic grain
and
fraudulently
label it "organic".
More training can enable one working person to move up the ladder and
get more pay and better working conditions. But the
supply
of those better jobs is limited, so more training for everyone
won't change much.
To make everyone better off, workers need to organize to change the
system. For instance, with progressive laws and unionization.
Poor people in Britain don't bother to vote because
none
of the parties shows much concern for them.
Even Labour doesn't show much concern for them, though
some
aspects of its platform will help them.
What
would happen if Donald Trump were impeached?
Omid, in Britain, is condemned to years of suffering for a disease
that will kill him eventually. He demands the
right
to assistance in suicide.
I support his demand. I do wonder whether he could die by refusing
food, and get treatment to help him bear the hunger. Would the
nursing home force-feed him?
Trump's New Bank Regulator:
Lawyer
Who Helped Banks Charge More Fees.
Ukraine has
blocked
access to Russian social media sites and a search engine.
There is no justification for this.
Remote, uninhabited Henderson Island is covered by
18
tons of plastic debris that washed up from the Pacific Ocean.
We
need
to use less plastic, so that we produce less plastic.
New french
pun: Mines de
charbon.
Everyone:
Call
on Taiwan to ban ivory trade.
US citizens:
call
on the FCC to block the Sinclair TV chain merger.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to condemn the troll's latest attack against Assad's
forces as illegal and impeachable.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to support a special committee to
investigate the troll's ties with Russia.
Texas Latinos have launched
100
days of protests and organizing in response to the Texas law that
forbids cities to offer sanctuary to unauthorized immigrants.
The US practice of arresting them and deporting them
when
they get medical treatment,
when
they meet with government officials, and even
when
they appear in court, threatens public health and public safety.
Everyone: move funds out of the big banks that fund polluting
pipelines and
tell the
banks that you're doing so.
The troll is the result of
centuries
of US racism.
The article presents Mumia Abu-Jamal's story of how he and friends
were beaten up by contemptuous thugs after they protested peacefully
at a campaign rally for white-supremacist candidate George Wallace.
US high school history teachers: devote the rest of the term to the
question of
how
to remove a president that is incompetent, repeatedly breaks the law,
and disregards the constitution.
The Senate
has
not provided any resources for a real investigation of
troll/Russia by the senate committees that are supposedly doing it.
Laundering drug money is responsible for
large
amounts of deforestation of protected land in Central America.
The troll shared secret information with Russian officials in a way
that
endangered
intelligence sources.
Sharing secrets with Russia (or other countries) is not necessarily a
bad thing. In some cases it is useful for diplomacy. However,
endangering sources is a harmful practice; states do this at their
peril.
One of the few criticisms of Wikileaks that I agree with is that
sometimes it endangers intelligence sources (and other people) by
failing
to redact information.
Dubya was criticized for
revealing
the identity of Valerie Plame. He did this merely to score
political points.
When a fossil appears at the surface of the ground, we have a
limited
time to collect it before it erodes away or is crushed. We could
remain forever ignorant of past species unless we have people
collecting fossils as they appear.
Tory changes in voter registration have
greatly
reduced the number of newly eligible voters that are registered.
The troll has emboldened white supremacists in the US; they are
becoming
a real danger, just as the KKK was.
The copyright industry
repeatedly
violates copyrights in its campaigns to make copyright law more
repressive.
The Liberal Democrats in the UK
have
made massive surveillance a campaign issue.
I wish Labour would do that too.
US deportation agents didn't obey Obama's orders to focus on the
unauthorized immigrants that had committed serious crimes. In
California, nearly half of those deported in the 9 months after that
order had no criminal record.
Agents particularly
picked
on immigrants whose children were US citizens, which suggests that
the agents were motivated by sadism or cruelty.
A British antiwar activist describes her two-year relationship with an
undercover thug infiltrator who was
lying
all the way.
If he didn't love her, he was callously lying when he told her he did.
If he did love her, he callously tossed her aside.
True support for family values means
giving
children everything they need to grow up strong and capable. And
that should mean all children.
Research from Sweden shows that reducing levels of children's lead exposure
reduces
subsequent crime, even when the level starts out rather low.
Diesel engine exhaust
kills
around 38000 people each year world-wide, a study estimates.
Each time right-wing politicians hurt millions of Americans, a
fraction of the victims are so deluded about who to blame that
they
turn to right-wing extremism.
This started with the
"farm crisis" caused by
President Reagan and the Republicans.
Great inequality
makes
life unhappy for everyone. Even for the rich — because each
rich person thinks, "I don't have as much as I really deserve."
It is true that some people have more talents than others. Few people
have as much of a talent for programming as I had in my prime. Does
that mean I deserved to get rich? That it would have been unjust not
to give me a chance to get rich that way? Would that have justified
my using my talent to subjugate people, so that I could get rich?
I don't think so.
The Tories offer to give back to the non rich a little of what they
have taken, and
say
that is support for workers' rights.
Right-wingers want people to think that the
widespread
prosperity and lesser inequality of the 1970s is a "fantasy",
impossible in the real world.
Since we did it once, we can do it again — if we stop the
plutocrats from getting in the way.
The mainstream media's intense focus on troll/Russia and the firing of
Comey has pushed all the political nastiness of Republican policies
into the shadows.
Could
the troll have intended this?
Making announcements as distraction is
his
standard modus operandi. I don't think that was his motive for
firing Comey; I think he considered the investigation a real danger
and wanted to stop it. But it could be that his shocking way of
firing Comey was a distraction operation.
US citizens:
Protect
Bears Ears and other national monuments.
US citizens:
support
the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would prohibit
deportation raids on schools, hospitals, courthouses, and churches.
Everyone:
call
on UK Prime Minister May to stop helping cause famine in Yemen.
The
troll is the epitome of the values of most Americans. We should
not be surprised he got almost enough votes to win the election.
The article assumes that people deserve the consequences of their
foolish ways of thinking and acting. I disagree. Even when people
are so foolish that they bring disaster on their country, they still
don't deserve the disaster.
People get the government their behavior deserves.
Comey
wanted
to prosecute Assange and Wikileaks based on a newly invented
criterion about his perceptions of a journalist's motives.
I disagree with the author on one point. I maintain that a US
government employee's duty of loyalty to the US and its constitution
must take precedence over any specific undertaking that the employee
has made. That duty can morally require leaking information about
injustices of the state. Drake, Manning and Snowden are the true
patriots.
New South Korea Leader Moon Jae-in
Willing
to Talk to Kim in North.
The new president is a former political prisoner and wants to bring
peace to Korea.
Texas will try to negate a court ruling against keeping immigrant
children in immigration prison by
designating
the prisons as "child care facilities".
One of the most repressive states on Earth is
pushing
to eliminate cash.
I hope this convinces you to defend the use of cash.
The way to do that is to insist on using cash.
To justify Comey's claims that protests against killer thugs have
inhibited thugs from doing their proper jobs, the FBI has released a
"study"
which only asked thugs their opinions.
Abu Zubaydah
will
testify about how he was tortured by the US government.
Tory-imposed mass poverty is causing British children to suffer from
ailments
that were eradicated.
Since marijuana has great medical potential, we
need
research on how it affects humans.
Cholera is
spreading
in Yemen.
This is a consequence of the bombing campaign operated by Salafi
Arabia with US help. Those countries did not directly bring cholera,
but the bombing is what prevents it from being eradicated.
The bombing campaign has no moral justification. Its motive is
nothing more than
rivalry
for power, which the US supports based on the
bizarre
claim that Iran threatens to take over the whole Middle East.
Even if it didn't spread famine and cholera, it would be a crime.
The mainstream media
must
defend the right to protest.
Especially we must condemn
Haymarket-style
prosecutions that hold protest organizers responsible for any crime
that occurs at the protest.
Activists on behalf of gay rights tried to deliver a petition to the
Russian state. The state not only didn't accept the petition, it
arrested
them instead.
Barrett Brown was released from prison, then arrested (the thugs
claimed he wasn't allowed to give interviews to the press), then freed
a few days later (perhaps because legally he is allowed to give
interviews to the press). Here is his
interview
with Democracy Now.
He talks about the way the US government helps plutocrats get private
surveillance assistance from companies such as Palantir.
The NSA made the wave of ransomware attacks possible by
perpetuating
vulnerabilities rather than fixing them.
US border thugs are
gratuitously
cruel to refugees, for instance throwing all their medicine in the
trash, and the troll is pushing them to be more cruel.
Muhammad Rabbani of Cage faces
possible
imprisonment for refusing to give the UK border thugs the password
for his laptop.
Cage campaigns against torture and unjust imprisonment in various
countries including the US. The laptop contained privileged legal
work product that he had no right to reveal to anyone. Now Rabbani is
threatened with unjust imprisonment, unless Cage succeeds in
overturning that law.
Because of Tory underfunding, the UK's
ambulances
are barely operable, and their first aid equipment for people having
heart attacks is rickety and slow. The experienced staff are
quitting due to pension cuts.
Nurses are
going
to strike due to pay cuts.
In a few years, the Tories will admit that the NHS no longer
functions, and replace it by privatized medical treatment that most
people can't afford at all.
The EU's proposed copyright directive would require all social media,
all sites that let users post anything, to set up
copyright
censorship systems. Parodies and other fair use, not recognized
in Europe as part of freedom of speech, would be rigorously
eliminated.
Draft Law Would Require Egyptian Social Media Users to
Register
With [Egyptian] Government.
Professor Jacob Dorman explains his resignation from the University of
Kansas because of the state's
insistence
on allowing concealed guns on campus.
He also reviews the statistics that show why this will kill students
far more than it protects them.
Two scientists resigned from an EPA advisory committee
in
response to Saboteur Pruitt's dismissal of other scientists.
They say the dismissal
shows
that their recommendations will not be valued. In effect, their
recommendations would be ignored and their names used to imply
endorsement of the conclusions.
Many Americans that work full time
can't
afford the dental work they need.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to refuse to confirm a
new head of the FBI until an independent investigation under a special
prosecutor is under way.
Capitol Switchboard number: (202) 224-3121
Everyone:
call on NBC
not to give Megyn Kelly a platform for bigotry.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject Sessions' war on drugs.
US citizens:
call
on congresscritters to pledge to move off fossil fuels.
Even total surveillance of everyone would not find all terrorists.
The few real terrorists would be buried under a heap of
false
positives.
The saboteur-controlled EPA has
withdrawn
its objection to a giant mine in Alaska that would sooner or later
poison the salmon of Bristol Bay.
Madagascar's endemic plants are
heading
for extinction.
PCBs were banned in the 1970s, but millions of tons were produced and used
and they get into in the ocean, where they
make
dolphins and sharks sterile.
To Avoid Conflicts of Interest,
Pay
Doctors a Salary.
Government-organized
private loans keep worthless for-profit colleges going.
The companies that make the loans
treat
the borrowers terribly.
Senator Sanders has introduced
a
bill to promote worker-owned cooperatives.
UN urges Pakistan to
"incorporate
into its legislation a specific definition of torture."
