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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.
Women who went to Syria and joined PISSI were not necessarily innocent "brides". They often worked for PISSI — just not as soldiers. Some of them changed their minds and could not get away.
The proposed federal regulation intended to take funds from Planned Parenthood would mainly harm women who are poor or living precariously.
By denying them effective birth control, it would lead to more abortions (somewhat undesirable) and lots of unwanted babies (terrible).
Sex workers in New York State campaign for decriminalization of their work.
"Am I the only one who’s terrified about the warm weather?"
No, I am too. I often remark on unseasonably warm weather as a sign of disaster on the way. It's an opportunity to contribute to a good cause.
If February is like spring, feel very afraid, then join in the fight.
Science has established that record hot winter days are largely due to global heating.
A gang beat up a rabbi in Argentina, showing that antisemitism is now dangerous there.
Challenges in recycling concrete instead of burying it.
Various US states are using the power of eminent domain to seize land for businesses, using an argument that amounts to trickle-down. Wisconsin is using it in order to be able to give Foxconn a corrupt subsidy.
Arizona thugs say the reason they shot a 14-year-old was that he had a replica gun and made a "threatening" movement.
We should not assume those thugs have told the truth about any of this. Other thugs made a practice of carrying replica guns to plant.
Ebola keeps bubbling along in the DR Congo; medical teams have been unable to shut it down.
Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, now seeking the Democratic nomination, have been only partly progressive.
Especially Gillibrand, who has offered her support to plutocrats.
The Disability Integration Act would require US states to offer disabled people benefits while they stay in ordinary housing, rather than requiring them to move to a nursing home.
The UK has two different measures of inflation, and switches between them so as to raise prices and keep wages down.
Several newly elected progressive activist congresscritters have been appointed to the Financial Services Committee, where they may be able to interfere with the banksters.
Republicans in the Senate will block them from actually passing laws, but they may be able to help replace those Republicans by championing good bills.
US citizens: call on the FCC to reject the merger of Sprint and T-mobile.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on district attorneys to commit to expunging convictions for possession of marijuana (in states where that has been legalized).
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the narcissist's military parade.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to be a real climate leader and support the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US deportation thugs are force-feeding refugees that are on hunger strike.
The Paycheck Fairness Act aims to end the gender pay disparity by giving all employees a basic part of freedom of speech: to say what they are paid and talk with each other to compare their pay.
The stolen election in Georgia, based on stopping blacks from voting, is compared with the Constitution's rule to count a slave as 3/5 of a person.
With so many methods of voter suppression used, they can't be a coincidence. They must have been part of a broad effort, coordinated by the man who was in charge of running the state's election, the same man that is now the governor of Georgia.
Kamala Harris wanted to make students show up at school by threatening to jail their parents.
Schools alone won't eliminate robbery and other street crimes; we do need prisons, too. But the US could do with a lot fewer prisons if it made life easier for the nonrich.
The US government plans to hand over military computing over to a private company. That is a threat to national security.
France is attacking the right to protest, even the right to nonviolent protest.
A church in the Netherlands held nonstop services for 96 days to provide sanctuary to a refugee family.
The bullshitter and his assistants claim they are going to restore freedom and democracy to Venezuela, by threatening invasion.
The previous Republican president said the same thing about Iraq, and made things much much worse. Intervention in Venezuela could make things much much worse, too.
If the two sides come to some agreement, Venezuela might take a turn for the better.
Italian football officials have decided to suspend and maybe halt games when the spectators cry out racist insults. The minister of hate, Salvini, calls on all Italian racists not to be deterred by this.
Rat-infested [UK] Prison Cells Are One Difference Between Punishment And Cruelty.
The mass death of many species of starfish on the Pacific coast seems to be triggered by warmer water.
The loss of the sunflower sea star means that sea urchins are overrunning the US coast. They survive further north, but as global heating proceeds they could be wiped out there too, and the species will be extinct.
Industrial fishing boats refuse to take steps to avoid killing albatrosses.
Unfortunately, killing the albatrosses has not yet brought them any bad luck. Perhaps they are due for some strict laws.
EU Proposes Ban on 90% of Microplastic Pollutants.
If this is effective, we will need to extend it world-wide.
A new technique for cultivating rice produces a lot more grains, uses half the water and much less seed, and cuts methane emissions too.
This is a very good thing, but the benefit is not infinite. Population growth can wipe out the gains.
Poland's grass-roots democracy movement is growing through local victories.
US citizens: if your congresscritter was newly elected last November, phone per office to explain the problems with the distractive, inadequate network neutrality bills.
I have seen this advice for an effective call.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to make Amazon and other large companies pay their fair share of taxes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to defend abortion rights from obstructive arbitrary requirements.
While this bill has no chance of becoming law under this administration, it's important that we build momentum and support for it now.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support common-sense gun control measures.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Analyzing the history of Venezuela, before and during the presidency of Chávez. Oil money enabled him to implement socialist measures without curbing the power of the oligarchs, so the oligarchs were never weakened, and now they appear to plan to use Guaidó to take power again.
Thus, Venezuela faces the choice between an acutely repressive government and a permanently unjust government.
"Zumigo, which sold the location data of American cell phone users, wanted the FCC to remove requirements around user consent."
Requiring consent is not sufficient to make this acceptable. We need to require that any software that can send a user's location offer the option of spoofing the location.
Experts call for influence of ‘big food’ to be curbed to also tackle issue of climate change.
Some of the gilets jaunes protesters are starting political parties.
The US and the Taliban seem to have made substantial progress in negotiating some sort of agreement.
A judge in a UN court quit and denounced the US and Turkey for acting against international courts.
Bolton threatened to prosecute any judge in the International Criminal Court that investigated a US citizen.
People have said for decades that the US is the biggest rogue state.
The US deportation thugs used to arrest around 10 people a year from courts in New York City. Since 2017 it has been around 180 a year.
Good domestic policies such as the Green New Deal are not enough. We need to dismantle the global economic system that lets global capital and business move around and batter countries into economic submission.
80,000 protesters marched in Brussels for action to curb global heating, and thousands more couldn't fit in the trains to get to the protest.
Amazon's domination of online sales in the US has led it to set up a private legal system to govern sellers, complete with lawyers, but the "laws" are all secret and unaccountable.
Helping possibly unauthorized workers avoid driving down wages by hooking them up with a union to work for good wages.
China sentenced human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang to four years in prison.
US evangelical Christian schools are preparing children to take over the US and impose their cult on everyone.
The rich people at Davos nowadays acknowledge that our current economic system is leading to global disaster. But they never try to change it.
The hateful one is deporting people to Cambodia who have been in the US since childhood and do not speak Cambodian.
A would-be Nazi terrorist, a complete supporter of the would-be tyrant, was caught planning to assassinate progressive politicians.
He is an officer in the Coast Guard. I expect there are many would-be terrorists in the US military.
Israeli disinformation tries to frame Palestinian-rights activists for acts of anti-semitism.
Recycling paper, glass and plastic in the US is a sham, since most of what people give to be "recycled" is not feasible to recycle. It ends up as landfill or in an incinerator.
We need laws to require plastic made in large quantities to be made easy to recycle.
The Raise the Wage Act would raise the US minimum wage so it would reach $15 per hour by 2024. It would also eliminate the practice of paying waiters less.
A US judge ruled that Saboteur of Commerce Wilbur Ross disregarded the law when adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census, and the ruling effectively asserts that Ross committed a crime by lying to Congress.
The official leader of Democrats in the House of Representatives talks like a Republican, defending trickle-down by opposing plans to tax the rich more.
The Iranian ambassador to the UK said that the campaign to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not helping her release from prison.
That statement seems plausible to me. Too much pressure against a government can motivate its officials to dig in their heels and refuse to make a concession, lest they appear "weak".
However, this doesn't excuse the unjust treatment that Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe has received, which failed to respect the rights of criminal defendants.
Most wild coffee species face extinction. Their loss would interfere with future efforts to breed cultivated coffee to resist or endure other threats.
Many areas that now grow coffee will be unable to grow it by 2100. But what of the areas that can still grow it? Global disaster could put an end to the international trade by which coffee is shipped to other places where people drink coffee, and many of them won't be able to afford such luxuries anyway.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote against the anti-abortion bill S.311.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to build lots of affordable housing.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to pass the Special Counsel Transparency Act, which would direct Mueller to publish the report of his investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Greece might be starting to recover economically.
I guess that is good, but it feels too good to be true. What is the bad news?
"The river is dying": the vast ecological cost of Brazil's mining disasters.
(satire) Big US government data breech: public advocacy agencies revealed Monday that 340 million Social Security numbers had fallen into the hands of the federal government.
(satire) Taliban officials announced Monday that they had agreed to a peace deal despite their concerns about America’s human-rights record.
Joshua Tree national park 'may take 300 years to recover' from damage done while the government shutdown left it unguarded.
However, due to global heating all the joshua trees there might die during this century.
The UK's dooH niboR government has cut the budget for cities so hard that Labour-controlled local government can only make decisions about which poor people to crush first.
In such a situation, it is a mistake to try to minimize the harm. "Working within the cruel system to make it less cruel" has the main effect of propping the system up.
The UK has cut the budget for protecting wildlife and ecosystems to the point where the job cannot be done.
Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?
I agree that "Every billionaire is a policy failure", but I disagree with Ms Ocasio-Cortez about Bill Gates: he got his money by doing wrong to people (proprietary software).
Many problems that are intractable in today's conditions could be solved by spending money, but the government doesn't have money to spend on them. Why not? Too much money has gone to (1) reduced taxes for businesses and rich people and (2) spending more on the military than the next six countries together.
If we claw back the money from that, we could truly make America great again — great in its ability to do great things and make a better life. The US could also do its share of reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast.
Proposing that Maduro and Guaidó share power for a couple of years and then hold new elections.
The two 2020 presidential candidates that plutocrats really hate are Sanders and Warren.
I have confidence that both of them will thwart the plutocrats, but Sanders is better on a range of other progressive issues.
Warren says that the CEO of Wells Fargo should be fired; he has been in charge of the bank's operations for many years and has the responsibility for the various frauds the bank has committed.
When witnesses speak in black American dialects, Court reporters and juries frequently misunderstand what they said.
Sea Shepherd is acting as Liberia's coast guard and putting a stop to illegal fishing.
Illegal fishing is not just a matter of who gets to fish where. It is also a matter of preventing overfishing, and the use of fishing methods that destroy the marine environment.
Bolsonaro just gave an order to allow Brazilians to own guns and keep them at home. Women are afraid their husbands will shoot them.
Right-wing supporters of Bolsonaro make the usual right-wing argument that guns will enable people to protect themselves. Experience shows that this doesn't work: rather, having a gun in your home puts you in more danger.
For protection against someone who lives in your house, who might have per own gun, your gun is almost useless. To use it for this, you'd need the experience and honed sharp thinking of Travis McGee or James Bond, both of whom are fictional characters. I don't know whether any real people really have that.
Virginia can't afford school buildings — its funds are offered to Amazon. Teachers plan to strike, and will make Amazon one of the demands.
Tulsi Gabbard is associated with the organized Hindu extremists of India, a group that includes the governing party, which has been involved in various kinds of repression, sometimes fatal.
Instagram is Facebook's second tentacle for tracking and manipulating people and closely connected with the first tentacle, but somehow people tend not to recognize how nasty it is.
A hypothesis for why greenhouse gas emissions have started increasing again.
Failing to curb global heating is likely to cause an economic collapse by and by.
A uterus transplanted from a dead woman's body has been used successfully to carry a pregnancy to term.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with this procedure. I suppose that after a few decades of further advance, artificial organs of all kinds will be suitable for transplants, eliminating the need for organ donors.
However, using the procedure in today's conditions is something society cannot afford. I think all methods of assisting fertility should be shelved until the world has achieved a stable human population that coexists sustainably with the natural world.
A new program for discouraging gang violence operates by offering gang members a little help if they avoid violence, as well as punishment if they don't.
It appears that violence killed Roxsana Hernández in a US immigration prison, and the thugs are covering it up.
A company selling parents surveillance devices so they can treat their children like prisoners.
Salafi Arabia wants the US to sell it a nuclear reactor and let it manage the nuclear fuel. Meanwhile, the acting king, guilty of massive killing, already said he would develop nuclear weapons if Iran does.
He has already started working on making sure that Iran develops nuclear weapons by convincing the bullshitter to cancel the deal which convinced Iran not to develop them.
It all stinks. The US, remembering Yemen and Khashoggi, should not sell the reactor.
Amnesty International says that Venezuela's special thug force has killed more than 12 protesters recently.
Several US states are working on a target to end fossil fuel use for electricity.
It is well-meant, but a target for 2045 is too remote to avoid disaster. We have only around 10 years to do that. Therefore, what we need is an ambitious target for 2025, and a more ambitious target for 2030.
We need more than targets, though, because targets do not magically implement themselves. To reach a target which is ambitious enough to do the job, we need large programs starting now.
It needs to tackle more than just electricity, too.
US states need to pass laws granting abortion rights, given the danger that the Supreme Court will reverse the decision that made them available.
The bully backed down and agreed to let the US government reopen… for about two weeks.
Zimbabwe is ruled by its army, which can replace the president and other high officials, and represses at will.
Mexican Dafne McPherson was convicted after a miscarriage of murdering the fetus.
Such repression is not limited to Mexico.
If this converges with the current US tendency to punish parents for not being overprotective, it could make life hell for all US parents and all US children. And each of the two has the potential to potentiate the other.
Industrial democracy — putting workers on corporations' boards — is a way to reduce mistreatment of workers.
The AFL-CIO needs to focus on organizing, not on money for Democratic candidates.
As regards funding campaigns, I suspect its choice of candidates to support is not selective enough.
Marzieh Hashemi says that US agents holding her as a material witness harassed her by offering her only food that she as a Muslim was not supposed to eat.
She was required to testify against the Iranian broadcaster that she works for. Why did that require keeping her hungry?
Her example points out the unfairness of the secret process for deciding whether to jail someone as a material witness.
Flights at major US airports were delayed because of a shortage of air controllers.
Cod Stocks on Course to Crash if Ocean Warming Continues.
The US government is seriously planning to impose regime change on Venezuela, working together with Guaidó.
An open letter calls on the US government to stop pushing for a coup in Venezuela and support reconciliation efforts to move the country towards fair elections.
The letter points out that US sanctions along with Maduro's bad economic policies are jointly responsible for the economic crisis in Venezuela.
Medea Benjamin: "A Coup Is Not a Democratic Transition!"
One Venezuelan journalist supports Guaidó as president but warns the US not to turn this into a bloody coup.
Maduro's treatment of both Guaidó and the US embassy are astonishingly gentle. Can you imagine what the repressor would do if Clinton declared herself president, on the grounds that Republicans stole the election two years ago?
Socialism for the rich now includes oil companies in the UK, which are shirking the responsibility to clean up and shut down oil drilling platforms in the North Sea.
Big companies have a history of using bankruptcy to evade responsibilities, even pension obligations. Rather than trust a company to come up with money later to carry out its responsibilities, we should make it put the money in escrow in advance when it incurs the obligation, on a schedule that collects the money while the project is profitable.
Many Australians now mark the date of the landing of the first British fleet (of convict transportees) as "Invasion Day", looking at it from the point of view of the Australians of that time.
The US has started making asylum-seekers from Central America to Mexico to wait, perhaps for months or years, while their cases are considered.
This is not inherently unjust, but it could become so if (for instance) they have to live in penury there, or if the gangs that threatened to kill them at home come after them there.
Canada's ambassador to China regrets saying what he said, about Meng Wanzhou's arguments for avoiding extradition, but didn't say that it was not accurate.
US citizens: call on Congress to block military intervention in Venezuela.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore the Violence Against Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to revoke the would-be tyrant's national emergency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Ordinarily I would consider it a waste of time for the House to try this, since the Republicans controlling the Senate would simply ignore it. But it seems that in this kind of case, if the House passes such a resolution, the Senate has to hold a vote on it. That would put pressure on senators to vote to cancel the emergency — it might even pass.
Conscience Versus Blind Deep-State Allegiance.
I do not advocate "limited government" if that means laissez-faire, laissez-mourir. I do believe in limiting the government's power to kill, torture, and imprison people.
Is it right to block criticism of US foreign policy simply for being funded by Russia?
Imagine where US politics would be today if Sanders had not run in 2016. Then vote for him in 2020!
An effective method of deradicalizing Islamist extremists is to teach them that modern-day Ialamic law recognizes countries that have various religions.
Islamic law tramples human rights in many other ways, so we should not treat it as an acceptable position. But since it doesn't imply a holy war, we can live at peace with its adherents, while opposing them politically.
China censors postings on Twitter even though Twitter is not generally accessible in China.
Twitter sometimes gets led by China into censoring people, but not always. Slimy LinkedIn obeys China reliably.
Doug Ford premier of Ontario, has unchecked power over that Canadian province. He abolishes human rights laws while arbitrarily changing the structure of city governments.
Oregon high school students protested the presence of thugs in their schools. They said that the thugs made them feel less safe in school.
Bravo!
Burmese journalists will be in prison for 7 years for publishing news about the violence against the Rohingya.
Everyone: Urge Malaysia to end debt bondage for migrant workers — instead of enslaving them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose intervention in Venezuela.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase to stop funding private prisons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for requiring big companies' stores to pay their staff anyway when they close due to extreme weather.
We should not forget the subcontracted workers and the ones whose schedules are precarious!
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google Search profiles people and applies its filter bubble even when they are not logged in.
Google is modifying Chrome (and Chromium) so that extensions won't be able to alter or block whatever the page contains.
This implies, in particular, that nothing like LibreJS will be possible in Chrome.
We can understand this as a further step towards making browsers serve the businesses that use web sites to snoop and manipulate, rather than serving the users that run them.
Paper maps are better than digital map systems for learning to understand the geography of an area.
Continuing education (with more student debt) for workers whose jobs are automated away will never give most of the non-rich a good life.
The US and other right-wing governments recognized opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the president of Venezuela. Maduro responded by ordering US diplomatic personnel to leave.
I know very little about Guaidó, but in general the opposition in Venezuela represents the oligarchs and advocates right-wing dooH niboR policies. Maduro's government is a dictatorship, but the right-wing opposition would offshore the country's income and repress the poor.
The bully has a scheme to kick more people off federal food assistance.
The US drops bombs in Somalia, intended to attack al-Shabaab, but does not try seriously to determine which of the casualties were al-Shabaab fighters and which were bystanders.
Since 7 years of this bombing have not crushed al-Shabaab, there is no reason to suppose 7 more years will achieve that. Guerrilla movements that can recruit more members easily are not defeated by attrition.
Now that there is strong public pressure for a universal medical system in the US, the medical profiteers are proposing half-measures to preserve their role.
Four years of Republican attacks on Obama's medical insurance law have driven 7 million Americans out of insurance coverage.
But that's not the worst harm — millions have insurance that fails to cover a lot of the costs, and patients can be randomly screwed with enormous prices.
Meat inspection in the US is inadequate — there are not enough inspectors to do the job. Most plants admit this, while others lie about it.
Denying the grandstander the use of Congress for a State of the Union address is very clever way of pressuring him. It denies him something he craves, while not harming anyone else because it has no intrinsic importance.
Michael Cohen says he has postponed his testimony to Congress because the bully is making legal threats against his family.
Los Angeles teachers won a partial victory, including a raise that is not enough to keep up with inflation.
But they also won other benefits for the community, including a plan to limit charter schools.
There needs to be a way for the public to convert charter schools to public schools.
The US has agreed to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, but doesn't give people any recourse when the US government fails to follow its requirements.
China is rebuilding some cities, vulnerable to flooding from rain, to absorb and store more water underground.
Women in the UK that make accusations of rape or domestic violence are threatened with lawsuits for libel.
San Francisco’s Accidental Surveillance State and the Future of Privacy.
"What's more offensive: a racist yearbook photo or structural racism?"
The way for Northam to atone for racist jokes is to commit to eliminating structural racism.
Reportedly PISSI is reorganizing as an underground movement in Iraq and might get strong enough to cause real trouble.
Allowing students and workers to wake up at a later hour enables them to sleep better and concentrate better at school or work.
Sanders and Ro Khanna have introduced bills to reduce prescription drug prices in the US.
The measures are not radical.
The surprise "winner" of DR Congo's presidential election may have been chosen because of a deal with the old president, Kabila.
Amtrak has reportedly dropped the requirement for passengers to show ID to buy a ticket. I think this means there is no longer a reason to refuse to ride Amtrak.
A Christian extremist who publicly insulted the homosexuals that had been murdered in the Pulse club has now resigned because he hired sex workers.
This is backwards. It was the insult that he should have resigned for.
17 years after it was set up, Guantanamo prison remains a threat to human rights.
US citizens: call on congressional Democratic leaders to stand by Ilhan Omar against right-wing attacks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on Target to give its employees 12 weeks of paid family leave.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call Democrats in Congress to make rich people pay their fair share of taxes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for the Green New Deal to include ending fossil fuel development.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tobacco companies, fighting public health measures (such as increased taxes) designed to reduce deaths from smoking, hire "free market" think tanks as lobbying and PR fronts.
To the extent that cigarettes are smuggled, the effects of the tax would be less. One way to reduce that is to make agreements with neighboring countries to increase the tax on tobacco.
How Elon Musk's Secretive Foundation Benefits His Own Family.
Julian Assange is suing the US in the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights, demanding to know whether he faces US charges.
Italy is closing a refugee center and evicting the 500 refugees that live there.
Supposedly some of them will be housed elsewhere. The rest, who knows?
William Barr Has a Long History of Abusing Civil Rights and Liberties in the Name of "National Security".
A survey of many countries found that people strongly oppose development of autonomous killer robots.
Greenland ice is melting faster than before, suggesting 3 meters (10 feet) of sea level rise by 2100.
I have visited many cities which are likely to become sea as a result: most recently, Kozhikode and Kochi in India.
The actual rise is likely to be more. We don't know of all the positive-feedback cycles that will make global heating speed up.
Some workers that clean sewers in India don't get safety equipment, and fairly often have accidents that turn fatal.
10% of the TSA's workers took sick days on Jan 20. After a while, many would have to quit, and air travel in the US would grind to a halt.
A former FBI deputy assistant director said that the FBI defined its mission to include preventing the election of progressive and socialist candidates.
Relatives and colleagues call for a new investigation of the assassination in the 1960s of President Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Senator Robert Kennedy.
Democrats in Congress are weakening the single payer medical bill to make it more palatable to insurance companies.
George Washington lost his teeth, so he bought teeth from his slaves.
Florida's Republican governor has "suspended" two officials in charge of counting votes in Miami and replaced them with Republicans.
Republicans in Florida have a history of unfair election practices.
People on Moscow streets will be tracked using face recognition.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call your state representative and senator to oppose subsidies for movies. States should not compete to attract businesses away from other states.
If we don't stop this, next thing you know they will want to offer twice as much money as New York City offered as a handout to Amazon.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Indonesia is accused of heavy repression in response to a guerrilla attack in West Papua.
I believe the accusation, both because Indonesia has done such things before, and because another article said Indonesia was not allowing journalists into the area.
A verbal confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial between protesting right-wing white students and a group of protesting blacks became verbally nasty. It sheds light on the level of hostility in the US.
The students probably were bigots and racists, since they were wearing right-wing extremist symbols such as "MAGA". That is no ground to infer anything about their parentage, or to insult homosexuals by calling someone "faggot". Nor to insult them for their race. The right way to oppose them is to focus on criticizing the views they choose to advocate.
A mother faces prosecution in Minnesota because her child's car seat fell out of the car on the road.
Punishing parents for mistakes is stupid as well as unjust. The accusation itself causes stress to the family, which harms the children as well as the parents.
This is part of the overall US pattern of pressuring parents, even by threats, if they fail to be stiflingly overprotective. Antiabortionists even extend this to miscarriages.
It constitutes one additional secondary reason why it is better not to have children.
2019 Is the Year to Embrace Energy Democracy — Or Face Social and Climate Breakdown.
Thailand's supreme court upheld a legal victory for workers enslaved in a chicken farm.
Martin Luther King held views that were labeled as radical.
Nowadays, they are not so radical — many of them are supported by most Americans.
Nicaraguan thugs raided an opposition news publisher; the editor has fled to exile in Costa Rica.
The Philippines government approved an "autonomous region" for the part of Mindanao inhabited mostly by Muslims.
The article does not say whether the agreement reduces freedom of religion and other human rights in that region. Islamic law tramples various human rights, so there is reason to be concerned about that danger.
The British Commonwealth disregards its charter about democracy and human rights by hosting a summit in Rwanda.
Globalization's irony: Spice Girls t-shirts, sold to raise money to campaign for equality, were made in a factory in Bangladesh by women getting paid around 30 cents per hour.
The book No Logo explained how business-supremacy treaties knocked down the unions that were starting to raise the wages of factory workers in some low-wage countries.
The article also shows, tangentially, how the practice of despising sex workers is tied into broader misogyny.
In an age when the US imprisons far too many people, a prosecutor as president (or other elected official) is in general a bad idea.
Facebook staff discussed in a tone of cupidity how they were leading minors to spend their parents' money playing games. Facebook kept the parents confused about the situation, too.
Charter schools are like tree roots growing into cracks in the building of public education. If not stopped, they will bring it crashing down.
Teacher's strikes are weakening the political support that charter schools have obtained in the plutocratist system.
Black markets are developing a sort of cell system by which the participants can't identify each other and can't betray each other. The customers never see any of them, and they can't identify the customers either.
As sale of prohibited goods becomes anonymous and safe, lawful sales of lawful goods are becoming a dangerous system of massive surveillance. When will we be able to buy those through a darknet, for our privacy?
If Tor sold its DRM-free contract-free e-books through a darknet, I would in principle (some details are crucial) be glad to buy them straight from the publisher that way.
Google's employees have launched a campaign to end forced arbitration in the US. Not solely for cases of sexual harassment — the campaign includes all forms of mistreating workers.
Don't forget customers and clients!
US citizens: call on the Senate not to allow Mueller's report to be buried.
Witnesses say that thugs in Rio de Janeiro murdered gangsters who had surrendered, and a few others too.
Young people, including teenagers, are trying various creative approaches to make the world curb global heating.
The younger you are, the more likely global heating will cut your life short.
Everyone: call on the Philippines to drop charges against Senator de Lima, which seem to be trumped up to repress opposition to President Do-Dirty's murderous War on Drugs.
Today at an airport I sat down at a table which had a tablet facing me. I am not sure what it's supposed to do for people, but I realized that one thing it might be doing to me was watching me with a camera. It is full of nonfree software and there is no basis to suppose it isn't malicious.
So I put my coat down over it before sitting down.
Sure, there are other cameras in the airport, making recordings. We are under total surveillance by the state, there. But the tablet might be spying for various companies that have no access to the surveillance camera recordings. If there are two snoopers, and I can block one of them, that is an improvement.
Coca Cola Company is involved in planning China's approach to avoiding obesity, which focuses on exercise rather than eating less sweets.
The EPA recently proposed to weaken mercury regulations estimated to save 11,000 lives per year.
The planet-roaster-in-chief has nominated coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to head the EPA.
He will continue to be on the side of the polluters.
The US government fabricated statistic to claim most terrorists are foreigners or immigrants, by not counting the domestic terrorists.
Queensland shifted suddenly from years of drought to a flood that destroyed farms and killed hundreds of thousands of cattle.
The author does not tie this to the global heating that is likely responsible. Extreme weather in both directions is one of the typical results.
A BBC cameraman covering one of the bully's rallies was attacked by his supporters.
What the bully says in his events is meant to inflame his supporters and distract the public from what the bully is doing. It would be better for reporters to stay away and cover events of some real significance.
Plutocratist Democrats are already working hard to defeat Sanders. Their left hand says that the dozens of others are all progressive so we no longer need Sanders, while their right hand says that few of us will insist on Sanders.
Either way, their real message is "Vote for someone who is less reliably progressive than Sanders."
"Fusion" centers are not just about terrorism any more. They combine surveillance data from many sources, and in effect bring local and state thug departments more or less under federal control. They investigate and redistribute the videos the cameras that any level of government puts on your streetcorner, and even cameras in businesses.
In "Operation Choke Point", the US government, under Obama, tried to shut down certain businesses extrajudicially by making banks drop them.
Let's not take either side in the "battle between Trump’s abhorrent America First nationalism and the political establishment’s neoliberal imperialism."
Neither side is our side.
The "ghost user" is a back door by another name.
A couple found that a therapy office would allow their child to walk a block to the office. They only needed to sign a waiver that the therapists would not be liable for anything that might befall the child during that brief walk.
If only it were so easy all the time.
Oxford students call for prohibiting advocacy of the traditional Catholic position on homosexuality, calling it "harassment".
I disagree totally with the idea that sex should be limited to attempts to procreate. It is just the opposite: procreation makes more burden for the Earth, whereas sex, when it makes the participants happy and assuming precautions against conception and spreading disease, is good.
But even though I disagree thoroughly with those views, I defend the right to advocate them.
The US military is resisting supervision to the extent that the official public list of US military bases says nothing about Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Niger, Tunisia, Cameroon or Somalia.
The US is bombing more in Syria, and telling us less about it.
Guatemala's Supreme Court says that the president cannot expel UN corruption investigators.
Treating prisoners with utmost possible harshness and suspicion creates more crime.
Writer Yann Moix said that he cannot be attracted to women in their 50s, and people are condemning him, claiming he has an obligation to be attracted to them.
You might as well demand that a homosexual be attracted to people not of the same sex. Or that a heterosexual be attracted to people that are of the same sex. There is no arguing about tastes. If we respect people's right to say no, we should not rebuke them when they do.
Of course, many people (especially men, but not only) despise those they find unattractive. That is a mean way to treat people who haven't done anything wrong.
But being unattracted by someone is not the same as despising per. Yann Moix understands this.
US citizens: call on House Climate Committee members to take the no-fossil-fuel-money pledge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on House committees to make the deportation thugs stop force-feeding prisoners.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US government shutdown made air traffic control less safe. Controllers were not getting paid, so they may have been moonlighting rather than sleeping.
A new system proposes to track each individual fish from when it is caught to when it is served in a restaurant, using blockchain, to stop illegal fishing of Patagonian toothfish.
It is easier to preserve a database record across time than to make sure it always corresponds to the same actual fish.
In this particular case, that problem may not matter. It may be sufficient to make sure that the number of toothfish that are sold is no more than the number that were caught lawfully. If customers keep restaurants honest by checking the record of an individual fish, they might find it impossible to make use of the fish caught by poachers.
If the poachers of this fish, a luxury product, can't sell to expensive restaurants, they won't find it profitable.
However, if a restaurant could sell the "same" fish multiple times, the system would not achieve its goal.
Apple is crusading to regulate data brokers in a rather weak way that would let them more or less continue what they are doing.
If on-line retailers let you pay using GNU Taler, and likewise respect your anonymity in other ways, they won't have any data about you worth selling.
The US has preferred to end the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty rather than work on restoring compliance with it.
Thugs arrested Detroit DJ Moodymann for "breaking and entering" into his own car, using the keys. Apparently they are on a power trip and arrest him frequently for no good reason.
A thug that shows such ill-will towards the citizens person is supposed to serve is not fit for the job at all.
Ten Years After the First War on Gaza, Israel Still Plans Endless Brute Force.
Since 2006, Israel has demolished 1,400 Palestinian homes.
The Israeli army damages farms in Gaza by spraying herbicides. These chemicals also endanger farmers, because they are carcinogenic.
An unused no-mans-land as a buffer zone at the border is a good idea, but if Israel wants to make one unilaterally, it should do so on the Israeli side of the border.
A number of companies associated with making plastic have a plan to put a fair pile of money into reducing the unrecycled plastic — but not by making less plastic.
In Arizona on the border with Mexico, what is the right way to leave food and water so border-crossers won't die in the desert?
It might indeed be better to protect wildlife by filling large drums of water, rather than leaving small bottles. The same sort of method could be used for food.
However, if this system were practiced adequately there to do the job, I suppose activists would not feel they had work to do there.
One US court ruled that thugs can't arbitrarily require everyone in a home unlock per phone biometrically merely because perse was present there at the time of a raid.
This is a small and tentative step; we need to move much further than that to make the protections of the fourth amendment effective again. And we need to put an end to assembling many digital dossiers about each person.
A strange proposal: England and Wales could leave the European Union while Scotland and Northern Ireland remain part of it.
The US immigration prison where sick children are systematically denied medicine. Children there generally get sick, or sicker.
The Tory government continues to exacerbate the poverty and hunger that it has inflicted on millions, pretending compassion while announcing occasional small steps forward, in between the giant steps back.
We should not forget, however, that it was Tony B'liar and New Labour that began the process of making wealth trickle upward. They did not target the poor particularly, but they gave the rich more power which they used to take from working people. This weakened traditions of compassion and solidarity, which then made it easy for the Tories to win popularity by promising to do more and better trickle-up, and hold it by squeezing the poor (but not acknowledging they were doing so).
Bolsonaro's war on the environment has launched with an arbitrary (and illegal) suspension of funding for environmental protection NGOs.
US citizens: phone your congresscritters to oppose giving funds for the bully's border wall.
North Dakota is amending its constitution to conceal how state and private thugs repress pipeline protesters.
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology.
Illinois will enforce its law regulating companies from collecting biometric identifiers.
Guatemala's president has kicked out UN corruption investigators. I suppose he has an idea of what they would have found.
With the US setting a bad example, it is hard to pressure other countries not to follow it.
Accusing the former British Empire of being responsible for present-day "racism, police brutality, privatisation, militarism, ongoing economic dispossession and the retention of the spoils of empire."
I am not sure it is fair to blame the British Empire for militarism (which is millennia old) and police brutality (thugs torture people all around the world). I suspect that privatization would have been imposed anyway, though the empire may have helped to pave the way.
The empire played a big role in the other three.
Turkish journalist Pelin Ünker has been sentenced to prison for "defamation" because she published facts about how one of Erdoğan's henchmen used companies in Malta as tax havens.
They don't even bother to deny the facts that she published.
US greenhouse gas emissions jumped 3% in 2018.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter in favor of ending US support for Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
The ruiner must love oil spills, since he wants to cancel the safety rules that were put in place after the Big Spill, to prevent another pollution event.
Overcoming internet trolls by posting positive comments.
Pacific Gas and Electric has gone bankrupt because of its liabilities for starting giant fires.
The bullshitter Fails to Answer Yes Or No When Asked If He Ever Worked for Russia.
Beto O'Rourke sought to break the power of the thugs' union in El Paso, not to prevent them from getting away with crimes, but just so as to pay them less.
The bullshitter threatened Turkey with economic warfare if it attacks the Syrian Kurds.
A threat like that might be an effective defense measure if issued by someone who keeps his word.
The troops constitute a kind of commitment: if attacked, they will by default fight back. That constitutes a deterrent, notwithstanding the bullshitter's unreliability. A mere threat doesn't do that, so Erdoğan may ignore it.
The Thai military have postponed elections, which has stimulated protests.
Iran is accused of assassinating two Iranian exiles that were living in the Netherlands.
Iran accuses them of violent rebellion. I have no basis to judge the truth of those claims, but if the claim against Notamed is true, we would have to weigh it against the scattershot execution policies of the Islamic Republic in 1981.
Writers are under pressure not to participate in Dubai's book festival, because of Dubai's repression.
Women in Nigeria who escaped from Boko Haram have freedom, to the extent a woman can have freedom in that patriarchal culture, but they can't get work and go hungry. Some of them go back to Boko Haram.
Oakland, California, is moving people from sidewalks to sheds, whether they like it or not.
A shed could be physically better and some people could be glad to move to one. But the sheds require people to have roommates even if they can't get along. Those who feel unsafe in them are forbidden to go back to the sidewalk.
I don't see any reason Oakland can't offer sheds to those who prefer them while also allowing encampments.
The UK has a tradition of consulting organizations of patients and disabled people to improve the services for them, but this is falling by the wayside.
Nepal is pressuring families quite firmly to stop confining women to special huts when they are menstruating, and to let girls go to school when menstruating.
The thugs in Bangladesh are repressing a strike by garment workers. They are paid very little and are forced to work in dangerous conditions.
The American Psychological Association warns against raising boys with the traditional idea of masculinity that calls for suppressing feelings that are regarded as weaknesses.
I was fortunate — I never learned that lesson.
The UK is considering making social networks legally responsible for the specifics of users' postings. That requirement would shut them down.
Some requirements about certain algorithms might be feasible to implement, and then one could discuss whether they are good or bad.
UK thugs did an announced test of facial recognition, and mistreated people who tried to cover their faces.
Bravo to those who resist! Britons, next time, aim for a high participation rate.
Big companies are selling camera doorbells that allow home owners, the companies, and in many cases the state as well, to watch everyone who passes by.
With face recognition, these systems will identify everyone who passes by.
We must do whatever it takes to eliminate these systems.
Human Rights Watch says that Iraqi Kurdistan tortures teenagers to get them to confess to working for PISSI.
Right-wing fallacious attacks on taxing the rich for a Green New Deal show Americans how wise that would be.
UK spy agencies plan to secretly order companies to provide a tap on encrypted communications services.
It's not precisely a back door, but it requires making the client software malicious, indeed dishonest.