The troll has appointed a Republican voter suppression activist to run
a
phony
"investigation" of nonexistent individual "voting fraud". This is
meant to provide an excuse for more voter suppression.
It is clear what the troll's plan is. The Republicans know they can't
win an honest election, so they plan to steal the 2018 election even
more than they
stole
the 2016 election. The reports of the "investigation" will be a
bunch of lies, and nearly all Republicans will pretend they are true,
as an excuse for more voter suppression.
Since 1989 the total mass of insects in Germany has
fallen
by 80%. And it's not just in Germany — this is an example
of a widespread tendency.
I think the writer is obtuse about extinction. Concern about
extinction is not a matter of "fetishizing" the last few individuals
of the species. The species is different from its members, and the
loss of a species is different from the death of any number of members
of that species.
If a given species of frog has a million members, the death of a
specific hundred of them would not concern me much. If those hundred
were the only ones left, their death would still not concern me much;
but it would mean the extinction of the species, and I would consider
that a real loss.
An 80% decrease in insect biomass is a big ecological change, and I
think we had better find out soon what we did to cause it.
Theresa May Is
Creating
an Epidemic of Poverty. Don't Give Her a Free Hand.
The troll has admitted that he fired Comey
because
Comey was pursuing an investigation of the troll/Russia links.
Firing
Comey for obviously bogus reasons was an example of the troll's
attempt to destroy the very idea of truth and loyalty to truth.
His gesture said, "I can do anything I want and no one will
dare stop me."
The troll has
confessed
to obstruction of justice.
Some Americans have the
courage
to refuse to go along with the Republican lie machine.
Our future depends on whether SCROTUS find the moral fiber
to stand for truth rather than lines.
Millions of working people in the UK
can
barely pay the rent. Many sometimes have to borrow money to pay
the rent.
Thatcher started this by allowing tenants in public housing the
"right
to buy".
Thailand has
ordered
Facebook to delete posts that the state considers critical of the
Thai monarchy.
Facebook
has
generally given in to demands for censorship of political views.
I think this shows that multinational social networks have a deep
problem: each country can impose its own censorship on the whole
world.
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but
only if his testimony is
public.
Comey says that the troll
asked him to pledge personal loyalty,
basically to put the troll above his country, and he refused.
Campaigning to free the US black mothers (and others) that are jailed,
often for months,
because they are too poor to pay bail.
Laurence
Tribe: Congress must start impeaching the troll now, for his
obstruction
of justice (as well as plenty of other acts).
Are There 22 Patriotic House Republicans?
Comey wants to testify before Congress, but only if his testimony is
public.
Republicans that shield the troll from punishment for blatant
obstruction of justice, and investigation for possible treason, are
associating themselves morally with those acts. They cannot be
legitimate parts of the US government.
The Syrian Kurds would like to negotiate a trade route to the
Mediterranean. That would involve an agreement with Assad. They
also
talk about capturing Idlib from the Islamists some day.
Liberating Idlib from the Islamists would be good, provided that the
inhabitants are happy with it. That is easier said than done. Who
would rule Idlib instead? The inhabitants probably don't want that
to
be Assad, and they (being Arabs) may not be comfortable with Kurds
today
(though they were content enough with Salah ad-Din).
Our global heating, which melts Arctic sea ice, is
forcing polar bears
to live on land where they may fight with humans.
Beyond apartheid to ethnic cleansing: the rabbi that leads a
significant Israeli electoral party calls for expelling all non-Jews
from
Israel.
Peace Now: Israel's New Settlement Policy an Attempt to "Fool
International Community".
Some sunscreens contain a chemical that
poisons coral even in very low
concentrations.
Airwars has found over 3000 civilian casualties from US bombing in
Iraq and Syria, but the Pentagon acknowledges only 352 of them.
Airwars' method of counting tends to lead to a considerable
underestimate.
The real number must be a lot more.
We should note that the US bombing in Syria and Iraq is far less
criminal than PISSI. Meanwhile, the US bombing in Yemen is entirely
gratuitous.
Sanders: "A
basic principle of American economic life should be that
if you work 40 hours or more a week, you do not live in poverty."
Really our goal should be that no one lives in poverty,
but Sanders is campaigning for a substantial step forward.
No
system of recycling for drink bottles will be effective unless
people get a refund on a deposit for turning in the bottles.
US citizens:
call on the
USDA to reject GMO eucalyptus trees.
The article is mistaken in one point: growing these trees and burning
them would not contribute to global heating. But the other reasons,
such as the danger that the genes would spread, are significant.
Everyone:
phone
the banks that might fund the Keystone XL pipeline.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to block the sale of arms to the UAE if it rejects a
cease fire in Yemen.
US citizens:
call for
protection of the corals off the New England coast.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject the troll's commission that is designed to
provide an excuse for voter suppression.
US citizens:
call
for an independent investigation of the troll's campaign's ties
with Russia.
Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang
said,
in his show trial, that he wasn't tortured into confessing.
However, he had already informed people that any confession would be
due to torture. Apparently he was tortured into denying that he had
been tortured.
The charges against him amount to "campaigning for human rights".
When a state charges someone with that sort of "crime", it is
automatically an injustice.
The US also prosecutes people for political organizing. Unlike China,
it
tries
to disguise this behind phony accusations, but that doesn't make
it any less of an
injustice.
Ireland has
dropped
the prosecution of Stephen Fry — hardly any Irish viewers
complained about what he said on TV.
This is a relief, but the
prohibition
of "blasphemy" remains unjust, in Ireland as in Pakistan.
Israel has expelled a Dutch journalist, apparently for
tweeting
references to articles in 972 Magazine.
Israel
does
not have a free press. Now it is trying to repress foreign
writing about Israel.
Thugs in West Virginia
arrested
a reporter for "yelling questions" at Saboteur of Health Tom
Price.
Thugs have
repressed
dissent in the US for a long time, but it seems that the troll has
emboldened them in repression.
Sanders has introduced a bill to
provide
funds to promote employee ownership of businesses.
How
"safety"
is used to shut down discussion and control people.
Republicans have redefined "diversity"
to
avoid representing minorities or women in decisionmaking bodies.
Republican congresscritters are receiving so much condemnation from the public
that most of them are
hiding
from their constituents.
Taking down the confederate president's statue in New Orleans: "We
must remember all of our history, but
we
need not revere it."
The motive for the secession of the South was to perpetuate slavery.
No matter what good personal qualities some of the secessionists may
have had, they can't outweigh the wrong of what they were fighting
for.
The UK Labour Party platform
will
correct many of the policies that oppress the poor.
It
will
even ban neonicotinoids to protect bees.
To wish for this platform but without Corbyn, as Polly Toynbee does,
is like wishing for a square circle. The reason the Labour Party now
dares to propose to fix those wrongs, which it hasn't dared to propose
since the 1980s, is Corbyn.
A victory for Labour could be a
big
help to the poor in the UK.
The troll met with Russian officials and
allowed
a Russian news photographer but no US journalists.
Henry
Kissinger was his guest at about the same time.
People are
protesting
outside senators' offices, demanding an independent investigation
of troll/Russia.
Jeff Sessions' Defense of James Comey
Contradicts
His Justification for Firing Him.
BAE, which sold jet fighters to Salafi Arabia which it uses for the
bombardment of Yemen,
may
also employ people who load the bombs.
Innovation
starts
from the state. Without state funding, what you get is lots of
juiceros.
Global heating vs Glacier National Park:
124
glaciers gone, 26 remain.
Hong Kong Accused of
Smothering
Dissent for Expected Xi Jinping Visit.
Don't be embarrassed to ask for tap water. Be proud that you are
avoiding
some harmful plastic waste!
A Muslim Indian wife
demands
the same right of instant divorce that Muslim Indian husbands
have.
It's
Time to Build a Trump Impeachment Campaign.
Congressional aides say Comey
asked
for more resources for the troll/Russia investigation a few days
before he was fired.
New pipelines will pollute Pennsylvania to
ship
ethane to Europe to make plastic.
It's not as bad as burning the gas, but fracking to get the gas will
cause local pollution and leak greenhouse-producing methane.
Around
1/5
of low-wage workers in the US are being paid, illegally, less than
the minimum wage.
The minimum wage is worth less now than it was 40 years ago, so you
can see how the economy is getting worse and worse for the poor. This
is no accident: it is dooH niboR at work.
US citizens:
stand
for Network Neutrality.
US citizens:
urge
the Senate intelligence committee to call Comey to testify about
troll/Russia.
US citizens:
Tell
the State Department to stop promoting the troll's businesses.
Everyone:
call
on Volkswagen to negotiate with the US workers' new union.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to ban "conversion therapy" that purports to "cure"
homosexuality.
A high official of UK thugs was formerly an undercover infiltrator of
protest groups, and seduced a real protester to get cover.
Lawrence Tribe: "Trump is putting himself above justice in a
fundamental challenge to our system."
Clothing companies are doing little to reduce the release of
microfibers from new clothing.
Sprint and T-mobile are considering a merger that would take the US
even closer to a monopoly of mobile service.
The US constitution, or any constitution, is impotent to stop a president
who disregards the unwritten rules of democracy with no shame.
Oracle and Cisco are eager to see the end of Network Neutrality in the
US.
The repression of Shari'a law in part of Indonesia.
It was wrong of Indonesia to allow Aceh to impose Shari'a law on
anyone. Individuals should have the right to choose the same
law that applies to the rest of Indonesia.
Trump's Voter Fraud Commission Is a Shameless White Power Grab.
Substantial oil pipeline leaks happen fairly often.
The troll hinted that he secretly recorded his conversations with Comey
and threatened to use them to refute Comey's statements about their
conversations.
Said recordings may not really exist, and we must never assume the troll
means what he says. However, I do hope Comey sticks to the truth
in his statements.
A proposed definition of fake news, to distinguish that from
flawed journalism.
Nader: The US keeps attacking new enemies, and yet hostility to the US
keeps spreading to more countries. It is because Congress fails
to exercise its responsibility to control US war.
Corbyn said that Labour would try to use diplomacy rather than war
to address international conflicts.
Sessions has ordered prosecutors to aim to put drug suspects (in
particular) in prison for longer, by charging them with crimes
that have mandatory minimum sentences.
Myanmar Army Allegedly Left Rohingya Refugees with Bullet Wounds And Burns.
There are so many videos of thugs' killing blacks that each one hardly
sticks in people's minds.
I have to look up the names of specific victims to recall what
happened to each one.
Almost a million Britons now work on zero-hour contracts in which they are
not assured of any work each week.
The US government keeps too many secrets and that threatens democracy.
Journalists must publish leaked secrets, when they consider them to
speak to important issues.
They also need to fight against plans to prosecute Wikileaks.
A judge released Baxter Reid, who was jailed by the US when Canada
didn't let him leave the US just before his visa required.
I am glad that judge resolved this in a good way, but the problem is
in the system. It's not enough to end one example of the injustice.
The US needs to change the attitude of grasping for a chance
to screw someone.
The Dakota Access pipeline isn't operating yet but has already had an
oil spill. The company wasn't going to inform us.
DeVos was invited to speak to the graduation at Bethune-Cookman,
formerly one of the black colleges set up because blacks were
excluded from other colleges. The students booed her off the stage.
Hooray for them.
I don't believe that the school administrators invited her for
intellectual reasons. I believe they were doing it for political
reasons, effectively sucking up to Republicans.
I hope that students and donors demand they resign.
The Dakota Access pipeline's owner has been fined in Ohio for
destroying wetlands with a leak.
I don't think a half-million-dollar fine is enough to teach that company
any lesson.
The Republican senators foiled the troll's effort to eliminate Obama's
regulation to limit methane emissions from extraction on federal land.
Oakland, California, has adopted a law requiring all new use of surveillance
technology to get approval from the city council.
It would be even better if all current uses of surveillance technology
had to get approval from the city council within 2 years, or else be
discontinued.
Even Republicans in Congress won't stand for Saboteur Price's rule that
staff of the Department of Health must get permission before talking with
Congress.
A West Virginia police officer is suing the thug department which fired
him for not shooting someone.
More kinds of product packaging may start spying on people.
We need to push for a "No radio interaction" label.
Yale graduate student teaching assistants are hunger striking
because Yale won't negotiate with their union.
The blasphemy law is being used to establish Islamist domination of
Indonesia.
Protests in Jakarta After Christian Governor Convicted of Blasphemy.
Joint events, organized by Israelis and Palestinians to remember the
dead of both peoples, were attacked by Israeli fanatics.
Israel makes it extremely hard for a Palestinian in Gaza to move to
the West Bank.
In 8 years, permission has been granted only 5 times. Merely having a parent
or spouse living in the West Bank is not enough.
Since the Israeli Medical Association condemns force-feeding of prisoners,
Israel threatens to bring in foreign doctors to do that.
Force-feeding sometimes kills the prisoners. Fasting also is
eventually fatal, but the prisoners (like anyone else) have a right to
end their own lives.
Some of the prisoners are too weak to stand up, so Israel is now fining
them for not standing when ordered to do so.
Israeli soldiers shot at Gaza fishermen again,
and sprayed herbicide on crops in Gaza.
Israeli fanatics threw stones at Palestinian houses and broke their
windows. The inhabitants tried to chase them away, so soldiers
came and shot rubber-coated steel bullets at the Palestinians.
The soldiers didn't interfere with the attacking bigots.
Elsewhere, Palestinians protested land-grabbing Israeli "settlers" who
were building a road across Palestinians' farmland. Israeli soldiers
defended the "settlers".
The soldiers paid no attention to the Israeli court decision that
ordered the "settlers" to stop.
Wisconsin's voter ID law stole the election there for the cheater.
Republican senators are planning to draw up a new Dontcare bill
in secret meetings with no hearings.
Why give the victims a platform to complain, they must have asked
themselves.
Cloudflare rejected calls to impose censorship, but offered a way to
make anonymous complaints to sites.
The troll's FCC saboteurs have relaxed media concentration rules,
allowing right-wing radio chain Sinclair to buy a lot more radio
stations.
The troll fired FBI director Comey, supposedly for treating Clinton
unfairly in July by announcing that Clinton would not be prosecuted.
This was said to exceed his authority and thus do wrong to the
Attorney General at the time (who did not, however, object).
If the cheater really wanted to fire Comey for this reason, he would
not have waited until now. His real reason must be something else.
Many suspect it's an attempt to stop the FBI from investigating the
cheater's team's relations with Russia.
The UK now forces long-married couples separately into nursing homes.
That means they almost never see each other again.
Some German soldiers are on being prosecuted for planning a false flag
terrorist act. They would have made it appear that refugees were the
culprits.
The US
says
it will give the Syrian Kurds more arms. I hope so.
The worst terrorist group in Turkey is the Turkish army. (PISSI is a
distant second.) We don't hear much about its terror activities
because they happen in places where tourists don't go — where
mainly Kurds live. Recall that the Kurdish separatist group PKK made
a truce with the Turkish government many years ago, and Erdoğan
broke
it to get more votes.
Unauthorized immigrants
now
don't dare collect US benefits for giving their babies proper
nutrition.
That means the babies may be permanently harmed.
It is
very
important for women to talk about their abortions. If they stay
in the closet, people can fool themselves that nobody they know would
ever have one.
The troll condemned the war in Afghanistan, before the election.
Now
he wants to escalate it.
The Taliban have infiltrated schools in parts of Afghanistan,
intimidating
teachers or imposing their own choice of teachers.
Laws punishing banks for anything that resembles money laundering are
leading banks to
shut
the bank accounts of small charities and organizations. And they
refuse to explain why.
The internet facilitated today's right-wing lie campaigns: it created
"message-board" darwinian discourse, in which people compete for
attention and
the
most brash and outrageous claims win.
The total insecurity of Signaling System 7 means that
crackers
can now fake two-factor authentication using SMS.
I have never used two-factor authentication myself, because it
requires a mobile phone (portable tracking and listening device) and I
refuse to be tracked and listened to.
I think other sorts of two-factor authentication require a smart phone
— which means, even more malicious.
I don't do internet banking at all, because it is legally risky as
well as risky in regard to computer security.
The Macron campaign fooled the phishers by
giving
them phony accounts.
There is good and bad about this. If the Democratic National
Committee biases the primary race against Sanders in 2020, as it did
in 2016, it may be harder to detect that.
Israel is
considering
a law to eliminate Arabic as a national language and say that
non-Jews are essentially second-class citizens.
An American living in Germany describes
her
experience with the German public medical system.
A survey found that managers
don't
have more stress than the employees they manage.
Sally Yates warned a lawyer from the White House that Michael Flynn
could
be blackmailed by Russia.
Now that Macron has defeated right-wing demonizer Le Pen, France faces
the challenge of
preventing
him from "reforming" the French economy to suit business more, in
the name of imaginary trickle-down.
Global heating is
causing
Alaskan tundra to release more CO2.
Legalization of marijuana
makes
possible regulations to require higher levels of cannabidiol,
which reduces harmful side effects of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
The FCC is investigating Stephen Colbert for a joke some prudes
complained about,
instead
of doing its job and protecting our freedom from ISPs.
In a sample of Australians,
20%
had had nude photos distributed without their consent. Revenge is
only one of the motives of those who do it.
In our culture, the person whose photo is distributed can feel great
pain as a result. There are other cultures where people would say,
"So what? Is this supposed to hurt me? Everyone in the village sees
me nude every day."
200 years ago, in Europe and the US, if you slapped a man's face he'd
feel he had no choice but to fight you to the death. We are fortunate
to have discarded that idea. Now let's discard the idea there is
something shameful about nudity.
The Democratic Party, if it is to win again,
must
present progressive values and stick to them.
Stephen Fry
faces
possible criminal charges for talking about a "a mean-minded,
stupid god who creates a world so full of injustice and pain" on Irish
television.
That law is evidently unjust.
As the troll blatantly embraces dictators, he is
trying
to destroy the US's national conscience.
Quietly embracing other dictators, which the US did before and still
does, does damage in some ways; embracing them openly does that damage
and other kinds too.
Can virtual reality games provide a
sense
of meaning for our lives?
The end of work won't be an unprecedented situation for humanity.
Hunter-gatherers typically had lots of leisure time. They needed to
do some work, but that was far less than 6 hours a day (the equivalent
of 42 hours a week). They had plenty of time for rituals, games,
whatever they wanted to do. We know people don't have trouble living
that way.
The article helped me understand something about myself: I am
completely insensitive to "deep play" that has no intrinsic interest
for me. I don't care deeply about baseball or football in the US, any
more than about about cockfights in Bali or soccer in Argentina. I
don't try to learn to care deeply. I don't pretend to care deeply.
The fact that other people do care deeply about these things has no
influence on me because it makes no sense to me.
I can be curious about a sport — for instance, I read a book
about cricket so I could understand how it works. I'd be interested
in watching part of a game one day, to understand it better. But that
is simply curiosity. I would never get worked up about whether team A
wins or loses.
And the only way I want to play a computer game is without
competition.
Texas has adopted a state law
requiring
local thug departments to arrest people for deportation.
Which is worse: the risk of giving aid to someone who is cheating the
system in a small way, or the risk of
denying
needed aid to someone who isn't cheating?
When the state's aid to those who are honest is not enough to get by,
it systematically compels them to cheat in every small way that they
can find. If that is bad, the blame falls those who run the state.
Everyone: call on the US National Collegiate Athletic Association
to
stop holding
prestigious football matches in North Carolina and other states
that allow discrimination against queer people.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to support the
Safe
Energy Future Plan, which would make fossil fuel business follow
the usual environmental standards.
US citizens: phone your senators to
oppose
the Regulatory Accountability Act.
Please don't try to send a message through that page — it
requires nonfree Javascript code.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate Intel Committee to have Comey testify.
US citizens:
Ask
your congresscritter to support the Respect State Marijuana Laws
Act.
Saboteur Pruitt is
packing the EPA Scientific Board with saboteurs
that represent polluters.
Life Expectancy Gap Between Rich And Poor US Regions Is "More Than 20 Years".
And it is getting worse.
Puerto Rico's bankruptcy
may be a disaster instead of a solution.
The board placed in charge of running Puerto Rico can impose
austerity that would kills thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
30 state bills to punish protesters would 'attack right to speak out'.
Right-wing billionaires quietly fund efforts to wipe out union power
in the US.
The biggest defeat that US workers have suffered is that they have
lost the idea that unions need their support.
A general explanation of anti-science disinformation techniques
helped
people resist those techniques on multiple issues.
The troll has no serious political philosophy. Trying to construct
one
from his inconsistent, even nonsensical words is like trying to
interpret
white noise with a speech recognition system.
Guled Hassan Duran has been held prisoner in Guantanamo for 11 years
with no trial. The US government is giving his lawyers a runaround.
Mississippi African Americans
Besieged by Illegal Searches, ACLU
Lawsuit
Says.
Republicans: "Death to the Unemployed!"
They
want to take Medicaid
away from unemployed people.
Case Farms sought out unauthorized immigrants to hire, guided them in
how to help Case officially deny it was doing this … then used
their vulnerability to impose illegal working and living conditions.
When the troll supports dictators, even mass murderers, that's nothing
new for the US.
The US has done that for decades, maybe more than a
century.
Nonetheless, the article misses out on an important change. The US
used to have certain general policies that acted weakly to promote
freedom globally. Also, it proclaimed principles of freedom which
inspired freedom-lovers to defend freedom in their own countries.
Stating these principles did some good even though many people
knew that the US did not follow them.
The troll is continuing the harmful and unjust US practices while
abandoning the principles that did some good.
A Republican in Congress said that people are always to blame for
their preexisting medical conditions.
The UK government is
planning to ban products with encryption it can't
break.
Boko Haram released 50 or 60 kidnaped girls
after negotiation with the
Nigerian government.