Note how the criticism presumes that GCHQ itself is not a "bad actor". How can we assume that? The UK government not long ago sent undercover thugs to infiltrate dissident groups by pretending to love activists.
EU citizens: phone your MEPs to condemn the proposed automated copyright censorship scheme.
German and French citizens, phone your members of parliament and/or other political parties to oppose this policy.
US citizens: support the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The reason why you can only buy "smart" (read "spy") TVs nowadays is that the TV itself is sold at a break-even price. The profit on them comes from selling products to the users and from spying on them. If they sold non-"smart" TVs, they would have to charge more.
If I wanted a TV set, I would definitely pay extra to get one that could not spy on me. Indeed, I would refuse to have a "smart" TV at all, unless I knew I could block it from communicating anything about my activities. (That would convert it into a mere appliance, and I would not need to care what is inside it.)
The same applies for a cable box; but I can imagine that a cable box requires a contract I would consider immoral and thus refuse to sing.
I don't in fact want those things, because they would lead me to waste time. As a child, I was a TV addict. I cut it off cold-turkey when I went to college.
The militarist asked the US military for plans to attack Iran.
Ocasio-Cortez's Climate Genius Stroke: Her #GreenNewDeal Is the Most Serious Response to the Crisis Yet.
African Nations Call for Recount in DRC Election.
The US border thugs have had for decades an unofficial policy jailing children, taking them away from their parents, and physical torture.
Whatever we do in the future, it should not include this agency.
The US government has the power to learn almost everything about anyone's life by breaking into per phone, but it is not clear what rules it follows to get permission to do so.
Please don't call this operation "hacking". The officials that do it are surely not doing it with the playful cleverness that constitutes hacking. So please don't insult us hackers by using that word to mean "breaking security". Please call it "cracking".
The city of Penang has installed over 750 face recognition cameras so that the thug department can track people on the street at will.
The article says this will be used to track "criminals", but the cameras can be used to track anyone, even to track everyone.
The Houthis now imitate the US in launching drone attacks in Yemen.
We can't expect them to stop fighting outside the agreed-on cease-fire zone. So how about extending the cease fire to the whole of Yemen?
The US deported Nelson Espinal back to Honduras. One week later, he was murdered, just as he said he feared.
China's repression of Christianity includes censorship of the Bible.
I condemn repression of Christianity, but we must keep in mind that when Christianity gets too powerful, it can itself become a repressive force. In the US it has almost reached that point as Christian fanatics are the supporters of the bullshitter.
The cheater seems to have proposed Barr as attorney general as a way to put himself above the law.
It is irrational to accept a disastrously bad appointment on the grounds that someone else worse could be found. The rational response is to oppose the disastrously bad one, and if a worse one follows, oppose that one too.
The UK thugs have a system that designates teenagers and adults as suspected gang members, often based on nothing but surmise about their associations, which ends up targeting them for various forms of repression based on their race.
On efforts to reduce smoking in Jordan.
Macron got special EU permission to run a deficit more than 3% in France, so he could placate the French people for a while.
Why not do this for Italy, which really needs it? Why not Greece?
Macron seems to be aiming to do this mainly with temporary relief of pressure, so that the long-term process of dooH niboR will proceed steadily as planned.
Sea Shepherd is operating a boat in the Gulf of California to protect Vaquita porpoises. Mexican fishing boats attacked it, trying to burn it or sink it.
The protesters that blocked a UK deportation flight were not sentenced to prison.
UN Tells UK: Stop Using Terror Charges against Peaceful Protesters.
Salafia Arabia "seriously undermined" Turkey's investigation of Khashoggi's murder.
This is not surprising, since Salafia Arabia murdered him.
France and Germany made a "compromise" that will leave no way for companies in Europe to post anything submitted by users without using automated copyright censorship filters.
Global heating is spreading dangerous and deadly jellyfish further along the Australian coast.
By comparison, sharks are hardly a significant danger.
A high school in Arizona requires students that are missing credits needed to graduate wear a red badge so as to shame them. This is very effective in inspiring bullying against them. Probably less so in helping them do better.
It turns out to be an illegal violation of those students' privacy.
Canadian thugs have arrested indigenous protesters that were blocking pipeline construction teams from entering their land.
Under the principle of necessity, they would be justified in destroying the construction equipment, since it is being used to bring about mass murder.
Murder, per se, is not their immediate goal, but that changes nothing — building fossil fuel infrastructure will kill hundreds of millions, and any reasonable person should know that. How many of those millions would be due to this pipeline, if it is completed, is a question we don't need to answer.
Climate defense: "the fight for what's left and the people who get left with it."
I think things are a little better than the article presents it. It is not quite true to say that the enemy "is us" — rather, it is a system, which we are part of, but which is effectively controlled by the plutocracy. So we have to fight them for the decision about whether governments should mobilize the world to save itself, or tread the non-rich down.
Seattle warns NYC: Amazon will do the city harm.
This is over and above the harm of the payment to Amazon to come and do that.
The US Department of Labor's new "transparency" rule makes it easier for employers to get away with discrimination.
The movement to remove monuments that praise the Confederacy is getting stronger and making progress.
A Thai princess will run for prime minister, in an election that will be even less fair than with the other candidates, since saying anything critical about her will be a crime.
However, it could also knock our military rule.
Antisocialist Senator Rand Paul condemns government programs that actively help people, but he makes exceptions when they help him.
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Social Security 2100 Act.
New Yorkers' opposition to Amazon has
convinced
some executives to cancel their plan to put a large subsidized office
there.
Bravo, New Yorkers! Keep up the fight!
The bank deregulation law of 2018, which was supposedly not going to
lead to mergers of big banks, is
already
doing so.
Ocasio-Cortez has the right idea about
compromise.
Here's
how I explain
it.
The high-pitched sound heard by US diplomats in Cuba appears to be
made by a
cricket
found in the Caribbean.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, from Salafi Arabia, was going to Australia
via Thailand. Officials from Salafi Arabia
stole
her passport in Bangkok airport, so the airport stopped her from
travelling on, and she was faced with possible deportation.
Thailand says she
will
not be deported. That is good because, if sent back, she could be
walled up in a room for the rest of her life, as she was for months
already. Or simply murdered.
This shows one way that Islamic law violates the human rights of
Muslims: they are denied the right to change their religion.
US
citizens: rebuke
the bogus environmental impact statement intended to pave the way for
oil drilling in ANWR.
To sign without JS code, use lynx.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The United States is characterized as a "flawed
democracy", in
25th position, in the Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy
Index.
Separating fact-checking from moral reasoning is
sometimes a
subtle question.
Democrats in
Congress propose
increased surveillance as a substitute for the bully's wall.
Without knowing just what sort of "scanning technology" cited in the
article, I can't judge whether it that would be a specific injustice.
But I can point out that continuing the "war on
drugs" does
a lot of harm, and it is a foolish approach to the problem of
addiction.
Warning: the bully may try
to rule
the US by decree.
To stop him would depend on Republicans in Congress. So far it seems
they will back the bullshitter no matter how far he goes.
The DNA sampling company 23andMe
just sold
a lot of shares to a Big Pharma company which can now use all the
DNA samples that people sent in.
There are two bad things about this:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has formed its
leadership team out
of plutocratist
Democrats.
That's no different from the past, but now the number of progressives
they have excluded is greater and their right-wing bias is more stark.
The Democrats in Congress have given the Green New Deal only lip
service, setting up a committee
that won't
make the slightest effort to do what is needed.
Joseph Stiglitz: that was stupid of
them, and
self-defeating.
However, it is what the plutocrats that pay them want.
You can watch the number of homeless
people increase
in British cities. Nowadays many of them are derelicts, but
people who work for Amazon and Uber and do not get paid enough to have
a place to live.
The US
Senate rejected
the bill that would have tried to allow states to punish companies
that support the Palestinians' boycott of Israel.
I
don't support that boycott myself, but the right to do so should
be respected.
Australian
thugs arrested
a man for a sign insulting former prime minister Tony Abbott.
Tony
Abbott, planet
roaster
and plutocratist,
deserves more than insult — he deserves to be loathed. But I
wouldn't use the word "cunt" to insult him, or anyone, or anything.
Indeed, since any use of the word conveys insult, it has no use that I
will accept, so I have never used the word. I reject associating part
of a woman's body with insult — count me out.
In Xinjiang, reporters get
to experience
some of the repression that China visits on Uighur citizens.
The UN
has condemned
Bahrain for imprisoning the family of exile Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei
to punish him for protesting in Britain.
The UK government
keeps postponing
the requirement for its remaining colonies to require corporations
to report their real owners.
One suspects that its true mission is to defend tax-dodging for the
rich.
A member of Nicaragua's supreme
court resigned,
accusing Ortega of establishing a dictatorship and saying that it will
provoke an armed uprising.
As expected,
Pelosi kept
progressive leaders out of the most powerful committees in the
House of Representatives, the ones that must approve spending.
The plutocratist Democrats will be able to block progress on the most
important issues, such as universal medical care and the Green New Deal.
Iowa's "ag-gag" law, designed to criminalize undercover reporting
about farming
practices, has
been ruled unconstitutional.
The threat of automated copyright censorship in Europe appeared to have
subsided, but it
has
awakened again.
Washington Bills Would
Ban
the Warrantless Use of Facial Recognition Technology.
It is a grave mistake to think that the danger of face recognition is
that it might be inaccurate. The real danger is that it might be
accurate. Face recognition can be used to identify criminals. But it
can also be used to identify dissidents and whistleblowers, and that
is
dangerous
for democracy.
Just a few minutes after putting people in a holding pen, US border
thugs pull out the
brainwashing
techniques, including denying visitors use of a toilet.
Five years after
living
in an airport terminal, refugee Hassan al-Kontar has received
asylum in Canada.
US landlords consult unreliable and simplistic databases that
veto
allowing people to rent an apartment.
It is the general shortage of housing that makes this so harmful. In
the absence of the shortage, some landlord would have to rent to you.
Brazil is considering laws that could
classify
advocating protests as "terrorism". Also for more surveillance
and forcing decryption.
Religious nuts with academic positions in India
disgraced
a scientific conference with science denial.
Before giving moral accolades to ancient Hindu texts, we should think
about the fact that
caste
prejudice and sexism are a tightly integrated part of their world
view.
It is not known whether the mythical Lanka from the Ramayana
corresponds to a real place, let alone what place that was.
Controlled fusion power research continues to advance, and it may yet
function some day. But it
won't
function soon enough to enable us to replace fossil fuels in time
to avoid global disaster.
Fortunately, we already have the technology needed to avoid global
disaster. All we need is the determination to defeat the plutocrats
that are fighting against correcting the problem.
The UK is once again
using
loopholes to deport people to Jamaica.
Sanders Investigates a
$375,000
Price Spike on Old Drug.
The same stupid law affected the drug colchicine which has been used
to treat gout for a long time — so long that it was
grandfathered in when drug licensing was established. Some scoundrels
discovered it had never gone through licensing, so they obtained a
monopoly on it and made it fairly expensive.
Under Tory policies, you can be
almost
unable to walk and still be labeled "fit for work".
US citizens:
call
on Congress to pass the Prevention of Arms Race Act.
US citizens:
call on
Congress to repeal the bully's discrimination against Muslims in
immigration.
Patrick Ball uses statistics to figure out roughly how many people
were massacred,
based
on incomplete and spotty records of deaths.
When I first learned about Patrick Ball, he had determined from data
analysis that the Serbs had forced the Albanians out of their homes in
Kosovo, rather than (as the Serbs claimed) the Albanians' fleeing and
pretending to be attacked.
Capitalism
increases
production by creating artificial scarcity, which forces most
everyone to work desperately hard to compete for what has been made
scarce.
Thus, eliminating the artificial scarcities can enable people to live
comfortably while producing less — and thus reduce the strain on
Earth's natural systems that we are now overloading.
Artificial scarcity of material things reduces the supply, but even
without artificial scarcity those things are not totally abundant.
Forbidding the sharing of copyable works is the ultimate instance of
artificial scarcity, since it makes something scarce which would
otherwise be available without practical limit.
In Salafi Arabia, not only your boyfriend can drop you by text message.
Your
husband can do it, too.
And that's a step forward from last year, when he didn't have to tell
you that you were divorced.
Islamic law
trashes
human rights for men, too.
DRC Election Results
Postponed as Officials Say "Remain Patient".
Developing consistent and plausible phony results takes time!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to ban discrimination against queer people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: The bully is using his official power
to bully
the rest of the government, trying to seize the power of a
dictator.
It is vital to make this fail, because if he succeeds with it once,
he will threaten it whenever Congress defies him. And that will make
him indeed a dictator.
Why Sustainable Agriculture
Should Support
a Green New Deal.
I don't know whether these ideas about agriculture are valid,
biologically and economically. I don't know enough about that
field to try to judge, and I don't know of anyone I can regard
as an authority on the matter.
New York City
has proposed
a system of universal medical coverage for all residents of the
city.
Los Angeles public school teachers are going on strike
to block
systematic privatization of the schools.
A study found that users aged 65 and over are far more likely to
redistribute
fake news. They may not understand the need to judge the validity
of an article.
Turkey
demanded that the US withdraw its troops from Syrian Kurdish
territory or else Turkey will attack there.
In effect, Erdoğan is figuring Trump will back down when threatened.
A study suggests that overprotecting children
may encourage
mental illness in teenagers.
Defining
populism: a populist movement is one that consistently promises to
channel the unified will of the people, and by doing so defeat the
schemes of the powerful elite.
I don't think Bernie Sanders denies that a substantial fraction of
Americans are right-wing and disagree with him. Thus, I think he is
not really a populist by this definition.
Cyntoia Brown
has received
clemency and will be released from prison.
Many people feel disgust for sex workers, and are inclined to treat
them unfairly. The same happens to blacks, because of racism, but I
think sex workers get it even worse. I think Brown's conviction was
an example of this disgust at work.
I agree with the article that her age did not matter to the issue.
She had the right to self-defense at age 16, and she would have had
the same right if she were 26, 36, 46, or 86. We don't need to label
all teenage sex workers as ipso facto "trafficking victims" in order
to respect their rights.
San Francisco General Hospital, a public
hospital systematically
gouges patients that come to the emergency room. It refuses to
cooperate with private insurance companies, so whatever charges they
don't cover bankrupt the patient.
The hospital was recently named after Zuckerberg, but he is not in
charge of it, so I don't expect that he is personally responsible for
this practice. However, the grasping spirit demonstrated by renaming
a public hospital after a billionaire donor could be related to it.
With Medicare for All, hospitals would not have any way to do this.
They would get paid by Medicare, and they would get the amount
Medicare pays.
The Israeli army says it investigates killings of Palestinians, but
the investigations
are not
intended to find anything wrong.
After Juneau stopped putting fluoride in the water supply, there
was a
substantial increase in the rate of cavities in children's teeth.
Tracking data for mobile phones in the US is easily available to lots
of businesses and individuals, because the phone
networks readily
sell it.
The fact that the state can get data about your past actions, perhaps for
years, is dangerous even if the state gets a search warrant. That means
that in effect the phone networks are spying on all mobile phone users
in advance for Big Brother. Any person's location data should only start
if a warrant authorizes it.
The US used to dissolve corporations that trampled the public. It
should
do so again.
I would rather avoid the term "death penalty" to describe this, however,
because corporations are not alive. They are not, morally, persons
and not morally entitled to human rights.
Killer thugs are using vague "victims' rights" laws
to shield
their identity.
Given how rare it is for thugs' crimes to be properly investigated,
this practice makes a bad situation even worse.
US citizens: call on the World Bank
not to
let the bullshitter choose its next president.
US citizens:
support
taxing the rich more.
NBC TV reporter William Arkin apologized for being
manipulated
into supporting the security state in the name of defeating the
bully.
Egypt is now trying to encourage people to have fewer children, but
its
efforts are weak.
Each woman that starts using reliable contraception will avoid some
births. But the patriarchal requirement for her to get a man's
permission to use it undermines the goal.
Here is an idea: the government could encourage and support farm
families to adopt children from struggling poor families, when both
families start using contraception. "If you want another child on
your farm, adopt an existing one!"
How
to pressure your congresscritter to side with the public instead
of with the plutocrats.
The
Money,
Job, Marriage Myth: Are You Happy Yet?
The limitations on bankruptcy in the Czech Republic are driving
almost 8% of the population into penury and despair due to
debts
they have no hope of paying.
This sort of has happened to many in the US with student debt, ever
since the US made it impossible to get out of that debt through
bankruptcy.
In Spain, an unknown number of people are "fiscally dead", which means
they cannot work other than underground because their income would be
seized for debt. If you have a mortgage on a house and can't pay it,
you will lose the house but be stuck with the debt for the rest of
your life.
The
brilliance
of British industrial policy is often hard for us to appreciate.
A woman that has been in a coma in a hospital for a decade had a baby.
The search for who raped her
might
involve taking DNA samples from all the male employees.
15 years ago, if I were not the father of the baby, I would have seen
no reason to object to the testing of my DNA. It would have shown I
was not the guilty party, and that's all it would have done.
Nowadays, I would be concerned about possible harm that might come to
me as a result of having my DNA on file, regardless of why they had
taken it.
The First Step Act
needs
to be followed by more steps. The US imprisons far too many
people, and puts many in solitary for years, even subjecting many to
physical torture.
The bill HR.1 would
fix
dozens of cracks and loopholes in US democracy.
I support all of them, except one:
It will be hard to pass this bill; Republicans will oppose it.
But they may lose the next election due to opposing it.
Brazil's new president dooH niboR plans to
reduce
the minimum wage for the poor, and reduce taxes for the rich.
He gets his support, like the numbskull in the US, mainly from people
who practice a reversed sect of Christianity: hate thy poor neighbors
and obey the powerful.
The bully could sabotage the US in many ways
by
declaring a state of emergency. He would have many powers that he
could use against any target of his choice.
60,000 students around the world went on strike recently
demanding
action to defend Earth's climate.
Local gathering places can build social cohesion by offering a place
for people to
mix
with neighbors that are not similar to them, people that they
would not meet in interest-based activities.
White House "press briefings" are
becoming
once-a-month events. Perhaps they will disappear entirely.
Since they are used only to present lies, that would be no loss.
President Sanders could bring them back.
Proposal: trade funding for the border wall for
reestablishment
of DACA.
The article errs on one point: an incomplete border wall can
do harm — to local ecosystems such such as that in the ;
National
Butterfly Sanctuary.
The deal proposed here might be a good idea if it can prevent the next
year's wall construction from affecting those parts of the border.
American parents have bought into the idea that they have a
responsibility to over their children
all
the time.
Part of the issue concerns providing students with enrichments to
their education. Only wealthy parents can do this thoroughly, so this
tends to perpetuate and increase inequality.
We could instead do as parts of the US used to do, and include
enrichments in public schools so that all children could have them
available. But this costs money. We used to get it by taxing the
rich. We need to do so again.
Part of the issue is obsessive overprotection. This is a useless
burden for American parents regardless of their level of wealth.
If Japanese children can take the subway (which implies crossing
streets walking to and from the station) on their own at age 6,
American children can do it too. We have to learn to direct them
towards such independence.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to reject more repression of immigrants and more
surveillance of everyone in the name of repression of immigrants.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to investigate and impeach Kavanaugh for perjury.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Senate Republicans to pass the Special Counsel Transparency
Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US states
are starting
to prohibit companies from imposing mandatory arbitration, and
nondisclosure, in sexual harassment cases.
But that is not enough. Companies should not be allowed to impose
arbitration or nondisclosure on their workers or customers for any sort
of dispute.
The US government definition of poverty is far too low; the real
number of poor
people is
much larger than what the government says.
The Sunrise Movement
is planning
political campaigning to pressure Democrats in Congress to support
the Green New Deal.
This is vitally important — we need it to win by the 2020
election.
The Climate
Risk Disclosure Act would require publicly traded corporations to
disclose how their business is threatened by global heating.
An
American reports on the harmful effects of his overprotective
upbringing.
He may have a chance to to make people a few years younger than him
aware of these problems, and they can spread the word.
Due to bus cuts in the UK, many areas of the country have no bus
services. Poor people living there cannot get to work or to medical
appointments. Most ironically, unemployed people will
be unable
to get to the jobcenter unless they can walk long distances.
Heating of the atmosphere and the surface is just the tip of the
heatberg; 90% of
heating goes
into the ocean.
A UK undercover thug, infiltrating animal rights groups, lied to the
women he had long-term relationships with — and
then lied
to an official inquiry about it.
The first wrong was infiltrating opposition groups at all.
India has abolished the idea of privacy, and protection against
arbitrary searches, by authorizing many government agencies
to seize
data and decryption keys from any computer. Individuals as well
as businesses are required to obey on pain of imprisonment. No court
order is required.
This means that India has effectively abolished the principle of not
being forced to incriminate oneself.
The tendency to digitize and remember all communication tends to
eliminate physical privacy. It is natural that grasping governments,
which put their authority above human rights, will use this as an
excuse to eliminate legal privacy.
It
is ten
years since Israel launched a war against Gaza and killed 1400
people.
Israeli generals call bombarding Gaza "mowing the lawn", in effect asserting
that the human beings there are no more than leaves of grass.
Progressive Ideas Matter to Voters. So Why Do Democrats Fixate on the
Identity
of the Messenger?
The US border thugs have a long list of excuses for searching any car
within miles of the US border. For every car, there is an excuse if
they want it. This is only part of
a system
of repression.
Research
suggests that a sense of social isolation might be an important
factor in radicalizing Islamists.
The
article exaggerates how much the study shows.
The first counterargument is valid but not pertinent. If everyone
tends to feel hurt when subject to social exclusion, that doesn't
refute the idea that it can contribute to Islamist radicalization. It
could help radicalize people in different groups for different causes.
The study discussed (without a reference) is not proof of the
conjecture, but the conjecture could be true. If it is, that suggests
action that could help reduce violence, not limited to the extreme
which is terrorism. Namely, to help reduce society's tendency to
cause feelings of social exclusion.
The cheater has decided to bypass getting the heads of departments
approved by the Senate
by leaving
them as "acting" heads.
Los Angeles set up an earthquakes warning
system, for
snoopphone users only.
An Israeli teenager has been
charged
with killing a Palestinian by throwing a rock at the car she was
in.
Persistent protester John Catt was surveilled for decades by UK thugs
because of his politics. He has now
won
a court order telling them to delete their records about him from
a secret surveillance database.
Since the database is secret, how will we know if they really delete
it?
The FDA seems
unwilling
to restrain drug companies from introducing powerful new opioids.
As sea level rises,
coastal
wetlands will have to move inland or the ecosystems and their
species will be lost. To preserve them requires making human
activities move out of the way.
The US has
secretly
tested face-recognizing everyone on the street.
At a border crossing is perhaps the one place where the use of face
recognition is not oppressive. To enter the US, each person will be
required to show an identity document anyway.
Using face recognition to systematically identify people on the street
anywhere else should be illegal outside of special cases.
US
citizens: call
on Democrats to boycott the State of the Union speech.
Blocking the bully from speaking to Congress was a good lever against him,
but since Pelosi conceded on this in exchange for only temporarily reopening
the government, come Feb 15 she will have the same problem again and won't
have this lever to use.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Amazon, Microsoft, Google, not to sell facial recognition
technology to governments.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: oppose
strip-searching students for appearing "giddy".
If you sign, please spread the word!
Famous glaciers in the Alps, depicted in famous
paintings, have
disappeared.
By 2100 the Alps are likely to be bare peaks.
Doctors
are on
strike in Zimbabwe because the new dictator is squeezing the
people to attract Chinese and other international "investment".
Lending to the dictators of poor countries is, in effect, buying an
opportunity to squeeze that money out of the people later.
David Sirota, who reported on Beto O'Rourke's fossil fuel funding and
his more-right-wing-than-most-Democrats voting record in Congress, is
the target
of systematic attacks by the supporters of plutocratist Democrats.
Ocasio-Cortez advocates
high tax rates for the highest income bracket.
This is a step in the right direction, but to succeed at taxing the
rich more than a few percent we need to change laws for tax shelters.
Getting Congressional Democrats to support things like this will
require pressuring
them continually.
Some progressive House Democrats negotiated to make the paygo rule
weaker, then
voted for it.
Maybe they achieved something significant with that negotiation.
Perhaps they did help the progressive cause. To judge that depends
on what they could have achieved by voting no, and I don't know that.
I don't think this should reduce our criticism of the plutocratist
Democrats.
The bully talks of making asylum seekers wait in Mexico for years for
their cases to be considered, but the
US needs
Mexico's approval for this, and Mexico could not cope with it.
Right-wing governments in the
Americas made
a joint statement calling on Maduro to step down.
The article does not say that the countries named are all
right-wing, but that is the case. Brazil, in particular, is now led
by a man that seems to aim to outdo Maduro in repression.
Nonetheless, I too am suspicious of Maduro's latest election.
The US is importing increasing amounts of asbestos. The
EPA rejected
a call for more reporting about the imports.
Removing some US ground troops from other countries could be a first
step towards peace, but to really reach peace
requires ending
the aerial bombardment.
Salafi Arabia
should free
the women who campaigned for the right to drive a car.
Now that Ireland has abortion services, religious fanatics are
blocking
patients and spreading disinformation with phony web sites.
The French regard equality as a positive value. Most Americans have
accepted
the story that they deserve suffering if they lose the game, even
though plutocrats have stacked the deck against them.
Half of Americans that believe they are allergic to some kind of food
are not
really allergic to it.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo held an election, but the
government
is not
saying who won.
If you use a cell phone in the US, you can be tracked and listened to
by the US government, the Russian government, and the Chinese
government, using
cell tower simulators.
I am surprised that the US government cannot find them. They are
radio transmitters; it should be possible to see which direction
the signal is coming from.
The Indian women who visited a temple, from which women of a fertile
age were banned, have been
forced
to hide from violence by Hindu fanatics, and by their own
relatives.
The bully's
statement
of political motives for charging Huawei executive Mang Wanzhou
provide legal arguments for Canada to refuse to extradite her to the
US.
I distrust Huawei products; I suspect them of spying for China. (US
companies are known to spy for the US; under the PAT RIOT Act, they
are compelled to.)
However, the case against Ms Mang has nothing to do with privacy or
spying. It is about allegedly violating US sanctions on trade with
Iran, sanctions which the bully applied in order to destroy the
nonnuclear deal with Iran. It is arrogant for the US to try to make
foreign countries follow US sanctions.
Australia has
canceled
the citizenship of Neil Prakash, on the pretext that supposedly he
should be entitled to citizenship in Fiji.
The article does not say whether Prakash has ever been in Fiji. I get
the impression that he has only a theoretical relationship with that
country. Is there any reason to believe that Fiji will recognize him
as a citizen? Since he appears to be a violent Islamist, it might
not. Then he would be stateless.
Even if that doesn't happen this time, it will happen to someone else.
If Prakash is guilty of the crimes that are alleged, they are grounds
for putting him in prison. But countries should never forcibly exile
their citizens.
Microrobots to inspect oil pipelines
could
be very useful, but experience shows that oil companies
would
rather cut corners than spend money to inspect.
Devices and platforms, using AI, are making medical diagnoses
but the companies that get the information claim not to be covered
by medical regulations for protecting patients.
Canada has deregistered a "charity" which contributed funds to
military training in Israel and to Israeli use of Palestinian land,
Israel Plans to Expel 36,000 Negev Bedouins (from the villages
which Israel says are unauthorized).
Big Agriculture is giving a lot of money to universities, and
exercising
a veto over research.
This is one of the many ways in which big companies endanger everyone.
A vision
for how the World Bank could be converted into a beneficent
engine for equality.
However, what is more likely is that the bully will use it as another
weapon for plutocrats.
Europe Sets Up Scheme to Get Round US Sanctions on Iran.
Sanctions can be justified or not, but I can't see why other countries
should or would allow the US to unilaterally compel them to impose
sanctions on some other country.
US
citizens: call
on Congress to cancel the Oak Flat land swap, which would turn
over land to a multinational mining company that is likely to spread
pollution.
It is also considered sacred by an indigenous group. For me, that
carries less weight; they didn't live in the area until after 1600.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: oppose
the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.
I put this into the comment field.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Recycling plastic is technically
difficult. Only
a tiny fraction of the plastic that is collected for "recycling"
is actually recycled.
President Maduro of Venezuela
is arresting
human rights advocates even if they have not engaged in partisan
politics, for criticizing his policies.
The US government has
started ignoring
UN complaints about US violations of human rights.
This is, in effect, dismisses the defense of human rights. It
will encourage human rights violation all around the world.
It will encourage China to brazenly imprison both Chinese citizens and
foreign visitors
under torture
and brainwashing conditions almost as bad as in Guantanamo.
Short-sighted insurance and zoning regulations are pushing California
housing away from the cities where there are jobs,
and into
fire-prone areas where fire insurance will not be available in the
future at any price.
Canada says
that around
200 Canadians are under arrest or in prison in China, but that's
the usual amount and doesn't seem to represent arbitrary retaliation.
Whether it is retaliation or not, the crucial point is that people
arrested in China, whatever the motive, don't get a fair trial, and
sometimes no trial at all. And they may be tortured.
I wish
I could say that my country never did such things.
The "green
death" movement encourages letting human corpses decay and push up
daisies, and trees, rather than embalming them so that they will
remain unchanged for thousands of years.
The US empire treats nominally independent countries as puppets. One
of the worst
examples is
from Bosnia. The US pressured it to exile naturalized citizens,
often hand them over for torture — in Egypt, in Guantanamo,
elsewhere.
The US labeled them enemies because they had fought for the Bosnian
Muslims motivated by their religion. This doesn't imply they
supported al-Qa'ida. But even if they did, they should not have been
punished like this, disregarding laws, whether or not they committed
any crime.
I think the article's very short aside about the civil war in Syria is
one-sided.
Meng Wanzhou faces an extradition hearing in which Canada is obligated
to demand evidence of specific crimes — exactly what the
Bosnians deserved but did not get.
A supposed UK "charity", the "Institute for
Statecraft", disguises
the location of its headquarters, as well as the fact that its
funding comes from the state and its director is a colonel in military
intelligence. Its mission is to correct "fake news" by spreading
other news, which we must suspect is a mixture of truth and falsehood.
Chinese "reeducation" camps in Xinjing are making clothing that is
exported
to US schools and sports teams.
Thugs permanently stationed in high schools offer the US government a
pipeline to information about students, to collect trivia which might
or might not label them as "gang associates". People are often
arrested
because of this labeling.
Some of the students thus labeled do participate in gangs' crimes.
Some do not. The supposed signs are a basis only for suspicion,
but they are treated as more.
It is an injustice to punish people for unidentified possible crimes,
without proof of any one. It is an injustice to punish people for
what they draw when they doodle, or for "association" at all.
Single mothers
are especially
likely to get caught in US debtors' prisons. Sooner or later, the
day comes when they can't pay a fine and take care of their children.
Collecting the many ways Google is involved with US government
surveillance, abroad and in the US, amounts
to quite
a package.
A giant
British arms company sold sophisticated whole-country surveillance
systems to repressive regimes.
The opponents of Medicare for All want
to undermine
the plan with changes that would make it more expensive by letting
companies sell coverage to young, healthy people.
Toyota wants to design robots that "know what people are thinking".
Not by telepathy, of course, but
by watching
and listening to them all the time.
It is not just the robot that will know. So will Toyota's data
center, and any entity or government that Toyota gives access to, or
that contrives to take the data.
Unless the robot's software is under your control, don't think of it
as your "pal".
The fight to restore network neutrality is not over. Democrats will
make
Ajit Pai testify about lying about the fraudulent comments that
supported his actions.
If you want to look in battleforthenet.com/scoreboard for how each
member of Congress voted, you can do that without running nonfree
Javascript by clicking
on VIEW FULL
SCOREBOARD.
Racist Hyde-Smith won the election for senator from Mississippi. Right-wing government in Australia plays the same games as right-wing government in the US and the UK: demanding that poor people be perfect and never make a mistake, and punish them if it looks like they have made a mistake.
Preventing states from imposing restrictions on voting by mail;
I am concerned that your boss or your spouse might force you to vote
by mail, and use that to compel you to vote as perse wants. Many US
companies and managers
try
to tell their staff how to vote, and lying about what you did in
the voting booth is your defense, which you would lose if you can vote
by mail instead. I don't understand this item:
Affirming Congress’s right to restore the Voting Rights Act of
1965, which granted the Justice Department veto power over
jurisdictions with histories of voting discrimination;
It is important to restore the Voting Rights Act, but does this bill
do so, or does it only insist that Congress could do so?
Grave as the local dangers of the Line 3 pipeline are, its global
danger is even worse. Just when we need to drastically reduce
greenhouse gas emissions, this pipeline would lead to increasing them.
The US government wants to judge applications for residency based on credit scores -- as if credit scores were a direct measure of personal merit.
Rapist Fathers Should Not Have Rights over Their Victims’ Children.
Even most Republicans now agree that global heating is occurring. However, we have a long way to go to show most Americans that human activity is the cause.
Without much help from the US, Europe or Brazil, we are left hoping that China will prevent the impending mass extinction of species.
Varoufakis, working with Sanders, proposes to redirect various international institutions to serve the goals they were created for.
The people directly involved in murdering Berta Cáceres have been convicted, and others just above them face trial. But there is evidence that ministers and other powerful people were involved somehow.
Calling on the Republics of the House of Representatives to censure Rep. Steve King for his racism.
Republican efforts to take away medical coverage for some children seems to have had some success -- the number of children without medical coverage rose in 2017.
Washington, DC, may rename the street outside the Salafi Arabian embassy to Jamal Khashoggi Streetb.
An experiment suggests that even a 1% level of fake news can sabotage society's ability to reach consensus.
He would be a lousy choice even if he were not blatantly corrupt.
The cheater's staff is looking for ways to hand over Fethullah Gulen to Erdoğan for punishment, as a bribe so Erdoğan will stop trying to hold the acting monarch of Salafi Arabia responsible for murdering Jamal Khashoggi.
British activists that blocked a deportation flight with nonviolent interference are threatened with life inprisonment.
The activists are accused of blocking the runway, but they are not the ones who did that. It was the state. The state followed a policy of maximum overreaction, based on the worst imaginable case, which it had every reason to know was not occurring. It can't justly blame its overreaction on the activists.
The article explains that the UK denies some deportees the right to appeal decisions, and cheats others out of that right by deporting them illegally fast.
US citizens: call on Congress to close and investigate the bully's prison camps for refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pay the wages of federal contract workers that had no income during the shutdown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to resist both building a physical border wall and any other new deportation efforts that the bully wants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Does it make a difference that "the CEOs of four of the [US's] five biggest defense contractors — Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defense arm of Boeing — are now women"?
I do not believe the claim that female political leaders will in general be less violent or less brutal than male leaders. They seem to vary much as male leaders do.
But we are talking here about business leaders of the US military-industrial complex. They do not decide directly whether to fight any war or repress anyone. But they constantly sponsor persuasion that encourages war in a general way, and encourages repression at least indirectly. More concretely, they impoverish Americans by diverting ever more of the country's resources to buying arms from their companies.
Let's not get distracted from this by their gender.
Google assigns profits from various EU countries to Bermuda, through tax loopholes in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The obvious response is for other EU countries to legislate that Google (and other multinationals) may not dodge their national taxes in this way. I think the reason they do not is that the EU does not allow this. Would leaving the EU enable the UK to tax these companies as they should be taxed?
I would be very interested in talking with an expert.
The UK is buying drone-radio jammers to stop drones from operating near major airports.
This would stop people from operating ordinary commercial drones near airports, but people determined to cause trouble could easily reprogram a drone to make a nuisance of itself without radio control.
A US appeals court upheld a ruling that makes companies responsible for mistreatment of subcontracted workers.
I would celebrate this, but I fear it will be overturned by the right-wing Supreme Court.
A right-wing distraction campaign attacks Senator Warren as a presidential candidate for being "unlikeable".
Warren has fought the financial industry for many years, which puts her miles above Clinton and Obama, who are the banksters' pets. If Warren becomes the Democrats' nominee, I will vote for her. But in the overall range of progressive issues, Sanders is the one who excels. I think Warren should endorse him.
The US is bombing internet cafes in the Syrian towns still held by the remnants of PISSI. Meanwhile, the Kurds are negotiating a truce with PISSI so they can use all their forces to defend against Turkey.
Indian women made a 400-mile human chain upholding their right to enter a temple which formerly had been restricted only to men.
The head of Italian medical research has resigned because of the government's anti-vaccine policies.
Australia is developing systematic disrespect for freedom-of-information requests.
Chinese Schools Track Students by Requiring Chip-Enhanced Uniforms.
If you can force someone to wear certain clothing, it's almost equivalent to forcibly implanting a RFID. Naturally, the school's scheme of total surveillance also includes face recognition.
The staff of a prison for refugee minors were observed shoving and hitting them. Maybe they will be prosecuted for this.
I hope to see a campaign to encourage that prosecution.
Bernie Sanders says what he stands for.
Americans, accept nothing less in 2020 than Sanders.
Facebook says its useds "own their own data", but "their own data" doesn't mean what you would think. It includes only some of the data Facebook keeps about its useds.
This is one reason why the demand that users "own their data" is fundamentally inadequate.
Israel is trying to stop the terrorist attacks against Palestinians, and has arrested two people accused of this.