Oklahoma has made sit-in protests a felony, and some other kinds of
trespassing or minor mischief if it is part of a protest.
Any organization that helps organize the protest can also be
prosecuted. Those who provide legal aid to those who are arrested or
prosecuted might also be prosecuted.
The Republican Party is the enemy of what America says it stands for.
I wonder what they would dare say about the Boston Tea Party.
The
common
theme in the troll's actions is gratuitous cruelty.
A few developers are
changing
Michigan tax laws to get a big payoff for developing a small part
of Detroit.
UK thugs
arrested
a press photographer for taking pictures of city hall. This is a
small illustration of the danger of giving thugs too much
discretionary power: some of them, inevitably, will be overeager.
Thugs around the US
used
to do this sort of thing in the early 2000s. I have not seen
reports of it recently.
The troll will
allow
churches to collect money secretly and use it for political ads.
That behavior is illegal, but the troll has ordered federal agencies
to let churches get away with it.
We must defend freedom of speech from attacks from all sides. Your
words don't need to have some identifiable social value to give you
the
right to say them.
Committee to Protect Journalists: With press freedom under attack
worldwide, US is
setting
the wrong example.
President Rouhani says that
hard-liners
in Iran tried to sabotage the nuclear deal.
Sounds
like
the US.
The accusation that the CIA tried to kill Kim Jong-un is not beyond
the bounds of credibility, given its
past
history.
However, it's entirely plausible that Kim Jong-un made it up.
Argentina's right-wing government has
found
an excuse to shorten the sentences of the military torturers and
murderers of the 1970s, who were prosecuted only decades later.
These people have still refused to disclose what they did with the
people they kidnaped and killed, and with the children they took.
If you let ISPs and data brokers see what web sites you visit, that can
add up to a
nightmare
for you.
The troll, and Saboteur Zinke, are
legally
required to consult with various indigenous tribes before
abolishing national monuments, but refuse even to talk with them.
This will give the tribal governments a basis to sue.
Some predict that driverless cars will take over completely in 13
years, drastically
cutting
the combustion of oil.
If this happens, it will be great — but we have to make sure
they don't turn into a massive surveillance system that tracks where
people go, like
Uber.
Sad to say, the proponents are encouraging exactly this.
Jeff Sessions now heads the Department of Injustice. He is taking
action to
put
more people in prison, deny voting rights to minorities, and let
uniformed thugs bully and harass at will.
Many wilderness areas in the US are affected by noise from human
activities which drowns out natural sounds, This
can
mess up the lives of some animals that need to hear.
Muslim fanatics in Pakistan tried to lynch a Hindu man
jailed
for an accusation of blasphemy.
It is a good thing that the thugs are protecting suspects from
lynching, but the law against blasphemy is as unjust as lynching.
Companies are doing away with physical annual meetings
so that there is
no
place or time for the public to protest.
The US did the same thing with
auctions
for fossil fuel deposits.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to insist that Sessions resign.
US citizens:
call
for an independent investigation of the troll's links to Russia.
US citizens:
support
the People's Budget.
US citizens:
support
the College for All Act.
US citizens:
call on
Michigan governor Snyder to restore the water credits for the
people of Flint rather than letting his henchmen take away their
homes.
Snyder is primarily responsible for the lead contamination in Flint.
It was his effort that imposed a nondemocratic government on Flint and
that is what
changed
the water source in a way that caused lead contamination in people's
homes.
Kushner told rich foreigners they
could get US residency by investing
in his company.
He
left out important business from his official disclosure form, too.
Wireless power for small snooping devices: is that an advance for
the good,
or is it dangerous?
The world is
not providing enough food aid to feed the starving people
in Yemen.
If Salafi Arabia and the US bomb Hodeida, the food aid couldn't reach
Yemen anyway.
"The insurance market is
extracting millions to protect us from the
built-in flaws the surveillance state relies on."
The
US and al-Qa'ida are effectively fighting on the same side in
Yemen.
The EU supported a ban on DecaBDE, an endocrine disruptor,
then turned
around and asked for broad exceptions.
Medicaid funds the medical care for half the babies born in the US.
That's
what SCROTUS just cut.
The divestment movement offers
a way for people to put global heating
on the political agenda and press to loosen the ties between fossil
fuel
industry and the rest of the world.
Draft Law Would Require Egyptian Social Media Users to
Register With
Government.
Anti-vaxxers caused an outbreak of measles in Minnesota.
China has kept the Panchen Lama
in prison incommunicado for 22 years.
Did the Marquis de Sade Write This Health Care Bill?
No, he was only interested in directly and personally making people
suffer.
To get pleasure from harming millions of people you don't personally
know,
you have to be a Republican.
The article includes a long list of specific harmful provisions in the
bill.
The
Labour Party says it will raise taxes on high earners.
That's a good first step. It must also make businesses pay tax.
Anyone in France who republishes anything from the Macron leaks is
threatened with prosecution.
These leaks appear to be of no intrinsic importance, but the
repressive policy of the state towards leaks will help cover up real
scandals in the future.
The
UK wants to do the same thing.
The troll seeks to
eliminate 27 US national monuments.
Varoufakis says that Macron was the only French minister that opposed
the Euro-banksters on behalf of Greece.
China will require all online news portals to have staff specifically
to carry out state-imposed censorship.
Facebook reports that it was used by organized groups to spread
disinformation to influence the US election.
Global heating effects are already harming human health.
With the years, the effects will get worse.
Does anyone have an idea how to breed, or engineer, plants to make
as much protein as they do now even with higher CO2 concentration?
Puerto Rico has applied for bankruptcy and relief of some of its debt.
The objections of creditors and plutocratist politicians suggest the
bankruptcy scheme might actually do some good for Puerto Rico's
citizens.
The Republicans in the Senate may modify Dontcare drastically to
bypass
a filibuster. It will have to be limited to spending cuts and tax
cuts.
That will provide no opportunity to disguise the nature of the bill.
Boko Haram lures young girls to carry bombs into crowds for murder.
The children are too young to understand death, and it doesn't occur
to them to disobey.
As a result, people in Maiduguri are afraid of any unknown children
that approach them.
Sometimes an adult man hugs the girl to carry her away from the crowd,
much as some soldiers in World War II threw themselves on a grenade to
save the other soldiers around them.
We don't need to pretend that everyone who gets food from food banks
is totally admirable. It's a shame to make life so hard that people
need to go to food banks.
It's also a shame not to make make alcoholism treatment available
to everyone that needs it.
The US plans to demand that some visa applicants
describe their travel
and work history for 15 years — which many people could not possibly
answer — as well as demanding to look at their social media accounts.
Doing this at the time of visa application is less cruel than doing it
when people enter the US. If you get asked unacceptable prying
questions when you apply for the visa, at least you can still cancel
your trip without losing the price of intercontinental airplane
tickets.
Lakhdar Boumediene and Mustafa Ait Idir, formerly prisoners in
Guantanamo,
write about their torture and their legal cases.
The US imprisoned them without trial, and eventually released them
after the Supreme Court ruled they were entitled to demand justice.
But that was after 7 years of unjust imprisonment.
The dates suggest that Dubya was unwilling to release them
and they were freed only after Obama became president.
The Kentucky Derby is complaining that it can't find the workers
it needs.
It generally hires immigrants for low wages.
The idea of limiting immigration of workers is that businesses will
have to hire citizens. If citizens won't accept the job without a
higher salary and better working conditions, the businesses will be
compelled to improve wages and conditions. That is unpleasant for
businesses, and good for the people. But it takes time for the labor
market to adjust to that.
Stephenie Jimenez got a
scholarship to a private school, which offered
her a rare opportunity for social mobility. But she recognizes that
lots
of other people from poor families could be successful with a good
public
school system.
France has adopted new laws to prevent clothing publicity from
teaching
people
that women should be dangerously thin.
"Democrats have
no business rejoicing at the Trumpcare disaster."
Wall Street Democrats are not on our side. We have to defeat them
in primaries.
World population growth, and plans for farming in Africa,
could
eliminate wild African elephants, and wipe out lots of other species.
The article proposes ways to limit the disaster, but keeps its eyes
firmly shut to the best solution: keep the human population down. We
should give people everywhere contraception aid, and offer incentives
for people to get themselves sterilized. Let's aim to cut the human
birth rate in half, so the population will start slowly decreasing
to a sustainable level.
Around 1900, poor working stiffs recognized that the rich "robber
barons" were keeping them down — and they supported the
progressive movement and then the New Deal.
Today's robber barons have used the consolidated, corporate media to
convince
the working stiffs that the robber barons deserve what they have
taken, and it's the urban middle class (or what's left of it) that
is making them poor.
A leak of the Macron campaign's internal documents seems, on initial
examination,
not
to contain anything scandalous.
Macron says that some of them are fake.
It seems to have been published in the hope that voters will assume,
"Where there's a leak, there is wrongdoing." But that doesn't seem to
have taken hold with the voters.
This contrasts with the Democratic Party officials' leaked emails,
which proved that they were
secretly
biasing the primary race in favor of Clinton and against Sanders.
The thug that shot Jordan Edwards
will
be charged with murder.
The US government is working with cattle companies to
convince
people to eat more beef and dairy products.
Eating a lot of beef is
bad
for health, and maintaining a lot of cattle
contributes
substantially to global heating.
We have to consider this another example of the harm done by having
plutocracy instead of democracy.
If the troll's Dontcare bill passes, Republicans
will
have American blood on their hands.
The Dontcare bill offers companies an
excuse
to reduce the scope of the medical coverage that they provide to
employees.
It would
gut
Medicaid along with Obama's insurance law.
It would
allow
insurance companies to deny coverage for certain treatments to
those that already suffer mental illness from being raped or
experiencing domestic violence.
When people complain to Cloudflare about neo-nazi material, Cloudflare
sends their personal information to the publishers of that material,
who
sometimes
use it to harass and threaten those that complained.
I wonder, does Cloudflare follow this same nasty practice for all the
sites that use it?
I agree with Cloudflare, however, in opposing attempts to ban neo-nazi
sites. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to take a position we
disagree with, even one we despise. Remember, there are people who
despise your views, too, but they should not be able to kick you off
the internet.
US officials that now participate in sending arms to Salafi Arabia
may
be guilty of war crimes.
Americans
remember
only the parts of US wars in which the US was attacked or in which
Americans acted admirably. They forget the parts in which US
armed forces committed enormous terrorism.
I was particularly interested by the point about using the terminology
"ground zero" to equate the September 2001 terrorist attacks (about
3000 victims, mainly American) with the US use of nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hundreds of thousands of victims, mainly
Japanese). I have generally rejected the use of the term "ground
zero" for the World Trade Center because it struck me as tendentious,
but I never before understood why this was so.
A new approach to economics
recognizes
the limits imposed by nature and the needs of society.
Darwinian
economics is another new perspective.
The pace of activism against the troll and his saboteurs is
increasing.
People are not getting tired of fighting back.
Asking citizens to monitor each other for the thugs is
very
dangerous.
North Korea has missiles, but
even
their medium-range missiles rarely work. The ICBMs are pretty much
theoretical.
California has
a
chance to put strict limits on the surveillance capabilities of
thugs.
Congress is
considering
a law to reauthorize vague and abstract patents on computing
activities.
Australia's minister in charge
persistently
lies about a violent attack on refugees that Australia has dumped
on Manus Island.
Some decades ago, it was the Stalinists that stuck to official the lie
no matter how absurd it became. Now it's the capitalists.
US border thugs routinely
lie
to Central Americans who want asylum, denying them the chance to
apply for asylum and the possibility of protection from immediate
danger.
Tillerson
proposes
to disconnect US foreign policy from the stated values of the US
(human rights and political freedom).
The sad and ironic thing is that this would be very little change, as
the two have been mostly separate for a long time. The US been
allied
with repressive Salafi Arabia for decades. In the 1970s the US
arranged
murderous military governments in several countries in South
America.
And that's just a fraction of the instances.
Activist Desiree Fairooz has been convicted of
laughing
at the blatantly counterfactual testimony of a senator.
Two others were convicted of being present before the hearing wearing
KKK robes.
The Republican Party is the enemy of everything the United States
stands for.
The number of prisoners in the US sentenced to life in prison
keeps
increasing. There are now 162,000 of them.
"Prosperity gospel" preacher Benny Hinn has been
raided
by the US. His "prosperity" doesn't come from worshiping —
it comes from the worshipers to whom he promises riches, and
apparently from the US treasury.
The troll is trying to follow the same bogus economics that Reagan
followed: the idea that tax cuts will lead the rich to increase
investment and produce growth,
a
little of which will "trickle down" to the rest of us.
It isn't good for the budget or the country, but it's great for dooH
niboR.
The US has had plenty of growth since Reagan. None of it reached the
non-rich;
the
rich kept it all. What we need now is not growth, it is to
take
our fare share from the rich.
There
was
no "hiatus" in global heating. Rather, denialists seized on the
way science handles a minor anomaly in important data by proposing and
testing various explanations for it.
We don't need to know exactly where the water rose over the seawall
to recognize a flood. We shouldn't need to know every detail
of how the temperature of the ecosphere is rising to recognize that
it's going to swamp our world, nor that the only way to prevent that
is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a lot.
US
law has been used before to keep advertisements and snooping out
of certain areas of our lives.
Let's do it again!
(It is regrettable that the article refers to publications as
"content".)
SCROTUS have proposed a law to
bar
the FCC from requiring any kind of network neutrality.
The imposed government of Flint has
threatened
to seize the homes of people who have not paid their exorbitant water
bills.
Those bills are for water that has to be filtered since it still has
too much lead.
The government of Flint is nondemocratic; the people of the city
cannot replace it. It was put in place by the Republicans that
dominate Michigan as a whole. Naturally it acts to
oppress,
since that is its purpose.
Windows 10 S ("S for Straitjacket")
does
not allow users to change the default browser or the default search
engine.
WalMart and TrueValue have or will
stop
selling neonicotinoid pesticides and plants grown with them.
I expect that farms use a lot more neonicotinoids than home gardeners,
but this is a significant step forward.
Too bad our government is so submissive to business that it can't take
necessary decisive action that large companies oppose. It reduces us
to begging companies to stop doing wrong.
As I suspected, the US federal claim that even an insignificant
falsehood in a citizenship application is grounds to revoke
citizenship was
first
presented under Obama.
It is to Obama's shame, and Holder's that neither of them objected to
this. Of course, neither do the troll and Sessions.
Google outsources the checking of its algorithmic classifications to a
company called Leapforce. The company just
cut
all its full-time workers to part-time, cut their wages, and
discharged many of them.
It did this in a strange way — a new, replacement company has
been started up which is hiring only some of the workers, and it seems
the company Leapforce will be shut down.
The article doesn't explain the motive for doing it that way, but I
suspect it is an end run around US labor law — essentially, a
way to cheat some of the workers.
Senator Feinstein persistently opposes single-payer medical care.
Perhaps her reason is that she
depends
on money from insurance companies.
South Dakota Republicans are
attacking
the right to protest.
Many intellectuals think about the future of humanity
based solely on
their own fields of thoughty, ignoring and thus implicitly denying the
ecological and climate disasters that humanity is building up.
I wish the author would reconsider the name "Anthropocene" for the new
geological epoch that is the result of human activity.
Meanwhile, the oil companies pay attention to the coming disaster —
but only how to profit from it.
They too underestimate the consequences that would result from 4C of
global heating.
Preventing an ice age in 50,000 years would be a good thing, if it
were not a side effect of an even bigger disaster in a few decades
from now. The avoided ice age would imply 4C of global cooling. The
Thermocene epoch could ultimately involve more than 4C of heating.
The
House of Representatives passed an even worse version of the
SCROTUS medical disinsurance bill.
It seems they papered over the denial of coverage to people with
preexisting medical conditions with a limited amount of funds to cover
some of them.
Then they rushed it through to deny the opportunity for informed
public criticism. There was no emergency here. Any legislator who
rushes a controversial change for no urgent reason is trying to
screw the public.
It is foolish and misleading to call that bill "Trumpcare". The troll
tries to shock us, but in some ways he is totally predictable: he will
never care about Americans in general.
I have decided to call that bill "Dontcare".
Forest Service's "Independent" Report on Atlantic Coast Pipeline
Written
by Pipeline Company Contractor.
A study
documents how effectively money buys votes in congress.
The
ACLU is suing the US government for arbitrarily searching
Aaron Gach's phone.
Saying curse-words boosts one's physical strength.
I have a hunch it boosts firmness of will under some circumstances.
There are
proposals for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Growing a tree seems simple, but growing billions of trees is a lot
harder than just planting them. For instance, they could be killed by
global heating effects such as drought, floods, or tropical pests. A
dead tree doesn't sequester carbon.
An interview with Desiree Fairooz, with more detail about the events
of her arrest and prosecution.
It seems she was expelled originally for laughing, but prosecuted
for objecting when she was expelled for laughing.
Putin has got support from Turkey, Iran and the US for a plan to
establish
"humanitarian safe zones" in Syria.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to block Dontcare. More precisely, any law that
undermines Medicare and Medicaid, defunds Planned Parenthood, or takes
health care away from sick people.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to reject EPA budget cuts.
Everyone:
call on
professional golf tournaments to stop using the troll's golf
courses.
US citizens:
condemn
the Dontcare bill.
Everyone:
Urge
Canada to protect the boreal forest.
The last stage of Tory "welfare reform" was an
arbitrary
maximum limit on annual welfare payments. This was supposed to
pressure people into working, even disabled people and people for whom
working is logistically impossible.
This policy is a catastrophe for the non-rich, but not for the Tories
that set it up. On the contrary, it achieves their goal: to drive the
non-rich into ever-worse poverty, to the point that they become a
timid and unresisting underclass, useful for intimidating everyone
else.
There is one good effect of the policy: that it encourages some women
to have abortions rather than babies. In our overpopulated world,
with the human population still growing, people ought to ask
themselves, "Is it right for me to have a child?" If it would be
difficult for you to support one, that is the indirect way that the
world shows you that you shouldn't have it.
However, the Tory choice to send this message by denying support to
children Tories consider "excess" is cruel and destructive. It
condemns real, live children to grow up in poverty, hunger and
stress,
which gratuitously
stunts
them for life.
A Republican congresscritter revealed the cruelty of Republicans by
blaming
individuals for all their medical problems.
What Republicans are really saying is, "If you weren't born rich, you
deserve a life of shit." They say this to serve the people they work
for: the rich.
The US Justice Department will bring no charges against the thugs that
held
Alton Sterling down and shot him dead.
This could reflect a new policy of supporting thugs no matter how
flagrant their crimes. But it will take more than one occasion to see
if it is a new policy.
Varoufakis gives quotes to prove that "bailout" of Greece was
designed
from the start to be a disaster.
I disagree with Paul Mason's judgment of Tsipras. Each stage of
"bailout" only makes Greece weaker.
Eliminating today's
plastic
straws is environmentally necessary.
Remembering the
US
war crimes of the Korean War.
The two governments ruling parts of Libya
may
be making some sort of agreement for peace with each other.
Ukrainians that collaborated with the Nazi occupation later led
guerrilla resistance against Stalin. That
makes
it hard to judge those who fought them on behalf of Stalin.
Poor areas of Caracas have
broken
out in riots.
The Tories, extractivists rather than conservatives,
plan
to rewrite all of British law bypassing Parliament, if nobody
stops them.
The
nocebo
effect: how imaginary damage can cause real pain.
Among the refugees imprisoned by Australia on Nauru, 50 have
threatened
or tried to burn themselves to death.
Wisconsin had a law that
denied
human autonomy automatically to every pregnant women who had a
history of using certain drugs. It has been ruled unconstitutional.
Women have a moral obligation to the good health of babies they will
have — if they intend to have babies. (Aborting a fetus
eliminates the issue because then it won't become a baby.) But women
are not incubators. Being pregnant doesn't take away their human
rights.
Us border thugs jailed Baxter Reid for being one hour late in leaving
the US. He was not late by choice — he was
delayed
in departure by Canadian immigration.
Countries have a right to deport those who willfully overstay a visa.
But no country can excuse punishing people who in trying to carry out
their visa requirements encounter delays beyond their control. That
is the act of people whose goal is to cause suffering and use rules as
an excuse.
The United States should give Reid an apology and fire those
responsible for this treatment of him. If the government does not nip
this in the bud, soon we will hear about visitors that were jailed
because they had a heart attack before their visas expired, or their
departure flight was canceled, or their taxi had a collision on the
way to the airport.
In many US schools, the staff go out of their way to
stigmatize
students from poor families. Anyone who would even think of this
should not be working with children.
It seems to me that schools are doing the wrong sort of background
check on their staff. Contempt for some set of students —
whether it is poverty, or an ethnic group — is the biggest
danger to the students.
How the NRA's resistance to gun control
ties
in with traditional US racism.
The thug that killed Walter Scott, shooting him in the back as he was
fleeing, has pleaded
guilty
to federal civil rights charges.
A prosecutor in Texas is on trial for
illegally
rigging a trial, which caused an innocent man to be executed.
When adults need to borrow money from their parents to buy a house,
this
exacerbates
inequality — between those whose parents have that much
money and those whose parents don't.
The troll's saboteurs in the USDA have
cancelled
new nutritional standards for school lunches.
That shows how much he cares about poor rural children.
The
new
Congressional budget saved funding for the EPA and for scientific
research, which the troll wanted to kill.
Americans have learned that
Democrats
such as Clinton favor the rich. Strangely, they believed the
troll when he said he was different.
Americans need to elect politicians like Senator Sanders and Senator
Warren, who really don't favor the rich.
When the troll gave a speech for the NRA, guns were
banned
in the hall.
His bodyguards understand that this is necessary, even though he says
it isn't.