Israel has the duty to stop that terrorism and should have started many years ago. Meanwhile, these suspects deserve respect for their rights, just as Palestinian suspects do.
Israel stopped 800 people in Gaza last year from traveling to get medical treatment which is impossible there.
US citizens: call on Congress to get the US out of the war in Yemen.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject the appointment of Neomi Rao as a federal judge.
Ms Rao's views on intoxication and rape fit the usual patriarchal pattern of searching for any excuse to blame the victim of rape. They never take that approach for other crimes such as robbery. Right-wingers never tell men, "Taking your wallet was not theft, because you consented by carrying it in your back pocket."
I wish the writers would avoid lumping rape together with a wide range of other actions under the term "sexual assault".
If you sign, please spread the word!
A study of how an Israeli soldier shot medic Rouzan al-Najjar suggests that the shooter did not aim directly at her, but firing near a group of medics is a war crime anyway.
So is firing at a group of people who are not participating in violence.
During 2018, Israeli forces killed 265 Palestinians and wounded 29,000. Around 1,500 of the wounded can't recover easily.
Bangladesh is using its new press censorship law to punish reports of problems in the election.
The Houthis have been manipulating food aid to bring a bigger fraction of food aid to areas they control.
The article is not clear about exactly what is going on. Unless the Houthis have been misrepresenting the amount of hunger in areas they do not control — and how could they do that? — the root of the problem seems to be that the total amount of food aid is not enough.
Bolsonaro has launched a plan to wipe out the indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest.
Plutocratist Democrats in Congress have tied their hands with a rule against passing any measures that increase the deficit.
This puts the US on course to have a balanced budget in 50 years: zero dollars revenue, and zero dollars expenditure.
If the non-rich can't afford a court case, rule of law degenerates into rule of the rich. That's what the UK is pushing things toward.
The US situation is different in detail, but worse overall. Criminal defendants get a public defender who tries to only get them a plea bargain. In any other situation, including an asylum hearing, you have no help unless some charity wants to assist you.
The European Union doesn't adequately respect freedom of speech. One example: an anti-abortion activist was forbidden by Europe's highest court from calling abortion "murder" and from comparing abortions with the Holocaust.
I disagree totally with what he said, but freedom of speech includes the right to say it. We who oppose plutocracy must defend all unpopular opinions against censorship, or we will be the next ones censored.
Vietnam has adopted a Chinese-style requirement for ISPs to block criticism of the government.
The avowed ideology of the Vietnamese government is "serve and obey global investors."
When foreign workers in Dubai get pregnant, they are imprisoned unless they conceal it. Some of them abandon their children to get out. Others hide their children for years because their families won't accept them back.
Dubai's cruelty to women who get pregnant, indeed its cruelty to foreign workers in general, is inexcusable.
However, the root cause of this problem — the reason why women from countries like the Philippines take the risky course of going to work in Dubai — is overpopulation in their home countries. That is why they take the risk of travelling to a country where they will certainly be exploited and from which they can't return home. Desperate conditions at home push millions into competitions in which many competitors must surely lose.
When Japan brings in foreign workers, they are sometimes exploited in the same way.
Japan should admit immigrants — not temporary workers to exploit. And in case someone does want to go home, Japan should guarantee the air fare. Japan can afford it.
Proposed development in Florida could drive the Florida panther to extinction.
Meanwhile, sea-level rise will push from the other side.
Fiji says that Neil Prakash does not have Fijian citizenship and cannot apply for it. Thus, Australia seems to have rendered him stateless.
Once Australia adopted the policy of making bets like this, it was certain that it would lose a bet sooner or later.
What if he did have Fijian citizenship even though he has never been there? I question the legitimacy of telling a person, "You are now required to live in that country over there, which you don't know, where you don't know anyone, and you don't speak the local language."
I criticized the US for doing that — for instance, deporting to Mexico a man who was indeed a Mexican citizen but had been brought to the US as a small child.
Countries sometimes need to punish their own citizens, after a fair trial, but should never exile them. Not even after a trial — which Prakash did not have. Australia exiled him without a trial.
Persistent pressure from climate activists have made the mainstream media cover the climate danger — a little.
The Democratic Party is going to require presidential candidates to demonstrate grass-roots funding in order to be included in debates.
An object lesson in spinelessness: someone who passionately hates Apple's decision to eliminate the headphone jack, and hasn't got the guts to do anything but moan.
A fool and his freedom are soon parted.
How can you develop the strength not to be herded? Practice saying no! Practice when it is very easy, and in a year you will learn to at least consider saying no every time some company wants you to submit to mistreatment.
The US has privatized housing for soldiers, with the unsurprising result that some people are getting rich and soldiers live in intolerable conditions.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as head of the EPA.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Chinese students in the Marxist Student Society met with fierce repression after they tried to support a strike in the name of Mao Zidong. They have been jailed (some of them incommunicado, as is common in China).
Mao Zidong is an ironic choice of icon for a movement to help workers against the power of the state, since he was as repressive as any ruler in history. Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng, describes her experience in the Great Cultural Revolution; around ten years previously, Mao's policies causes a nationwide famine. But China's censorship has left these students little opportunity to learn about what Mao did.
Despite this irony, their hearts are in the right place. That is what China has jailed them for.
Immigrants from Mexico don't seem to cause much crime — US cities near the border have low crime rates.
The 1978 US copyright law dealt a horrible blow to the public domain. Here is a list of just a few of the highly appreciated books that would be in the public domain now if not for that law.
Copyright should last for ten years from the date of publication of a work.
People in Arizona are harassing Waymo's not-yet-quite-driverless vans in an attempt to drive them away.
Bravo! We do not have to allow companies to automate millions of jobs; we do not have to allow them to drive camera platforms through the neighborhoods where we live, work, or travel. How about passing laws to stop them?
Please join me in refusing to use the automated cash registers that stores have set up. I reject them absolutely — once I left a store without buying what I had come for, because the automated cash register was the only way to pay. But even if you don't feel the moral determination to reject them every time, rejecting them most of the time still helps.
I also shout to the other customers, as I pass those machines: "If we use those machines, that puts other Americans out of work. When I realized that, I decided I would always go to the human sales agents, to help them stay employed. We don't have to let companies replace people with robots."
On three occasions, someone immediately responded that that was a good point. Interestingly, each one was a black woman. Maybe they are accustomed to the idea of solidarity.
Relating the murder of women to the prohibition of abortion as two aspects of male domination.
Hasan Minhaj made a comic video, published via Netflix, that mocked the official Salafi Arabian story about how Jamal Khashoggi disappeared. The acting king declared the story illegal, so Netflix banned access to the video from there.
Because Netflix is the only distribution site, the only way anyone in Salafi Arabia can see the program now is via unofficial redistribution, which is hampered by Netflix's use of DRM.
Netflix has the power to entirely terminate distribution of any video it made, and the video would essentially disappear because there is no other place to get it.
Join me and flick off Netflix!
It does other injustices too.
Israel's blockade of Gaza has crippled medical care, which has led (among other things) to increase of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The uncontacted tribes of Brazil could soon be wiped out by disease.
Children that grow up in poverty are mentally and physically stunted. This is a big drag in the economy — estimated at around a trillion dollars a year for the US.
The wealthy people who don't care about poor people's suffering might care about that.
Amazon warehouse workers in the US are pushing to unionize. The company treats them as throwaways.
The US economy is so concentrated that in many areas there is little competition. This drives consumer prices up, and drives small farms out of business.
It also means less competition to hire any given worker, which drives wages down.
Companies and managers in the US really try to tell employees who to vote for. And not just a handful of them.
In the absence of legal protection against this, we need to make it very easy for employees to lie to their bosses about how they voted.
The environment-hater's cancellation of environmental protection regulations is causing damage all around the US.
When people see videos of blacks attacked by thugs, they often bend over backwards to find an excuse. This often takes the form of wondering what might have happened before someone started making a video of the attack.
"I used to defend smacking children. Now I see it as an abuse of power."
When my father, and sometimes other adults, punished me physically, that taught me fear and anger which lasted for years. Even decades later, though I no longer felt in physical danger from him, I did not trust him.
However, as I grew up, and saw other children behaving in intolerable ways, I saw the situation from the other side. What could I do to stop a child from doing things that were either dangerous or harmful to others, without losing my temper? It is easy to say, "Find some gentle way to solve the problem" — but I did not think I could find them. Maybe some other people, less easily upset than I, could do that, but I could see I would be stressed to my wits' end, and explode.
At that point I made a very smart decision: to avoid getting into that situation, by not having children.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bully's proposed deal about the shutdown and immigration.
The "deal" is not a compromise — it demands to eliminate any way for people from Central America to ask for asylum.
Hundreds, potentially thousands of Australian plant species are being wiped out by an introduced fungus.
Many villages in India do not have toilets. Women there have to set out before dawn to find a place in the fields they can use without being harassed by men. Now there is a campaign to build toilets all across India.
Telephone companies and ISPs are pushing for weak federal "privacy" laws in the hope of stopping states from doing anything stronger.
But even "stronger" laws to protect "privacy" only regarding commercial use of tracking people is inadequate to protect against repression.
Companies impose nondisclosure agreements on people that they fire for reasons they would be ashamed to admit.
George Monbiot: University research is teaching advertisers how to manipulate people more compellingly.
In the 1980s there was a push to make universities do research that would be more directly useful to business. I suspect this is the result of that.
If you refuse — firmly refuse — to run nonfree software, that will cut a lot of the commercial manipulation out of your life. If in addition you stay off the online disservices, that will get rid of most of the rest. You will still see some ads, but they won't be enough to achieve the intended "cognitive depletion" effect.
Throwaway clothing (an idea that seems absurd to me) is so widely used that it is a major source of greenhouse gases and plastic waste.
When cotton is used, the growing of the cotton releases fertilizer runoff and competes with food production.
We can hope that people will turn towards rejecting throwaway clothing (and any non-durable clothing), but that involves going against social pressure. Turning the pressure around would have more effect. Perhaps a 300% tax on clothing that appears designed to last less than six months, decreasing to zero for clothing that would last three years. Alternatively, require the store or the "brand" to buy the clothing back within three years, and put up a deposit for doing this.
Another alternative: if you want a design on your body just once, paint it on.
The sixth mass extinction is no longer threatening — it is happening all around us. For instance, many species of trees in the western US are already dead, and the animals that depended on them are dying or dead.
Research of internal documents demonstrates that the massacre of Communists in Indonesia in 1965-66 was planned by the army and ordered explicitly by General Suharto.
The infantile US president is inspiring high school students to be infantile.
The mayor of Gdansk in Poland was assassinated by a crazed fanatic who was apparently motivated by that party's propaganda. The mayor had defended human rights against the ruling right-wing party.
Verizon pressures workers hard with propaganda against unionization.
14-year-old Antonio Arce was shot by a thug while running away. It is possible he really was carrying a fake gun.
The wrecker-in-chief is making exceptions to the legally-required government shutdown so as to speed permits for new fossil fuel drilling.
Rep. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American, wants to set up a trip for members of Congress to visit Palestine and see how the occupation treats Palestinians.
The US deportation thugs are so eager to deport people that periodically they jail US citizens and prepare to deport them.
It's not clear how they would choose a country to send someone to, who was born in the US, but being so careless they might pick anywhere.
A leaked document shows that the bully and his henchmen intentionally planned to deport refugee minors quickly, denying them their right to a hearing, after taking them away from their parents.
They lied about this, naturally, since they belong to the Republiar Party. Senator Merkley called for the FBI to investigate the Secretary of Homeland Savagery, Kirstjen Nielsen, who patently lied to Congress about this.
Lots of plastic that Americans hand over for recycling does not really get recycled. The system is not able to cope with the needs of the real waste stream.
Perhaps we need to tax the use of plastic packaging that doesn't match up with real recycling capabilities.
The adoption of e-cigarettes has greatly increased the fraction of teenagers that use nicotine.
How bad is that? The change since 20 years ago is that today many of them are using e-cigarettes, whereas their counterparts 20 years ago were smoking.
The UK Department of Health finds that vaping nicotine does only 5% as much harm as smoking tobacco.
So it seems to me that the change reported in Mother Jones is a big change for the not-so-bad.
There is bipartisan support for relaxing zoning regulations, but not at the local level where it can actually be done.
Syrian Kurds have handed the town of Manbij to Assad's forces, hoping that will thwart Erdoğan's plan to attack Manbij.
If Assad is willing to make peace with Rojava, that could give Rojava a way to survive. However, there is no way for Rojava to respect human rights under Assad's dominion, as long as he will not do so.
Americans that live near costs are campaigning vigorously to block oil drilling off their coasts. Florida has just prohibited offshore drilling.
US citizens: support the Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour over a few years.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US military to stop spraying toxic PFAS fire extinguishers; use other extinguishing substances instead.
To sign this without running nonfree JavaScript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Sudan is full of nonviolent protests against al-Bashir's power.
The most common kind of childhood leukaemia may be caused by keeping babies away from germs.
Assad has clearly won the Syrian civil war.
I think this is not a bad thing, overall, given that there was no one else less bad that we could support to replace him. The Syrian rebels were no better, and PISSI wasn't either.
The EU accuses Romania of undermining rule of law — like Poland and Hungary. Italy may soon follow.
Meanwhile, censorship in EU countries is increasing, with Article 13 and the police censorship directive.
It seems that the EU has insufficient power to use for defending human rights and democracy in its member states, while it has too much power to collect debts for the banksters.
Outgoing Michigan governor Snyder, normally no hero of democracy, blocked most Republican attempts to reduce the power of the incoming Democratic state officials.
It seems that he has some scruples about how far partisanship should go.
Israeli terrorism against Palestinians is increasing. Often the terrorists destroy orchards and buildings, but sometimes they kill.
The elite in the UK no longer claim to be better than the masses because of their aristocratic pedigrees. Instead they claim to be better than the masses because their parents were wealthy enough to send them to better schools (and give them the best connections).
US Corporations Are Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students.
The Department of the Interior, suspected of much corruption, has decided to make it harder to find out what it is doing and has done.
George Monbiot discusses evidence that the increase of obesity is the result of eating more sugar.
Laws whose stated purpose is to restrict advocacy of right-wing extremists end up being used to restrict leftist resistance to plutocracy.
Facebook and Google provide support on contract to specific political campaigns. Given the role they play in communication between citizens, this is a conflict of interest, and should be prohibited.
French cities are collaborating with companies to combine data about people from every possible source.
If the GDPR do not prohibit this, they are a joke.
They aim to detect and use "weak signals", which means collecting lots of personal data, looking for barely detectable patterns, and acting on unreliable conclusions.
Facebook has a history of deleting accurate statements that criticize Israel's occupation policies.
The plutocratist Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has created a climate committee that lacks the power to investigate wrongdoing by the administration, and with a leader who won't push hard.
We will have to put Democrats on the spot over this.
Right-wingers are once again spreading claims that using marijuana makes people violent. Now we have scientific studies showing that is false.
It seems that the presidential election in the DR Congo was rigged, and that two losing candidates made a deal to cheat the main opposition leader of victory.
Who is more dangerous: El Chapo or Carlos Slim?
In other words, which is more dangerous: illegal drug trafficking, or Plutocrats and dooH niboR.
With the the 1989 Montreal Protocol, all the countries on Earth agreed to ban production of the substances that were destroying the atmosphere's ozone layer.
This example ought to have led to similar action to curb global heating, but lobbyists for disaster have blocked it.
France proposes repression of protests, including establishing identity checkpoints and banning anonymous protest.
The three million Europeans living in the UK will in principle be allowed to continue living there, but they will have to pay a fee and jump through hoops to get papers.
This means surely thousands will fail for one reason or another -- missing records, poverty, or bureaucratic screwups.
Large oil companies such as Shell and Exxon are planning a big expansion in plastics production.
Making plastic with the oil is not as bad as burning it, but it is harmful in its own way.
Contraceptive pills ought to be nonprescription medicine.
The article is inaccurate in claiming that they are available without prescription in 100 countries. But that is the case in some countries, including Portugal and China. The arguments are valid anyway.
When copyright enforcement becomes too easy, human rights suffer.
"Man arrested at Sydney airport over baby formula crime syndicate allegations."
Why unlimited economic growth is not possible in our finite world.
Even if they make organic milk, small dairy farms in the US cannot compete. They are closing by the thousands, and often being converted to soy beans.
16% of the US soldiers that fought in Iraq and Afghanistan developed PTSD afterward.
Labour promises the UK a Green New Deal.
Horseshoe crabs produce an enzyme that is used in medicine as a very sensitive test for presence of bacteria. But we are catching too many of them, and their numbers are declining.
Stop Biodiversity Loss Or We Could Face Our Own Extinction, Warns UN.
Three years of letting the copyright industry restrict Australian ISPs have not crushed forbidden sharing, so the copyright industry demands even more power.
The article is weak in that it gets distracted by questions of price. The usual authorized methods of distributing music, books and video over the internet are unjust -- they typically identify people and what works they obtain, they impose DRM, and/or make people accept a contract to be a jerk. I never accept anything through such channels, and I would not do so even if they paid me a high price to do it.
US Postal Service workers deliver lots of packages for Amazon, especially on Sundays. You can imagine how they are mistreated: some "part time" workers have to go weeks without a day off. The speedup is so intense that following the official safety procedures is not feasible.
A theory tries to explain how prejudice against various groups takes various forms, and how the ups and downs of the economy affect them.
Digital monitoring enables employers to gamify the job and make workers work harder. This way, they can control each worker's movements as if perse were a robot.
The workers don't get more pay for working harder, but they do get more injuries.
Microfinance loan plans are so rigid that in certain contexts they assure failure.
I remember reading that the original microfinance loans were effective because they gave borrowers a way to get out of a specific kind of debt slavery. There is no reason they should be equally effective in places where the system that imposes poverty is similar.
India is shutting down the operations of Greenpeace and Amnesty International by freezing their bank accounts. Almost 20,000 other NGOs have been blocked from receiving donations.
The repressor wants to restrict protests near the White House and in other parts of Washington DC.
Second warning: we are running Earth's systems into destruction, and the degradation is now visible in many global statistics continuing since decades ago.
"Racial equality once meant tearing down barriers, not doing a DNA test."
I am not convinced by the idea that the question "who I am" is defined by a set of comparisons of my DNA with various other groups. My idea of my identity is not based on how closely biologically related to various groups of people. The aspects I identify with are more about what shaped my thoughts than about what shaped my body.
As for "cultural appropriation", that's what culture is for. That is how culture develops. No community has the right to monopolize a style element.
As the US and states make it ever harder to get prescription opioids, addicts switch to illegal opioids which they obtain through the black market. That increases the rate of overdoses. Governments frantic to "do something", whether effective or not, react by making it even harder to get prescription opioids.
After repealing the laws that make it a crime to be homeless, here are ways to give them the help they need.
Tasmanian old-growth forests are drying up due to global heating; they could all burn up in one large fire.
Seymour Hersh cannot publish his investigations in US periodicals. They are too subservient to expose crimes of the powerful, let alone those of the rich.
Presenting the difference between patriotism and nationalism.
The Pentagon seems to have equated protest in the US with rebellion, so it is trying to use AI to predict protests so as to crack down on them quickly.
The pressure to "reform" the system may lead to positive changes, but what is needed is to completely prevent the ISDS from interfering with laws to end plutocracy.
Africa could become the continent of a billion “angry, underfed, under-educated and under-employed” young people by 2050. How should we avoid this? One way is too invest trillions of dollars in educating them and employing them -- but it won't be easy to obtain that much money for this.
Another way is to invest a few billion in reliable birth control, and sterilization. This will avoid not only the billion hungry unemployed, but also the damage that would be done by the population increase.
If the human population keeps increasing, we will wipe out nature and then wipe out humanity.
"Deep fake" videos are rapidly advancing. They could be used to provide apparent substantiation for fake news, and would teach people to distrust everything.
Without a way to determine the truth, we are helpless prey for the powerful.
UN Special Rapporteur Analyses AI's Impact on Human Rights: systems are opaque and biased, they foment massive surveillance, and they encourage self-censorship.
US citizens: call on Congress not to rubber-stamp the numbskull's laser drone anti-missile plan.
In principle, defense against ballistic missiles could be a very good thing. But the US military has a bad record of spending hundreds of billions on such systems with no reason to think they would be effective, or what countermeasures might thwart them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How Congress can stop the bully from redirecting other funds to building a border wall.
US rules for labeling GMO foods are designed not to inform the public effectively.
The law that stopped states from establishing labeling requirements was designed to lead to this.
US border policies are calculated to discourage refugees by putting them at risk of death and rape.
We can see that this is intentional when the US refuses to allow refugees to apply for asylum safely at a point or entry, so that they will risk their lives to cross the border.
Pioneers are exploring life without disposable plastics.
Producers of ham and bacon should stop adding nitrates, which cause cancer and other medical problems. They were needed in the past to prevent botulism, but modern sanitary methods prevent it anyway.
DeVos has opened wide the entrance of the school-to-prison pipeline.
I think schools should not be allowed to have a thug on premises except in response to a specific possible crime.
Having elections in which 40% of the population is not allowed to vote is not enough to make Israel qualify as a democracy.
Palestinians are supposed to be able to vote for the legislature of the Palestinian Authority. But that agency has little power — Israeli military rule overrides it in many areas of life — and Israel has blocked those elections for years.
An old, highly polluting oil-burning power plant in New York City exploded. It should have been shut down years ago.
Summing up the damage that two years of the bullshitter have done to the US.
The US spend over 800 million dollars on privatized immigration prisons.
We should not permit privatized prisons of any kind.
Palm oil is still driving massive deforestation of rain forests. That releases lots of greenhouse gas, and will cause extinction of many species. The producers have succeeded in defying public pressure to stop deforestation.
The EU does wrong in permitting use of palm oil in fuel for vehicles. Burning oils produced by agriculture, with agricultural inputs, is no better than burning fossil oil. What would be better is oil made by microbes that don't need much input, or made from agricultural waste.
Mary Robinson met with Sheikha Latifa, who was grabbed off a boat in which she was fleeing to India, and is now kept at home by her family. Latifa said that she regretted trying to escape. Robinson said she appears "vulnerable".
There are two possibilities. (1) She really does regret her attempt to escape, and is glad to be home. (2) She is a prisoner subject to brainwashing and/or intimidation.
Neither one is impossible, but the fact that her family isolates her and blocks her from communication except for a short time with one chosen visitor suggests they don't believe she is glad to be home. So I believe (2).
Facebook has many complicated rules for judging what to censor, and employs thousands of censors who are supposed to apply them. Sometimes they get confused — but the rules themselves are confusing.
The bullshitter's sabotage is causing increasing harm, and is starting to drive hostile resistance since just working around him is not effective.
The bully's punishment of all medical aid organizations if they do abortions stimulated a world-wide campaign for abortion rights and women's rights in general.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Tell the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers and Office of the Bar Counsel to dismiss the complaint against District Attorney Rollins.
US citizens: call on Congress to subpoena the notes from the translator at the meeting between the bully and Putin.
Australian Students Launch National Campaign to Pressure MPs to Allow Pill-Testing.
Progressives are making plutocratist Democrats worry about being replaced.
Making them worry is not enough — we should follow through and really replace them.
My old representative, Capuano, usually voted mildly progressive, but only within the limits of respect for the power of the plutocrats. Many years ago I went with a group of constituents to call on him to support a stronger measure, and he said, "If you want a representative more progressive than me, vote for one."
Last summer, I voted for Ayanna Pressley.
In the Netherlands, the state can watch through thousands of private surveillance cameras.
It is a mistake to refer to these as "security" cameras, because they facilitate massive surveillance.
A security camera is one that records locally only. These cameras help security but do not threaten human rights.
If the camera can transmit images remotely, it becomes a surveillance camera, a useful tool for repression.
The Netherlands should take steps to replace surveillance cameras with security cameras.
For massive surveillance, controlled balloons pose almost the same danger as drones.
Rhode Island is considering a bill to strictly limit car license plate surveillance by the state.
The bill seems very solid, but I think it needs to restrict private systems too. Individuals must have the right to use their eyes and cameras here and there, but systematic tracking of people in general should not be allowed.
Barr worked for the federal government in 1992, and set up massive surveillance of American's phone calls, which continues to this day.
You should have the right to sue when systems spy on you.
A lawsuit is general over alleged damages. The law should say that being surveilled is in itself damage, and make sure there is no need to demonstrate the loss in financial terms.
US insurance companies and clinics are pooling data to help Pharma companies market expensive drugs.
When foreign workers visit the UK to work as domestic servants, their employers rob and abuse them, knowing that they are desperate.
The 6-month visa period is a protection for domestic workers: it means that at least every 6 months they have a chance to speak to an official about abusive employers. That makes it harder for employers to keep them locked up for years, effectively as slaves. But this doesn't eliminate the problem.
The government could prevent wage theft too, by making employers send workers' pay to the government, which would then remit it directly to the worker's family.
Nonetheless, their situation would be dire if they don't dare lose their job.
In ordinary circumstances, it would be a foolish risk to take a job as a domestic servant in a country that would deport you if you quit. These women do it because they are desperate.
So the deeper question is, why are these women desperate? The article says it is because they have children that they cannot afford to raise.
We can try to stop specific injustices against them, and we should; but when overreproduction pressures people into making a desperate bet, inevitably some of them will lose. The long-term solution to these abuses is to reduce the birth rate.
(satire) … advisors to Donald Trump’s attorney general pick William Barr reportedly instructed him Monday to avoid referring to the president as “my liege” during his confirmation hearing.
US companies are imposing repressive conditions on millions of American workers, restricting and censoring them even while not at work.
The mainstream media cover the split in the Democratic Party from the plutocratist side, using commentators that are disconnected from most Americans' difficult lives and needs.
Rich countries should give adequate support to refugees that have fled to poor countries.
Congress is working on pulling the US out of the war in Yemen.
Indonesia has established a certified sustainable tuna fishery with an increasing tuna population.
US citizens: call on Senate Republicans to block other business until the Senate votes on ending the shutdown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
UK courts don't trust privatized probation monitoring, so they sentence people to prison instead.
Just when it seemed that phones could not snoop any worse: they will put fingerprint scanners in the touch screen!
Don't touch a phone's screen without some sort of plastic over your fingers.
The "classic" conservative Republican Party was the party of crackpot ideas. That was before the bullshitter took it over, and before the corporate-funded "Tea Party" movement.
FBI agent Terry Albury has been sentenced to four years in prison for revealing how the FBI intimidated people selected based on their race or religion.
The prime minister of Bangladesh seems to be procuring reelection by repressing the opposition.
A poll found that 80% of Americans want to spend 5 billion dollars on medical care, education, or infrastructure, not the border wall.
San Francisco has a terrible shortage of housing, but trying to build some is a terrible struggle. Or should I say "because" instead of "but"?
Zoning laws are one of the causes of the shortage of housing in the US cities where jobs are. They force urban sprawl, which leads to long commutes. People object to denser housing in their neighborhood because it would increase the amount of traffic, but spreading that housing over a wider area would result in even more total increase in traffic.
In the long run, the only lasting way to prevent gentrification without exiling people a long distance from their work and their lives is to make housing dense.
Four Kansas state legislators have switched from Republican to Democrat. They feel the Republican party has become too right-wing.
This might be good to some extent, but they will surely not be progressive Democrats.
Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Melting Even in the Middle of Winter.
Canada's medical system is far superior to Obama's reformed medical insurance system. Before Obama's reforms, the US system was even worse.
IBM has worked with the New York Thug Department to develop software to search for people by skin color.
Now a thug that wants to beat up, arrest, or shoot a black male doesn't have to wait to happen upon one by chance. ;-{
Seriously, we should prohibit all systems to do any sort of recognition of faces in places where the public can normally go: outdoors, in theaters, stadiums, stores and other retail businesses when they are open, and in government buildings when the public is allowed to enter. Exceptions would require specific authorization by a court, specifying the place and the period of time.
The UK regularly gives its secret agents immunity from prosecution for torturing people in other countries.
Baltimore [thugs] Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, to fabricate excuses for shooting them.
How the Online Tracking Industry "Informs" Policy Makers about privacy.
Japan is giving in to its low birth rate and allowing immigrants.
This is a very good thing. The whole world needs to recognize low birth rates as a necessary step towards a sustainable population.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect workers from harm due to the shutdown.
US citizens: call on Congress to require the president and all presidential candidates to release their tax returns.
Just after T-Mobile and Sprint announced plans to merge, their executives checked in to the cheater's hotel — in effect, offering him a bribe.
Global heating is speeding up the melting of ice in Antarctica.
US fossil fuel companies are planning a big expansion in extraction, which would eliminate all chance of avoiding climate disaster.
We have to stop them before they can do it, since it would amount to murder of hundreds of millions, if not more.
The power-grabber systematically uses his power to erode the democratic checks and balances that stand between him and total power.
Three nuclear power plants planned for the UK won't be built, because the foreign companies that were going to build them have decided they were money-losers, even despite the billions in subsidy.
The supposed reason for building them is to have power reliably available even if there is no wind at night. But we already know another way to do that: batteries. Batteries are still somewhat expensive, but are nuclear power plants cheaper? And batteries can't have a massive meltdown that converts a multi-billion-dollar investment into a tens-of-billions cleanup expense.
An inspector general's report says that the US government took thousands of refugee children away from their parents, before the time in 2018 when the bully announced an explicit policy of doing so. How many thousands is unknown.
Censorship of blasphemous art has struck in Israel.
"Legislation to raise the federal minimum wage is a direct response to activists raising their voices in unison."
To get that legislation adopted, they will need to organize for progressive Senate candidates in Democratic primaries in 2020.
The Democratic senators with plutocratist leanings are trying to present themselves as progressive: Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand.
The authors of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5C kept some of the most alarming predictions out of the executive summary hoping to reduce the resistance from planet-roaster governments such as the US and Australia.
Appeasing the planet roasters is as mistaken as appeasing Hitler was. They don't respond with "What a relief, we got enough" but with "They seem to feel weak; let's attack them now."
Right-wing US judges are promoting systematic miscarriages of justice by allowing prosecutors to offer plea bargains while concealing information a that proves the accused innocent.
They are trying to trick the defendant into accepting imprisonment because they know they could not convict per.
'Trumpwashing': the Danger of Turning the Republican Resistance into Liberal Heroes.
A French activist blocked an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a Palestinian house. Israeli thugs tried to deport him before he could have a court hearing.
The thugs attacked not just one nonviolent humanitarian activist, but also rule of law in Israel.
The neoliberal order kept politics stable by suppressing discussion questioning its basic ideas were valid. That it is losing the ability to do that shows it is losing control.
Falling Total Fertility Rate Should Be Welcomed, Population Expert Says.
Waiting to welcome it if it comes is too passive. We should buy a ticket for it to come.
Japan will quit the International Whaling Commission and start killing whales again.
With a decreasing population (something every country ought to have), why turn to such a morally questionable food source? It's not as if Japan needed whale meat.
There have been hundreds of sexual harassment claims against UK thugs, and that counts only certain parts of the UK -- probably less than half of them.
Australian human rights defenders are starting to recognize the danger of face recognition.
They should recognize that license plate recognition has almost the same danger.
Could robot bees replace living bees, if we wipe out the latter?
Perhaps they could, for pollinating crops. But I don't think they could do the job for all the wild plants.
California has loosened regulations that made many small-scale businesses impossible.
In the UK, if you order food delivered "from" some restaurant, in most cases the food is prepared not at the restaurant, but in a cooking sweatshop.
So it's not just the delivery couriers that are low-paid and worked to the bone, but the cooks too.
Is this system used in the US as well?
US thugs have a policy of preferentially stopping black drivers and inventing pretexts to search their cars. Each occasion might offer an opportunity to jail a black person, or perhaps cause per to be fired just for being arrested. Each time, it can push someone permanently into poverty.
Why allow employers to find out whether a person has been arrested? We have no obligation to give businesses that power. How about making it illegal for employers to ask for, record, or act on that information?
Rich and powerful white males have long claimed that they are so rich and powerful because they are better than everyone else -- in effect denying the existence of racism and sexism.
They used to do this smoothly to make the claim appear plausible. Now they do it Republican style -- with blatant contempt for reality.
Now that the Gulf of Maine (a few miles from where I sit) has become substantially hotter, endangered sea turtles find it attractive in autumn. In winter it gets too cold for them, and they try to go south -- but they get caught by Cape Cod. They don't know how to escape from the trap, and they die of hypothermia without months of medical care from humans.
Is there a way of catching them a somewhat earlier, when it would be sufficient to transport them to the south of Cape Cod and release them immediately?
Everyone: call for closing the Guantanamo prison and releasing the prisoners, in particular Toffiq al-Bihani. Here is what I said.
I urge you to immediately transfer Toffiq al-Bihani, who has been imprisoned without charges by the US since 2003, and apologize to him for our country's shameful act of imprisoning him without trial. He also deserves compensation in the form of providing his needs for life as a free man for the rest of his life.
I urge you also to close the Guantanamo prison and put an end to the various unjust Guantanamo-linked practices including imprisonment without trial, unfair kangaroo courts, and torture. And anything else that is unworthy of our country and has to pain the heart of Americans that love their country.
Some of the prisoners in Guantanamo may have committed great crimes. They have also suffered great crimes, including 17 years in prison without a fair trial, and torture. That is surely punishment enough; we have to right to commit crimes against them in the name of punishing them even more. They can't inspire terrorism more outside than they do now in Guantanamo. Most of them won't even try. If any of them gets involved in future terrorism, he will be one more among thousands — making little difference — and we could catch him and prosecute him honestly next time.
Those responsible for torture and enforced disappearance must be brought to justice in fair trial without recourse to the death penalty.
The US government has imposed something almost equivalent to a national ID card. Without it, people cannot use airplanes or enter a federal office building.
I suspect that exclusion from federal office buildings denies people a number of rights.
US citizens: call on the FCC to investigate phone network companies for selling location data.
Over 20% of writers surveyed by PEN reported that they avoided writing about certain topics because they knew about surveillance.
That survey was in Scotland. Here are some reports:
One participant who had covered the conflict in Northern Ireland in 70s and 80s stated that they would not cover the conflict in the same manner if it took place now; another stopped writing about child abuse when they thought about what their search history may look to someone else; when they heard of a conviction based on the ownership of the Anarchist Cookbook, a participant who bought a copy for research shredded it. Further to this a participant stated: "I think I would avoid direct research on issues to do with Islamic fundamentalism. I might work on aspects of the theory, but not on interviewing people…in the past, I have interviewed people who would be called…'subversives'."
An earlier survey of US writers found that 1/6 reported self-censoring because of surveillance.
Citizens of Washington DC are fighting an attempt to privatize the city's transit system.
Mass transit systems should never be privatized.
Some Indian hotels plan to send a photo of every customer immediately to the local government in addition to the ID card information.
In Sri Lanka, prime minister pretender Rajapaksa has dropped his claim to be prime minister.
Since the president appointed him unconstitutionally, he was never really the prime minister.
Modeling suggests that phasing out fossil fuel facilities could still curb global heating before 1.5C.
That means not building anything new that burns fossil fuels, so that old facilities and vehicles at the end of their lives are replaced with renewable energy facilities and vehicles.
Arguing that the cheater's collaboration with Russia is less important as a basis for impeachment than his other crimes.
To talk about what did or did not enable the cheater to "win" the election promotes the false claim that he "won" it. In fact, Republican voter suppression — cheating — is what enabled him to capture the presidency.
Whether it is good strategy to impeach the cheater, given that the Senate would not convict him, I do not know.
In Canada, the election issue about climate defense is whether to do far too little or far far too little. If closing coal-burning power plants is most of the emissions reduction that Canada makes in 10 years, that means they will stop with the easy stuff.
If Canada doesn't want to receive 20, 30, 50 million climate refugees a few decades from now from the collapse of agriculture in the US, it had better push for global climate defense action now.
The NIH has banned research using fetal tissue using its funds. This decision, incoherent even in its own terms, will hamper research into numerous maladies, including Alzheimer's disease and Zika.
The ban is incoherent because it fails to achieve the goal, preventing or discouraging abortions, that is supposedly the motive for it.
Paradoxically, impeding research on Zika will enable the disease to continue making it necessary for women to have abortions so as to avoid giving birth to babies with microcephaly. That research has a chance of someday preventing Zika from having those effects on fetuses, so that they could be born healthy.
Ironically, the same anti-abortion campaign has another tactic: making it a crime to endanger a fetus. But they only intend to apply this to endangering one fetus at a time. Endangering millions of fetuses, by keeping them in harm's way, seems to be ok in their opinion.
Everyone: call on Gannett newspapers not to sell to Digital First Media.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US should revive the Office of Technology Assessment.
It was abolished in 1995 by Republicans under Gingrich, because they didn't want serious investigation of technology issues.
Adorable wild parakeets in Greece may threaten native bird populations.
The bully is releasing hundreds of refugees from immigration, all at once — in the middle of nowhere.
It's good that they are being released, but why do it that way?
A series of criteria estimate how likely a genocide is in any given country.
"ContentID is exactly the thing YouTube claims it doesn't do: privately mediating ownership of [publications] without involving the law."
Please don't refer to publications or artistic works as "content"; that term disparages all publications and artistic works.
Juan Cole: 2018 was the year Israel finally went completely rogue and ensured that it can no longer be considered to be in the club of liberal capitalist democracies. It is now formally an Apartheid state even inside the Green Line. It is also the year when the Israeli elite consciously decided to shoot down with live ammunition unarmed, peaceful demonstrators in the thousands.
US nurses rebuke the border thugs for keeping border-crossers prisoner in conditions that endanger the prisoners' health.
Keeping children in prison at all endangers their health, and causes them stress that can harm them for life.
The Pentagon finally did an audit — a positive step. Next we need to make it pass an audit.
The article suggests that Congress could reject any increase in the military budget unless the Pentagon passes an audit.
Even better, decrease the Pentagon budget by 5% each year until it passes an audit.
1/5 of young workers in the UK are paid less than the minimum wage.
It seems that this practice is illegal in name only. Does the government have a plan to fine employers and jail managers that participate in this?
The way to reduce the waste from plastic things is to reduce the quantity of such things that are made.
"Recycling" plastic by burning it is even more ironic than the article says. The process consists basically of extracting petroleum from the ground and then burning it, but differs from the usual way of doing so in that the petroleum (more precisely, some fraction of it) passes through an intermediate stage as plastic. This does not reduce the greenhouse gas output.
Imagine if every item made of plastic — even fairly durable items — carried a deposit. If the item is recycled in less than 5 years, the consumer gets the deposit back. If it is recycled after 5 years, the consumer refund is a decreasing fraction of the original deposit; after 10 years, the refund goes to zero.
This law would encourage making plastic items that would remain usable for a longer period of time. It could even help put an end to planned obsolescence.
Afghan women who are raped are frequently imprisoned for not being virgin. When they get out of prison, they may be murdered for that.
This patriarchal cruelty perpetuates the Taliban. The US has tried to do "nation building", usually taking the form of investing in physical plant which often turns out to be useless. Perhaps it should have funded women's shelters instead.
Facebook made a secret deal with Amazon to give Amazon access to Facebook's data about users. A plague on both of those companies!
Airbnb increases the price of houses — and the rent for a place to live.
The bully has given the CIA much looser rules for drone assassinations, building on what Obama permitted.
A clown asks that we not use the word "clown" to refer to the incompetent.
The grifter and his siblings cheated thousands of rental tenants in the 1990s, and got millions of dollars this way.
Only socialism can make capitalism stable and keep it democratic.
The fight to capture PISSI's remaining islands of territory in Syria is still continuing; an important advance was just made.
The article speaks of the Syrian Democratic Forces. It seems clear that Rojava was involved. It is not clear precisely how.
Ireland's NHS has developed a way to treat homeless people's illnesses in a way that helps them get back on their feet.
Drones, DNA and Data: Please Don't Give the Gift of Privacy Invasion.
It looks like Republiars are making a play to deny the scientific evidence that links air pollution to medical problems.
The US now holds 15,000 refugee minors in prison, and there is almost no chance they will ever be released from prison because their relatives don't dare sponsor them.
The Senate voted to stop supporting Salafi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen.
Unfortunately, the House has already barred even voting on the question. However, this same resolution could pass the Senate next year, and the Democrats in the House could bring up the same resolution next year.
Does exercise of the War Powers Act require the president's signature? I would find that very surprising, since the whole point is to put a check on the president's power to fight a war without approval of Congress. But I would like to know.
It seems to me that the US has done plenty of buying of such support. Can people send me a couple of references about examples?
Varoufakis offers a plan to raise funds for a Green New Deal for Europe that would also rescue Italy and Greece.
Amazon has envisioned making doorbell cameras to let the thugs do face recognition on people who pass by.
Australia has finessed the issue of where its Israeli embassy will be located: it says it will move the embassy to Jerusalem if and when there is a peace settlement about it.
I am not sure what everyone will say about that plan, but it should put a little pressure on Israel to make peace.
Erdoğan's regime has convicted Dr. Gençay Gürsoy, founder of the Turkish Medical Association, of "propaganda for an armed terrorist organization". What he actually did was sign a petition for human rights.
The saboteur wants to eliminate a lot of post office service -- including for everyone outside major cities.
For our own safety, Americans must not let US thugs get training from Israeli thugs.
Senators are putting a law forbidding boycotting of Israel into a spending bill that "must pass".
Massive die-offs are affecting trees and animals in a wide variety of groups, around the world.
School Boots Professor Off Campus After He Exposes Its Complicity In Predatory Publishing Schemes.
Professors in that business school found they were rewarded for paying to get papers published.
An investigation aims to pin responsibility for global heating disaster on the companies that are making it happen.
Giving India's sex workers a calm place to rest made it possible to teach them how to avoid catching and spreading HIV.
Patricia Okoumou faces imprisonment in the US for a nonviolent protest: she climbed the statue of liberty. This does not inhibit her from keeping up the protests.
Charlottesville has commemorated murder and violence by right-wing extremists by educating the public about the history of racism there.
Some of Facebook's fact checkers, supposedly charged with eliminating fake news, are quitting, saying Facebook does not really want to get rid of fake news -- only make a show of trying.
The ruiner plans to destroy the National Butterfly Sanctuary for his obsession, the border wall.
The sanctuary is located next to the Rio Grande because that's where conditions make it possible. There is no easy way to move it. It will be possible to tear down the wall, but there will be no easy way to bring back what was destroyed.
I don't think the ruiner would mind if these species went extinct (which some of them are sure to do, over coming decades, though not solely because of this).
Climate research leader Richard Betts has endorsed the term "global heating".
I have no way of knowing whether my advocacy of that term reached him at all. But it might have done so.
Secret face recognition at a Taylor Swift concert was nominally intended to recognize a list of known stalkers.
If someone was not on that list, what did they do with per photo? Did they save it? Put it in a database? Systems like this should be illegal except under extremely stringent conditions of not saving any data about people.
Jewish and Arab women in Israel are working together against gender violence.
When I visited Israel for the first time, I was told that Israeli men tended to be grabby.
Israel is arresting Palestinian children off the street as they return home after school.
These are really children -- as young as nine years old. Some of them are sentenced to imprisonment after bogus "trials".
Israel is evicting hundreds of Palestinians from Jerusalem in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
The head of consumer protection at the Federal Trade Commission has been the lawyer for many large companies. He would not be allowed to be involved in investigating them even if he wanted to.
With that history, he surely won't want to. He was surely chosen because he's on their side against us.
250 climate activists held a sit-in protest at Rep. Pelosi's office, calling on her to support the massive action needed to protect the Earth's climate.
Senator Schumer let us down by putting coal industry Senator Manchin an important position over energy legislation.
US unions should let the members vote on which candidates to endorse.
SCROTUS stuck a rider in the farm bill to prevent the House from even considering a resolution to pull the US out of the war in Yemen.
The US and Australia showed their contempt for Earth with an event at the Poland climate conference in favor of coal.
We will not see a stable climate in our lifetimes. The increasing danger of fire will force Americans to reshape their way of life.
Journalists are the last check on the repression and violence of Nicaragua. So the state is now directing its repression and violence at them.
I hope Nicaraguans can find a way to overthrow their government.
Macron has agreed to raise the minimum wage in France, in a concession to the gilets jaunes protests.
Bringing back the wealth tax would be very important, since each country that does this will help other countries to do it. We must tax the rich more -- a lot more.
New York City thugs attacked and arrested a woman, taking away her one-year-old baby. The excuse? She was sitting on the floor, rather than waiting standing up.
It seems that they told lies to try to justify this, per standard thug procedure, but even if they had been true it would be no excuse for such harshness.
Extinction Rebellion Goes Global in Run-Up to Week of International Civil Disobedience.
The microorganisms that live in the rock in the Earth's crust have a mass comparable to life in the oceans, but they live very slowly.
The protesters that blocked a deportation flight, and face imprisonment, gave one of the deportees the chance to win an appeal. In other words, his intended deportation would have been a miscarriage of justice.
That narrowly averted miscarriage of justice would not have been an accident, but rather the intended stochastic result of a policy of haste designed to excuse violating people's rights. The charges against these protesters are meant to reinforce that "hostile environment".
US college fraternities teach a Kavanaugh-style idea of masculinity based on the core values of brotherhood, privilege and machismo. The ideals they claim to stand for have been forgotten.
We would be better off if fraternities were abolished.
Repeated heat-induced coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has already caused evolutionary effect: the more vulnerable species and varieties are disappearing.
This does not make the remaining species and varieties any more robust than they already were. That part of evolution takes more time than we are going to let the corals have.
Russia spread fake news for a year to prepare public support for its attack on Ukrainian ships.
Appreciation of human rights is decreasing across the world, as people who experienced World War II are no longer here to lead the defense of them.
Living in San Francisco is now so expensive that restaurants have to close because they can't afford staff.
Big social network platforms are worse than feudal lords, If a social network offers you a chance at viral success, it also offers extremists a certainty of amplification. We are better off without such things.
Australia is challenging the legality of a deal in which New South Wales privatized two ports and committed not to build another port.
Any deal that commits the state not to build alternate competing facilities is a direct surrender of public power to a business. These deals ought to be canceled by a constitutional amendment if necessary.
If the government's hands are tied, so it cannot make a deal to privatize certain state assets, great! That is the goal.
US college students graduating in 2017 had about twice as much debt on the average as in 2004.
Since inflation has been low, almost all of this increase is real.
Egyptian officials are frothing at the mouth with fanatical prudery. Since they can't jail the people who made a nude video on top of the Great Pyramid, they want to jail everyone who helped them make the climb.
Whenever prudery takes itself seriously, it threatens repression.
Researchers point out the fallacies in the EPA's arguments for weak fuel economy standards.
Increased fuel economy standards are nowhere near enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as we need to.
The EU defeated Italy's attempt to use deficit spending to boost its stalled economy.
The ones who lose will be Italy's poor.
The Euro keeps countries permanently trapped in poverty by putting the banksters above every country.
Saifullah Paracha was a successful businessman in Pakistan, who was sent to Guantanamo and tortured, then arbitrarily sentenced to life imprisonment without trial.
It is not clear that he is innocent of intentionally helping a terrorist, but there is plenty of room for reasonable doubt about the accusation. The US should release him and apologize.
Every prisoner in Guantanamo should get a fair trial or be released. So what if some of them were real Islamist terrorists? There are thousands of real Islamist terrorists on the loose, and Salafi Arabia's extreme worldwide Islamist education system pre-radicalizes thousands, perhaps millions, every year. Keeping prisoners in Guantanamo changes only one thing: it gives people a reason to refuse to respect or admire the US.
Uber does not allow drivers to sue — it requires them to use arbitration for disputes with the company. But they can't actually use arbitration because Uber won't let them start cases.
We should not allow companies to impose a requirement for arbitration rather than a lawsuit, not on customers and not on workers.
US hospitals hold patients to ransom by refusing to tell them what their medical treatment will cost. The most trivial treatments can cost thousands of dollars, and bigger ones can cost hundreds of thousands.
I think we should not allow for-profit hospitals. However, even not-for-profit hospitals are driven by the same systemic imperatives.
The wife of executive Carlos Ghosn, accused of tax evasion, says he is being interrogated for long hours without his lawyers to pressure him to confess.
He may be guilty, but no one accused of crime should be treated this way. Unfortunately, in Japan, every suspect is.
The shutdown of "inessential" US government work means that prisoners can't see their families, and those that are terminally ill will die in prison rather than with their families.
Analyzing the bully's behavior in terms of infantile attachment insecurity.
I have read that "Stockholm syndrome" is not a recognized psychological pattern and has occurred only rarely.
Beginning Walkout, Los Angeles Teachers Find Support From Sanders—But Not Corporate Democrats.
The strike is not just about wages — it is an attempt to block privatization of the public schools.
Many college students in the US are going hungry.
(The protests at) Standing Rock Inspired Ocasio-Cortez to Run. That's the Power of Protest.
Fanatical US Christians aim to impose religion on state governments, and authorize religiously-motivated discrimination.
US citizens: call on Congress to require background checks for all gun sales.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Argentina's President Macri says that everyone in the country will soon adore the IMF, but they are already launching strikes against the IMF's dooH niboR.
The Department of Harassment and Suspicion is developing AI software which is supposed to figure out who is a terrorist, the way companies figure out who is pregnant or who is gay. They plan to put these people automatically on blacklists, which could result in harassing them or ruining their lives.
The correlations fit millions of people, and at most hundreds of them are real terrorists. Whatever the software does, almost all the matches will be false matches.
The DHS is doing this as proprietary software through a private company, which could enable it to avoid accountability for the wrongs it will do.
Some people are boycotting Amazon because of how it treats workers, and other wrongs to people other than its customers.
The article points out, correctly, that more people would need to join for the boycott to influence Amazon's practices. The article is written in a way that I think is intended to subtly discourage others from doing so. It repeatedly harps on how "convenient" Amazon is and presumes that the only thing customers could want for themselves is convenience.
I might boycott Amazon for those reasons, but the issue does not arise for me, because I reject Amazon due to the ways it mistreats its customers. It collects data about them and it requires running nonfree software. I value my freedom and privacy and I won't surrender them for convenience.
Right-wing extremists make a practice of manipulating people through the glories of each country's imperial past, amplified with exaggerations and distortions.
I expect we will find that the right-wing extremists of various countries will support each other even though the imperial glory of one country involved colonizing or murdering the people of the other country. Once people are sufficiently distracted from the present and from real issues, logic and sense cease to be relevant.
Digital ankle shackles are not an alternative to imprisonment. They are a form of imprisonment.
They can be better or worse than being in a physical prison. They do offer advantages: you can live with your family — if you have a family. You can go to work, if you have a job and they don't fire you for this.
But if you have to pay through the nose to be imprisoned this way, that is an injustice.
If they monitor your movements, and listen to your conversations, prison might be better. Even worse, it might be the first step towards doing the same thing to all of us.
A summary of the harm that NAFTA has done to the US and Mexico.
Now that the First Step Act has reduced future sentences, we need to reduce past sentences the same way so we can let a lot of people out of prison.
Think Twice Before You [Publish] Our Faces Online, Say Children.
They are right. Meanwhile, schools are distributing ever more data about their students to companies that we shouldn't trust either.
Plutocrats want Americans to imagine that we are united with them, but that is not how they treat us.
People around the world are dissatisfied with democracy, with good reasons: the power of plutocrats, exercised through various instruments, has made democracy increasingly ineffective.
If we don't want the right-wing authoritarians to rule, we need to reestablish democracy. However, to do this sufficiently requires eliminating the business-supremacy treaties, including the European Union as it exists today.
"Beto O'Rourke is the new Obama. And that's the last thing we need."
Nurses went on strike for one day against a hospital that was cutting their medical benefits, so the hospital locked them out.
This is part of increased militancy among nurses.
Rabbits in England have become much fewer due to diseases.
I read that rabbits were introduced to England by the Norman conquerors, who wanted to raise them as they did in Normandy.
An Israeli dirty tricks group has got the Palestinian Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign blocked from receiving donations via Donorbox.
I do not advocate the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions campaign. (I advocate the boycott of products made in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory, which was launched by Gush Shalom.) I would not donate to the BDS campaign. Nonetheless, it is a legitimate campaign and I condemn the dirty trick.
Is it possible to donate on Donorbox without running nonfree software (such as Javascript)? Based on what I've seen in other such sites, such as Patreon, I expect it is not. I would not donate to anyone or anything on Donorbox at the cost of my freedom. When I donate to organizations and campaigns, I do it by mailing a check.
The first step in learning the habit of standing up for your freedom is to give freedom priority.
The bully's latest scheme for cruelty to people requesting asylum is to require them to live in Mexico while their cases are heard. That could mean months of starving or begging.
US citizens: call for setting the highest tax bracket at 70% or more.
To make this truly effective requires closing loopholes for dodging taxes, but it is nonetheless a good thing to do.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich and back the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Democratic Party leaders in Congress have agreed to set up a Green New Deal committee. Now they are giving control of it to plutocratists who won't let it achieve anything.
The numbskull has had two soldiers discharged because they have suppressed HIV infections.
This is a method of spreading propaganda to his supporters: inculcating in them disgust and fear towards people that have suppressed HIV?
Facebook secretly let other companies access personal data of Facebook's useds. Why?
Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that the aim was (1) to give the other companies an interest in defending Facebook against regulation, and (2) because they would encourage their customers to give more of their personal data to Facebook.
I think Facebook should be eliminated entirely and replaced with an index of people. People would create records in the index under their names. Your record — if you make one — would give other people a way to contact you through various methods of messaging.
You could include a small amount of information about yourself to help people tell if you are the person they are seeking to contact, rather than another person with a similar name. Their messages to you would carry various contact coordinates in case you decide to respond.
It would do nothing more than that. It would not be allowed to do anything more, or have a special relationship with any other communication system.
This would provide a chance to decentralize the web again — but taking advantage of that chance would require other changes.
Australia is desperate to make life bad for the prisoners it holds on Nauru. A woman who was seriously ill was brought to Australia for treatment, then was held in immigration prison for 6 weeks without being allowed to see a doctor.
After Israeli drone-launched "warning strikes" killed two Palestinian boys on a roof, it looks like Israel edited the video which it posted, to disguise the fact that the drone pilots could see the boys.
Google's plan to turn part of Toronto into a Snoop City quietly swallowed important downtown areas while no one was looking.
The Russian disinformation campaign smeared Mueller's investigation.
The bully's decision to remove US troops from Syria is intended to satisfy Erdoğan's desire to attack Rojava.
Confirmation that China has arrested Michael Kovrig as a bargaining chip is that he has not been allowed to meet with his lawyers.
He is also subject to harsh prison and interrogation conditions, though the US does equally nasty things to prisoners.
The bully is causing a government shutdown to jolt SCROTUS to eliminate the filibuster.
Due to the spread of anti-vaccine hysteria, deaths due to measles are increasing in Europe.
Kenya will allow the European-funded Marie Stopes clinics to resume treating the thousands of women that are injured by underground abortions.
As population growth pushes Africa towards ecocide, legal limits on abortion are the worst possible policy for society, as well as an injustice to each woman.
The bullshitter is talking about greatly reducing US troop levels in Afghanistan.
I think that is the right thing to do. There is no way to win that war. The US can continue the near-stalemate at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths each year, while the Taliban slowly advance, or let the Taliban win.
If we do the latter, the Taliban will be able to defeat PISSI's branch there, which we are unable to do.
We will have the obligation to give the anti-Islamist Afghans, a safe refuge.
Toronto's large wild parks are being taken over by invasive species which will destroy them.
US citizens: call on the major TV networks not to give the bullshitter a platform.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Congress to respect the human right to migrate and end militarization at the border.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Global heating is enabling rats to increase in New York City.
New plants recently discovered are close to extinction due to human activities. Some seem to have become extinct before the finds were categorized and published.
Working to end the practice of giving pets as gifts to people who may not be prepared to take care of them.
Collections of genetic data enable the state to identify you if it has records for even a few of your third cousins. This creates various dangers for everyone.
The concept of property does not fit this problem, as the article recognizes. So why propose to think along those lines? It is the ideology of capitalism. If the only tool you have is "ownership", everything looks like a "property".
Facebook pays its subcontracted workers very little, and treats them in a way that is cruel if not fraudulent. When they demanded better treatment, the subcontractor told them to shut up or quit.
Subcontracting enables Facebook to disclaim legal responsibility for all of this, but morally Facebook is entirely responsible.
If company A buys goods or services from company B, and none of the workers of B are particularly associated with company A's purchase, there is usually no reason to hold A responsible for how B treats workers. But when B is hired to provide people to work for A, morally speaking they are working for A. We should change the law to match the morality.
Rep. Steny Hoyer plans to make the new Green New Deal committee specially powerless. He is a plutocratistic Democrat, so it is clear why he wants to do this.
Peter Stuyvesant participated in slavery and antisemitism in New Amsterdam, without moral hesitation.
Michal Netyks committed suicide in UK immigration prison after he found out he was going to be deported. The prison authority deleted some of the records about this, in an apparent coverup.
The UK funds immigration prisons in Libya in which refugees are treated with cruelty.
UK landlords boast of the power to evict tenants at Christmas as revenge if they complain about dangerous conditions in their homes.
Asking Rep. Pelosi to keep the most right-wing of congressional Democrats from being the heads of the committees where they could do the most good for the companies that they serve.
The US employs coast guard ships as floating Guantanamos; prisoners are shackled on deck, exposed to wind and rain; their legal rights are disregarded; they are presumed guilty.
The proposed Office of Drug Manufacturing would make sure generic drugs are available, and from a sufficient number of suppliers, to keep prices down.
This would address one part of the problem of outrageous drug prices in the US. Medicare for All would do the whole job, as it does in civilized countries.
A study of London thugs found that thugs that carry tasers are twice as likely to become violent. And more likely to be attacked with violence.
Thugs without tasers were more likely to commit violence when they were in the company of thugs that did have tasers.
Washington, DC, has committed to move the city to 100% renewable electricity by 2032.
That is quick enough to really push things.
Should We Be Worried About Computerized Facial Recognition?
Yes! It should be a crime to set up or operate a system that tries to recognize faces seen in public places, unless they are designed with limits that prevent them from tracking people other than suspects designated by specific court orders.
Increase Exposure to Negative And Inflammatory [messages] in Online Social Systems.
The UK digital spy agency can get authorization to break into any and all computers in some very large class. And it expects to do this more and more often.
This effectively eliminates the vital safeguard for human rights -- the requirement for a specific search warrant.
The EU sits on Italy, keeping it from escaping poverty; this is driving Italy towards right-wing radicalism.
As long as the EU keeps blocking elected governments from doing anything to help the people that elected them, the people will reject them for their failure and vote for a more radical party.
I see two ways this slide could end: with the election of a party that will confront the EU with an economic hand grenade in its hands and win some concessions, or with the election of a party that will be so repressive that it won't allow people to replace it.
The latter is the only way a party can lastingly impose the ever-increasing suffering that the banksters demand. I fear the Lega will soon get the chance to do that.
The Wooing of Jared Kushner: How the Saudis Got a Friend in the White House.
Actual US systems for recognizing "terrorists" are so incompetent that they can't distinguish 90-year-old David Mayer from a one-armed dead man.
These systems that supposedly "protect" us from terrorists do more harm to Americans than the terrorists themselves do.
Ever-advancing surveillance technologies and algorithms for controlling people threaten to create tyranny beyond the fictional 1984.
Ugandan opposition politician Robert Kyagulanyi (stage name Bobi Wine) has been facing repression for some time for his politics. Now thugs raided the hotel where he was staying before giving a concert, but he got away.
Israel wants the US to pay Palestinians to "voluntarily" move out of Palestine.
A plan like this might be ethical if the carrot were not accompanied by lots of sticks with blades on their sides.
Journalist Serafín Morán Santiago has been exiled from Cuba for his writings, so he cannot be deported there. So US border thugs have kept him in jail for 7 months while pondering whether to give him asylum.
Johnson & Johnson discovered that some lots of Baby Powder contained trace amounts of asbestos. Even these trace amounts are enough to cause cancer in some of the users, The company covered this up.
I wonder if the same is true of all talcum powder.
The issue does apply to many other talcum powder products, but it is not clear that the danger is significant.
Investors whose portfolios add up to 8 trillion dollars have endorsed divestment from fossil fuels, and it is starting to hamper the fossil fuel companies.
A few years ago I read that US fossil fuel companies are having trouble hiring staff.
Cruel and unjust as Venezuelan president Maduro is, the opposition is likely to be worse. They are allied with Bolsonaro, who openly proposes to commit similar injustices, which means he is likely to go even further.
Costa Rica's cloud forest is on the way to being wiped out. Thousands of species that are endemic to the cloud forest could face extinction.
A former insurance company executive says the US needs Medicare for All; the so-called "compromise" would enable private insurance companies to "skim the cream" of patients that don't need much medical care, while dumping only the expensive patients onto public funds.
Iranian students in UK universities face expulsion because US sanctions against Iran are stopping them from transferring the tuition fees to the UK.
Maria Butina has plead guilty to hooking up officials and donors of the NRA with the Kremlin, whence they hoped to receive support for their activities.
Flaws in computer security on ships puts them in danger of collision or shipwreck.
I suggest that over-reliance on digital systems for the operation of a ship is a fundamental design flaw, which ought to be illegal. One ship was saved from disaster by having paper charts for backup. Every ship should be required to carry paper charts.
Redundancy of systems requires redefinition, too. Having another computer as backup is worthless if it is easy to take over both of them digitally.
Protesters Are Slowly Winning Electronics Right-to-Repair Battles in Europe.
Hungary's nominally democratic government has passed a law allowing companies to demand 400 hours of overtime annually from a worker, and not even pay for it until years later. (Which perhaps means never, if the company is shut down.)
The town of Whistler, in Canada, has asked fossil fuel companies to pay the expenses that global heating is causing it.
The planet-roaster representative who said that it seems strange to single out specific planet roasters for this request has a valid point. The right way to handle this would be with a world-wide carbon tax, which would increase every year until it is clear that net emissions will go sufficiently negative.
However, their other hand just blocked all real progress at the Poland climate conference, which was unable to agree on targets that would do the job, or specific measures to take.
Given their intentional wrongdoing, they have no valid argument against any plan to hold them responsible.
The fossil fuel companies' power over the Poland climate conference was so strong that they got the UN officials in charge to censor the terms "dirty energy" and "fossil fuel companies".
Wisconsin's Republicans have taken away the principal power of the state governor, except for those in the state's constitution which is harder to change.
Nicaraguan thugs have occupied the headquarters of the opposition news site Confidencial.
The repressive Nicaraguan regime has also shut down a human rights organization, CENIDH.
The saboteur governor of Florida is trying to disobey the recently adopted voter initiative to restore voting rights to ex-cons. He hopes to get away with this because he will have the chance to pack the Florida supreme court.
Border crossers have often suffered great medical stress walking through the desert. If they are ill, they are likely to need medical attention quickly. Due to the procedures, they tend to get delay instead. Last week a child died as a result of this delay.
The Supreme Court validated the bully's partial visa ban for Muslims, but there has to be a system for individuals to apply for exceptions. The bully has not set up such a system, so people are suing.
Neo-nazis push hard for Israel's broad definition of "antisemitism".
The occasionally-connected waterways that EPA proposes to deregulate regularly feed pollution into the ones that will still nominally be regulated -- but the change will allow no way to clean up that pollution.
Legal Plastic Content in Animal Feed Could Harm Human Health, Experts Warn.
The Amish still stand up to pressure to conform to technology.
I think the Amish attitude towards technology is very wise: judge products based on how each one affects people's lives, rather than jumping for convenience into a trap.
I could not believe in their religion, however, and I don't think that there is any virtue in staying out of democratic engagement.
As for large families, that practice endangers the human and wild worlds. We can tolerate the practice of having many children only so long as few people actually do it. When there is a movement that grows by having large families in each generation, something is going to stop it. If we stand aside, that something will be starvation, which is the worst possible choice.
Let's join with the Amish in insisting on using cash. We can defeat the pressure to be tracked in everything if we start fighting it.
In the "frankenstate", components of a democratic state are connected up to make a nondemocratic whole.
Ralph Nader: what progressives in the House of Representatives need to do if they are to be progressive in deed as well as in words.
Tens of millions of Americans will lose their medical coverage if the Supreme Court approves this, and millions will be killed by it if it continues.
I hope this strengthens the campaign for Medicare for All in the 2020 election.
"No Labels" and the ‘Problem Solvers’ are Wolves of Wall Street in Sheep’s Clothing.
DeVos's attempt to cheat the students that were swindled by for-profit colleges was defeated by a court order. The Department of Education is now canceling their debts.
Five rules for when to refuse to privatize public activity.
In the cases where we have already privatized something that should not have been privatized, we should not cling to the mistaken decision. We should make the activity a public function again. This goes especially for charter schools.
The Poland climate conference has been unable to reach agreement on the one decision that actually matters: cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
This is not surprising given that several powerful countries, including the US, are opposed to that goal.
Many of the gilets jaunes now protesting in Paris are taking a specifically progressive stance, calling for redistributing the wealth.
"Centrist" plutocratists keep trying to distort Sanders' words to make it appear that he isn't committed to fighting racism. This article explains the depth of his commitment.
I am very impressed with it. Especially because he doesn't let "diversity" among the well-off replace the goal of justice for everyone.
Only socialism can make capitalism stable and keep it democratic.
Poland as an example of a country that clings to coal, and is even planning to invest in new coal facilities.
Salafi Arabia and the Houthis agreed to a cease fire in Hodeida. The question is whether it will really take hold.
Republicans are trying to allow churches to support political candidates. They have put it into a large bill so that it will be difficult to stop,
They know that the main support from churches will be for them, from the churches attended by their fanatical, bigoted, extremist supporters.
TV ads in the UK will be regulated so that they don't sharply promote gender stereotypes.
I think this is a legitimate policy. To apply it to the publications of a person would be a denial of freedom of speech, but that does not morally apply to commercial advertising.
Everyone: call on the new St Louis county prosecutor to carry out his promised reforms quickly.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to demand a clean funding bill that doesn't boost hostility to immigrants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: find a bank that lends to the local green economy.
The US Department of Agriculture has stopped publishing data about the number of vacant positions for meat inspectors.
Whitaker says he will exercise control over Mueller's investigation. He might shut it down, or he might limit what issues Mueller can investigate.
Urban Planning Is Failing Children And Breaching Their Human Rights — Here's What Needs to be Done.
We Should Replace Facebook With Personal Websites.
If you run your web site on free software, you can make it do what you want, and it won't force you into doing anything else.
However, in order for these sites not to snoop like Facebook, they need to be run on many different servers, and organizations need to once again run their own servers.
Canadians are protesting in the street, demanding accelerated global heating. Some of them are right-wing extremists too.
The WWF has pushed to create a wildlife refuge in a place where indigenous people don't want it.
Which should get priority? Preserving other species, or preserving other tribes of humans? I tend to think it is the former, because species are more different, than tribes and in most cases more separate as well.
Brazil's new environment minister has already been fined for pro-business corruption.
Different natural systems turn out to have many unexpected interactions, and many of them create unexpected positive feedbacks for global heating. It follows that the climate cliff, which we can't see, is closer than we knew.
Europe's "protected" marine areas are not protected effectively. They are subject to heavy fishing, and vulnerable species are more rare there than elsewhere.
The US and Salafi Arabia are playing politics with the proposed UN resolution for a cease-fire in Hodeida.
Barr, nominated for attorney general, criticized the Mueller investigation.
Suing to block another planet-roaster pipeline for tar sands oil.
Charging far too much for replacement batteries is part of Apple's pressure for people to buy a new model even if the old one was good enough.
The bully now wants to impose a national work requirement for food stamps.
Beto O'Rourke Frequently Voted for Republican Legislation.
Tell Huntington Bank that an apology in words is not enough to be forgiven for refusing to cash a black man's paycheck and calling the thugs to arrest him.
I am most worried by the idea of demanding people's fingerprints to cash their checks. This advance in biometric tracking threatens everyone. How much does this happen in the US?
Senator Warren proposes to ban former members of Congress from working as lobbyists.
I am in favor of the idea. I am concerned that it might perhaps be unconstitutional, just as long-term noncompete agreements are, but I am no expert on that question.
The bully has made many Americans, in of the groups he targets with hostility, want to leave the US.
I can understand that wish, but there is no other place that millions of Americans can move to. Anyway, Americans should not give up and flee, not now. We have a chance to defeat the bully and the plutocratists in 2020. We should not throw in the towel.
If we don't fight and win, nowhere on Earth will be reliably safe from global disaster, or even from repression in the next decade.
Workers at Wells Fargo Bank say they
Hungarians continue protesting against the forced overtime law.
US
citizens: call
on Senator McConnell to hold a vote on restoring funds for the US
government.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call
on Congress to bring back the Violence Against Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google and other surveillance-based companies
are closely
integrated with the US government, feeding it all the data they
get about people.
Neither Google nor the US government deserves this ingenuous trust.
We must put an end to the data collection; regardless of the fool's
convenience it offers, we must squash it.
The Family
History DNA
Can't Reveal.
Human rights activist Huang Qi is dying in Chinese prison, denied
medical care. His grandmother campaigned to free him, and she has now
been jailed after arriving in Beijing to appeal to officials to
release him,
and has
been held incommunicado.
The EU is moving to ban single-use plastic
goods for
a list of purposes.
Apparently the problem of plastic films for packaging has not been
addressed.
A
court struck
down the bully's order to refuse to grant asylum on grounds of
persecution by a spouse or a gang.
Rep. Al Green, regarding the border thug station that didn't give
Jakelin Caal Maquin any water: "the only reason why this facility is
still open as it is now is
because [TV news]
cameras can’t get in."
The new EU copyright directive, in particular Article 13's required
copyright censorship system, has the power
to kill
investigative journalism.
The ISP bahnhof.se is threatened
with punishment
for violating network neutrality, because it sends visitors to
elsevier.com to a page that condemns Elsevier, first, rather than
sending them directly to Elsevier's site.
It is true that this violates network neutrality, but this violation is mild
compared with the one that Swedish government has imposed for Elsevier.
The predecessor of NAFTA already put business in the driver's seat so
much that
it blocked
Ontario from adopting no-fault car insurance.
NAFTA, which followed, did this even more. The TPP
does it even more.
Beto O'Rourke promised not to accept fossil fuel money via PACs, but
he accepted
several donations from fossil fuel executives.
He is a "centrist" (center-right
plutocratist), not
a progressive.
No wonder the Democratic Party establishment is trying to push him
as a candidate for president.
US labor unions have become so absorbed in fighting for medical
insurance as a work benefit that
they have
trouble making the leap to Medicare for All.
The Israeli army
now fights
for personal revenge, which armies are not supposed to do.
Israeli soldiers fired tear gas near and into various Palestinian
schools. There was no unrest before the soldiers started it.
They fired
into a schoolyard across a wall without even seeing who was there.
Other
soldiers blocked
all traffic in and out of Ramallah.
Extremist fanatics terrorized two Palestinian schools near Nablus as
Israeli soldiers stood by
to protect
the extremists.
The now-standard US business idea that a corporation exists to make
money for its stockholders has been
a failure
in business as well as a failure for America and Americans.
In Thailand, saying that a dress is
ugly is
a crime, if it was designed by someone in the royal family.
There are many official points of entry from Mexico into the US, but
most of
them block
migrants from claiming asylum, which they have a legal right to
do.
Facebook allowed big companies (including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and
Sony) special access to its useds' personal
data, setting
aside its supposed rules for use of that data.
Facebook imposes
location tracking on its useds, and location-based advertising
too.
In my view, the mere fact that a used of Facebook cannot prevent Facebook
from finding out per location and putting it in a data base is an injustice,
a threat to the used's human rights, and in some cases even per safety.
An Indian
politician has
been convicted of leading a massacre of Sikhs in 1984.
After some Sikhs assassinated Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, violent
Hindus organized massacres of whatever Sikhs they could get their
hands on. Prosecuting the leaders has been difficult and slow.
Genetically
modified houseplants can clean up harmful chemicals in the air.
Each genetic modification is a different issue as regards effects on
humans and the environment. A houseplant doesn't have as much opportunity
to cause problems as a food crop, for instance.
Why Bernie Sanders Is (Still)
the Most
Progressive Choice for President.
I disagree with Robinson on one point: we should not judge candidates by
their demographics. I admire Ocasio-Cortez, and I'd gladly vote for her
for just about any office, but that's because of what she fights for, not
because of her "identity".
"I occupied
Hungary’s state TV studios with other MPs. This is only the
start."
An underdose of
opioid can
kill you, if the pain is more than you can stand.
The bully has decided
to pull
the US troops from Syria even though PISSI
has not
been entirely defeated.
This would leave Turkey a clear path to destroy Rojava.
I guess the bully can't resist trying to destroy a secularist and
socialist polity
that respects
human rights and treats women as equal.
Drivers for Guber in the UK are
now entitled
to minimum wage and other rights of workers.
However, that is limited to on country. Meanwhile, Guber continues to
do Orwellian tracking of
its customers.
12,000 to 20,000 people have been murdered in the Philippines
in the name of the "War on Drugs." The official count recognizes
only
5,000 of them.
How many of them were really drug dealers, we have no way of knowing,
since killing them was a substitute for a trial.
Poland extracted
a concession from the EU to extend coal subsidies, so that coal
plants could still be subsidized until 2035 — far past the time
when they must be closed.
Unless we try harder, we are doomed.
I propose declaring that operating a coal-burning power plant after
the start of 2022 constitutes an act of war against all other
countries.
A music festival in Sweden, which told males that they were not
welcome, has
been judged
to violate laws against gender discrimination.
We cannot condone "women-only" and condemn "men-only".
A study found that people buy less sweets and eat less sweets, if
sweets
are not
displayed in the line for the cash register.
Proposing
an upper limit on what companies pay their top executives: 100
times the pay of the lowest-paid workers.
I support this idea, but in order for it to be effective, we would
have to close the loopholes. These include hiring via subcontractors,
and making workers into "independent contractors".
We can also limit the stock options that executives can get
in a similar fashion.
I also support raising the maximum income tax rate for high incomes.
US
citizens: Please
tell Alex Azar and Kirstjen Nielsen to stop sharing data about
people who offer to give a home to refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Kirstjen Nielsen to resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Blind Creature That Buries Head in
Sand Named
After Donald Trump.
Even worse than killer
robots: nuclear
armed AIs.