Andrew Cuomo is a plutocratist Democrat; he favors progressive policies
as long as they don't cut into the income of his
bankster
supporters.
The Safest Way to Protect Water from Fracking is to
Ban
Fracking.
This is doubly the case since each gram of gas extracted, no matter
how, contributes to global heating.
We need to keep 80% of all known fossil fuel reserves
in
the ground, and we might as well start with all the reserves that
require dangerous procedures (such as fraction) to be extracted.
A forest fire in a fallout-contaminated area near Fukushima is
lifting
the radioactive fallout into the air.
Whether this event has a significant effect would depend on the
current wind. The radioactive atoms will drift for a while with the
wind, then fall down somewhere else.
The troll's political philosophy is not neoliberal, nor antisocialist
("libertarian"). He is an
authoritarian.
The troll tells so many falsehoods that the Washington Post fact
checkers cannot keep up. An average of
almost
5 per day.
The handful of scientists that deny global heating and its human
causes have published arguments in a paper. This article shows
its
errors.
The Circle is like a cartoon parody of Facebook, and
the
real Facebook is more dangerous.
Make sure your browser blocks Facebook's Like buttons so that they
can't snoop on your browsing.
"The higher the inequality, the more likely we are to
move
away from democracy."
Equality of opportunity includes more than just the opportunity for an
adult trying to enter a certain kind of work or school. It also
includes the opportunity for a child to grow up into a capable adult.
That requires good food, good medical care, and a life without high
stress.
US citizens:
call
on your senators to support sanctions against the Philippines
because of President Do-dirty's crimes.
US citizens:
call
on the Senate to reject the Dontcare bill.
US citizens:
submit
a comment urging Nebraska to refuse to approve the Keystone XL
pipeline.
Australia's rare red-finned blue-eye fish is
threatened
with extinction by an immigrant brought from the US. To protect
it, people are building three artificial springs to which to
transplant populations of the fish.
Peru's Plans to Cut Air Quality Rules Would
Smooth
Sale of Top Polluter.
Lots of French voters loathe Macron for the
right-wing
labor law "reforms" that he imposed on them a year ago.
Since the only reason to want Macron to win is that he's not a racist
anti-truther, France will be better off if he can't "govern
successfully". A sufficient leftist majority in legislature could
stop this.
Wealthy Americans get, on the average,
far
more government entitlements (money and tax breaks) than poor
Americans do.
A racist supporter of the troll
faces
charges for harassing a black protester.
Hamas has adopted a new charter that
accepts
coexistence with Israel with the pre-1967 borders.
This ought to make peace possible, but it would require dismantling
Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory. I think Netanyahu and
other right-wing Israeli leaders will find another excuse to avoid
that and continue the occupation.
Barack Obama's
$400,000
Speaking Fees Reveal What Few [progressives] Want to Admit.
Namely, that he was never committed to fight the plutocrats.
I could see this before he was elected, which is why I didn't vote for
him.
As brain scanning technology advances, we will need to have laws to
protect
people's privacy and autonomy in their minds.
But that won't be enough, because our thoughts can have visible
effects in tiny actions of our muscles.
Devices are being designed to
watch
how fast people walk, to deduce their state of health or to
identify them.
New Orleans prosecutors
harass
investigations by public defenders by filing criminal charges
against them over doing their jobs properly.
Everyone:
support
the California bail reform bill.
US citizens:
call on Senate Republicans
to reject the Dontcare bill.
Everyone:
state your
support for the Paris climate agreement.
It isn't enough to avoid global disaster, but undermining it would
hurry the disaster.
What the Battle of Puebla can teach us about the
injustice
of international debt, in 1862 and still today.
Everyone:
call
on Bethune-Cookman University to cancel its speech invitation to
DeVos.
US citizens:
call
on Nebraska to refuse the permit for the Keystone XL
planet-roaster pipeline.
It looks like the US and Salafi Arabia are
about
to bomb Hodeida. This would make the famine in Yemen deeper,
causing misery for 19 million people.
Salafi Arabia has no legitimate justification for attacking Yemen,
and the US has neither justification nor reason to do so.
The Salafi Arabian defense minister
says
Iran is trying to "control the Islamic world".
This is absurd, since most Muslims are Sunnis and they would hardly
follow Iran. The reason he made the claim is to distract us from
what
Salafi Arabia is doing to the Islamic world.
A thug shot at a moving car and
killed
15-year-old Jordan Edwards.
Can you guess his racial background?
15-Year-Old's
Death Shows What Can Happen When Cops Shoot at Cars.
The other countries that were in the TPP plan are
trying
to continue with it.
The TPP is a malicious plan to give businesses more power over people
and states, so they can take a bigger share of production and wealth.
The result, as we know from 30 years of this approach, is that
the non-rich get less.
The
latest
SCROTUS plan to repeal Obama's medical insurance plan has split
the Republican Party.
Tasmania (a part of Australia)
punishes
protests if they inconvenience business.
What that means is that the government of Tasmania takes the side of
business against its citizens.
US citizens:
call
on your congresscritter to sign the discharge petition for the
bill to require the troll to release his tax returns.
Everyone:
call
for criminal charges against the thug that killed Jordan Edwards.
Housing prices in London are falling. This is
good
news for poor people that actually live there.
The troll is rushing to install a missile defense system in South
Korea
before
the Korean people and politicians can debate whether they want it.
It would be a very good thing to cancel the Korea-US business
supremacy treaty. All
those treaties are designed to reduce democracy in all the countries
that sign them.
However, when the troll says such things, he usually is not serious,
just trying to provoke a reaction and then offer some other option.
US border thugs
deported
a family to Honduras while their lawyers were presenting their asylum
case.
The officials displayed trollish contempt for the very idea that
people have legal rights.
The FBI, which
uses
criminal methods to inculpate people every day, should not dare
try to say what is or is not legitimate journalism.
UN Accuses Saudi Arabia of
Using
Terror Laws to Suppress Free Speech. I'm glad to see some
criticism in the UN for that repressive and fanatical state.
The Tory outsourced system for
cutting
support for the disabled, after it has crushed their spirit,
starts pressing them to explain why they haven't committed suicide
yet.
The Tories are lower than vermin.
The troll's budget is designed to enrich the rich. The people's
budget, written by the progressive caucus, is designed to help the
non-rich.
The troll
wants
to shut down Arpa-E, which funds long-term research in generating
and using energy more efficiently.
We can guess his motive: more efficiency would lead to less demand for
fossil fuels, and less profit for fossil fuels companies.
Not all systems for saving energy are good; some have too high an
ethical price. For instance, the app described in the article is a
dangerous surveillance system. I will never have the portable phone
that the system presupposes.
Senator Warren rebuked Obama and other Democrats
for
ignoring the harm done by plutocracy.
Most people who are terminally ill would rather die at home, but
many
families can't cope with that.
Not too long ago, ex-presidents of the US
didn't
hire themselves out to companies.
Facebook Helped Advertisers
Target
Teens Who Feel "Worthless".
Heavy use of Facebook tends to make some people
feel worthless. We could
call this "vertical integration of exploitation."
How does the surveillance state watch thee? We can't count the ways,
but here's a
list
of quite a few of them.
We need general laws to prohibit most systems from collecting data
about people, or even identifying them at all.
The UK hounds poor people for small fines that they cannot pay, by
adding ever more fines. Jerome Roberts found that his
$100
fine was increased to $1500 because he could not pay it.
Jerome Roberts killed himself because, once they denied him use of his
motorcycle, he could no longer make any money.
Most of the victims pay the fines eventually, perhaps instead of
eating, but this becomes a substantial drain on poor people's income.
This resembles the practice of Ferguson, Missouri, and many other US
towns that get a lot of their income by fining poor people.
The practice of escalating fines to make people pay them presumes
people have money and simply refuse to pay. In a society so unjust as
to force millions into poverty, such as the UK or the US, that
assumption is false; the system of fining to collect fines is an
additional injustice visited on the poor.
The real solution, though, is to give poor people more money.
Then they will be able to pay their fines when first levied.
The troll is going to honor the President Do-dirty with a
visit
to Washington.
We must suppose that he will receive this honor for being a bully and
showing contempt for human rights in the Philippines.
Online sales stores are working together to use personal profiles to
mislead
the public about what the normal price of products is. They
arrange to give people the idea that they are getting a discount, when
in fact they are paying extra.
This is so pervasive that the concept of "the" price (for a given
product) may no longer make sense.
Economists claim that the market is excellent because it determines
the proper price for each good. I wonder if they are worried about
this.
A
right-wing
campaigner that seeks to ban abortion entirely has been nominated
as assistant saboteur of public communication in the Department of
Health.
The troll is placing a
religious
extremist that opposes birth control in charge of a big
contraceptive program there.
The EPA is now the Environmental Pollution Agency. It is
soliciting
excuses to allow more pollution.
Companies are still moving thousands of US jobs to other countries
where pay is less, and the troll
isn't
doing much if anything to stop it.
If your boss tells you "We are moving this work to another country,
and first we want you to train your replacements," be brave! Quit
before doing that — and organize your coworkers to quit too.
As the article points out, direct transfer of specific jobs is a very
small part of the overall job transfer out of the US due to
business-driven globalization. Its overall global effect is that
companies pay workers less, anywhere in the world.
The troll has found Sebastian Gorka's antisemitic ties
too
embarrassing.
The US is protecting the Syrian Kurds from Turkey by
stationing
US troops on the border between them.
The situation is complicated, with the Kurdish northern region of Iraq
allied with Turkey and not with the Syrian Kurds.
Apparently the troll's praise for Erdoğan was as insincere as
almost everything else he says.
The troll's threats scared many in Central America out of fleeing to
the US. But their lives are in danger at home, so they are
recovering
their courage to try.
The troll is looking at changing the US constitution so he can
sue
those that publish accusations that he denies. That would include
anything which is negative about him, since he calls such facts "false
news".
This announcement came just after he reminded Americans that
May 1 is
"Loyalty
Day", on which we are supposed to remember our loyalties to the
principles of the United States, such as freedom of the press.
In Norway, A
Growing
Movement Builds an Oil-Free Future.
In Washington DC, students that got a voucher and transferred to a
private school
did
not do any better subsequently, and in many cases did worse.
The only "persons" whose rights matter to the troll are
businesses.
Humans emit
100
times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
It
would
be easy for an internet army to rig the 2018 election.
Of course, it is
even easier for
insiders. It is a mistake to depend on computers for elections.
However, saving paper ballots for an audit is no use if state laws
make
recounts almost impossible, as we discovered in 2016.
Taser is storing the video from thugs' body cameras, and
wants
to analyze it all.
Body camera footage should be saved only when there is a
specific
justification for doing so These videos should be held by the
state and used only as evidence for specific crimes, as specified by
law. No company should ever get its hands on any of these videos,
except those which are published.
US troops have returned to Helmand, where their
previous
"victory" proved to be entirely transitory.
The US-supported Afghan government cannot defeat the Taliban. It
can't even stand against the Taliban for more than a few years without
US troops to prop it up. But US soldiers can't defeat the Taliban
either. They can only push it down.