Christina Engelhardt's love affair with Woody Allen lasted 8 years,
then they parted as friends. They
both remembered
it fondly.
This is the sort of relationship that everyone's life should be filled
with. I pity those who see something wrong in it.
Washington State has set up
a mandatory
paid family leave system.
To make this fulfill its mission, we need to extend it to the people
who are now compelled to be "independent contractors".
The Senate
has passed
the First Step Act, which will reduce mandatory minimum sentences
and make them less mandatory. Thousands of prisoners will be
released.
It will also begin to bring back the concept of rehabilitation into federal
prisons, which was discarded a few decades ago in a fit of vindictiveness.
The 83 ethics complaints made about Kavanaugh
can no
longer be acted on due to his undeserved elevation to the Supreme
Court.
The cheater
will shut
down the Trump Foundation because it has been caught in a "pattern
of illegality".
Challenging
the US border thugs' right to search a departing passenger's phone,
and deny the passenger an attorney.
Orbán's forced-overtime-paid-late-if-at-all law
has roused
Hungarians to campaign forcefully against his anti-freedom regime.
Chromium's domination of the world wide
web puts
the web in danger.
Nick Kristof led the fight for the FOSTA censorship law. Now his own
article has
been censored in the name of that law.
US border thugs
regularly disregard
all their rules when searching people's computers, rules that were
supposed to prevent abuses of their search power.
These violations were discovered in 2007, but the agency has not even
started to correct the unjust habits. What this implies is that rules
are an ineffective method for establishing any rights for people
entering the US.
In many US states, people can be prosecuted and
jailed for
criticizing someone.
The laws say that only intentional false statements can be prosecuted,
but it is easy to falsely claim that a criticism is false. The
bullshitter does this constantly.
These laws should all be eliminated.
In Texas,
the "dead
suspect loophole" assures secrecy for thugs that kill someone.
Anyone they kill is a "suspect" because they always find some
accusation to make.
Nigeria's government calls Amnesty International's reports of human
rights
violations fake
news.
US
citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to vote on Medicare for All.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the House of Representatives to investigate Saboteur Zinke.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Bolsonaro wants
to take away part of the Yanomami reservation.
The Yanomami reserve also functions more or less as a wildlife reserve
and a carbon sink. Converting even part of it to plantations therefore
would hurry and increase global heating and extinction disaster.
China is trying to intimidate visitors to Hong Kong
by tailing
one researcher and publishing details of his movements.
He was followed by human agents, but it is expensive to follow many
people that way. However, many governments can get now follow
everyone with the same thoroughness using using cameras and their cell
phones. That is the real threat to
our privacy
and political freedom,
and that is what we must fight to eliminate.
The mainstream media pretend that Bernie Sanders' supporters are
mainly
white males.
Australia operates
an automated system that supposes welfare recipients owe the state
money, unless they can prove to the robot that they don't.
At the moral level, whether this system is illegal under Australian
law is a side issue. That many of the "debts" it collects are bogus
is evil, but not the system's principal evil. The principal evil is
that it squeezes poor people harder, when they are already squeezed
to the crushing point.
Australia should tax the rich and businesses more, so as to give the poor
a life that is not quite so hard.
Arresting Huawei's executive may spare Canada
a new
business-supremacy treaty.
The article is based on, and takes for granted, the "free trade"
ideology, which is used as an excuse for governments to compete to
give business more power
(and
the people less).
An existing
business-supremacy treaty between Canada and China may be the
reason it is desperate to export more tar sands oil.
Millions of children in the US and UK are growing up in poverty. This
is a political
choice, imposed
by plutocratist government.
The stress caused by poverty provokes violence, mainly against women
and children. The stress itself
can scar
children for life.
(satire) … the Trump administration launched
a human
rights investigation Monday into the Senate’s harsh treatment of
Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman.
Public banks
could fund
the Green New Deal.
12
Reasons Labor Should Demand a Green New Deal.
The Russian troll army was very clever in using US racism
to convince
blacks not to vote.
That was the Republicans' first line of defense against black voters.
The second line
was voter
suppression, and the
third, gerrymandering.
The Russian ad campaign exploited a problem that the US really has:
plutocratist politicians tend to be mostly interested in the voters
only at election time. That is mostly true but not 100% true, and
racism is one of the injustices that plutocratists Democrats do make
some efforts to reduce — but only in the ways that the banksters
don't veto.
(satire) Ryan Zinke apologized Monday for misusing government funds by
sending the members of the ethics
committee a
$160,000 vase.
The "New World Order" really exists. It is global heating, and it
is run
by oligarchs and plutocratists.
Republicans have covered for right-wing extremism and neo-Nazis ever
since 2007, recruiting political support by presenting efforts to
limit hate
as attacks on
Republicanism.
In the past, that was false. Now that the bully
has converted the Republican Party into the Right-Wing Extremist Party,
the claim has become true.
Employees in the US
increasingly quit
a job without notice. This is a reflection of how little some
employers value them.
Russian
disinformation sent
out black propaganda claiming that Clinton was funded by the KKK,
and similar lies.
She was not funded by the KKK, and those lies are not excusable.
Alas, she was supported by the banksters — that was no lie.
Decisions
Made from
Now to 2020 Will Determine to What Extent Earth Remains Habitable.
I'm afraid they will have to delay until 2021 to have a chance of a
good outcome.
Everyone: Call
on advertisers to stop supporting Tucker Carlson.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the Department of HHS not to eliminate insurance coverage for
abortion.
If you send a comment, please spread the word!
China seems to
have arrested
two Canadians as retaliation for Canada's arrest of a Huawei
executive. To defend itself, the US and Canada must cite their
independent judiciaries and rule of law.
We cannot argue that the US would never twist the law for political
reasons. The bully
has done
precisely that to keep refugees in prison.
We cannot take for granted that the two Canadians did not
commit some real crime. But we do know that they won't get justice in
their trials in China.
Working against the US, in this dispute about which country respects
justice, will be the existence of imprisonment without trial in
Guantanamo.
Medical misinformation on the internet puts
people's health
and lives in danger.
Unknown
people attacked
security guards posted around a home in Ireland after they had
evicted the inhabitants.
An eviction without a court order would certainly be wrong,
but having a court order does not automatically excuse it.
When the law, and the power of the state, serve the banksters
against the poor, they do not have moral authority.
The Irish state should first make sure nobody is made homeless by
eviction, and only then attend to the wishes of the banks.
The Global
Compact for Migration is an agreement, to be developed, that will
aim to protect the rights of migrants, including preventing
trafficking and enslavement, and preventing the disasters that force
people to migrate.
Extinction Revolution is
organizing more
climate defense rallies around the world.
This is the spirit we need, to have any chance of doing enough and
soon enough to avoid global heating disaster.
Using mobile computers tends to make
children neglect
other ways of interacting with people, and promote insomnia.
This is before we even get to the intentionally manipulative and
controlling nature of
the software IN
the computers.
Progressives: Be Careful of the Comfort
of Placating the
Privileged at the Expense of the Afflicted.
This article refers to a letter in which Martin Luther King, Jr.,
criticized white "moderates" who said that blacks should not be in
such a hurry to win equality — they should wait a few centuries and
see what happens.
The area in which I most hear the argument that "We must not tell
people how bad things are, or it would discourage them" is that of
global heating, in which we know from the hard figures that each year lost
makes it less likely we can avoid the disaster at all.
Texas, New York, California and many other states impose a political
loyalty oath on some public employees — a loyalty oath to
Israel. The US congress is
now considering
imposing one.
Since I support the boycott of companies that operate in Israel's
colonies in Palestinian territory, a boycott that
was launched
in Israel by Uri Avnery,
I am one of the many excluded from those jobs for their political views.
Israel, keep your hands off Americans' freedom!
Goldman Sachs and some of its
staff face
charges in regard to Najib Razak's mega-corruption.
The
year's top
ten incidents of oppressive overprotection of the more-or-less
young — children, adolescents, and even college students that
are legally adults.
I speculate that the general acceptance of overprotection of minors
promotes acceptance of overprotection of everyone, including massive
surveillance. Regardless of your age, this threatens you.
The countries that sabotage efforts to protect Earth's climate are the
ones with
the most inequality.
I conjecture that the high inequality is the result of the richest's having
taken control of those countries' governments years ago, and that control
enables the same plutocrats to make the governments let our planet roast.
China is using the million imprisoned
Uyghurs as
slave labor.
The
US does
something similar in its immigration prisons.
It is an injustice in both countries.
An official purged from the Department of the Interior by Zinke
describes
the many
kinds of sabotage he carried out.
His brief summary:
When "moderate"
politicians champion
"compromise", what they really stand for is "preserve at all costs
the privilege of the elite".
Swedish
Green MP Leila Ali Elmi stands for eliminating the discrimination
and segregation against immigrants.
Remembering
nine
journalists that were murdered during 2018.
Invest
in Africa's Youth Before Migration to Europe Doubles, Says UN
Official.
I think it would be more efficient to invest in avoiding the birth of
some African youth. Surely a million IUDs cost less than sending a
million people to school.
Hindu extremists have
forced
churches in Varanasi to close. Christians have held a "peace
rally" to ask for their religious freedoms to be restored.
The Hindu extremist party that rules India is becoming ever more
oppressive.
Macron has
decided
to reconsider a tax cut that mainly serves the rich.
This is a real victory.
Amazon warehouse workers say they are
forced
to speed up and ignore safety rules.
Chinook salmon in Canada are
in
big trouble.
Matthew Hedges said his jailers in Dubai
psychologically
bullied him into a false confession of spying.
He also said they tried to recruit him to spy on the British foreign
ministry and would believe he did not work there.
To keep eating beef at the current rate, we
would
have to wipe out all forests by 2050. Also, it would result in catastrophic global heating.
The best way to deal with the projected need for 50% more food
is to cut the birth rate so we won't need 50% more.
Australia's parliament has approved a
somewhat
weakened form of the new anti-encryption law.
It might, possibly, be compatible with human rights, but I don't
expect such good fortune.
Israeli soldiers
shot
Muhammad Habali in the back as he was walking away. Habali was
killed.
This typical of the way soldiers treat Palestinians.
Right-wing extremists protesting in Sacramento hit and stabbed
antifascist counterprotesters. The thugs accused the victims of
various crimes, but
did
nothing to punish the perpetrators.
Around the world, many thugs support violent right-wing extremism.
The Sacramento thugs investigated 100 counterprotesters. They could
have investigated the violence if they had wanted to. They must
support the right-wing extremists and their violence.
Corbyn said Conservative MPs are
using
food banks as "a photo opportunity."
It is only natural that Tory MPs seek photo ops with food banks.
After striving for years to make food banks more central to the lives
of Britons, they wish to vaunt their achievements.
French journalists
investigating
corruption in sand-mining in India face accusations of crimes, and
have been smeared as "spies".
It looks like the corruption is so powerful that the crooks can direct
the state's power against anyone who wants to expose it.
Save
Millions
of Lives by Tackling [global heating], Says WHO.
When a political leader dies, we should not suffer
amnesia
about important bad things that the leader did.
Don't forget how President Bush I
connived
at murderous fascist governments in South America.
When Steve Jobs died, I refused to hush up about
the
great harm that he (through Apple) had done to human freedom.
Prosecuting someone for the same act as a state crime and as a federal crime
effectively
undermines
the Constitution's prohibition of double jeopardy.
I can see several ways to reconcile the various goals here.
For instance, federal charges, if pursued to a verdict,
could pre-empt state charges. Or any sentence served for a state
conviction could count towards the sentence for a federal conviction
and vice versa.
The Strand bookstore says that
designating
its building as a landmark could make it shut down.
Making the
Green
New Deal concrete.
The EU plans changes in banking
so
that the US cannot interfere with EU trade with other countries.
It makes eminent sense for the EU to protect itself from US
numbskulls, but the matter would not be as important if the EU were
doing enough to reduce its use of fossil fuels.
The axolotl is
heading
for extinction in the wild, due to pollution and introduced fish.
The claim that Google has a left-wing bias seems to be a right-wing
conspiracy theory,
based
on no real evidence.
Some have claimed that Google has a centrist bias. I don't know
whether that is true, but there is
some
suggestive evidence for it.
20,000 students in several countries have joined
Greta
Thunberg's school strike to demand protection of the climate.
They have recognized that action now is a matter of life or death for
them.
It could be a matter of life or death for people now in their 20s and
30s, but they don't see this so clearly.
The US Senate is trying to jam a bill to punish companies that boycott
Israel. The ACLU warns that this is
unconstitutional.
While the extreme plutocratists of the Republican party demand radical
changes to favor the rich, their "Democratic" facilitators that call
themselves "No Label" call for meeting the Republicans half way,
meaning a slower slide to favor the rich. They
urge
us not to resist the plutocratists so hard.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to reject Barr as attorney general, for right-wing
extremist views and because he has stated he wants to shut down
Mueller's investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support Amending
the US Constitution to say that corporations are not human beings
and are not entitled to human rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on Congress to stop arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Erdoğan
is ready
to launch an attack against the Kurds of Rojava.
I don't think they can depend on the US for protection, and all other
relevant powers are opposed to them. I fear the worst.
Google's search engine for China would
also be
a surveillance system for China, showing the state every query and
who made it. "Search for freedom, go to jail!"
Some Amerindian tribes
are bringing
back buffalo to their lands, and the buffalos' effect on the land
enables other native species thrive.
Australia proposes to achieve the Paris climate agreement emission
cuts
by counting
earlier emissions decreases.
I doubt that this legalistic argument will persuade the Earth's
atmosphere to cool off.
The UK and South Africa
are refusing
to cooperate with an investigation into the suspicious death of UN
Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1961.
Interviews
with gilets jaunes in a small French town.
Someone with very little will-power
has decided
to resist Amazon because of how it underpays workers.
If you're aware of the tracking it does to customers, you'll have
a stronger spine for rejecting Amazon.
Farming in the US midwest is being hit
by heat,
humidity and floods, all due to global heating.
A victory for progressives in the House of
Representatives: they
will eliminate for the next session a Republican-introduced rule
requiring 60% support for raising taxes on the wealthy.
The fact that Democrats continued this rule for 24 years, even at
times when that party controlled the House of Representatives, shows
how much influence the plutocratists have had in the Democratic Party.
Vanuatu
has accused
the US government of betraying the American people as well as the
rest of the world by pushing global heating.
Bravo!
The planet roasters want to keep control of the global conversation,
to keep it focused on details such as whether to "note" or "welcome" a
report about how close we are to disaster, and far away from
considering any action adequate to avoid the disaster.
Dissident music bands in Russia are facing heavy censorship as
thugs close
down their concerts.
Barr, the bully's nominee for attorney general, supports the "War on
Drugs" even to
the point
of actual war.
He also supports "forfeiture", a legalistic excuse to take people's property
arbitrarily based on alleged supposed crimes, without trying them for the
supposed crimes.
Italian
Priests Vow
to Open Church Doors to Evictees from Immigration Centres.
Criminalization of sex workers makes violence against them by their
clients much
more frequent.
A similar result was observed in Canada, where it is the client rather than
the sex worker who can be prosecuted for the transaction.
I am surprised that clients are happy with the idea of being
identified in a data base. Think of what trouble they could face if
they were identified as having done this.
The ice sheet of East
Antarctica has
started melting.
This suggests that sea level rise will be more than previously predicted.
Perhaps a lot more.
US
citizens: call
on Congressional Democrats to make HR 1 bold and strong.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé to stop lobbying against bottle
deposits.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Tell
Amazon to stop developing dangerous face-recognition services.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Amazon employees to refuse military work.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Steve Jobs used Apple's censorship power to impose prudery on the net,
and this is part of why Stumblr
is now
deleting everything that won't be rated G.
I tried to view a Tumblr page, but its contents did not appear. It
seemed to be totally dependent on nonfree Javascript code. Whatever
may disappear from Tumblr, I personally will not miss it.
Nonetheless, I am concerned about this issue because creeping prudish
censorship is dangerous in general; we should fight it in general.
Let us therefore invite Apple to go fuck itself and post a selfie of
that act on Stumblr.
Mobile apps
often track
the user's movements. Each user's location history starts out
anonymized, but it is not hard to identify the user by correlating
that data with other data.
This malicious functionality exists because the programs involved are
nonfree.
If these apps were free/libre, users could change them not to send
location data, or to send spoofed location data. If the operating
systems were free/libre, users could change them to offer the option
of spoofing the app with incorrect location data.
You might fondly believe that if a certain app charges for use, then
it won't track the user, but there is no objective reason to assume
that is always true. Paying to use an app does not forcibly stop
it from tracking the user's movements.
The Sanders Institute's Gathering Was About Saving the World, But It
Was Not
About Bernie Sanders.
(satire) officials announced Monday that a high-level White House
ficus would leave for the State Arboretum of Virginia after
declining
the president’s offer to be chief of staff.
(satire) those sensors that flush public
toilets were
also cameras this whole time.
Some
ideas of the sort of society that massive increasing inequality is
likely to impose in the coming decades, unless we tax the rich.
By sentencing
nonviolent deportation-blockers to a terrorist crime, the UK
government has demonstrated once again the great danger of
"anti-terrorism" laws and policies.
1000
activists are visiting Congress to demand that Democrats press for
a Green New Deal.
Global heating
will harm
sugar maples; the result will be less maple syrup, also less CO2
removed from the air.
This is another one of the positive feedback loops that prevent us from seeing
just the edge of the carbon cliff we are rushing towards.
Teachers went on
strike in a Chicago charter school chain. Its CEO gets a high
salary; they don't.
They will get somewhat better pay and working
conditions as
a result of the strike.
400
leaders of various churches protested at the San Diego border
fence supporting asylum seekers.
"Britain's long tradition of respect for human
rights is
under threat."
I would say the threat started in the 90s when the UK started
repealing some of the traditional "rights of Englishmen"; this
included adopting
censorship based on various reasons including
mere opinions
that are nasty,
and punishment
based on suspicion.
After facing international pressure,
Egypt freed
a visiting student who took a photo from the plane's window which
happened to include a photo of a military aircraft at the same
airport.
Why risk visiting a country that arrests people for absurd reasons?
An oil spill from a ship carrying oil from the Trans Mountain Pipeline
would do
lasting damage to ocean life, including species we want to
preserve as well as species we eat.
However, that local calamity would be just a footnote compared to the
disaster that will be caused when the oil does not spill. We
need to
leave 80%
of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, and since tar sands
oil has a particularly high ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to
energy delivered, the tar sands oil should be first.
Canadian indigenous peoples are determined
to block
all new pipelines for export of tar sands oil.
The US government is
still holding
prisoner 173 minors that border thugs took away from their
parents.
The US uses various excuses for them. Some of them have found no
sponsors to go to because the
US used
them as bait to deport the relatives that could have sponsored
them.
The parents that were deported, and said they did not want their
children sent to them, agreed in many cases to be deported, rather than
filing an appeal, because US agents lied to them. This history does
not excuse the US government of responsibility.
Tokyo Olympics Venues ‘Built with Wood from Threatened Rainforests’.
the largest reduction in public lands protection in our nation’s
history; a systematic failure to acknowledge or act on climate
change; unprecedented constraints on the funding and communication
of science; and a blatant disregard for public health and safety.
Russia is blockading the Ukrainian port of Mariupol and might do so indefinitely. This is an indisputable act of war.
US border thugs can take refugee minors away from their parents by accusing the parents of being gang members. They don't need to convince a judge, so they don't need a reason.
Cambridge Analytica used Facebook's database to figure out that certain clothing brands correlated with right-wing extremism, then recruited people who liked those brands for the bigot's campaign.
If we want this sort of campaigning to occur, we should give all candidates the opportunity to use the database. But I think it is better to give every candidates a way to send a message occasionally to all voters that want to receive candidates' messages.
Senate Democrats report on the deep sabotage that Mulvaney, chief saboteur of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has done secretly in that agency.
Republiars' latest plan to sabotage Obama's medical insurance plan works by authorizing various sorts of cheating and confusion.
The right-wing ruling politicians of Japan are covering up the history of forcing women in occupied countries into prostitution.
The reason millenials spend less money on goods is economic, not cultural: they have less money to spend.
Proposing community governance principles for social media and platforms.
They seem useful, but I don't think they will be adequate to protect people from massive surveillance. It will be hard to stir up, among users who have already surrendered their privacy, enough political will to impose anonymous use on a company with a business model that depends on accumulating personal data.
What’s Keeping the World From Ending AIDS: Greedy Big Pharma, Bad Policy.
Cuts in tax rates for corporations have left US public schools desperate. They pressure parents to pay for supplies, but nowadays some US families can barely afford food and rent.
For this reason and dozens more, we need to make the rich pay more tax.
A Florida thug chief achieved a perfect record for catching burglars by choosing the usual suspects (i.e., black males) and framing them.
Israel refused to cancel the export license for the company whose spyware was used by some other country to try to insert malware into an Amnesty International staffer's computer.
That country might be Salafi Arabia. It was a customer for that software, and it surely regards defenders of human rights (such as Amnesty International) as its enemies.
The EU proposes to aim for zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but that is too late!
Almost 2/3 of the US Senate voted for a discharge petition that will lead to a vote soon on the resolution to stop US participation in the war in Yemen.
The senators that voted for the discharge petition will not necessarily all vote for the resolution itself. But not all their votes are needed to pass it.
Proposing that Sanders and the progressives need to learn to fight hard and dirty, so that in 2020 we will win.
I support learning to fight hard. But we should not do dirty tricks such as lying about what we intend to do. The way we can win is by championing the progressive policies that most Americans support.
Labour proposes systems to limit and publicize executive pay.
The EU's censorship-by-police directive covers communication, not just publication, so it would prohibit end-to-end encrypted services such as Telegram and Signal.
The French government is going all-out to prevent public debate about this directive, which would expose everyone in the EU to the danger of state repression in the name of "protecting" them from the far smaller danger of terrorism.
Some billionaires have shifted from funding overt Republicans to funding center-right "moderate" Democrats that resemble the Republicans of 10 years ago.
Chilean thugs have been arrested for killing a Mapuche who drove away on his tractor when he saw the thugs approach.
The thug who fired the shot discarded the recording of his helmet camera, then lied about that.
These thugs belong to a heavily armed unit that was dispatched to repress the Mapuche.
US cities are not preparing for the possible 8 feet of sea-level rise projected for this century.
However, hitting a tipping point (and we don't know where those are) could result in a lot more rise.
Students will go on strike across Australia to demand action to protect the climate.
Stacy Adams is championing a campaign to end voter suppression in Georgia.
Michael Cohen testified that he had lied to protect the cheater, and that he had maintained contact with Russian officials over many months and discussed it with the cheater himself.
This could lead to charges against the cheater or his family.
Seven Hondurans have been convicted of murdering Berta Cáceres.
Michigan Republicans preempted a people's initiative to raise the minimum wage by passing a similar law. This was just a trick to arrange to be able to repeal the measures during the lame duck session.
The citizens will have to repeat the initiative petition to overcome the Republiars.
Autocracies depend on fake news to keep the people from communicating and uniting. Democracies depend on communication with trust, which is undermined by fake news.
Georgia jailed Dasha Fincher for months after a drug test mistook blue dye in cotton candy for methamphetamine.
A church in the Netherlands has been holding services nonstop for 27 days to protect refugees from deportation.
Research Says Men Who Are Insecure About Their 'Manhood' Tend to Be Donald Trump Voters.
Can we make it embarrassing for me to admit support for the bully?
A journalist's report from Libya, plus one interview with a former Qadhafi-era dissident.
The EU is so desperate to give the copyright industry more power that it pretends that article 13 does not impose filters for automated censorship.
"I quit Google over its censored Chinese search engine."
The company's responses to his criticism were vague, and directed at arguing that censorship and snooping aren't really so bad.
Many states spend far more on prisons than they do on schools. Spending more on schools might save a lot more money on prisons.
Racist beatings were so common in the UK, 40 years ago, that they would hardly attract notice. The fact that they now shock people shows that they have become a lot less frequent. That is progress.
Version 2 of NAFTA has some improvements.
I wonder what new nastiness it might have, though Can anyone find out? Has someone checked the area of copyrights?
The one black Republican senator blocked the nomination of Thomas Farr as a federal judge.
An Indian woman who won a suit for women to be allowed to enter a temple has been arrested for posting a video in which her thigh was visible.
This is an extreme level of toxic prudery. It doesn't usually reach that level in the US, but it is toxic anyway. It is often associated with religiosity.
We should all get used to appearing naked in public, and then the problem will disappear. So will revenge porn.
The center-right Democrat that was elected as head of the Democratic House caucus chair is supported by a campaign of rich people that want to break teachers' unions and privatize public schools.
Many Americans are so overloaded that they can't afford to stop buying from Amazon. In other words, it is a trap that pushes many Americans into poverty while giving them a little help in coping with that poverty.
If we provide working people with an adequate standard of living, they could afford to escape.
The former Dallas thug that went into a neighbor's apartment and shot him and then made up a variety of incredible excuses has been charged with murder.
Whitaker, proposed as acting attorney general, lied to federal investigators about his patent threat business.
(Try him, and if convicted) Lock him up!
US citizens: demand that Commissioner Kevin McAleenan of the border thug agency resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to end the school-to-prison pipeline.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Blackrock to divest from fossil fuels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Green New Deal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Journalists meeting in Palestine protested at a checkpoint in the annexation wall, so Israeli thugs fired tear gas at them.
The International Federation of Journalists is a federation of journalists' unions from many countries.
If you see thugs committing physical grievous violence without just cause, is it ethically legitimate to stop them by shooting them?
The article presents the Special Immunity Thesis and the Moral Parity Thesis. I think the Special Immunity is valid but only to a certain extent. You, as well as the thugs, must not resort to violence if it isn't necessary.
Wisconsin Republicans, as a parting shot against the state's poor people, have imposed a work requirement and a drug test requirement on food stamps and Medicaid.
The new Democratic governor will be unable to undo this because Republicans will still control the legislature. However, they may conflict with federal law, so courts might overturn them.
I wonder if Wisconsin allows an initiative petition to undo this.
Facebook got "consent" to upload call logs automatically from Android phones while disguising what the "consent" was for.
Delta airlines has given international passengers departing Atlanta the convenient and attractive option of being tracked by face recognition instead of showing passports.
La Quadrature: European Governments Agree to Outsource Internet Censorship to Google and Facebook. And allow the state thugs to order deletion of anything, with an hour's deadline.
Uyghurs living in Australia and the US say the Chinese government sends agents to question them and threaten them, and treats their relatives in China as hostages.
The idea that China might exterminate Uyghurs seems to be an extrapolation. I would not put that past China, but our condemnation will rest on a stronger foundation if we limit it to what China is known to be doing and refrain from treating possibilities as deeds.
It used to be that millions of monarch butterflies lived through the California winter. Now there are only 30,000.
This creates a danger they could be wiped out in various ways.
Shell's management says that Shell was closely involved in writing the Paris climate agreement. It seems Shell wants to make cap-and-trade the only form of regulation or measure used to reduce emissions.
This would be a grave policy mistake, because cap-and-trade systems are vulnerable to being gamed. If companies find loopholes, or insert loopholes, they could then obey the rules without actually reducing emissions.
Although new airliners are more fuel-efficient than older ones, the number of new planes is too small to make much difference in efficiency.
Even if the whole fleet became substantially more efficient, the increase in flying would cancel that out. We need to tax jet fuel enough to stop the increase.
When the EU tried to start this, the US slapped it back.
Global heating will wipe out lobsters off the coast of Maine.
Saboteur Pruitt used a personal email account for public business, and ignored the EPA requirement to send in those emails within 20 days.
It's far from the worst thing he did. It matters as an instance of the Republican double standard.
The cheater's golf course in New Jersey hires unauthorized immigrants and the supervisors bully the workers.
Offering to test and verify drugs for the public is very effective at preventing medical problems.
Legalizing the drugs would have the same effect, since commercially sold drugs would generally contain what they are advertised to contain.
The US Air Force Missed Four Chances to Stop Texas Church Shooter from Buying Guns.
US citizens: Call on the House of Representatives to vote on pulling the US out of the war in Yemen.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: support clemency for Cyntoia Brown.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on the House of Representatives to keep HR 1 a strong protection for voting rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
ACLU: New NYPD Drone Policy Represents a Serious Threat to Privacy.
The TSA is changing from the Theater of Security Authority to the Total Surveillance Agency — planning to collect travelers' fingerprints and face photos, even sneakily.
Beto O'Rourke's record in Congress is not very progressive. Defeating Ted Cruz would have been good, but we want a good replacement, not someone like Obama.
Michael Cohen testified that the cheater asked him to seek Russian contacts after the presidential campaign had started. Here is that, and other things that we have learned recently from Mueller's investigation.
The white supremacist that killed Heather Heyer has been convicted of murder.
He deserves to go to prison, but the death penalty is never justified, not even for hate crimes.
Under Australia's new cyber-sabotage law, the state can compel a company to secretly install sabotage software into your computer. This includes Australian companies, and companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft that operate in Australia.
The targets of this attack include whistleblowers and journalists.
The unjust power that Australia has just taken is far more dangerous than any of the crimes this is supposed to be used to protect against.
Election monitors appointed to supervise the honest conduct of the Catalan independence referendum now face criminal charges and could be imprisoned for many years.
The cheater's nominee for attorney general has made partisan statements about the Trump-Russia investigation.
Trump's Pick for Attorney General Pushed for Military Strikes on Drug Traffickers, Questioned Asylum Law.
Republican politicians in several states are pushing new voter-suppression schemes.
A regional insurance company that covered homes in Northern California has been bankrupted by claims for houses destroyed by the recent wildfire.
Fortunately, the state set up a backup insurance system to handle such situations, so the insurance claimants will still get some money, but perhaps not all that they were supposed to get.
Rwandan president Kagame prosecuted opposition leader Diane Rwigara for crimes that seem to be fabricated, but she was acquitted.
Saxony, a region of Germany, is setting up a zone near the border that permits a wide range of repression.
In Italy, refugees that have not been given asylum are being tossed out on the street to beg, since they are forbidden to work.
The Koch brothers are funding plutocratist deregulationism in the UK as well as in the US.
Their philosophy is laissez faire, laissez mourir.
China is paying many news publishers to include propaganda advertorials for China.
US citizens: support Sanders' bill to stop corporations from buying their own stock, if they pay workers under $15 per hour.
Until a few decades ago, corporations in the US were not allowed to buy back their own stock. How about reversing that change, as well as the hundreds of others that have deregulated corporations?
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Tell Blackwood to stop funding deforestation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: urge Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to cut military funds to fund the Green New Deal (and to reduce US military activity).
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on congressional Democrats not to make militarist Rep. Engel head of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to block arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
To sign without running their Javascript code, use the Salsalabs method.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Gaza is sliding into hunger after the US stopped funding food aid.
The root cause is the Israeli siege of Gaza, which is an act of war.
Why Don’t We Riot Over Wealth Inequality?
Perhaps the irrational psychological tendency to feel more upset about losing a dollar than about getting one less dollar plays a part.
Africa Cocoa Industry Failing on Deforestation Pledge.
Global heating effects make millions of people sick.
After decades of distraction campaigns about hypothetical fraud committed by individual voters, Republicans show little interest in the real case of organized election fraud committed by Republicans.
Perhaps this is because they have grown so comfortable with voter-suppression and gerrymandering. Those measures are not, strictly speaking, fraud, but they are the moral equivalent of fraud.
Scientists caught 100 sea turtles and studied what was in their stomachs. Every one of them had swallowed many pieces of plastic, as well as objects such as cigarettes.
As mainstream media dwell only on the good things that Bush I did, Glenn Greenwald and Mehdi Hasan present the bad things also.
A landlord in the UK will have to pay around 2 million dollars in fines to avoid going to jail for renting people tiny apartments with conditions that endanger health.
The landlords that gouge the poor for intolerable living conditions deserve punishment, but giving everyone adequate housing requires more than just fining and jailing exploiters. Britain needs to make more housing available, and rapidly. Otherwise these tenants will be living in even worse conditions, on the street.
(satire) the Republican-controlled Wisconsin legislature was working to weaken incoming Democratic governor Tony Evers by restricting his access to food, water, and shelter, sources confirmed Wednesday.
Republicans have been using lies and scapegoating immigrants for a long time. That is how Bush I got himself elected.
Where the bullshitter differs from Republican liars such as Bush I is that they felt obliged to present a consistent false picture, rather than totally incoherent fluctuating bullshit.
Xcel Energy, a US electric utility, has set a target of 80% renewable energy by 2030.
Its 100% target for 2050 is less important because what is crucial now is to make fast reductions.
What we usually see nowadays is just the opposite: planning to extract every last drop from oil deposits which we desperately need to leave in the ground.
The bully's plan to bring down the Iranian government is not working, and he may find obstacles to starting a war there.
This year's increase in greenhouse gas emissions comes mainly from China, India and the US.
Record-High Carbon Emissions Show 'We Are Speeding Towards the Precipice of Irrevocable Climate Chaos'.
China stopped ordering couples to have just one child. Now it has started pressuring them to have more children.
This is insane. China does not need a higher birth rate; it needs a lower population.
Ukraine says that Russia is waging overt war with Ukraine by blockading its ports in the Sea of Azov.
De facto, Russia has been at war with Ukraine for years through its support for rebels in the Donbass region. But Russia has always pretended that was not so. I wonder whether Russia will say there is no blockade.
Argentina has decided to consider prosecute the acting king of Salafi Arabia, if he is not being investigated in Salafi Arabia or Yemen. However, it won't develop fast enough to stop his visit.
Union organizers in NYC condemned Amazon for its history of mistreating workers, and said they wanted the company kept out.
Global heating is already causing a health emergency. Imagine the damage it will cause 20 years from now!
Global heating will make the use of water supplies harder to manage.
The more numerous progressive Democrats in Congress need to firm themselves up so that they don't bow to the power of the centrist House leadership.
Denial of global heating, in the face of the facts, is depravity: lying for pay even though it endangers the survival of civilization. The Republican Party has been, for six years, the party of depravity.
The "temporary" prison for migrant minors now holds 2,300 prisoners, and looks like it will be permanent.
In the prison, hugging is forbidden.
'This Is Sketchy': Critics Warn Against Blind Acceptance of Explosive Guardian Report About Secret Manafort-Assange Meetings.
General Abizaid as ambassador to Salafi Arabia might give the US a chance to learn something realistic about that country, bypassing the biases of right-wingers with commercial dealings with that country's rulers.
Fixing Campaign Finance Needs to Be at the Center of Democracy Reform.
Airbnb's refusal to list rooms in Israel's colonies in Palestine is not antisemitic; rather, it upholds nondiscrimination and international law.
Israel has supported many cruel regimes in war and repression through sales of arms and training soldiers. The details, surely embarrassing, are concealed through secrecy and censorship.
Netanyahu is supporting Hamas in order to keep Palestinians divided, and agreed to a truce in Gaza for that purpose. But most Israelis are now so right-wing that they just want to kill more Palestinians.
Google employees' letter demanding that Google drop the censoring and surveilling search engine for China.
The sad thing is that what Google Search does in the US differs only in degree from this atrocious project -- with Google Search in Europe somewhere in the middle.
"I’d bet those … dollars that Amazon’s giving to fight homelessness will come as cold comfort to those in Long Island City and Crystal City who are about to be made homeless [by Amazon's new offices]."
Senator Schumer demonstrated his weakness in confronting right-wing policies by agreeing to 1.6 billion for "border security" which is too harsh already.
Hurricane Michael devastated the oyster and shrimp industries in Florida, which were still suffering from BP's oil spill years ago.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the First Step Act.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: Demand real climate leadership.
The petition specifies what it means by that.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Tell Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your senators to reject Barr as attorney general.
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European governments have made it impossible for Médecins Sans Frontières to continue operating the ship that rescued tens of thousands of refugees from drowning.
I am sure that MSF knows how to dispose of that waste properly, and I am confident that it did so. I suspect the accusations of being fabricated.
Tourists queue to take photos at Mt Roys and struggle to make it appear like peaceful solitude.
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government set up an "orientation" event for newly elected congresscritters, co-hosted by a right-wing "think tank" pressure group, and featuring executives speaking plutocratist propaganda.
The event is "bipartisan", meaning it wants to recruit representatives of both parties as plutocratists.
Reps Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib refused to play the game, while Ayanna Pressley spoke at a protest nearby.
Shame on the Kennedy School for letting itself be used this way.
Reducing the protections for the sage grouse would push its ecosystem closer to elimination.
Doing this to drill for oil would globally push millions of species closer to extinction, including perhaps our own.
President Moreno says that it is safe for Assange to leave the Ecuadorian embassy, based on a commitment that appears to me less than adequate.
The UK has committed not to extradite Assange to a country where he could possibly face a death sentence. Assuming it will keep its commitment, he can leave the embassy with no risk of being executed. But that hardly means it would be safe.
The mass extinction of 250 million years ago was caused by global heating.
It’s Good to Argue About Dead Presidents. Here is more of what Bush I did that's good to argue about.
Why Voters Should Mark Ballots by Hand.
There is more evidence that glyphosate causes cancer.
The Fight over a Georgia Nuclear Plant Shows We Need to Ban Dark Money.
Governments and telecommunication companies are recognizing that they can't trust telecommunications equipment by Huawei — it is likely to contain devices that spy for China.
What beats me is why they think it is safe to trust a likely enemy in a "non-core role". That would still present plenty of opportunity for spying.
It also beats me why anyone thinks it is safe to use systems made by Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. Their proprietary software snoops on the user.
The world's carbon emissions are still increasing, despite all efforts to reduce them.
After the Irish people voted to legalize abortion, the legislature is trying to create bureaucratic impediments that you'd expect from US Republicans.
Blacks in the UK regularly feel they have encountered racism in everyday life.
A new threat to expand copyright, from a rapper claiming no one should be allowed to imitate his "moves".
I hope judges understand that ruling in his favor would cripple art.
The parents of a school shooter are being sued for failing to keep their guns away from him.
An Australian so poor that she can't always afford to eat went to a workshop on economizing more for the gratis barbecue than because she expected useful advice.
The suggestions were aimed at people who had the spending habits of the well-off, useless for the participants who were really poor. The barbecue was cancelled.
Manafort cheated on his plea deal by having his lawyers tell the cheater's lawyers what questions Mueller asked him. As well as by lying in his answers.
The US Office of Refugee Resettlement tricks minors into informing on relatives in the US that might sponsor them -- then uses this info to arrest and deport those relatives.
Arms sold by the US and UK to Salafi Arabia and its allies in Yemen are diverted in substantial quantities to the black market, in which they are sold to al-Qa'ida and PISSI, as well as the Houthis.
Some terrorist groups have been integrated into the "army of Yemen" which is allied to Salafi Arabia.
The center-right "moderate" Democrats defeated Barbara Lee as head of the House Democratic Caucus.
In 2020 I will once again donate to organizations such as Justice Democrats that support only progressive Democrats.
New Zealand joins other countries in recognizing that using Huawei equipment in critical infrastructure is a threat to national security.
Using proprietary software in critical infrastructure, or in critical state agencies, threatens national security in the same way, no matter who the developer is.
Global Food System Is Broken, Say World's Science Academies.
We make so much meat that it makes people sick, while the resulting deforestation and the methane produced by cattle are driving global heating faster.
However, the claim that "reducing meat and dairy consumption is the single biggest way individuals can lessen their impact on the planet" is incorrect because it overlooks the real biggest way: have fewer children or none.
30% of Americans that start college drop out after the first year.
This could be because they have suddenly been asked to manage their own lives and they never had a chance to start to learn how to do that,
Russia is falling down on the job of treating HIV, and the disease is spreading outside the high-risk groups.
There is a chance that Democrats in the House may put an end to the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits use of US government funds for abortions.
Three Philippine thugs have been sentenced to 40 years in prison without parole for murdering a high-school student, then lying about the circumstances.
The US can't ever win the war in Afghanistan, but has arranged for Americans not to notice very often that it is continuing and the situation is slowly but steadily getting worse.
What the North Vietnamese minister explains the situation in a nutshell.
A UN resolution calling for a cease-fire in the port of Hodeida was blocked at the UN by the US and China, together with threats by Salafi Arabia to cancel proposed peace talks.
Peace talks are likely to take months to reach an agreement, if they ever do, so I think a truce in Hodeida is more urgent than starting the peace talks.
Interpol is helping Bahrain grab a refugee that got asylum in Australia, because he went with his sports team to Thailand.
US citizens: call on the district attorney to charge the thug that shot Emantic Bradford.
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US citizens: call on Sanders to oppose militarism and advocate cutting the military budget.
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US citizens: Call on Congress to block new Republican tax giveaways to business.
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Everyone: call on the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and High Commissioner on Refugees to launch a UN investigation into US violations of the human rights of asylum seekers.
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Luxembourg will make all public transport gratis. Riders will not need any sort of tickets.
Greenland's ice cap is melting faster than we thought, so the estimates of sea level rise need to be revised upwards.
Any sort of unexpected positive feedback will lead to more global heating effects.
Parents in a UK school district are fighting hard to prevent their public school* from being privatized.
The policy being applied here is transparently an excuse to privatize many public schools. It is supposed to make the schools better, but if they really wanted that result, they would be willing to convert them back.
Has Labour said anything about unprivatizing these schools?
* I am using US terminology, which makes more sense to the readers of this site.
The bullshitter has become a little more sophisticated in regard to the INF nuclear missile treaty. Instead of simply saying he will cancel it, he now says he will cancel it unless Russia corrects its violations within 60 days.
The US and Russia accuse each other of violations. If the bullshitter gets a little more wise, maybe they can negotiate returning to mutual compliance with the treaty.
A very plutocratist Democrat who supports voter suppression was reelected as Secretary of State in New Hampshire, with support from some plutocratist Democrat legislators as well as Republicans.
I hope the people of New Hampshire run progressives against those plutocratist Democrat legislators.
Internal Documents Show Facebook Has Never Deserved Our Trust or Our Data.
No system deserves such trust.
Even today's rather limited chatbots are a tool to manipulate the public.
Facebook used trickery to get personal data of Android users.
Bolsonaro's supporters used WhatsApp to spread fake news.
Ideas for designing cities to encourage people to talk with each other instead of being lonely.
Independence fighters in West Papua had a fight and killed people. Were they Indonesian soldiers, or civilians?
Cuba has arrested artists that planned to protest a new law that would require all artists and musicians to get government licenses.
Cuba has continued to be repressive in recent years.
The UK's deadly heat wave last summer almost certainly would not have happened if not for global heating.
How Tories made working-class children pay for the 2008 financial crisis.
Macron is facing protests because of his dooH niboR policies.
US citizens: call on senators to reject Nauert as envoy to the UN. She has no pertinent experience except promoting hatred.
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US citizens: call on Rep. Pelosi to put Rep. Ocasio-Cortez on the Ways and Means Committee.
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US citizens: Tell future Speaker Pelosi not to give Republicans veto power over the Democratic agenda.
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US citizens: Call on Democrats not to let militarist Rep. Engel head the Foreign Affairs Committee.
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Maine's prisons used to be effective in rehabilitating prisoners. Around 15 years ago they turned to dehumanizing prisoners. When they are released, they usually go back to crime.
I wonder what caused the change. Budget cuts? Right-wing ideology?
Revealed: Disney's [40 or 50 dollar] Ariel doll earns a Chinese worker one cent.
European Commission to Help Member States Recognize Work of Kremlin "Troll Factories" (and recognize it quickly).
Israel's supreme court has broadened the loophole that permits torture.
(satire) … CIA director Gina Haspel briefed senators Tuesday on the "shockingly uninspired" techniques employed by Saudi government agents during the interrogation of Jamal Khashoggi… Haspel added that, had she been responsible for such a "hack" interrogation, she would be denying it as well.
Israeli soldiers snuck into Gaza disguised as workers for a humanitarian aid organization, with fake credentials.
This is a despicable tactic because it endangers humanitarian aid. The US did this in Pakistan to find Osama bin Laden, and the distrust this created set back the cause of eradicating polio for years.
Chile's congress passed a resolution to boycott products of the Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
Israeli soldiers arrest hundreds of Palestinian minors every year, often with no charges (which is sometimes because they are not really accused of anything, just used as hostages). Then the brainwashing begins.
This treatment is just the sort of thing to stimulate Palestinian hatred. If the Israeli government wanted to make Palestinians get violent and thus prevent any possibility of peace, this would be just the way.
Hmm, is it possible that that's the real motive for this practice?
Flint, Michigan, was supposed to replace all the lead pipes leading to homes, but took a shortcut and has not checked them all.
Chase Bank is funding new coal development in Poland.
(satire) The GOP-controlled Wisconsin legislature voted Tuesday to dissolve [that state] rather than let governor-elect Tony Evers and other members of the Democratic Party have it.
The FCC is denying FOIA requests for information pertinent to the fake comments that pretended to come from individuals in favor of ending network neutrality.
Ajit Pai pretends those comments were bona fide. One must suspect that he wants congresscritters to find it easy to pretend to believe this. That suggests he has a certain amount of power to get Republicans to pretend to believe lies, but feels he had better not push it too far.
Statistics demonstrate bias against blacks in London thugs' use of handcuffs and tasers.
Prudish censorship attacks again in the UK, convicting someone for possessing "extreme pornography", including images of sex with animals.
I can't imagine a possible reason to punish people for this. The article does not report that the animals were harmed, or that they objected to the experience, or that they thought of it as sexual. The law does not consider these questions pertinent.
What is, however, clear is that prohibiting the possession of copies of some image or text — no matter what that image or text may be — threatens human rights. It creates excuses to search through people's possessions and files. It creates ways to make people vulnerable to criminal charges without their cooperation or even their knowledge. All such laws must be repealed.
Barclays bank customers are reproving the bank for investing in tar sand oil extraction, and some are threatening to move their bank accounts.
Russia has stopped blockading Ukraine's ports, while claiming it never blockaded them. The claim seems like typical Putin disinformation.
I speculate that Putin was probing to see how far he could advance.
Growing marijuana could harm the environment — since so many other chemicals we produce tend to do so.
Prudery is advancing, and with it comes censorship.
Tumblr is using "AI" to find the photos that will presently be banned. This results in lots of stupid errors, but unless that shames the company into reversing its policy, it won't change anything.
(Note: Tumblr seems to depend on nonfree Javascript code, so I myself cannot see anything there, and I urge people not to run that code.)
I doubt I ever heard French Kiss, and if I did hear it I would probably have considered it superficial titillation and annoying. But my personal taste does not matter. Prudish censorship threatens to increase sexual repression.
If this keeps up, instead of teenagers that know about sex only from porn — alas, mostly sexist porn — we will once again have teenagers that know nothing about what makes for sex, and have no idea who to ask.
The globalized high-volume food industry was designed by plutocrats for plutocrats, and it does harm of many kinds: economic, ecological, medical, and agricultural.
A black manager for Facebook quit, and posted on Facebook that Facebook had treated black useds and black staff badly and had censored blacks' postings.
Facebook deleted his post, saying it went against "community standards".
The Afghan army is being worn down and could not continue to fight with the current casualty levels. A US general proposes to help them improve, but he can't guess how long it would take for them to become capable of continuing the stalemate.
That is because there is no concrete reason to suppose they could ever become capable of doing so. For over 10 years, the Afghan army has had no chance of standing up unless the US props it up. The question is, what is the point of trying?
A Roman city in Switzerland killed life in a nearby lake due to agricultural pollution, and it took 300 years for the lake to become normal again.
Facilitators of tax evasion, exposed in the Panama Papers, have been charged for it in the US.
Canadians are demanding that the Canada Pension Fund divest from privatized US deportation prisons.
I wish Sum of Us made its petitions signable without running nonfree software. I would sign and promote many of them, if the mechanism they use were acceptable to promote.
Being kind and good within your own circle is good, but in order to defeat organized malignant evil, we need courage.
Rather than pay workers a living wage, Walmart is replacing cleaning workers with robots.
Businesses are not fundamentally entitled to rights. There is no reason we should allow companies to automate jobs away.
Fighting World War II required state planning, public investment, and tight control of markets. Now we can do it to end global heating.
In the process, we could spread the wealth around.
Like the emperors he aims to follow, the bullshitter doesn't lie with the intention that people mistake his lies for truth, but rather with the intention that they pretend to believe while knowing it is a lie.
The Republiars have given him that power, which is what makes him (and them) enemies of the US Constitution, which every Federal official has sworn to defend.
If we defeat the bullshitter's power grab, those who now support him will continue to be present in the US, in substantial numbers, for a few decades. How can we enable them to climb down from the insane mental state that the bullshitter has led them into?
Even though impeaching the bullshitter is unlikely to remove him from office (since Senate Republicans will protect him regardless of his crimes), the process would give House Democrats grounds to investigate every area of his life and expose many crimes.
London thugs have boasted of the effectiveness of their new tactic to stop moped-riding thieves: ramming them with cars. Not surprisingly, a moped rider has been seriously injured this way.
A rumor has it that Manafort tried to make a deal with Ecuadorian president Moreno to deliver Julian Assange to the US in exchange for concessions of economic value, and that Moreno was quite interested.
Germany's new right-wing extremist party seems to have got its start with funds from a secretive billionaire, who arranged to start a right-wing extremist news outlet.
The US deportation thugs, with help of local thug departments, jailed Peter Sean Brown and were going to deport him to Jamaica. They simply ignored his statement that he was born in the US, and insisted he was Jamaican, because he had gone there as a tourist once.
He was jailed for weeks.
Everyone makes mistakes, but there is no excuse for clinging obstinately to a mistake.
I would expect that trying to deport him to Jamaica would have failed. Jamaica must have no record of him as a citizen, and must have a record of admitting him as a tourist, so I expect it would not have let him in.
Or would it have? Is Jamaica so afraid of the US that it would accept anyone the US claims is "Jamaican"?
Giving congresscritters proportional votes would enable proportional representation of the voters.
It is straightforward to extend this system to cover more than two parties, but that would require even more congresscritters.
Amnesty International accuses Iran of covering up the murder of thousands of dissidents in 1988.
Iran killed dissidents during elections much more recently.
British Columbia won strong public support for its carbon tax by making it revenue-neutral: the money it raises is put into other tax cuts.
That policy takes the sting away, for the middle class. But not for poor people, because they don't pay much in other taxes so tax cuts won't reach them much.
One solution is to replace parts of the tax cuts with some aid for the poor.
Centralized fraud is suspected in a close congressional election in North Carolina.
For the 2020 Democratic nomination, we may again face the challenge of defeating Clinton.
The Tories were pilloried for systematically deporting people who had moved to Britain many years ago from former colonies, and who were entitled to citizenship. It agreed give them a fair chance at citizenship, but didn't bother trying to find them and tell them that.
It appears that Sheryl Sandberg personally intervened to make Facebook support the censorship law, FOSTA.
That an executive alters a company's policy for ethical reasons does not seem fundamentally wrong to me. I reject the perverse idea that a company must put its own profits above any idea of right and wrong. Indeed, it was only in the 1980s that US plutocrats started effectively promoting that idea.
However, I think it is a crying shame that Sandberg's conscience pushed censorship on the internet and made life more dangerous for sex workers.
Uber led drivers in India into taking on debt to buy cars, them cut their pay so that they now have to work over 12 hours every day.
A princess from Dubai planned for seven years how to escape her life of captivity. The plan almost succeeded, but commandos grabbed her from a yacht when she had almost reached India. One must suppose that the commandos were sent by her father, the emir.
No one has heard from her since, and she might have been killed, or killed herself rather than be captured. Or she may be imprisoned in permanent solitary confinement (see Princess, by Jean Sasson, for another instance of this).
US citizens: protect US ocelots — oppose the border wall.
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Everyone: call on Ecuador to protect the Yasuni National Park by not allowing oil drilling there.
You can sign without running nonfree software by using Lynx.
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US citizens: Call on Congress to pay staff and interns a fair wage.
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US citizens: tell the DEA not to ban Kratom.
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UK plutocratists with lots of political power want to take the UK out of the European Union because it would enable them to force the UK into horrible business-supremacy treaties with the US.
Apple stores are cunningly designed theater, somewhat like Disneyland. The employees are all young because people with dependents can't afford the low pay.
A lawsuit attempts to prevent the Tories from bringing US-style voter suppression to the UK.
Macron will "suspend" the fuel tax increase.
How sad — of all the demands of the gilets jaunes, this is the one that is misguided.
Why acting king Mohammed bin Salman of Salafi Arabia should be prosecuted for causing starvation in Yemen.
How some scientific tests try to detect implicit bias, and attempts to teach people to keep it in check.
If some fool calls the thugs because a child was seen walking outside, you can organize to teach people that this is safer (as well as less stressful) than driving per around.
The USDA's inability to end the salmonella infestation in turkeys that started a year ago is another reason not to transfer all US food inspection to the USDA.
Australia's "catastrophic" wildfires have worn out fire crews, but now it seems that they will be extinguished by another kind of disaster: a typhoon.
Crews will not have time to convert their equipment from fighting fires to aiding the victims of typhoons.
Rep. Tlaib plans to lead a group of newly elected congresscritters to visit Israel and Palestine, and see what it looks like from the Palestinian side — as a way of counteracting AIPAC's guided visit that shows the Israeli side.
Aggressive Debt Collectors Raise Risk of Suicide.
The numbskull's cancellation of the non-nuclear deal with Iran may already be bearing fruit in the form of Iranian tests of new medium-range ballistic missile.
This might violate the deal, if the deal had not been cancelled.
Thugs shot and killed Emantic Bradford Jr as he was running after someone who had shot people in a mall. They jumped to the conclusion he was the shooter, and shot him immediately. They say he was a threat, but the autopsy shows he was facing away from them when they shot him.
This is typical of such incidents. Once thugs jump to such a conclusion, they ignore everything else.
George HW Bush's Presidential Campaign Was Nothing to be Proud of.
Bush's Sordid Saudi Ties Set Template for Trump — [Bush] Was Just More Subtle.
Argentine prosecutors may place charges against Salafi Arabia's acting king, for war crimes in Yemen as well as the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Don't visiting heads of state normally get diplomatic immunity? To prosecute him, I think it would be necessary to deny him diplomatic immunity before he comes to Argentina. If that happens, I suppose he would not come to the meeting, so there would be no actual chance of prosecuting him. Nonetheless, it would be worth doing: the political impact of his staying away to avoid charges would be powerful.
Data Provided to HHS to Vett Sponsors of Unaccompanied Children Should Not Be Repurposed for Immigration Enforcement.
So many examples of elites caught lying have made it almost impossible for people to trust anyone. So liberal democracy, a system based on trust, falls down.
Not 100% impossible, though. I trust Bernie Sanders.
The Ewaiwe family are Palestinians that live in Hebron. Fanatical Israeli "settlers" are trying to push Palestinians out of Hebron, one by one. So they attack the Ewaiwe home, over and over, trying to drive them out.
"Settlers" attacks now target elementary schools as well as olive trees and homes.
Israel Has Injured 24,000 Gaza Protesters.
"No, democracies don't have 'cultural loyalty' laws." But Israel wants one.
Bangladesh is building prison camps for the Rohingya, in an isolated low-lying island under military control where they would be inaccessible to journalists.
Did Bangladesh get this idea from the bully's treatment of refugees?
In a few years, a typhoon will drown the island.
Most women who are killed, are killed by their relatives or lovers.
Looking at the moral arguments about genetically modified babies.
People seem to think there is something fundamentally wrong with the idea. I think they are repeating the silliness about "playing god" that we used to come across 60 years ago. In principle, there is nothing wrong with making genetically modified babies.
There is a problem in our present state of ignorance: the danger that something will go wrong and produce babies that are somehow damaged. That is a valid reason not to make genetically modified babies -- for now.
If we develop ways to make babies that are somehow superior, we should make that option available to all babies at no cost. It would be unfair to deny the benefits to anyone.
Right-wing extremists could convert a movement for "objectivity" in Brazil's schools into an excuse to repress teachers that supported the Workers Party.
US border thugs grasp at straws and loopholes to block reunion of refugee families.
Americans that aren't white are not similar to each other. "'People of color' is a pretty meaningless category today, and one that will become even more meaningless in the future… What we should be asking is, what policies would we need to allow people to reach their full potentials, to live in security and dignity?"
The result of prohibiting online ads for sex work is that prostitutes have to seek customers on the street -- where they tend to be raped, harassed, and arrested. It does not help them that their would-be customers are arrested, too.
The article refers to arrested customers as "predatory". Perhaps some of them really were predatory, but if so that was by chance, if the criterion for arresting them was that they were looking for a prostitute to hire. Supposedly this practice is justified because they might by chance have hired a prostitute who was enslaved. However, for those prostitutes who are indeed enslaved, arresting their customers does not help free them, and neither does arresting the prostitutes.
Applying the same logic to other fields, the state would arrest would-be customers of manicures, fish, fruits and vegetables, laundry, and houses, because those things too are sometimes provided by enslaved workers. Fortunately, this misguided solution is not proposed for those fields.
To "hold abusers accountable" is a laudable goal, but I have a disturbing feeling that when the DA says "abusers" it means "customers", not violent men.
I hope these women find a better life, but the repressive laws are part of the obstacles in their way.
When big companies use AI to "predict" (i.e., shape) people's decisions, it hardly matters whether that is called "capitalism" or "communism". Because either way, it is dehumanisingly totalitarian.
The Taliban attacked Afghan government forces, so they called in an air strike, which killed Afghan civilians.
Mistakes happen even in peacetime; in the fog of war, avoiding them is even more difficult. While the war continues, things like this will happen. Thus, the decision about whether to continue the war includes deciding whether more things like this will happen.
The real question is, is there a reason to continue the war?
Saboteur Zinke wants the National Archives to destroy lots of documents from the process of deciding questions such as how and whether to protect endangered species.
Their loss would make it impossible to investigate whether the department operated honestly or not.
The bully told CIA head (and torturer) Haspel not to testify before the Senate about the murder of Khashoggi, including what she heard in the recording that Turkey has.
To hold global heating at 1.5C, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.
It follows that reduction plans whose targets are after 2030 are a distraction.
Proposal: "Restore higher tax rates for corporations that can’t contain CEO pay."
I disagree. There is no reason to allow any companies the unwarranted 2017 tax cut. What we should do is cancel that tax cut entirely, then increase the tax rate for high individual incomes so that the CEOs will pay more taxes.
Republican officials specifically rushed the release of the latest US climate report to make it come out on the day after Thanksgiving.
Large farms spray herbicides to kill the crop plants in order to take off their seeds more efficiently. The result is more herbicides in our food. Since herbicides affect gut bacteria, that can effect human health.
The pathway to a Green New Deal, if fully designed by early 2020 as it should be, will give Americans an opportunity to make climate safety a major election issue.
The US seems to be planning to make e-cigarettes hard to access without measuring and comparing the positive health effects with the negative health effects.
Tories are in effect eliminating gratis public education in the UK. Their budget cuts, and punishment of any school that is below average, have pushed schools to demand increasing amounts of "donations" from parents.
Republican pets of the logging industry are citing the recent California fires as a reason to cut down some of the trees in California forests -- a practice that makes fires spread faster.
The rational response would be to curb the global heating which is making fires more dangerous.
The US would avoid E coli contamination of lettuce if the saboteur in chief had not postponed the new regulations about the water used for irrigation.
Chinese photographer Lu Guang, who photographed poor people and environmental problems, has been jailed incommunicado.
Bolsonaro has cancelled, outright, an international climate conference scheduled for next year.
Bangladesh agreed to a safety inspection system so that no more clothing factories would collapse on their workers. Now it is shutting down that system.
I suspect that the well-known front companies ("brands") which sell the clothing objected to the expense, and that they made the government to take the blame instead of them.
Microplastics poison periwinkles so that they cannot protect themselves from being eaten.
Progressives in Congress hope to elect Barbara Lee as head of the House Democratic Caucus.
Alas, that is the only special position in the House that is being contested in this way. For the others, we have to hope that the occupants feel pressure to act more progressive.
The Climate Report Trump Tried to Bury -– Key Findings No 2: Some Pollution Action Is Far Better Than None.
The French personal data regulation authority ruled that the system whereby companies bid to show a particular user an ad at that very moment violates the GDPR, because it shows the bidders that user's personal data without consent.
This relates to the fact that "consent" for data collection is meaningless because it is impossible to express what actions the consent is for.
But even if that problem had a solution, it is so easy for sites to manufacture "consent" that it can't be enough to permit the surveillance.
I will be glad if this decision throws a monkey wrench into the system that motivates collecting so much personal data, and especially if it makes some of that collection not worth doing. But that won't be enough to convince me to hand over any personal data. and won't convince me that it is safe for society to permit this massive surveillance to happen at all, "consent" or no "consent".
Australia is moving towards extreme repression of sites that get used for file-sharing, even when that isn't their purpose.
To resist copyright repression, we must stop granting any legitimacy to its goal. Sharing is good. To interfere with sharing is evil.
Around 60% of the countries on Earth are repressing dissent.
The UK is threatened again with national ID cards.
Don't be suckered by talk of "new technology" and "secure". "New technology" means (1) they could track you more often and (2) it would be more vulnerable to data breaches and sabotage. "Secure" means "secure against you."
Even if you want to reduce the number of immigrants, you can see that a small increase in immigrants is a small price to pay for freedom,
Is the No2ID campaign still operating?
The suffering of global heating disaster will fall first and most heavily on minorities and workers. Progressive politicians who have focused on other issues are starting to take up the Green New Deal.
PG&E, the electric company in most of California, seems to be going bankrupt because of expected liability for the burning of the town of Paradise. This provides an opportunity to convert it into a public agency, controlled by local people and putting excess funds into safety and the cities where it operates.
James Risen said: bad as Obama was on the issue of freedom of the press, the bullshitter is even worse.
Walmart's part-time employees -- which are half of its employees -- call for the company to pay them $15 an hour. It can afford that.
Since Walmart does a lot of harm to society in general, I don't shop there.
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter to oppose making the registrar of copyrights a presidential political appointment.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
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US citizens: call on the Senate to censure Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for apologizing for slavery and supporting bigotry.
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In the US: call on Sinclair Broadcasting to fire Epshteyn.
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US citizens: Call on powerful Congresscritters to return large campaign donations from the military-industrial complex.
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Reparations for Slavery Are Not about Punishing Children for Parents' Sins.
I basically agree with the conclusion, but not with the whole of the argument he uses. The concept of "collective guilt" is misguided: we are not "guilty" in any sense of past crimes.
However, "guilt" is a red herring in this discussion, because responsibility is broader than guilt. Today's descendants of the victims of past systematic bigotry suffer damage today as a consequence, so society has the responsibility to make up for that — to cure the damage. You and I are not guilty of that past systematic bigotry, but the responsibility to cure the continuing damage falls on us.
Russia's "anti-extremism" law is being used to prosecute a feminist for a joke about beating up men.
Do-dirty is planning to jail a news editor based on unlikely tax evasion charges.
The charges are unlikely a priori because that's the sort of thing rich people do and expect to get away with; but investigative journalists would hardly take the risk of offering a valid excuse to prosecute them.
Hong Kong "democracy" is now only for supporters of Chinese power.
How anti-fascists in Heraklion, the capital of Crete, kicked out the fascist extremist party.
The US government should fund abortions.
You can't stop your taxes from being used to fund new nuclear weapons, or locking up refugee minors and using them as bait to find and deport their relatives. Does it make sense to treat abortion as if it were worse than those?
The Poland climate conference is supposed to work out detailed plans for curbing global heating, but the event not only faces opposition from planet-roaster states, the Polish government undermined it from the outset by allowing two coal companies an influential role.
More about the new corruption charges that Netanyahu faces.
Progressive legislators criticize the new NAFTA.
The Jim Hightower column I recently linked to was censored by the syndicate that normally distributes his columns. It seems that the hedge funds he rebuked own the newspapers that the syndicate distributes to, so it won't publish any criticism of them.
A racist British student beat up a Syrian refugee student, Jamal, out of hatred. This led to threats of violence against the perpetrator. So Jamal asked people not to resort to violence.
We now have proof that the bullshitter was under Putin's thumb.
It appears that he still is.
We must reject the "corporate feminism" that cites the success of some female CEOs as a distraction from justice and equality for women who are not executives of big companies.
Understanding the Psyche of Today's American Oligarchy through Magazine Ads (in The New Yorker).
The UK cancels citizens' citizenship without a trial, arbitrarily, citing a law with vague conditions. Nowadays it has a loophole so that it can leave the victim stateless. At least one victim was lured into making a trip to a country that handed him to the CIA.
Netanyahu faces corruption charges, unless his influence is enough to get them dropped.
Ariel Dorfman tells of when he stopped Bush I from getting the hotel room in Sydney that he wanted, by refusing to cede it to him. Though that was small payback for the cruel things that Bush I did to the US, and to Chile.
Leaving parts of society behind in poverty is not the work of a magical "invisible hand". It's the result of laws set up by plutocracy.
School systems should not waste money on armed guards -- they don't make students safer in school because school is generally the safest place they ever go.
Gazans call on people to pressure their governments to tell Israel to stop its crimes in Gaza.
A court has ordered the release of some Iraqis who were jailed for the sake of deportation that cannot be done.
They were jailed on the pretense that they would be deported, but it is impossible to deport them and the government knows that.
There have been tens of thousands of evictions in Spain this year. One woman jumped out the window rather than be evicted.
The wildfire that burned parts of Malibu (and lots more) seems to have started near where the Santa Susana Field Laboratory's experimental nuclear reactor was ruined by a nuclear accident. Some fallout may have been spread in the air.
Plutocratist Democrats propose to make the election of the Speaker of the House require Republican support. That shows whose side they are on.
They probably won't succeed in blocking the election of Pelosi, but Pelosi herself is too centrist to campaign against plutocracy.
Ireland is phasing out the practice of extracting peat and burning it, perhaps going no faster than the bogs are being exhausted. But the bogs that were already dried out and mined will continue spewing greenhouse gases unless they are filled with water again.
The French state's refusal to recognize race is intended to discourage racist politics. It has not been entirely successful.
This does not necessarily mean the policy is doing no good, or that it is clear how to do better.
What was touted as a "sharing economy" has evolved into a domain of quasi-monopolies which are now changing from platforms into owners of things for rent.
A drought in Afghanistan has cut "agricultural output" by about half. It is not clear what portion of that decrease is in food production and what part in opium, but there is a big shortage of food.
Both kinds of decrease cause instability, and any instability will be useful for the Taliban.
Mueller cancelled Manafort's plea bargain, saying that Manafort has given the FBI false testimony. Manafort will face prosecution.
This is a setback, because Manafort's testimony would have been helped to convict bigwigs including perhaps the cheater himself. Sentencing Manafort to start a long prison term soon is at best a consolation prize. And if the cheater pardons him, he may not spend much time in prison.
General Motors will fire 15% of its US workers and close factories, presumably to move production somewhere else.
This shows how foolish it is to try to keep jobs in the US by cutting taxes on business. We have cut those taxes drastically in the past 5 decades, and all it achieved was a lot more inequality.
Most Americans want the US to stop aiding Salafi America in bombarding and crushing Yemen. Sanders says he thinks the Senate can pass something to end US participation.
The bullshitter said that the US really really needs to sell arms to Salafi Arabia, but that was bullshit.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to protect the INF nuclear treaty and don't fund the weapons systems that would violate it.
To sign this without running nonfree software, use the Salsalabs method.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: Urge Bernie Sanders to run for president in 2020.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your legislators to protect abortion rights.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on companies to stop advertising in Sinclair Broadcast Group's TV channels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Thank your senators for voting to take the Yemen resolution out of committee (if they did so).
Jim Hightower: "Our right to a free press is meaningless if hedge funds can gobble up and gut the community newspapers that exercise it."
Whether to require back doors for the state in encryption has become one of the paramount political issues in Australia.
Alas, Labor's criticism of the law is based on secondary issues — that parties other than the state might break security using the back door — rather than mentioning that the goal itself is dangerous and unjust.
Look at how Australia has treated the refugees it has dumped into prison on Nauru and Manus. Look at the prosecution of the whistleblower who revealed that Australia was snooping on the diplomats of East Timor during a negotiation. One cannot presume that the Australian government will not act with cruelty and oppression.
Some day someone might find a way to reliably limit a back door to real state agencies. That will invalidate the secondary argument, but it won't make the spying requirement acceptable. If Australians want to defend their country's freedom in the long term, if they don't want their country to become like China, they must move beyond the weak argument about unintended consequences and focus on the injustice of the intended consequences.
Australians, why wait? Please spread the word.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with editing germlines.
The reason this method of genetic editing affects the germline is that it affects the whole body — which therefore includes the germline. It can be done early in development.
To cure genetic problems that result from genetically-guided incorrect fetal development can only be done in this way. Once you're going to do something so fundamental, there is no benefit in leaving the problem uncorrected in the germline, to spring up again in the next generation, even if that could be done.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the approach, but in the present state of inexperience, there are risks that things will go wrong. But I suspect that many of them could be avoided by aborting fetuses that are developing visibly wrong.
To be seen as making society safer and better, rather than as an occupying army, thug departments need to win the public's trust. The only way to do that is to behave in a way that earns that trust.
The gilets jaunes in France are denouncing more or less the same problem that the US suffers: life is getting harder for all but a wealthy fraction, because there are not enough good jobs.
I support them wholeheartedly, except for their demand for low prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.
The article about the danger of "counterfeit" goods makes false arguments.
The word "counterfeit" is sometimes used for inferior imitation products. But nowadays it is used also as propaganda by the copyright industry to smear copies it does not authorize. These copies are normally in no way inferior to the authorized copies, and often much, much better because they don't mistreat people as authorized copies do.
As for manufacture in sweatshops, we have no reason to suppose that the "real" products are not made that way. If we want to ensure that products are made by well-treated workers, trademark enforcement won't do the job; we need rather to establish laws to hold importers responsible for how suppliers in other countries treat their workers.
The Supreme Court will decide whether Apple's censorship power, imposed by limiting users of iThings to apps in Apple's store, violates US antitrust law.
US antitrust law is so narrow nowadays that a verdict in favor of Apple would signify nothing on the moral level. Apple's censorship is an injustice to the users. If it is not illegal now, we should make it illegal.
Some academics meet with real repression for expressing hated ideas. The journal for anonymous publication will serve a real purpose.
As the article shows, this danger is not limited to defense of Palestinians' rights.
There is a resemblance between protecting authors from death threats and denial of employment with the safe spaces that protect students from insults and attacks. However, when safe spaces are used to censor, they are not at all similar to this journal.
Portrait of a Planet on the Verge of Climate Catastrophe.
In occupied Palestine, hate crimes by Israelis against Palestinians are frequent. Here are typical examples.
It is silly to ask how to "pay for" the Green New Deal, since failing to implement it will cause so much damage that we can't afford not to do it.
The question, "How could we pay for Medicare for All," is foolish because it is based on a false assumption. The right question is, "How shall we use the $500 billion annual savings from Medicare for All?"
(satire) …member leaders at the G20 Summit attended the Saudi Crown Prince’s informative seminar Friday on eliminating dissident journalists.
The cheater planned in 2016 to bribe Putin by giving him the penthouse in the planned Moscow Trump Tower. If, that is, the concept of "bribe" is meaningful in the context of a kleptocracy where corruption is everywhere.
Sheryl Sandberg Asked Facebook Staff to Investigate George Soros' Finances.
Having seen that order could easily have led employees and contractors to choose him as a point of attack against the protest group.
Her order was in response to a speech by Soros, copied here.
I agree completely with his criticism of Facebook and Google, though he doesn't recognize some of their worst problems — collection of personal data, and nonfree software, and the concept that one of the main dangers of large companies is their political power.
Did Facebook manipulate its useds so that they would see and believe the smears against its critics?
Tesla cars in China report their location in real time. What about Tesla cars in the US?
All "connected" cars report their location because the "connection" works via a cellular modem. Every cell phone is tracked the same way, but you can turn off the phone (maybe), and you can certainly leave it home.
I think we need laws to require cars to have a way to turn off the car's "connection" at the physical level, a way that malicious software can't override.
St Louis protesters for Black Lives Matter are aware of what a lucky coincidence it was that thugs beating up protesters attacked an undercover thug who was infiltrating the protest. For once, thugs could not get away with impunity after maiming someone for pleasure.
We know it was for pleasure because of the text message one of the thugs sent, about how much fun it would be to attack protesters.
US citizens: phone your senators to urge them to vote for the resolution to cut off US support for Salafi Arabia's bombardment and invasion of Yemen.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democratic representatives to support establishing a Green New Deal committee.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Secretary of Labor Acosta to resign.
Also call on the House of Representatives to impeach him.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Prescription Drug Price Relief Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone Senator Schumer's office and call on him to choose someone other than planet roaster Manchin for the ranking Democrat in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
If you phone, please spread the word!
The marauder's men have authorized seismic exploration off the Atlantic coast. In the short term this can kill some of the endangered North Atlantic right whales.
In the longer term it creates the danger that oil will be extracted, and whatever doesn't spill and poison marine life will be burned and endanger all life.
Israel regularly invites US thugs for training. Now Americans in some places are objecting to this.
What would they learn from Israeli thugs? How to dehumanize?
Martin Luther King saw and reproved the elimination of programs to cut poverty, in favor of fighting the Vietnam War.
That war was based on lies about a fictitious attack by North Vietnam, lies which the US government has since admitted.
When will we have a Congress that has the courage to refuse to feed the military-industrial complex, and refuse to fight wars that don't have any justification? Pulling out of the war in Yemen would be a good start.
Progress is being made towards making meat without animals.
I expect it will be a lot more efficient than growing real animals, because only a small fraction of the animal is the meat that people want to eat.
Canada's supreme court ordered a reporter to hand over his notes from an interview with someone accused of being a member of PISSI.
Catching and stopping supporters of PISSI is important, but there were tens of thousands of them and surely still are thousands. Only a few of them could possibly be prosecuted by using reporters' notes, and that would not make much of a dent in PISSI. (Indeed, it required a war to achieve that.) So is it worth endangering the free press to build a case against one member of PISSI? Especially one who is reported to be dead?
I have to suspect that the state's purpose is precisely to intimidate journalists and their sources.
I wonder if journalists could entrust their notes to a sanctuary in another country which won't give them back the notes unless they show they are not threatened.
Queensland, the northernmost part of Australia, is encountering the worst wildfire situation ever. A few days ago, hundreds of wildfires were burning. And it is not even summer.