The Taliban are stronger than the corrupt Afghan government because
the Taliban inspire real support from a segment of the population, but
the Afghan government gets no support except what it pays for.
Is it worth a forever war just to keep the Taliban from winning in
Afghanistan?
Interviews with women in the army of the Syrian Kurds.
The few refugees that escape from Raqqa confirm that the civilians
there are faced with starvation if they stay, but PISSI will try to
kill them if they leave. While there, they are
used
as human shields.
The US persistently refuses to give the Kurds much in the way of
weapons. I think the US has been planning all along to betray the
Kurds to Turkey once PISSI is
defeated. The increasing tyranny of Erdoğan apparently appeals
to the troll, which makes that suspicion even more plausible.
Approaches
for resisting climate trumpery so as to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
Food and Water Watch says that protecting food and water safety now
requires avoiding climate chaos, so it
intends
to campaign for that.
"There can be no greater crime against humanity than the foreseeable,
and methodical,
destruction
of conditions that make human life possible."
The only way to prevent extinction of the vaquita porpoise is to
catch
all 3 of them and move them to protected waters.
The election of Obama, and that of Trump, both reflect that Americans
are
desperate
for politicians that will serve the public rather than the rich.
In each case they didn't get it. (To be fair to Obama, he tried to go
further on medical insurance, and was
blocked
by Republicans and business lobbying.) The general point is that
the US political system is
no
longer a democracy.
Sanders recognizes this, which is why he aims for a
"political revolution".
Doctors are starting to measure the phenomenon that childhood stress
tends to cause medical problems that
take
many years off people's lives.
The US is causing childhood stress for millions of children in some
other
countries.
Meanwhile,
right-wing
antisocialist
policies are causing child stress for millions of children in the
US.
If saying hello to each student on entering the classroom makes a big
difference to the class, this is one example of why large classes will
tend to be bad classes, no matter how capable and assiduous the
teacher is.
The US has put sanctions on doing business with Russia, but a
loophole
permits JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to continue.
Facebook has agreed to
censor
publications to Vietnam's specifications.
(Please don't refer to publications as
"content".)
The
Three
Hot Trends in Silicon Valley Horseshit.
The troll has given prominent anti-semites
important
platforms.
His own personal relationships with some Jews do not cancel that out.
US drug companies have increased the price of some kinds of insulin to
the point where
some
diabetic people can barely afford to stay alive.
This wouldn't happen if we had a single-payer Medicare for All system.
The troll's appointee for Deputy Saboteur of the Interior, to be in
charge of approving or disapproving mining and drilling, has made a
career of
lobbying
for polluting projects.
The troll proposes to
eliminate
courts that block implementation of his illegal proclamations.
This is, in effect, a proposal to eliminate the independence of the US
judiciary — an attack on the constitution.
The frightening thing is that the troll and the billionaires that
mostly control Republican legislators might actually be able to do it.
The level of civic virtue among Republicans is too low to assure
failure.
A Democratic Party campaign funding organization analyzed the 2016
election defeat, and
refuses
to say what it found.
But if the findings have to do with fund raising and expendature, it
is clear they are looking for the failure next to the UV streetlight
because that's the only place they can see through their UV-filter
glasses.
US citizens: stand up for the
Clean
Power Plan.
US citizens: phone Republican leaders to
oppose
their plans to cut medical care.
US citizens:
oppose
the NRA's bill to deregulate silencers.
US citizens:
oppose
the "CHOICE" Act — don't give banksters the
choice to cheat people more.
US citizens: call on Congress to
reject the
troll's plan to allow offshore oil drilling on the Atlantic and
Arctic coasts
US citizens: support the
senators
who have objected to bombing Hodeida.
US citizens: call on Congress to
pass the
100 By 50 Act, which establishes the goal of eliminating all
fossil fuel use to generate electricity in the US by 2050.
US citizens: tell Congress:
don't
pass any tax cuts for the troll.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to
oppose the new,
even worse medical insurance proposal, which would attack Medicaid
as well as endangering Americans with preexisting medical problems.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588.
Melting ice in Antarctica could subject the US east coast to
12
feet of sea level rise.
800,000 people's homes in New York City could be underwater.
Parts of Boston too.
And of course Miami and New Orleans.
Saboteur Pruitt is
sabotaging
the EPA's climate science pages.
When two Dalits got high scores on the entrance exam for the Indian
Institute of Technology, local bigots
attacked
their house with stones.
Nobody was hurt, but it shows the nature of the hatred that Dalits in
general have to face. Most Dalits, like most non-Dalits, can't get
into an exclusive school, but they deserve decent treatment anyway.
Erdoğan has underlined his repressive vision for Turkey by
blocking
access to Wikipedia.
The New York Times hired a right-wing columnist who
presents
global heating denial salted with falsehoods. The Times said it
would do fact checking on that columnist's writing, but
didn't
effectively do so.
China has
jailed
visiting Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che.
Due to the hostility between the two countries, Taiwan's government is
in no position to press for his release. It's possible that the
motive for doing so is political pressure on Taiwan.
Selling abortion medicines without prescription
seems
to be safe, and it would protect women from antiabortionist
repression.
The US is apparently going to
escalate
its bombing campaign against al-Shabaab in Somalia, reducing the
care taken to avoid civilian casualties.
The troll wants to put a persistent antiabortion campaigner, who also
opposes effective birth control,
in
the Department of Health.
The troll set up a phone number for people to report crimes committed
by unauthorized immigrants. The system is
entirely
useless for curbing crimes or catching criminals. Its sole
purpose is to spread, by existing, the impression that they commit a
lot of crimes.
People immediately began reporting supposed crimes by aliens of
another sort, flying in UFOs.
In general, the victims and witnesses can't tell whether the person
who committed the crime is an unauthorized immigrant, unless they know
that person. However, Serious investigation says they commit fewer
crimes on average than US citizens.
The NSA said it
will
stop examining Americans' email merely because it mentions some
coordinates associated with a foreign surveillance subject.
This is a small change in the right direction, but I emphasize
"small". The fight to disestablish
massive
collection of data about our activities is just beginning.
The Australian national thugs snooped on lists of journalists' past
communication records
without
even a warrant.
A warrant should be required to start keeping records of anyone's
communications.
Humpback whales sometimes organize to
block
orcas from hunting other kinds of prey.
Are they smart enough to realize this will indirectly protect the
humpback whales from being attacked by orcas on other occasions?
North Korea
fired
another ballistic missile.
I get the impression that King Kim and the troll have the same
approach to peace negotiations: act as bellicose as possible, hoping
to get the "best deal". Unfortunately, that resembles a game of
chicken.
Progressive activists
should
focus their campaigns on changing powerful repressive
institutions. Trying to silence right-wing speakers is wrong, and
protesting them tends to be a distraction from substantive issues.
Missouri's insane new law requires schools to
report
all fights between students for prosecution, and makes fighting a
felony.
Prosecutors will decide which students to prosecute. I suppose they
will usually prosecute blacks and not whites. But it is vicious
prosecute students for this.
Ivanka Trump is
soliciting
foreign donations for a fund for "female entrepreneurs".
Some Republicans are
campaigning
to move the Republican Party out of global heating denialism.
Please don't legitimize these denialists, in many cases paid to
campaign or deluded by paid campaigns, by calling them "skeptics".
However, the Republican Party still merits Chomsky's term:
the
most dangerous group in human history.
Brazilians Sick of Corrupt Politicians Hit the Streets to
Protest
Austerity Measures.
Plutocratist politicians speak of "reforms" when what they mean is
to eliminate workers' rights and reduce their pay.
PISSI terrorists may be
sneaking
into Europe by posing as wounded Libyan soldiers.
Many countries are adopting the US system of plea bargaining, which
effectively
denies
most accused people a trial.
US citizens:
call
on Zinke to preserve national monuments.
US citizens:
Tell
the troll not to interfere with states that have legalized and
regulated marijuana.
US citizens:
tell
Congress not to pass any tax legislation until the troll publishes
his tax returns.
US citizens:
call
on the House of Representatives to force vote before General
Mattis attacks the Yemeni port of Hodeida, pushing Yemen into famine.
US citizens:
call
for immediate suspension of Jared Kushner's Interim Top-Secret
Security Clearance.
Tennessee's governor encourages state agencies to
subcontract
jobs to a company that he profits from.
He's a Republican, naturally. Republican officials feel that, in the
troll's wake, no corruption is too blatant.
Texas Republicans are passing a bill to
imprison
thug chiefs that don't cooperate 100% with repression of
unauthorized immigrants.
They seek to whip up Americans' hatred of foreigners, then offer
Americans the excitement of vicarious participation in repressing
them.
Greenpeace says that palm oil company IOI Group has
made
progress in ending deforestation, and has dropped its pressure
campaign against that company.
Slavery in India is tied up in
social
networks that make it very difficult to put an end to.
Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping was given a suspended sentence
— for a bogus crime, in a secret trial, after
2
years of imprisonment with torture.
The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo
fear
that the right-wing government of Argentina will cover up the 1970s
murder of their children with systematic lies.
Union organizers in the right-wing southern US
have
to reach out to an entire community, not just the workers in a
particular company.
Kayla Greenwood, whose father was killed by Kenneth Williams,
begged
the governor not to execute him.
It is a moving letter, though I denounce the idea that the state
should reduce someone's punishment because that person became
religious.
The governor, standing firm for the principle that the state is
mercilessness, carried out the execution anyway.
Most of us will not be sentenced to death, but we could easily be
hit by that immoral principle in lesser ways.
Holocaust denial was an early example of the sort of systematic
lie-fabrication campaigns that the right-wing now uses
derail
serious political discussion based on facts.
Politicians today sometimes advocate laws and repressive policies for
no evident reason except to
harass
their opponents.
The article errs in putting gun control in that category. Guns really
are dangerous, especially to the families of their owners.
"Social" features that say "If you like what A posts, try what B
posts", can
indirectly
doxx A or B.
Although human greenhouse gas emissions seem to have leveled off, the
rate
of increase in the atmosphere is rising. Evidently the heat has
damaged part of the Earth's natural CO2 sink.
The US government has made submarine-launched nuclear missiles
accurate
enough to destroy Russian ICBMs.
That was a foolish and dangerous thing to do, since it gives Russia a
reason to fear a US first strike, and thus a reason to launch its
missiles on warning, thus increasing the danger of accidental nuclear
war.
The US government is arguing, before the Supreme Court, that the
slightest
omission in an application for citizenship, even failing to
mention that you once went to a meeting of any club or once drove
faster than the speed limit, is ground to revoke citizenship.
The worst plausible projection of sea level rise is
8
feet by 2100.
Sanders and two Democrats have a
proposed
a bill to move the US rapidly towards renewable electric
generation. New fossil fuel pipelines would be banned.
The aim of the bill, which SCROTUS will surely block, is to change the
debate.
Obama demonstrates his loyalty to rich investors by
going
to their event for $400,000.