The company Patagonia will donate its windfall from the 2017 Republican tax attacks to environmental charities.
The bullshitter said he would cancel his meeting with Putin, but reportedly Putin ordered him to come to the meeting and he obeyed.
PFOA and PFOS — chemicals that are used in nonstick pans, waterproof products, and firefighting foam — reduce male fertility.
The study was done on men exposed to those chemicals through industrial pollution. Whether contact with consumer products could give people a big enough dose to have an effect is apparently not clear.
A moderate reduction of human fertility is a change for the better, for the next few decades, but since these chemicals never degrade they could accumulate ever-larger quantities.
Why No US Region Is Safe from [global heating].
"New Yorkers won't give up the fight to stop Amazon colonising our city."
How Wisconsin Republiars plan to change the election rules so as to maintain control of the state's supreme court, and thus preserve their gerrymander to maintain minority control of the state's legislature.
"We ban [marijuana] but let people eat as much meat as they want. That makes no sense."
Muhammed Fathi Abulkasem, a university student, visited Egypt and took photos out the window of his plane as it was landing. Some of the photos included a military helicopter at the airport. He now faces the insane charge of spying.
Anything that is exposed to the view of thousands of people is no secret.
(satire) … a Senate resolution to end the U.S. role in the war in Yemen was roundly rejected Thursday by House Raytheon executives.
It looks like Facebook is shutting down news and political pages, apparently based on their political orientations.
You can reduce Facebook's importance and power by using it as little as possible — ideally never. If you don't let Facebook decide what news you see, its political censorship won't affect you.
We can reduce Facebook's importance and power even more by campaigning against it and by not publishing through it. Don't depend for publishing your works on a company that calls your publications "content".
CNN fired commentator Mark Lamont Hill for speaking in favor of boycotting Israel for the sake of equal rights for Palestinians. This was described as "antisemitism".
His talk advocated a single state made up of what are now Israel and Palestine — a solution I do not support — and treats them unequally by calling that single state "Palestine". I don't like that position, but it is not antisemitic, because Israel and Jews are not the same.
I reject the claim that having two states is impossible, because the US has the power to pressure Israel quite firmly, and maybe it could bring about the return of the Palestinian land Israeli fanatics have colonized, if it tried. The US government is unwilling to try, but since it is unwilling to do anything towards any scheme for peace and equality between Israel and Palestine, that is no argument for preferring one such scheme to another. Following Uri Avnery, I advocate two states.
I am not dead-set on that solution. If Israelis and Palestinians come to support some other scheme for peace, then unless there is something gravely unjust about it, I will support giving it a try.
Some in San Francisco do not like the fact that the city's general hospital has been renamed after Zuckerberg, and one official has proposed to change the name back.
I think that the practice of naming institutions and buildings after donors is in general a form of decadence, regardless of who the donors are.
Whether the donors have a bad influence on the organization's activities is a different question: sometimes that happens, but not always. I don't think Zuckerberg's money would tend to corrupt the activity of a hospital — as far as I know, he has no special interests regarding hospitals. However, his money or Facebook's money might corrupt other kinds of organizations where they do have interests at stake.
The Gates Foundation's money has served to impose his policy ideas on education in the US.
Greta Thunberg explains her school strike and weekly protest to demand curbing global heating fast.
"Some say I should be in school. But why should any young person be made to study for a future when no one is doing enough to save that future? What is the point of learning facts when the most important facts given by the finest scientists are ignored by our politicians?"
China intimidates Uyghurs even outside China, through the threat to their relatives.
The way China treats non-Uyghur Chinese expats is similar, just not as brutal.
The European Union is planning to interrogate visa applicants in extremely intrusive ways, which will involve a special "lie detector" app.
Whether the app is reliable in telling truth from lies is not clear. However, from the article it is almost certain that the app is nonfree software, and that in itself is an injustice, before you even get to the moral issues of what it does.
It is useful for the progressive movement to ally with the forms of Christianity that promote equality and helping the poor.
The power of large corporations — effectively, intelligent machines whose components are human — illustrates the danger of rule by AIs.
A corporation is fundamentally similar to a heartless AI that doesn't care about people.
US private immigration prison companies hire asylum seekers for a pittance. They effectively compel the asylum seekers to work for a pittance by denying them essentials such as toothpaste. Now they are being sued for this.
The claim that someone agreed to work for less than the minimum wage is no excuse for failing to pay the minimum wage.
Yet another threat to abortion rights: exploiting an accident that spoiled frozen ova and embryos to try to claim that each of them was a "death."
The just way to handle these accidents is to treat the eggs and embryos as property with special sentimental value.
The dirty history of businesses playing cities and states for bigger tax breaks.
The solutions proposed here would be useful, but don't forget my proposal for the states to form a union to stop this.
Use of AI to analyze voice as a "lie detector", whether it really works or not, could be used for aiwashing racist bias.
The concept of "identity theft" was made up by banks so as to make you responsible for the loss, when someone else defrauds the bank.
A woman is suing the NHS for not telling her that her father had Huntington's disease (a genetic disease). If she had known earlier, she could have ensured, when conceiving a child, that the child did not have the disease.
Tories have been connected with Definers, the company that "defended" Facebook through associating an organization that criticizes it with Soros.
Michigan's Republicans, defeated in the election, are planning to pass a law to hide the names of large donors to political organizations that support specific candidates but are not part of their campaigns.
Calling on New York University to threaten to end its support for the UAE, which includes a branch campus there.
Amazon warehouse workers went on strike in Europe on Friday.
Charts show how badly global heating will hit the US in this century.
Some new CPAP machines track users' sleep every night, and transmit the information directly to the manufacturer.
The article does not say how they transmit it, but if it is done with a cellular modem, that also tracks where they sleep.
This is the sort of "feature" that should be illegal.
Many successful progressive candidates this year refused campaign funds from business, but the businesses are not licked yet. They are scrambling to maintain their power in Washington, and they have plenty of money to do it with.
A satirical fake news site publishes incredible whoppers as a trap for credulous right-wingers. The idea is to tell them afterward that they should learn not to believe everything they read.
It would be a great hack, except for the fact that some credulous right-wingers continue to believe the stories even after the site says they were false.
In the UK it is possible to pay your way through college by working full time in a supermarket at the same time.
It should not be necessary for people to do this. But I think it is not even possible to do this in the US — college is too expensive.
Alexa presents itself to users as a servant, but it is a corrupt servant that takes kickbacks. Here is how Amazon controls which products it will offer to customers.
Amazon already has too much power over the marketplace. For the sake of preserving competition, systems like Alexa should be prohibited by law. Of course, that is not to mention all the other injustices of Amazon and of this product.
Note how the article starts with propaganda in favor of such products.
"Black Friday" is blackest for the low-paid workers in the stores.
"Cyber Monday" is a campaign to kill local retail stores and eliminate jobs. If you care about your town, buy from local stores. And pay cash, so no database knows what you bought.
I have never had anything to do with either of them. Decades ago I opted out of celebrating retail-promotion holidays which now include Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, Halloween, and probably others coming in the next few years.
It makes me sad to read about the people who are so poor they can barely pay for their necessities, and yet load themselves down with buying gifts that they can't afford. However, I don't respond with the intended reaction — "The worst thing is that he can't even afford to buy some toys for children in the family." Instead, I want to tell them, "Forget the toys! Buy the food and the medicine you need!"
The EU's required automated copyright censorship regime would do nothing to pay artists more (and not much even to pay publishers more, not that we should care). The effective way to pay artists more is with a mandatory payment to the artist for commercial redistribution.
The law would need to be carefully designed so that the publishers could not take these payments away from the artists through some nasty contracts. It should be a crime for the publisher to ask how much of these payments some artist receives.
An MD argues for Medicare for All, and refutes plutocratist objections.
Almost half of Americans that have medical insurance now find that its deductibles cost so much that they can't get much benefit from it. Medicare for All would fix that.
US citizens: support the People's Demands for Climate Justice.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Residents of New York City: call on your city council representative to support the law requiring retail businesses to accept payment in cash.
I suggest stating that this is not only for the sake of poor people who don't or can't have bank payment cards, but also for the sake of people that don't want their purchases to be put in a data base. I hope you're one of them — if not, you can learn to be one.
The Hindu-nationalists are using their political power to fill India's school textbooks with bogus history and adulation of ancient Hindu rulers and modern Hindu religious extremists.
Some of them also praise fascism and Hitler.
Proposal: Make Amazon permit unionization as a condition for getting its proposed New York City campus.
I am not sure whether this is better than just saying no. There are advantages to each one.
Judging by his enemies, George Soros seems to be rather admirable. Erdoğan is the latest authoritarian ruler to force his organizations out.
Whitaker, proposed by the bully for acting attorney general, is a fanatical Christian, even more hostile toward abortion rights than Sessions.
Some rarely mentioned issues that increase inequality and suffering in the US.
A student housing project in Stuttgart was built by student residents, and the current residents continue to maintain it and change it.
France is fining cruise ship captains and owners for using fuel that makes excessive air pollution.
Protests that block roads can wake people up, but launching an adequate effort to curb global heating requires winning the state's backing.
The UAE has pardoned Matthew Hedges.
This does not alter the basic situation of that country, which remains equally repressive. The universities that have established branches in the UAE should pull back from them.
Dissidents and artists in repressive postcolonial countries face a dilemma: stay home and face repression, or seek safety in some former colonial power which respects human rights more, but be interpreted as an excuse for past colonialism.
National Public Radio rewarded Amazon's funding with a one-sided paean to Amazon's convenience and advanced methods, saying nothing about the injustices it does.
Is it a good thing if the state can grab your car by remote control if stolen? It might be dangerous.
Saboteur Carson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is doing quiet sabotage by letting the number of inspectors dwindle, which means that public housing gradually becomes degraded and unsafe.
The idea of "repatriating" artistic treasures taken by imperial powers sometimes involves simplifying history, focusing on only one injustice out of a history of many such.
Projecting modern standards of right and wrong back into the past is often misguided and simplistic. The principle that nations shouldn't try to defeat other nations and take their land is a modern advance in morality. We should campaign to uphold that principle against nations that violate it today.
In the past, though, just about every nation got its land by taking it from some other nation. Empires were generally created by subjugating other nations, and that surely includes Benin. That was not merely common practice, it was also considered acceptable. If we were to judge their past conduct by modern standards, we would condemn almost every nation.
Many US hispanics whose ancestors included Jews expelled from Spain are now seeking Spanish citizenship.
The state of human rights in Spain is not all that good, but the danger of getting much worse seems greater in the US.
Many UK universities have a big financial relationship with the fossil fuel companies. Imperial University held a "green innovation fair", but when students protested there against the university's legitimization of fossil fuel companies, "security" forced them to stop.
I occasionally hand out such leaflets at MIT, usually about massive surveillance and the danger of supposedly autonomous cars.
Birmingham University (in the UK) has set up a branch in Dubai. The teachers have voted not to do any work or provide any support for that branch.
A correspondent on CBC radio asked, on the air, why a public radio channel promotes Facebook instead of promoting democracy.
Some of the French protesters have turned to violence. In an interesting reversal, the state blames the violence on some right-wing infiltrators and defends the legitimacy of the rest.
A potential legal disaster has been avoided: the EU has decided that the taste of a food cannot be copyrighted.
The Swedish Green Party has introduced many programs to curb global heating, including some at the EU level.
When the NRA says, "a good guy with a gun," it really means "a white guy with a gun." In a mall near Birmingham, Alabama, a man started shooting people; a black man with a gun chased him. Some thugs appeared and shot the latter man dead, then asserted he was the shooter.
In the US, the right to carry a gun applies only to whites, since blacks know they are likely to be killed just for having a legal gun.
The US government threatens to arrest anyone that supervises a self-injection room. California's government didn't have the gumption to go against this.
The extent of the danger of opioid use is not due only to Purdue Pharma. These policies contribute to it too.
Prestigious universities have large investments in fossil fuel companies. They ought to divest.
Brazil Records Worst Annual Deforestation for a Decade. And Bolsonaro has stated he wants even more.
Some airlines intentionally separate passengers of the same family unless they pay extra.
The Texas Board of Education has admitted that the US Civil War was about slavery.
Australia should not allow oil drilling off its south coast, which is full of unique species. An oil spill there could cause tens of billions of dollars worth of damages, not counting extinctions.
PETA is trying to pressure and bribe the town of Wool to rename itself to "Vegan Wool".
I would oppose renaming my city to endorse any political cause, even if I support that cause myself. I think that would be almost as bad as naming stadiums after businesses.
The incoming House Democrats plan to investigate the bully's ties with Salafi Arabia, and how his whitewashing of the acting king for assassinating Jamal Khashoggi relates to them.
The US national climate assessment says that global heating effects will soon cause "substantial damages" to many regions of the US. The scientists whose work is reported say that the government weakened their conclusions and then tried to avoid attention to it.
California has narrowed its "felony murder" law, which is used to convict people of murders that they did not plan, anticipate, or help commit. Hundreds of people may be freed from prison.
Comparing smuggling arms to Iran to selling arms to Salafi Arabia.
Iran is not involved in any aerial warfare, so its combat aircraft are not likely to be fighting in the near future unless the bully launches an attack.
Amazon warehouse workers are on strike in several European countries, condemning dangerous working conditions as well as low pay.
The road-blocking protests in France now aim at inequality and plutocracy rather than just increasing the gasoline tax.
I am happy to see this change, from a shortsighted and mistaken cause to a valid cause.
Taxing fossil fuels more is vitally necessary. We desperately need to reduce the use of them, and only taxing them can put the market to work on doing so. However, plutocracy and inequality are unjust, and not necessary for any valid reason.
Tory welfare cuts are driving many destitute people to consider suicide.
David Haigh was tortured in prison in the UAE (Dubai), and says that public condemnation and pressure is the only way to get prisoners out. He urges people to avoid going there, and other forms of international pressure.
The UAE might be thinking of pardoning him, in response to the pressure.
Matthew Hedges, the recently imprisoned "spy", was reportedly researching "Emirate tribal structures and their views on the war in Yemen". The idea that people's views on issues are secret, and that researching them constitutes spying, makes sense only if repression is taken for granted as a premise.
Michael Segalov, a UK journalist, was ordered by thugs not to attend the 2017 Labour Party conference. They refused to give any grounds for this.
He sued, and proved that the decision by the thug department was based partly on false information. Before the trial, given no grounds, Segalov had no chance to demonstrate that the grounds were false.
Worse, the decision was based on equating "participation in a protest" with "threat of terrorism".
The UK thugs have a long history of interfering with the Labour Party, and of labeling peaceful leftist protesters as dangerous criminals.
Some authors will boycott the Dubai book festival.
Even when there is nothing specific to boycott, you'd be wise not to go to Dubai or any part of the UAE.
The Arctic has heated up so much that there is still little sea ice in some regions. Species that depend on it, such as polar bears, could be wiped out locally this year.
It had to happen someday: animal rights advocates call it "barbaric" to use tame falcons to chase away some of the excess of starlings that migrate through Rome. There are other places in Italy where they could stop.
What about all the wild falcons — what are they supposed to do? Not to mention lions and wolves.
The Chinese Export We Really Should Be Worried About: Repression.
Brazil may not be able to replace the Cuban doctors that Bolsonaro is now ousting. However, I don't think he will be disappointed that poor and indigenous people won't get medical care.
The Joy of Missing Out on commercial sales holidays.
Geoengineering to cool the Earth might be doable for 2 billion dollars per year. It would delay global heating disaster, perhaps long enough to take other permanent measures.
It would not stop ocean acidification, which threatens to wipe out all coral and molluscs and make some species act in crazy, dangerous ways.
It would also not stop the increased CO2 from making many food plants produce less protein.
All in all, it would be better to push renewables and electric storage.
A government agency in Australia recovered a million dollars in stolen wages for farm workers.
Since these crimes are committed by the stronger against the weaker, we can expect conscience to play little role in dissuading them. The penalties for such cheating need to be enough that the farm companies won't risk trying it.
A Chinese writer was sentenced to 10 years in prison for publishing a novel about a homosexual relationship.
Air Pollution Cuts Global Average Lifespan by Nearly Two Years.
Former Staffers Say FCC May Be Hiding Data Showing Broadband Industry Problems. (More precisely, not providing the speeds they claim to provide.)
The International Maritime Organization has been operating in secret to hamper efforts to reduce shipping's contribution to global heating.
The bullshitter sent 6,000 US troops to the border with Mexico as an election stunt. Supposedly they were to block the caravan of Central American migrants. But he knows that idea never made any sense, so he is sending them back to base now even though the caravan is still in Mexico.
I've read that some members of the caravan are in Tijuana, right near the California border. But that is not where the soldiers were sent.
"I was arrested at a climate change protest –- it was worth it."
Leaked: the secret PR and lobbying plan of private medical insurance to defeat Medicare for All.
Ivanka Trump used a personal email account for official business.
This actually doesn't matter. It also didn't actually matter that Hillary Clinton did the same thing.
Indonesia: Dead Whale Had 1,000 Pieces of Plastic in Stomach.
A court blocked the bully's order to refuse asylum to border-crossers. The law says the opposite.
Interpol did not learn a lesson from having a Chinese official as its chief. It is now considering a Russian who has previously tried to use Interpol for Russian trickery.
This would "put the assassin in charge of the murder investigation."
E-cigarettes have a good effect (helping people avoid the harm of smoking tobacco) and a bad effect (getting some people addicted to nicotine). Are we weighing the good against the bad carefully?
Stacey Abrams, defeated by Kemp in an election he personally rigged, refused to endorse the procedure as legitimate.
Bravo!
When charitable organizations mimic corporations, they stop fighting for the people they are meant to help, and become soulless.
US citizens: Call on House Democrats to take the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge.
Democrats must stand up to planet-roaster businesses by rejecting their financial support.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Congress to reject white nationalism.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call your Democratic congresscritter — more precisely, whoever has been elected as your congresscritter for 2019 — and call for supporting Barbara Lee for head of the House Democratic Caucus.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Alas, that is the only special position in the House that is being contested in this way. For the others, we have to hope that the occupants feel pressure to act more progressive.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Leftists have a tendency to tell working people what they ought to want.
The article's accusation against cultural elites is somewhat misguided. The people who decide what ideas get expressed on TV are not the "cultural" elite, and not leftist. They are in the advertising department, and they are right-wing.
Sex workers in India face the threat of being "rescued" by kidnaping and then "rehabilitated" through slave labor while held incommunicado in a place that is not officially a prison.
Including flowering crops in most farms could help save bees.
However, we would need to avoid the pesticides that kill bees.
Curatorial journalism collects and correlates thousands of stories, published across many years, to establish the facts of a complex series of events such as the Trump-Russia relationship.
Ugandan Courts Hold Special Sessions to Clear Backlog of Sexual Violence Cases.
The Famine Facing Yemen Is a War Crime — It Must Be Investigated.
A group of right-wing Jews operates a web site that doxes and criticizes people for either (1) antisemitism or (2) defending Palestinians' rights, and equates both of them with each other and with terrorism. Americans listed there have lost their jobs and been questioned by FBI agents.
Just Being Anti-Trump 'Not Good Enough': Sanders Urges Democrats in New Congress to Embrace This Detailed Progressive Agenda.
A Corbynite explains her support for leaving the EU: to escape its plutocratism.
Prosecution of Julian Assange, America's Betrayal of Its Own Ideals.
Comey demands that his testimony to the House of Representatives be public so that the Republicans can't lie about it.
It is possible in principle that this would have the side effect of blocking questioning about secrets. But I don't know whether that is really a factor for this issue.
Why do 1/4 of British children and adolescents have a mental health problem?
There are several causes, but some of them are dooH niboR's work. Poverty causes stress for the parents and the children.
Speculation about how Matthew Hedges' PhD research could have led the repressive UAE to want to imprison him.
Salafi Arabia is citing the bullshitter to pretend that the acting king didn't plan Khashoggi's murder.
If this conspiracy of bullshit succeeds, it will show that countries can get away with assassination, as well as mass murder, with the support of the US.
Australia proposes to imitate the UK's loophole that permits taking away citizenship even when it might make someone stateless.
This is not a far-fetched concern.
Many US cities track everyone's cars with cameras on the street, and distribute data on everyone's movements. The EFF and Muckrock dug up and published data on the policies of 200 cities.
Biodiversity experts say mass extinction of wildlife is as big a danger as climate change.
The pressure for converting wild habitat into farms dwarfs all the effort for preserving wild habitat. Some of this pressure comes from desire for goods such as beef, but that pressure comes from hundreds of millions of people, not from the rich few. Some of it comes from the desire for subsistence of billions of poor people.
To reduce this, we must reduce the birth rate -- something the article doesn't mention.
The Other Victims of California’s Fires: Workers Inhaling Toxic Fumes.
A US charity campaign provides lawyers to people facing threat of deportation.
As Brisbane places boulders to stop homeless people from sleeping under a bridge, why shouldn't they break open unused government buildings to sleep there?
(satire) Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the decision Thursday to implement a new one-Uighur policy.
Kemp's voter suppression succeeded in taking the governorship of Georgia.
The denialist's war on science, and how Congress can fight back.
Do we want poor Americans to get less fire protection than rich Americans? It's moving that way.
The US should make sure fire protection does not change from a public service that protects everyone into a paid service that protects mainly the rich.
Since Apple dodges taxes and rakes in far more money than it can see a way to invest, it manipulates its stock price through "buybacks".
Democrats Say Their First Bill Will Focus On Strengthening Democracy: automatic voter registration, strengthen the Voting Rights Act, limit partisan redistricting and tighten campaign finance laws.
On this one issue, Pelosi is on the right side. However, that is not the case for many other issues, so I still support replacing her with someone more progressive.
South Korea and North Korea are steadily taking many small steps in the direction of peace.
The Department of "Defense" has tried to audit its accounts.
Even though the audit did not come clean, trying it is the first step towards reaching that goal.
Suggesting how progressives can work to overcome Rep. Pelosi's center-right policies, such as spending even more money on the military and rejecting Medicare for all.
Amazon's NYC swindle includes gobbling the space planned for 1500 units of public housing.
Arkansas has kicked 12,000 people out of Medicaid, using their unemployment as an excuse.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Thomas Farr as a judge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to block and resist Andrew Wheeler as EPA administrator.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Some "insurance" companies charge patients a lot more for CPAP machines and supplies than the machines and supplies actually cost.
I suspect that these "insurance" companies are the ones that employers use to provide coverage to their employees.
A national health system would put an end to these swindles.
In between all the lies, the bully has occasionally told the truth in ways that centrist politicians wouldn't have dared.
Unfortunately, given his tendency to be totally inconsistent, the fact that he admits these forbidden truths once in a while gives us no basis to expect him to do anything good about them.
The US has still not reunited all the minors (including some young children) that it took away from their parents.
The bully's policy of deporting relatives that offer to sponsor these minors has resulted in their being stuck in prison long-term.
Richard Ojeda says he firmly supports abortion rights, and that he calls himself "pro-life" because he wants to make reliable contraception available to all women so that they won't need abortions often.
He wants to take the term "pro-life" away from the campaign against abortion rights.
I can support his views on this issue. However, my choice for president is still Bernie Sanders, partly because I expect him to stand for similar policies about abortion and contraception.
As Critics Obsess Over Her Finances, Ocasio-Cortez Urges Media to Focus on Issue 'Actually Worth Airtime': Low-Wage Jobs.
Bravo!
British universities need to break off ties with their branches in the UAE, which is not a safe place to do research in.
I feel that the very idea of opening a branch of a prestigious university in another country (or even a distant city) is misguided. A university should be independent; we should not have conglomerates of universities.
A federal court ruled that the US government has no say over female genital mutilation. Under the constitution, only the states can legislate about that.
I would like FGM to be prohibited, but I am not unhappy to see the power of the federal government limited.
At the G20 meeting, political leaders will have to decide whether to be seen associating with Salafi Arabia's acting king despite all those he has killed.
"The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5m years ago, when the temperature was 2-3C warmer and sea level was 10-20 metres higher than now.”
Thugs can punish people in and out of prison based on arbitrarily designated "symbols" that are supposed to indicate membership in a gang.
Maybe some of the people associated with these symbols are gang members, but others are not. Guilt by association is an injustice.
Prisoners get put in solitary confinement for years based on similarly sketchy accusations.
2/3 of Americans now support legalization of marijuana. Even a majority of Republicans support it. Congress, how about legalizing it?
An anonymous insider source reports that the bully wanted to prosecute Clinton and Comey. He was told he could not give the Justice Department such an order.
Now that the Democrats control the House of Representatives, will they accept leaders that support the War Lobby?
Chicago thugs tortured Gerald Reed with no subtlety at all, leaving clear proof of what they had done, but his false confession led to his conviction for murder and he has been in prison for 28 years. Now he may get a new trial.
Save the Children estimates that 85,000 children under 5 years old have died of starvation in Yemen due to the civil war.
The "barriers to importing and distributing supplies" are mainly imposed by Salafi Arabia (with backing from the US and other countries).
Arkansas's new scheme to deny people Medicaid if they are not employed was not explained clearly to Adrian McGonigal, so he lost first his Medicaid coverage and then his job.
I have a sinking feeling that this system also requires people to run nonfree software to report their work hours.
Julian Assange Deserves a Medal of Freedom, Not a Secret Indictment.
A proposed Amazon protected zone from the Andes to the Atlantic may be killed by right-wing rulers of Colombia and Brazil.
Dubai sentenced Matthew Hedges to life in prison after a bad joke of a trial.
Denial of the murder of 6 million Jews has changed the same way other right-wing activity has changed: instead of trying to seriously convince people there was no holocaust, they mock the question: "What is truth?"
Asia Bibi Family Being Hunted 'House to House' in Pakistan.
The most horrible aspect is that the court might "reconsider" and decide to execute her after all.
It may well be best for the UK not to say whether it has offered her asylum — especially if it has done so. Her whole family may need a new identity, keeping secret which country they have actually gone to.
Some companies are dropping their mandatory arbitration requirements for sexual harassment claims.
That's a step forward, but what about all the other kinds of issues? Pressuring workers go to an arbitrator (that generally favors the employer) to defend their rights is a way of weakening those rights.
It should be illegal for companies to make agreements by which workers are required to use arbitration instead of a court for any kind of issue whatsoever.
It's no longer just children who are being kept too dependent. No longer just adolescents. Now universities are doing it, too.
Gilded Giving: How Philanthropy Dominated by Super-Rich Threatens Democracy.
US medical professionals are now organizing for gun control in defiance of a contemptuous statement by the NRA.
US "big box" stores have found a legal argument that works in some states to slash their property taxes. Where they succeed, they could force towns into bankruptcy, or into raising the taxes of everyone else, which would ruin them.
Who wins in court based on current tax laws does not in any sense determine what the right outcome is. The right outcome is to make large and successful companies pay high taxes.
The world's pharma industry is failing to develop treatments for diseases listed as high priority.
Developing a treatment for a disease is not a routine job like digging a ditch: you can't just allocated a certain amount of money and expect a treatment in N years. But if you don't put in the necessary effort, you predictably won't advance.
I think the root of the problem is depending on those businesses too much for the research. We need to increase taxes on those that have money, so that we will have money to spend on all the things that society needs.
The cheater will have every incentive, in December, to start either a constitutional crisis or a war.
The bullshitter has imposed rules of "decorum" on his "press conferences" to make sure they will never serve the purpose of real press conferences.
It is impossible to force the president (or anyone) to engage with the press. But since he doesn't want to, the press should stop going uselessly through the motions, stop supporting the pretense that they are real press conferences. Cover something else, something that matters.
Companies have found gamification an effective method of making workers work harder. Lyft manipulates drivers with the same techniques used to make slot machines addictive.
Gamification is effective partly because the workers enjoy playing the game. Also partly because it leads them to compete with other workers, and regard them as the problem, rather than to unite with them to demand that the company treat them all better,
If something is "personalized for you" by a company, that means it is harming you.
Hacking the DRM in CPAP machines saves lives.
The Republiar Party in California is crippled, perhaps permanently. It has become regarded as the white supremacist party.
The bully's officials discussed plans to use the citizenship question by giving the answers to deportation thugs.
Thus, we know that the danger of forcing people to identify themselves for deportation was not merely a possible side effect — it was the purpose.
Sanders and Ro Khanna have proposed a bill to bring in drugs from foreign countries when US pharma companies gouge patients.
A national health service would really fix this problem, by negotiating a quantity price for all patients.
The US military is no longer focusing mentally on counterinsurgency wars, in which it could always avoid defeat though perhaps never win. Now it imagines large armed interventions in any spot on the globe. These could lead to a defeat, or even to a nuclear war.
Israel has taken and concealed Palestinian books, documents, photographs and films, starting in the 1930s.
(satire) members of the House Republican caucus introduced a bill Tuesday containing open-ended language that would criminalize whatever it is black people are up to right now.
Israeli troops have overtly invaded Gaza 70 times this year.
Palestinians put up a billboard near Boston honoring the medics in Gaza that treated wounded protesters. Supporters of the Israeli occupation launched an intimidation campaign, calling that billboard "antisemitic", and bullied the billboard company into taking it down.
The US wants to retaliate against Palestine for joining various international organizations for international cooperation.
The usual right of military self-defense does not apply to soldiers involved in military occupation of another country. This includes Israeli troops in Palestine, whether Gaza or the West Bank.
The Annual Digest and Reports of Public International Law Cases 1948 states: “Under International Law, as in Domestic Law, there can be no reprisal against reprisal. The assassin who is being repulsed by his intended victim may not slay him and then, in turn, plead self-defense.
Architects won a prize for the design of a school by being willing to listen to what the students wanted.
The womens' rights activists imprisoned in May in Salafi Arabia have been tortured in prison.
The Republiar National Committee and campaign funds of Republiar politicians are giving money to the cheater's businesses. It added up to 4 million dollars this year.
I wonder whether this business from candidates' campaigns correlates with campaign support from the cheater for those candidates. I don't know the facts, but if he did that, it would mean that they are buying his support.
Republiars are fighting against a bill to reduce sentences for those convicted of nonviolent drug offences, by pretending that they are muggers.
Democrats may investigate Ivanka's emails, to see if she committed crimes or violations as Clinton did not.
The bullshitters' supporters will probably not care. They have rejected the idea of objective standards that should apply the same to everyone.
Self-injection rooms in many European countries have eliminated the danger of death from overdose.
Every country should do this, including the US. To look at the problem of addiction as a "war" systematically causes casualties.
Most of the indigenous inhabitants of West Papua braved repression to sign a petition for international support to end Indonesia's colonial rule.
Norway's oil company, formerly Statoil, plans to invest in forests to preserve as an excuse to keep extracting oil and gas.
The CEO of Twitter posed with a sign that said, "Smash Brahminical patriarchy", then was attacked by supporters of brahminical patriarchy who accused that of being incitement to violence.
The accusation is a typical right-wing 180-degree distortion attack. "Smashing" a system does not mean attacking people (though I would have chosen a word less harsh in tone). The real violence is carried out by right-wingers, in India as in the US.
Caste bigotry and gender bigotry are both unjust, and I expect that in India they work together.
The Food and Drug Administration has been captured by the drug companies it is supposed to protect the public from, as a result of depending on them for its funds.
The safe and ethical way to use their money to support government activities is to tax their income.
[US] Parents Deliver Ashes of Diabetic Children to Price-Gouging Insulin Manufacturer.
The high price of insulin is due to badly designed government policies towards the drug industry, together with the loss of its ethic of service to humanity, which I suspect a general increase in the level of greed that businesses in general think is acceptable.
Habitual use of a navigation system makes people less capable of finding their way without it.
The US offers a kind of visa for foreigners who carry out acts of public service, but the bully has found a way to terrify them from applying.
WeChat censors news and discussion about China, even outside China.
Short-sighted French drivers protest the slowly increasing tax on gasoline and diesel fuel.
Will they be glad to pay the cost of hundreds of seawalls to protect cities from inundation? Will they be glad to compensate vineyards when their climate is no longer good for making wine?
The UN special rapporteur on poverty says that the UK government has inflicted avoidable "great misery" by ideological preference.
He made a thorough study, and exposed the fundamental cruelty of Tory policies.
A new drug is making it possible to eradicate sleeping sickness, if doctors can overcome the superstition that it is a curse placed through witchcraft.
This superstition is widespread in Africa, and people are frequently chased away from home, or killed, based on these irrational accusations.
Australia might require some web sites to retain users' IP addresses, location data, etc.
Over 600 people are missing in Northern California, perhaps killed by the fire.
Damascus Journalist Has a Million Stories but None She Can Safely Report.
California prisoners are fighting wildfires for wages of $1.45 per day.
Low wages for prisoners drive down wages for everyone else.
The UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic is unable to cope with the violence there.
China, Russia and Canada follow policies that (if applied globally) would lead to 5C of global heating. The US and Australia are not much better.
The Salafi Arabian monarchy has officially declared the acting monarch innocent of murdering Jamal Khashoggi.
A right-wing hawkish Democrat is likely to become head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The fire in Northern California may have been caused by a faulty transmission line that the electric company was trying to repair as soon as it could get permission to enter the private land where the problem had occurred.
It appears that PG&E was not ignoring the problem. I suspect it was following its established procedures for dealing with such problems, in accord with the facts it had at the time. Perhaps those procedures need to be updated, due to global heating, to treat all transmission-line problems more urgently. But all this doesn't necessarily mean negligence.
The name "camp fire" seems silly, and there seems to be no particular sense in it, so I would rather not use it.
Yes, Yes, Yes: Why Female Pleasure Must Be at the Heart of Sex Education.
This aligns with what I have said: young humans, when they become interested in sex, are entitled to opportunities to learn how to make love well -- how please their lovers and how to tell their lovers how to please them.
'Stop Walmart Act': Sanders-Khanna Bill Would Outlaw Stock Buybacks for Corporate Giants That Don't Pay $15 an Hour.
Representatives of students of the Schola Europaea schools called on the UN to "stop withholding the science facts about global collapse, or nothing will be done to stop it."
One reason the Democratic Party won the House of Representatives is that it took advantage of electoral districts that were drawn up in non-partisan ways.
Ralph Nader: how right-wingers tarnish the words that we use to describe progressive views.
I should point out that around 1970, an increasing number of the politicians who did not hesitate to call themselves Liberals did oppose the Vietnam war. The reason many Democratic politicians today support militarism is the same as the reason they support the big banks: they are center-right servants of big business.
Misguided government spending on corporate welfare to win jobs away from other cities and states has tripled since 1990. It directly undercuts the state's proper missions.
I would not, however, say that the competition was a "charade" -- a no-op. I suspect it won Amazon a bigger subsidy, compared with what it could have got from the same places without the competition.
The total annual expenditures sometimes reach 90 billion dollars.
US citizens: call on Congress not to take away reservation land for fossil fuel extraction.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Tell the new Congress to Stand up for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Smoke from the California wildfires has exposed millions of people to extremely high levels of particulate pollution, which can make them sick now and even make them susceptible to asthma for the rest of their lives.
The head of the World Food Program implored Congress to stop the war in Yemen.
Tens of thousands of UK workers are restricted in going to the toilet or have no toilet available.
I would expect, a priori, that it is worse in the US; does anyone know?
China is slowly but steadily expanding its sphere of dominion in the Pacific.
Airbnb will stop listing apartments in Israel's colonies in Palestine's West Bank.
I appreciate this decision, but there are several reasons not to do business with Airbnb and this doesn't cancel them.
The bully shows characteristics of the authoritarian rulers he praises.
His supporters fit the profile of "authoritarian followers".
At the APEC summit, US Vice President Pence warned that China's Belt and Road infrastructure programme consists of "opaque" loans with strings attached, and can lead to "staggering debt".
I am ready to believe that is true, because it's much like the situation with the loans offered by western countries and institutions, including the US and the World Bank.
In addition, there is specific evidence: Maldives' New President Warns Treasury 'Looted' During China-led Boom.
We need to set up a way for poor countries with unsustainable debt to renounce debt that was contracted by corrupt dictators. Then banksters would be less eager to lend to corrupt dictators, and they won't find it so easy to stay in power.
"Flying fists and pelted bottles — warring politicians shock Sri Lanka."
The article suggests that the fighting in Parliament was planned in advance by Rajapaksa's supporters. If so, it fits with what he did when he was president.
An Australian state is considering making it a crime to kill or harm a fetus in the process of committing some other crime.
Experience in other countries shows that laws criminalizing harm to a fetus threaten women who have abortions, and even women who have miscarriages.
Meanwhile, in the other cases for which it is supposedly intended, it would make the penalty for any given crime unpredictable. That only makes justice less effective.
It could be reasonable to make it a crime to intentionally cause a fetus to be born with damage, or to intentionally commit certain acts of violence which are likely to cause a fetus to be born with damage. However, I doubt such things happen often enough to be worth legislating against.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg champions the profit and growth of Facebook, like plenty of other executives, but because she is a woman many feminists call her success an advance for society.
I was never in danger of thinking so, because as far as I'm concerned anything good for Facebook is by default bad for society.
More generally, though, I don't particularly cheer the fact that the small number of executives of big companies includes some women. That has little to do with the well-being of non-rich people of any gender. I think equality for women is a matter of how the majority of women are treated at work; for instance, the tens or hundreds of millions that are paid less than men in low-paid jobs.
Let us not be distracted from that by the gender of this or that executive.