What I rebuke Obama for is not the fact that he is working for
pay, but who he is working for.
The reason I didn't support Clinton in November was that she would
clearly have been
even
more of a supporter of the banksters than Obama was.
A website
offers
advice to women in the US that want to use abortion drugs and
can't consult a doctor.
Former
US intelligence personnel warn that the US is on the verge of
going to war with Assad's forces based on intelligence conclusions
that they have chemical weapons, without making really sure — much as
it did against Iraq.
The conclusions were wrong in the case of Iraq.
Most of the plastic that finds its way to the North Atlantic ends up
in a
garbage
patch in the Arctic Ocean.
The cheater has proposed tax cuts
designed
to benefit himself personally (and other rich people).
This is the result of changes that are supposedly to help small
businesses, but
will
help large businesses more.
For decades, Republicans have proposed tax cuts that reduced most
people's taxes an insignificant amount and mainly benefited rich
people. The natural concomitant is spending cuts that mainly hurt
the poor or middle class. The total outcome is dooH niboR.
Bluefin tuna are
being
fished to extinction. 90% of the fish that are caught nowadays
are not old enough to reproduce.
Why the UK is
sinking
in respect for press freedom.
Barrett Brown was imprisoned again —
for
giving interviews to the press.
Le Pen resigned as president of her political party, for electoral
reasons. The party appointed a replacement that
dabbled
in holocaust denial.
It is wrong to prosecute holocaust denial, as France does, because
freedom of speech includes the freedom to express any views about
history. However, the people who say such things do not deserve
respect or support.
Some Republicans in Congress are joining a
bipartisan
global heating caucus.
North Carolina Republicans are trying to reduce the size of the state
supreme court, so that Governor Cooper cannot appoint anyone. A
Republican judge was so incensed at this that he
resigned
and gave Cooper a chance to appoint his successor.
The troll has
appointed
a number of hate group activists to various US agencies.
"Free"
western countries voted to put Salafi Arabia on the UN Commission
on the Status of Women.
As sea level rise forecasts for California
increase,
it appears that inundation threatens houses, beaches, roads, bridges,
railways, and nuclear power plants.
40,000 houses could disappear beneath the Pacific Ocean, or San
Francisco Bay, in 70 years.
Of course, global heating could go even faster if some new positive
feedback appears.
SCROTUS have proposed the "Regulatory Accountability Act" to
make
regulations more accountable to the companies they are supposed to
regulate.
The idea is that regulation should be so gentle that it won't hamper
companies from making people sick or broke.
Republicans have campaigned for years to turn "regulation" into a
smear term so they can
permit
businesses to harm and cheat the public with no regulations to hold
them back.
The troll's budget would
eliminate
spending to support women's rights, world wide.
The ACLU is campaigning to
hold
prosecutors accountable for their decisions, with the goal of
reducing mass imprisonment in the US.
Harvard is starting to respond to years of pressure to divest
from fossil fuels. It will
"pause"
in buying such stocks.
Seems more disappointing than exciting.
The
arguments
for tax cuts for rich corporations are bogus.
Systematic
repression of democracy supporters in Hong Kong.
Islamist terrorists now aim to
expel
or kill the Christians that remain in Egypt.
Russia
wants
the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send an
investigation team to Khan Sheikhun to verify whether the deadly
chemical released there was sarin. The western countries in the
organization voted against this, leading to suspicion they are
covering something up.
Assad and Russia together can surely assure the safety of inspectors
from their side, and if the rebels refuse, the onus will fall on them.
The copyright industry wants to
convert
the head of the copyright office into its own servant by having
the president appoint him.
I expect this to make it very hard to get any significant DMCA
exemptions in the future. The DMCA exceptions process is basically a
distraction, meant to divert energy away from campaigning to repeal
the unjust sections of the DMCA. But it has provided limited relief
from the wrong, because the copyright office has granted some
exemptions. If it stops, maybe we can mobilize opposition to the
DMCA again.
Nonetheless, I oppose this change, and I hope some organization will
start a campaign against it that I can support. I do not believe in
endorsing a change for the worse on the supposition that it might spur
opposition.
The idea that copyright should "balance" interests of copyright
holders with those of the public
gives
the copyright holders too much importance. Copyright is supposed
to balance one aspect of public interest with another aspect of public
interest.
The campaign to raise the federal minimum wage has
grown
considerably stronger since two years ago.
SCROTUS will not support it, but the effort is worth while because it
shows that they stand for low wages.
We All Need to
Defend
Speech We Hate. Even right-wing bigots such as Ann Coulter or the
troll should not be blocked from speaking to people.
A sex robot with AI could eventually become a diverting companion, but
it would
tell
various companies everything about you.
If you use your imagination, a fantasy that costs you nothing can be
as enjoyable as an expensive robot, and it won't spy on you.
The troll plans to
"renegotiate"
NAFTA, not kill it.
In principle, renegotiation could make NAFTA less damaging, or more
damaging. NAFTA is damaging because it is a business-supremacy
treaty, and we can't expect the troll to oppose that in general.
It is also quite likely that ultimately he won't do anything;
that this is a preparation for forgetting about the issue.
Turkey has begun
bombing
the Syrian Kurds.
Erdoğan has a history of grasping for excuses to start wars.
He started a civil war with the Kurds of Turkey in order to
rerun
an election and get more votes. He is likely to grasp this excuse
for all-out war against the Kurds of Syria.
Pakistanis are defending the student, Mashal Khan, who was
accused
of blasphemy and murdered.
Alas, it seems that this is more because they think the accusation was
erroneous than because of new-found respect for freedom of speech.
A state investigation found that capital trials, and executions, in
Oklahoma are
so
slipshod it strains belief.
I disagree with the supporters of execution, but still I am surprised
they are so careless in deciding who to kill.
McDonalds has
offered
fixed-hours contracts to many of its workers in the UK.
The troll is
not
following his pledge to punish companies that send US jobs to other
countries.
How SCROTUS
want
to make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau totally
ineffective.
After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans replaced public schools with
privatized charter schools
do
a lousy job, and are segregated too.
The Senate's Trump-Russia investigation is a phony — it is
not
actually investigating.
It seems that Heath Mello, the candidate that Sanders recently
campaigned for,
doesn't
actually advocate restrictions on abortion. He says he is opposed
to that.
1/3 of the primary and secondary school students in the US have been
given computers to use, and these
nearly
always spy on the student.
The EFF doesn't mention that devices are fundamentally unjust because
they contain nonfree software.
US citizens:
Oppose
expanding US immigration prisons; spend the money on something
that helps people.
US citizens:
tell
the troll not to use the US military as political props.
US citizens:
Tell
Congress not to mess with the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau.
Reporters Without Borders says that freedom of the press in Britain is
in
danger from Theresa May's prohibition on publishing leaks.
In Afghanistan, abortions save lives, but they are
still
illegal.
The troll
wants
to cancel programs that help cities protect environmental security
and public health.
The troll
threatens
to abolish several national monuments.
US and UK laws against "supporting terrorism" are
blocking
humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Two elected Hong Kong legislators, barred from the legislature by
henchmen of China, have now been arrested and
charged
with a forbidden protest.
It seems the US is not the only country that
fabricates
charges to repress political protest.
Where Is the Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders of
Foreign
Policy?
The troll has retreated from
most
of what he said he would do about international trade.
Olive Beddows begged her husband to kill her so she would not die in a
nursing home. He
tried,
but failed. I suspect he couldn't bring himself to hit her hard
enough, what with loving her so much.
I fear they will put her in a nursing home, even if not right away.
Milwaukee County Jail guards killed prisoner Terrill Thomas by
denying
him water for 7 days.
New Report Reveals Trump Is Not Punishing Corporations That Offshore
American Jobs, But
Awarding
Them New Government Contracts.
Israel can't cope with nonviolent Palestinian protest and opposition
except to
smear
it as "support for terrorism".
Marwan Barghouti, one of the leaders of the prisoners' hunger strike,
was convicted in Israel of murder — but the Inter-Parliamentary Union
says his trial was unfair and that his guilt is not established.
The article describes how unfair trial, even pretrial torture to
extract false confessions, is standard practice in Israel when dealing
with accused Palestinians.
More
information about that.
Israel has
blocked
lawyers from meeting with the hunger strikers.
Could
Barghouti
Become Israel's Peace Partner?
Israel is selling natural gas
from
a field underneath Israel and Palestine. Naturally it isn't
giving Palestine any say or any share. Basically that is theft.
However, the most important thing about fossil fuel deposits is not
who gets to burn them, but
avoiding
burning them at all. If the pipeline from Israel to Europe is
actually put to use at the scheduled completion in 2025, Israel and
Palestine will both be doomed. There is no possible good in spending
money to build a pipeline in these circumstances, regardless of who
will get paid for a while.
Extremist "settlers" repeatedly attacked Palestinian shepherds,
driving them off their land. Israeli thugs naturally did nothing to
stop this. When nonviolent Israeli activists came to support the
shepherds, the "settlers"
attacked
them too.
On one occasion, they attacked Israeli thugs as well. But that is no
longer necessary; the thugs have learned their lesson and now
blatantly give the Israeli terrorists full support.
The troll has had a very successful 100 days when it comes to
giving
favors to the companies that have invested in his presidency.
Kucinich has launched a
campaign
against siphoning off money from public schools to fund privatized
charter schools.
One of the troll's executive orders gave Saboteur of the Interior
Zinke an
opportunity
to allow drilling for oil and gas in national parks.
George Monbiot: "I would love to elect a government led by someone
both competent and humane, but this option will not be on the ballot
paper. The choice today is between
brutal
efficiency in pursuit of a disastrous agenda, and gentle inefficiency
in pursuit of a better world. I know which I favour."
Russians are getting angry at the
massive
corruption of the high officials.
Some companies are promoting
ethical
clothing — less pollution and decent treatment of workers.
Labour proposes to continue taking Britain out of the EU but
preserve
almost all of the EU's laws.
This might perhaps avoid most of the harm that the Tories will end up
doing. It will also avoid nearly all the possible good of leaving the
EU: eliminating plutocratic laws that give business too much power and
oppress countries such as Greece. However, the Tories don't want to
eliminate those laws anyway — quite the contrary, they are looking
for an excuse to make those worse.
US citizens:
call
on Congress not to spend any money on the troll's border wall.
US citizens: stand for network neutrality
yet
again.
Arkansas governor Hutchinson rushed to execute a man
whose
trial was a series of bullshit and whose defense attorneys omitted
the most obvious steps.
In effect, Hutchinson said, "Never mind justice, let's kill someone."
Humans emit
100 times as much CO2 as volcanoes do.
Be an NGO,
Be an NGO,
And get into the game, oh!
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 because the old link was broken.]
[Reference updated on 2018-04-01 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.]
[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.]
It's not enough to prevent disaster, but it may make the disaster
somewhat smaller and buy time to take further action. To get rid
of it would be an act of reckless mass murder.
[Reference updated on 2018-03-31 because the old link was broken.]
People deserve better than that.
[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.]
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