DRM in the kitchen won't stop with Keurig coffee machines. Here's what it will look like when the same oppressive policies are extended to dishwashers.
In this article, the hypothetical company uses the term "intellectual property" which appears to refer to some specific aspect of law. It doesn't — it is a bogus concept, used to keep people unclear what law might actually be pertinent.
Why progressives must aim to increase the size of the Supreme Court in 2021.
The only standard by which Merrick Garland would have been good to have on the Supreme Court is by comparison with Gorsuch. He was a center-right choice from a center-right president.
Many US human rights organizations are advocating the "Public Interest Privacy Principles", which seem intended to follow the GDPR.
It follows the example of Europe's GDPR, which means it would be somewhat of an improvement, but with gaping flaws:
Evidence has leaked that the US plans to prosecute Julian Assange over more than one set of charges.
The new set of charges might be for publishing secret documents, which would be the bully's worst attack ever on the freedom to investigate government wrongdoing.
If these charges are recent, it is pretty certain that other charges were filed during Obama's presidency. If those were not about publishing secret documents, they must have been about something else.
Keep in mind that the DNC documents that Wikileaks revealed in 2016 showed that the DNC had corruptly and secretly acted to stop Sanders from winning the nomination. By favoring the center-right candidate Clinton, instead of being neutral as they should have been, they brought about (though not intentionally) the victory of the bully.
Extinction Rebellion protests are breaking out in the UK and spreading to Ireland and the US.
The approach of "don't scare people too much" has been tried for a many years, but it depended on politicians to be sensible. It couldn't overcome the fossil fuel money that was paying them to deny the problem. It has clearly failed; it is time for young people to say, "Don't you know you are killing us? And destroying civilization? And wiping out half the species on Earth?"
Canadian Literary Prize Suspended after Finalists Object to Amazon Sponsorship.
They recognized the wrong in a practice that so many people's brains are too numb to notice.
Surveillance Kills Freedom By Killing Experimentation. Any repressive practice gets potentiated by it.
Yet Another GDPR Disaster: Journalists Ordered To Hand Over Secret Sources Under 'Data Protection' Law.
Colombia has imprisoned one of the negotiators of peace between the state and the FARC -- despite having no evidence against him.
Khanna to Pelosi: Don't Just Create Green New Deal Select Committee, Make Ocasio-Cortez Its Chair.
On top of the traumas that gangs cause to children in Honduras, the US border thugs now give them additional traumas.
Tim Wu argues that democracy includes individual autonomy, and that plutocracy denies people that autonomy.
Quite a few American husbands bully their wives into voting right-wing, or not at all.
It seems that some of them ignore the bullying once inside the voting booth, but some may be too intimidated.
This is part of the reason I think that voting remotely should require a specific justification. The rest of the reason is that people's bosses could also bully them.
The owners of Purdue Pharma, maker of Oxycontin, are being sued and may be prosecuted for falsely presenting it as safe.
A US government "opportunity zone" gives a permanent tax break to whatever business has the clout to get possession of it.
Instead of giving tax breaks to businesses that are considered less bad than others, how about taxing the worse businesses extra?
Praising clear and precise discourse: "Every time a word disappears, we lose a little of our spirit and wit."
Extinction Rebellion protests closed five bridges in the center of London for hours.
In the UK, debt collectors make a habit of being very pushy, even illegally.
I have to suspect that this pattern of behavior is the result of government's favoring the rich and cutting budgets for activities that protect the poor.
Israeli "settlers" dumped sewage on a Palestinian school, and flooded the playground with it.
Five Supreme Court decisions that gave the US government dangerous power.
George Monbiot: The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us.
Some causes involve conflicting interests between groups. In these causes, society generally makes a compromise. An different compromise that is better for your group may be a fine goal.
But when there is an absolute goal, for instance defending human rights or survival, it is a mistake to ask people to aim campaigns at "politically realistic" lesser steps that won't be adequate to achieve the goal.
The free software movement, to give users control over their computing, is also of this kind. Each step in the right direction is good, but it won't be over until users' freedom is fully respected.
How an excess "safetyism" can make people grow up fragile and weak. We should reject the idea that to challenge a person's ideas is to threaten per.
CAPTCHAs and "click to agree" are examples of how computer systems are designed to reshape people to subserviently participate in the designs of the systems' owners, and avoid careful thinking.
Proprietary programs and online disservices are the means for doing this, but the solution to do this to people is found in executives and owners of those systems.
The free software movement has considerable overlap, therefore, with the refusal to let businesses reshape you.
It is getting harder to distinguish chatbots from humans.
I would talk with a mattress company's chatbot for information about its products, if I could do so without being identified. I would not ask it for advice, because I want unbiased advice and a mattress company is not the place to find unbiased information about mattresses.
I would not talk with anyone's chatbot about my personal feelings, because there is no reason whatsoever to expect it to keep my confidence.
Looking at rebuilding Paradise, California, and making it safe from fires.
Senator Schumer, as well as promoting war and catering to the most right-wing of Democrats, is also the senator from Facebook.
Ilhan Omar, newly elected to Congress, stated support for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. She is now targeted with a smear, claiming falsely that the campaign is antisemitic and that it demands the absolution of Israel.
Snowden: "If You Would Deny a Thing to Your (political) Enemy, It Is Not a Right."
I criticize Assange for working with the bully, but that does not make him deserve to be imprisoned. And we must not allow it to be an excuse to attack freedom of the press for everyone.
It appears that Chinese agents are trying to steal something from New Zealand journalist Anne-Marie Brady.
Facebook hired a Republican-oriented company to defend its reputation, and the company followed the standard Republican playbook by using a standard antisemitic smear about George Soros.
France and the EU are rushing a directive to require all hosting companies to carry out censorship rapidly on the orders of the police. This is tyranny, allowing the state to delete absolutely all publications without a trial.
Adding to the damage, only the giant companies are likely to be capable of implementing the system. Other hosting in Europe could disappear.
By the way, please don't refer to publications as "content".
The bully intends to drive veterans to private medical care.
Global heating is bringing new pathogens to the arctic. The species that live there have no defenses and populations can be wiped out.
The herbicide atrazine can cause birth defects, and 30 million Americans regularly have high levels of atrazine in their drinking water.
To convince Americans that voting is worth the effort, Democrats must make bold proposals that could be sufficient to end the injustices of America today.
Senator Schumer's right-wing policies make him almost the worst possible choice for the head of the Senate Democrats.
Wisconsin Republicans are looking for any and all ways to reduce the power of the state governor, now that a Democrat has been elected. They also want to make voter suppression harder to end.
Those cheaters stay in power through arranging elections that are not free and fair.
Once again, the Court of Appeals of the Federal Circuit has distorted a Supreme Court decision so as to help computational idea patents.
This is what it did in 1981, which exposed the US to the plague of computational idea patents in the first place.
Bolsonaro has appointed a fanatical planet roaster as foreign minister.
The Australian Green Party proposes to prohibit mining, burning or shipping thermal coal by 2030.
That does not go far enough to avoid disaster, but at least it shows an example of the kind of firmness needed to do the job.
The US and Australia used to have wildfires for half the year each, so they arranged to share equipment and crews. Due to global heating, their fire seasons have extended, and now they overlap.
Indonesian teacher Baiq Nuril Maknun has been sentenced to prison for recording a phone call in which her boss pressured her for sex. The supreme court declared her guilty.
No action has been taken against her boss.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that arrests of Alexei Navalny were politically motivated (as well as invalid).
It seems that Russia will ignore this and pull out of the ECHR.
UK prosecutors and thugs are "routinely failing" to show the defense evidence it could use to refute the charges.
This happens in the US as well. When a prosecutor does this, it represents aiming for a miscarriage of justice.
North Korea has several missile bases, and continues to work on them. But how important is that?
I think a peace treaty to end the Korean War would be a good thing, regardless of whether North Korea has nuclear weapons. The US and South Korea are at peace with nuclear-armed Pakistan and India, not to mention China and Russia. Why shouldn't they be at peace with nuclear-armed North Korea? Peace would make an actual nuclear war less likely.
The fact that North Korea is horribly repressive, even worse than China, doesn't change that conclusion.
Amazon's compete-to-subsidize-us competition gave the company information about city governments and their plans, that it can profit from in many ways, including taking advantage of them.
Amazon in Germany hired "security" guards from a company of Nazi sympathizers to repress foreign workers. Reporters came to cover this, and the guards tried to arrest them and take their cameras.
A plan to drill for oil off Alaska's coast is being thwarted by an insufficiency in sea ice.
If it is blocked for two years, can the saboteur's successor block it for good and all?
The World Bank cancelled a large loan to Tanzania, to improve secondary education, because of the policy of prohibiting pregnant girls from studying, as well as other forms of repression.
I support the decision to protect girls' right to an education, and to punish repression. However, I have doubts about the basic idea of asking a poor country to pay for education with loans. How would it repay ever these loans? By pushing more people into poverty?
Sex education and contraception aid might be a more efficient way to use funds to reduce future poverty in Tanzania.
Some of Amazon's rejected suitors have published what enticements they offered to Amazon to locate there.
It's a catalog of shameless surrender to business. We need laws to stop cities from making such offers.
The Citizens Climate Lobby aims to meet with all legislators (in the US, I guess) twice a year.
Bill Bray understood the issue perfectly when he campaigned, years ago, to increase oil prices. If we had made oil cost enough to cover the damage it was doing, we might have avoided the disaster that now stares us in the face.
Falluja is full of powerful artisanal landmines planted by PISSI — in roads, paths, gardens, and inside houses.
The idea that a person has a group "identity" with implications about what person should think or do leads to bizarre paradoxes when one of per parents lied about per ancestry. Especially if the person thinks of that as "Who I am", and has consciously based per way of thinking on that "identity".
I don't understand this concept of "identity". I can't imagine answering the question, "Who are you," based on my ancestors — nor on where they lived, what they did, or what they believed.
The only answer I can conceive of for that question is "Richard Stallman." That name doesn't refer to any of my characteristics, whether physical nor mental. It refers only to me, one specific person, distinguishing me from every other person, and that's precisely why it is the right answer. It will continue to designate me no matter how I change in the future.
If we were to pose the same question about you, I would respond similarly: the only answer I could conceive of would be your name, or some other way of distinguishing you from everyone else.
You have some background, as I have. Your background has surely influenced you, as mine did me. But what has that got to do with "who" you are, or "who" I am? Nothing at all.
I would never intentionally adopt a way of thinking or acting because it's what my ancestors did. That is no reason for me to think or act in any particular way.
Alberta has kept rats out for 50 years. About a dozen rats get in each year, but most of them are caught, and they cannot establish a population.
This turns out to be much less work, and much cheaper, than one would expect. It may be possible to make New Zealand rat-free and keep it so.
Israel continues demolishing Palestinian homes, built inevitably without a permit because Israel does not give permits to Palestinians.
Likewise in another part of the West Bank.
Israeli reporter Oren Cohen covered the stories of Palestinians in the 1980. He learned to expect that their reports were true, and the statements of the Israeli army were lies.
He describes a supposed Palestinian car bomb near an international meeting that was really a fake, set up by the Israeli army to sway visitors' hearts and minds. Army censorship forbade him to report this.
About Khalida Jarrar, Palestinian lawyer and elected official, who has been imprisoned by Israel for several years without charges.
I have some disagreements with her views, but advocating views about an international dispute does not justify imprisonment.
Israel doesn't dare criticize Khashoggi's murder, because it has a deal with the Salafi crown prince that organized it: to bully Palestine into accepting the absurd "peace" deal that Netanyahu and Trump have proposed.
Israel also does not want to draw attention to the fact that it has carried out targeted assassinations for many years.
Maryland is suing to block Whitaker from being considered acting attorney general.
China is disappearing labor-activist students. Reportedly just being in a place where they hand out leaflets can get you arrested.
(satire) Nancy Pelosi told reporters Wednesday of her plans to reenergize the House of Representatives by injecting herself with the blood of her party's young members.
Business concentration in a few cities visits poverty on rural workers and urban low-paid workers both.
Everyone: support safety and justice for heroic women that defend human rights.
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Everyone: call on California to stop exploiting the prisoners that work fighting fires.
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US citizens: call on all Democrats in Congress to join the Medicare for All caucus.
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The UK's criterion for "joint enterprise" is too lax, and you could be convicted of someone else's crime if you have not said, very loud, "I am not participating in this, goodbye".
When you see a child with a man, almost always the man is per father, but people have been taught to jump to the conclusion it is a kidnapping.
Amazon's corruption of US cities has awakened recognition that pay-to-attract-business deals cheat the people.
Some elected officials oppose it also, pointing at the good the money could do if it were not given to a business.
However, the mayor and governor have set things up to bypass all the usual forms of approval.
The legislature should cut off that loophole.
15 years ago when I told people that subsidizing businesses to "create jobs" was selling out, I met with incomprehension. They saw the short-term, narrow "benefits"; they resisted looking at the question, "When every city focuses on trying to attract businesses away from other cities, what will the overall result be?"
Coca Cola's contribution to Christmas in the UK is a tour handing out gratis sugar-laden drinks. This year, people are pushing against the practice.
Drinks with sugar substitutes do not entirely avoid problems; they trick the brain into preparing the stomach for the sugar that doesn't come.
A California crab-boat captain is suing oil companies for the global heating effect (red tide) that has made the crabs unsafe to eat.
Croatian thugs force border-crossers back to Bosnia — after breaking their bones and their phones, and stealing any money they have.
In Germany, antifascists rally in such large numbers that they make fascists disheartened.
Kuwait's censorship is so strict that the idea of a book fair there is almost absurd.
Even if you're old, your organs can save other people's lives.
When even celebrities visibly can't avoid the effects of global heating, will denialists start to believe?
Or will they claim that the famous actors who say their houses were burned "are just actors" ;-)?
Immigration activists in Vermont have sued, saying that the US government with the cooperation of Vermont agencies targeted them for infiltration and arrests to impede their political activities.
Spain will eliminate "alternative medicine" in its clinics, and will work to end the practice of teaching such "treatments".
This includes homeopathy and acupuncture. Homeopathy is absurd because it postulates differences between a treatment and a placebo that theoretically can't exist, and which no one can observe in practice.
Acupuncture is not obviously theoretically absurd, but experiment finds it is no different from a placebo.
The placebo effect may be useful, but there are lots of ways to trigger that.
Cuba will withdraw the 11,000 Cuban doctors that work in Brazil after Bolsonaro demanded that the doctors get a bigger fraction of what Brazil pays for their work, and demanded they get Brazilian medical licenses.
The second demand is evidently unreasonable. If Brazil wants Cuba to send doctors to Brazil as a national practice, it has to accept their Cuban medical training (which, I gather, is pretty good). This must be just an excuse to terminate the contract.
This suggests to me that the first demand is also an excuse to terminate the contract. I would be surprised if Bolsonaro cared about the income of a non-rich Cuban.
At the same time, I don't see that his statements contain insults or threats to the Cuban doctors.
The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty is shining the spotlight on how the UK government has boosted poverty there, poverty that the government consistently refuses to admit.
I think the claim that the UK's imposition of poverty is worse than the US is mistaken. In the UK, citizens who are broke are supposedly entitled to welfare, though bureaucrats look for excuses to cut it off. In the US, many such people are left to shift for themselves.
Bangladesh is using the army to force Rohingya back to Burma.
In the US: Tell governors, no secret deals for Amazon.
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Citizens of New Hampshire: for fair elections, call on your representatives in both state legislative chambers to champion Van Ostern as secretary of state.
Everyone: Call on the world's governments not to let planet roasters undermine implementation of the Paris climate agreement.
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All the G20 countries except India are still under the control of the fossil fools and on track to exceed 2C of global heating.
This probably does not evaluate the Spanish plan just proposed (but not yet adopted) which would reduce emissions there.
Since the crown prince of Salafi Arabia was not in the embassy in Istanbul, does that imply he was not guilty?
San Jose has made some sort of illegal secret deal with Google for Google to build offices there.
Searching blacks on the street because they are black is harmful and unfair in London, just as it was in New York City.
The UK has decided to make a substantial donation to contraception in Africa and Asia.
This is the most efficient way to reduce future poverty there.
Dating services, including Match, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, and OkCupid, get lots of data in a user's profile, and sell it to data brokers who resell it to anyone.
Sri Lanka's parliament refused the order pretending to dissolve it, and voted to reject Rajapaksa as prime minister.
This was after the Supreme Court ruled that the president could not dismiss parliament.
Rajapaksa was the previous president; he assassinated people that opposed or criticized him.
Closing Nuclear Plants Risks Rise in Greenhouse Gas Emissions (if they are replaced by gas-fired generators).
Gas won't be so cheap if we ban fracking, as we ought to.
I am skeptical of the claim that some physical absolute limit makes it impossible to install renewable power (plus storage) fast enough. Given a stable policy that encourages it, we could ramp up both industries as much as necessary. The real limit is the cost; but the money is available by taxing the people and organizations that have money.
Many US citizens whose parents are unauthorized immigrants must forego education, medical care, even food.
The Democratic Party has woken up to the need to campaign hard at the state level, and gained 370 legislative seats this year.
Queensland has systematically failed threatened species, auditor general says in scathing report.
Republicans are trying to stop the Florida recount by legal delaying tactics based on false claims.
Explaining how wildfires operate in California and why they are getting worse.
Amazingly, the EPA says it will propose to reduce NO2 pollution from trucks.
A black armed security guard in an area near Chicago subdued a man after a shooting. Then a white thug arrived and immediately shot the guard.
The thug apparently acted hastily without taking the requisite time to understand who was who. That is commonly how thugs kill blacks.
Washington and New York propose to give Amazon 2 billion dollars to put its headquarters there instead of in other cities that have more civic pride and are less willing to be suckers.
Heatwaves Can 'Wipe Out' Male Insect Fertility.
This might partly account for the decrease in insect populations around the world, but it would be premature to assume that.
Suggestions for stopping big US banks from investing in fossil fuels.
Another approach is simply to prohibit development of new oil and gas wells.
The Arctic was 10F too hot last winter, and this affects the rest of the world.
Armistice Day commemorated the horror of war. Renaming it "Veterans Day" was intended to teach Americans to support war.
The cheater wants to cut off reconstruction aid for still-devastated Puerto Rico, claiming that it was going to use the money to pay off debt.
It would be an injustice to pay any of that debt, regardless of where the money comes from. Those exploitative "investors", who bought the debt very cheap, must get what they deserve: zero.
The fire that burned Malibu also burned a site where rockets and nuclear reactors were tested. The fire may have lifted chemical contaminants as well as radioisotopes into the air.
Schumer calls for legislation already pending in the Senate to be added to some must-pass bill next month.
Campaigning against super-sugar drinks.
The BBC broadcasts a "Thought for the Day", but only religious people are allowed to present one.
Democratic Rep. Sinema won the Arizona senate election.
The Republican Party falsely accused Sinema's campaign of cheating. Two long-term aids of recently deceased Republican Senator McCain condemned those accusations.
McCain was an example of a Republican of a couple of decades ago. They were on the side of business and theocracy, but they still had some idea of political honor. Nothing like that remains in today's Republican Party.
Sinema is a Democrat — but reportedly a "centrist". In the most vital issue, the fight against plutocracy, which side will she be on?
San Francisco is getting used to smoke from wildfires.
With every sight of this, people should remember that it is just a foretaste of what the fossil fools and planet roasters have in store for us, if we don't stop them first.
Bangladesh has a list of Rohingya to send back to Burma, but most of them do not want to go. They are fleeing the refugee camps to avoid being sent back.
The plastics companies — which were the same as the oil companies — intentionally convinced the public to regard plastic as disposable, and to make avoidance of plastic litter the consumer's responsibility instead of the manufacturer's responsibility.
MIT and Harvard have been helping the acting monarch of Salafi Arabia give himself a positive image.
How various cities are reducing the production of air pollution.
Humans have linguistic capabilities that spoken language does not use. Assuming that spoken language came first, and sign language was used only by the few deaf people, those capabilities must have arisen as a byproduct, without being selected for.
Is it possible that humans developed a sign language first, and only later a spoken language which replaced it? This would simplify the evolutionary path.
If spoken language came first, it required evolving multiple facilities at once: controlling production of a variety of speech sounds, as well as the higher-level organization of them.
However, if humans had already evolved great manual dexterity and the ability to carry out a series movements, for other activities, developing sign language would have required evolving only the higher-level organization.
Spoken language has its advantages: for instance, you can talk to people who can't currently see your hands well, or at all. If humans started using vocalizations as substitutes for certain signs, and supposing this gave them an advantage, they would have encountered selection for control over a broader variety of speech sounds.
Progressive politicians' current proposals for reducing inequality.
I think we need more than these. For instance, to stop companies from dodging taxes, and to make large companies break up. We also need public funding for campaigns for office, so that the rich don't have so much influence.
We need something to achieve the same job regarding ballot questions, so that oil companies can't defeat initiatives to curb global heating.
The Tories want to burst the UK's carbon budget with a large new gas-burning power plant. They insist on fracking, so they need to burn the gas somehow.
Labour promises that under Corbin it will tax the rich more, and tax environmental harm more.
Everyone: call on SAExploration not to do seismic testing in the Arctic Refuge.
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Everyone: call on Mondelez to stop buying palm oil from Wilmar.
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Some scientists and campaigns want to ban the release of gene drives.
There are ways that gene drives could cause ecological harm — for instance, it could cause global extinction of a species, maybe even jump to other species. However, I think the right way to deal with that issue is to require each release of a gene drive to be protected by multiple redundant safety measures, far in excess of what appears to be sufficient.
A swatter whose act led to the killing of a family by a SWAT team has been sentenced to a long prison term.
He deserves punishment, but the danger of SWAT teams is not limited to malicious false alarms. They endanger people every day by carrying out the usual duties that have been assigned to them. To make SWAT teams less dangerous, we should eliminate most of them.
A lawsuit aims to eliminate North Carolina's gerrymander based on the state constitution.
After decades of hunting elephants for their tusks, in some parts of Africa 30% of female elephants are born tuskless. This is evolution in action. The lack of elephant tusks can alter ecosystems.
Wells Fargo is arguing in court that when it said people could trust that bank, they should have recognized the statement as bullshit and disregarded it.
More generally, I agree that the "puffery" defense should be narrowed. If that makes advertising more difficult and thus reduces the amount that is done, great!
World Has No Capacity to Absorb New Fossil Fuel [electric] Plants, Warns IEA.
50,000 refugees in Libya, with no way to get out, face dangers ranging from being sold as slaves to being hit by bullets when there is fighting near the prison camp.
Airport "security" officials confiscated a child's toy stuffed snake.
This is an example of the suffering caused by "zero tolerance", which means intentionally being unreasonable even (or especially?) when that hurts people.
I wonder if they would confiscate a toy elephant because it is a "replica" of an animal that wouldn't fit in the cabin.
The mother lied to the child to calm him down at that moment. I expect that the lie became evident on arrival, and that could make the child justifiably distrustful of her from now on.
Even when people carry real weapons that shouldn't be allowed in the cabin, to confiscate them is gratuitously harsh. They should be carried in a bin in the hold, and returned to passengers at their destination.
(satire) The bully is leading an expedition into a rainforest to find an uncontacted ethnic group to vilify.
San Diego is planning 40,000 new homes in areas that are likely to burn.
Spain has proposed a plan for moving to 100% renewable energy by 2050, including transportation. Sale of new fossil-fueled cars would be prohibited after 2040.
The prohibition on subsidies for fossil fuels, exploration permits, and fracking should not wait for 2040. It should start right away.
The energy sector is not the only source of greenhouse gases. Spain needs to address agriculture, especially beef. And there is deforestation, which is mainly occurring in countries other than Spain, but is a major source at the world level.
(satire) New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced Tuesday that the subway is just for Amazon employees now.
The CIA's "medical services" program experimented on prisoners trying to find a "truth serum". The CIA's doctors also described waterboarding (a torture procedure that approaches drowning) was a "relief" … from being forced to stand day and night.
(satire) Hillary Clinton told reporters she is launching a campaign Tuesday that will raise $100 million by the end of the year or else she will run for president.
Analyzing the propaganda terms that go with proposals to subsidize businesses, starting with "public-private partnership".
Artists in Brazil are already facing persecution and violence from the religious fanatics that voted for Bolsonaro. Some have already fled the country. Others are trying to resist.
Once Bolsonaro and his allies start mobilizing violence, I fear that many artists will be killed soon. If all he does is eliminate subsidies and tax deductions, that will be quite a relief.
Several of the artists mentioned do conceptual art. I generally find conceptual art uninteresting, because words can express concepts more clearly than ad-hoc symbols. Rather than watch the conceptual art and wonder what the point was, I'd say, "If you write it down in a few lines, I'll read them."
An encryption system for recording votes without the voters' name is valid in principle. However, for other reasons, it isn't ready for real use in official elections.
It is designed for use in voting machines in a polling place. It would not be safe to use this from the voter's own computer over the internet.
California has a law for temporarily taking guns away from people that seem violent and dangerous, but it wasn't applied to the recent multiple murderer.
"The World Must Not Be Too Scared To Talk About Teenagers' Having Sex."
For their sake, we should get rid of the taboo on sex, so that teenagers are not kept ignorant, and steered toward unwise paths and exploitation.
The UK is designing semiautonomous killer drones.
So is China.
I suspect the US is also doing so, though I don't know of proof.
It's unacceptable to make people stand on line for a long time waiting to vote, even if it is not intentional. We should insist on a system designed to make sure this never happens.
We know that in some cases the long lines for voting in the US were the result of voter-suppression.
A new encryption system makes it possible to collect aggregate statistics about things people do, but impossible to identify the statistics with individuals.
Campaign funding in the US is noxious because a large fraction comes from a few rich donors and it gives them political power.
Romania is twisting the GDPR privacy regulations to demand identification of journalists' sources.
South Korean women are gearing up to fight to legalize abortion there.
Bangladesh has chosen 4500 Rohingya to forcibly return to Burma.
Do-dirty is accusing opposition news site Rappler of tax evasion.
It seems that every politician or organization that stands up to Do-dirty is accused of some sort of crime. I have no independent information about whether Rappler is guilty of tax evasion, but I would expect that to be very common in the Philippines, so selectively accusing and prosecuting only those who oppose Do-dirty would be a very effective form of political bias.
Florida Governor Scott resorted to a standard Republican tactic: false accusations of fraud by individual voters.
That's how Republicans justify one of their systematic election frauds: voter-ID laws.
Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives will make Whitaker testify if he doesn't take hands off Mueller's investigation.
Nicaragua has followed the example of the UK and France in adopting an absurdly broad definition of "terrorism". Now protesters are being hunted down for prosecution for "terrorism".
Whenever I read that someone was accused of "terrorism" in the UK, my first thought is to wonder if the supposed "terrorism" consists of having a copy of the wrong book.
US citizens: Oppose permitting organizations to deny birth control coverage to their employees.
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The Guardian is getting most of the funding it needs, from voluntary donations.
UK climate defense protesters chained and glued themselves to the main government department in charge of planet-roasting.
The UK abandoned a system of making the NHS intimidate unauthorized immigrants.
There is a plan to preserve Venice from flooding, but at best it will be effective for a short time.
Sometime in this century it will be necessary to dam off the lagoon.
Australia's planet-roaster government wants to break up monopolies to make fossil fuels cheaper.
To avoid disaster, we need to make the price consumers pay for fossil fuels higher, while making the profit that companies get from selling them lower. The way to do both is by increasing the tax on them.
Khashoggi murder: Pompeo tells crown prince the US will hold all involved accountable.
It seems almost certain that one of those involved was the crown prince himself. I wonder if Pompeo was subtly suggesting that he put the blame on others and deny his own involvement.
A fairly progressive congressional candidate, Richard Ojeda, has attracted a lot of attention for pulling a lot of votes away from the Republican candidate.
I would certainly choose Sanders over Ojeda, if their views were the same. Sanders has defended the progressive cause for decades. He rose through the ranks of elective office as a progressive, which I admire far more than doing so in the army. What Ojeda says about coal suggests he doesn't recognize the danger of fossil fuels in general.
Imelda Cortez in El Salvador is on trial for attempted murder after she was forced to bear the fetus imposed on her by a rapist.
I don't think she did anything wrong.
Alabama seems to want to oppress women this way, too.
Planned Parenthood's new president warns of 'state of emergency' for women's health.
China faces a conundrum after arresting Communist protesters that protested for workers' rights.
The Syrian rebels are tied up with Islamists, and one thing they do is patriarchal murder.
The far-too-long career of Saboteur Zinke.
He made the Department of the Interior a tool for short-term profit for big business. The costs will affect us for as long as civilization lasts.
It is too late for incremental climate protection, and useless to hope for anything but sabotage from Republicans — we need Democrats to insist on courageous policies.
I disagree on one point. I think an increasing carbon tax should be part of what we do, even if it alone won't work fast enough. We need more money for the state, and the carbon tax will put pressure on business executives that don't give a damn about the world aside from their profits.
Here are the details about how Sessions has made it effectively impossible for the Department of "Justice" to use consent decrees to make local and state thug departments stop unjust policies.
"Sessions is all for punishment—just not the type of punishment that follows from accountability." He wants to loose thugs to punish whoever they wish to punish, regardless of justice or even law.
Here's the broader context.
Due to global heating, California can now have large and deadly fires across the state. Its fire-fighting resources, which were sufficient in the past, are not enough any more.
In the LA area, firefighters were overstretched and could not try to contain the fires for the first three days; it was all they could do to protect people and buildings that were immediately threatened. As a result, the fire became much bigger than it would have, if there weren't a fire in the north as well.
The bully has arbitrarily ordered denying asylum to anyone that crosses the border. The ACLU will sue.
The first segment of the bully's "wall" against Mexico will protect the US from a butterfly sanctuary, an old church, and a state park.
Whitaker's history of dishonest political prosecution disqualifies him from any government position, especially in the Justice Department.
The town of Paradise, California, was completely destroyed by a wildfire. It sprang up and engulfed the town in less than one day.
Does anyone know whether trees in that region have been killed by pests whose range has extended due to global heating?
Meanwhile, some rich people's mansions were burned in Malibu. I hope this teaches them to support efforts to curb global heating.
The US has dropped one form of support for Salafi Arabia's bombardment of Yemen.
However, it is possible that Salafi Arabia can now do its own refueling.
The "Anti-Semitism Awareness" bill would do nothing about real anti-semitism (promoted by right-wing extremists under the aegis of the cheater), but would set up repression of activism for Palestinians' rights.
Pinochet's chief of the army has been convicted of planning to kill 15 dissidents after Pinochet's coup in Chile.
The bully is again attacking union rights at the Veterans Administration.
Experience and statistics suggest that the casualties of fighting in Yemen number more than 70,000, and that the other deaths due to secondary effects of the war must number in the hundreds of thousands.
(Satire): Making US national parks safe for visitors.
The UK denied permanent residency to an Italian professor who has lived and taught in the UK for 20 years. It made a minor error, then used that as an opportunity to cause a big problem.
The bureaucrats have been taught to imitate a Hollywood exaggeration of bureaucratic cruelty.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans participated in protests to defend Mueller's investigation of the bully's apparent collaboration with Russia.
I don't know whether protests can achieve anything against the shameless dishonesty of Republicans. Protests won't dissuade the bully -- he would love to imprison every protester and boast of how powerful he is. A year ago, some Republican officials said that they wanted to defend the investigation. Do they care any more?
Refusing to interfere with Mueller's investigation is the only decent thing that Sessions did. He has consistently worked to harm and imprison refugees, and to give thugs unimpeded power to kill and attack blacks.
The USPS is accused of firing temporary workers that get injured on the job, without compensation.
If the US succeeds in defending its own democracy, it will then need to help other countries defend their own democracies.
The [bully] will never be out-ranted. These elections show that his supporters still want to be heard.
Japan is solving its labor shortage problem by bringing in foreign workers.
Nationalist politicians advocate contributing to civilization's suicide by increasing the national birth rate. One of the fallacious arguments they cite is, "We will have a shortage of labor." They ignore the counterarguments: (1) fewer workers will be needed to educate the fewer children, (2) with automation, and loss of jobs, having fewer people that need jobs may be a good thing, and (3) there are unemployed poor people in other countries.
The main challenge is to protect them from enslavement.
The UK is moving families with no domicile from London to faraway cities to house them. They get a place to live, but don't know anyone, and may have little chance of being anything but isolated in their new homes.
However, this is not as bad as some countries. In the US, these people would be dumped on the street.
US citizens: Tell Senators to vote no on Bernard McNamee for Federal Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
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Everyone: call on advertisers to drop Fox News.
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There is a danger that companies will pressure employees into getting RFID chips implanted in their bodies.
Often the only effective way to stop companies from coercing thousands or millions of people into some practice is to make that practice entirely illegal. A mere requirement for consent is ineffective because it is easy to pressure people into "consent."
San Franciscans voted to tax large companies to fund help for the homeless.
This is good, but for San Francisco to reduce homelessness, it needs to make more places for people to live.
Cities and states should not be allowed to offer special tax breaks or subsidies to attract a company to locate there. That practice ends up enriching companies at the expense of cities and most people.
Gait analysis software developed in China recognizes people reliably by their bodies and their gait.
We can't count on any country to be safe from this. Peoples that want freedom need to adopt laws against systems that can identify people on the street.
Alabama's anti-abortion constitutional amendment would allow prosecuting women for using IUDs or for not getting prenatal care.
This shows the absurdity of treating fetuses as human beings.
Organizations that cheated in campaigning for the UK to vote to leave the EU also persecuted a whistleblower who revealed their cheating.
Young men are now subject to commercially-stimulated distaste for their bodies, much as women have been for a long time.
I once heard two women conversing about a TV personality (they said a name I did not recognize). One of them was rebuking her for making no attempt to obey fashion. It came to me only later that I should have spoken up and praised her for resisting the power of the fashion industry.
Bombing al-Shabaab is killing lots of its fighters, but is not hampering its ability to fight.
It is typical for guerrilla groups that killing many of their fighters has no effect, because they can easily get as many as they want. In the past this was usually because they were successful only based on popular support. In the case of al-Shabaab, it seems to be due to conscription.
If the people in the areas they rule get fed up with al-Shabaab's high taxes and conscription, they might be willing to support the government.
The UK plans to sell more fighter planes to Salafi Arabia.
UK banks are closing the accounts of thousands of individuals, and refuse to tell them why.
Trudeau says that Canada's arms sale to Salafi Arabia includes a prohibition on explaining why cancelling it would be difficult.
If that is true, it is an additional reason why it is Trudeau's duty to cancel the deal.
Nazi violence changed rather quickly from discrimination through violence into mass murder.
It should be noted that during the 1930s the Nazis' goal was not specifically to kill Jews. The Nazis hated Jews but thought of exiling them from Germany — perhaps to the east. They started systematically killing Jews in 1941 after conquering a large part of Russia.
This correction doesn't make any level of repression more excusable. Rather, it shows that we can't take for granted that a hate movement won't quickly turn into murder or even mass murder.
US drone bombers have put an end to the "Vietnam syndrome" and enabled the US to rain unchecked violence on countries around the world.
100 days after the court ordered the US government to return minors that border thugs took away from their parents, 47 remain in prison.
Brazil has as many voters as the US, and much less money, but it
avoids
the gross problems that plague US elections.
One problem that Brazil might have is that it uses digital voting
machines and the totals cannot be audited.
Scott Walker's megadeal to buy Foxconn jobs was not only not worth the price
Wisconsin paid in tax funds. It was also a fraud, since Foxconn
plans
to bring over Chinese workers instead of providing the promised
jobs to American workers.
The idea of paying companies to "create jobs" is
fundamentally
idiotic.
US
citizens: call
on Mattis to investigate the persecution of immigrant soldiers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the UN to send observers to the US border with Mexico to check
for human rights violations.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A single fake fingerprint can
match 20%
of all real fingerprints, in many fingerprint authentication
systems.
A UK supermarket's ad campaign was banned because
it focused
on stopping deforestation.
Republicans
are trying
to obstruct counting of some votes in four close races.
Republicans' obvious
lies about Jim Acosta illustrate clearly their general strategy of
obvious lies.
Those who do not favor lying should follow a strategy designed
to thwart theirs. For instance, focusing on the substantial harm
that they do, and the further harm that they are trying to do.
This year's newly elected Democratic representatives is
the most
progressive such group ever.
Juan Cole:
The Top
11 Things the Dems Absolutely Must Do in the House.
Some of these things are easier said than done, but passing a bill
in the House of Representatives would affect politics even if
it doesn't become a law now.
I disagree about Syria. The small remaining US involvement in Syria
is aimed at fighting PISSI and perhaps (I hope) protecting Rojava.
Prosecutors have
evidence that the bullshitter was directly involved in organizing
payoffs to Stormy Daniels and another sex partner.
This might lead to a prosecution.
Eliminating partisan gerrymandering in the US will not be easy, but
several states' populations
have voted
to take control away from the partisan elected officials.
Scotland
will teach
all students about what it means to be homosexual, transgender,
etc.
A new report estimates that the US wars in this century
have killed
half a million people.
It estimates only 200,000 killed in Iraq, but I have doubts about
that, since
the report
published in the Lancet estimated a lot more than that.
The Pentagon is whitewashing the history of the Vietnam War,
including factual
falsehoods.
The US troops that fought in Vietnam deserve condolences and an
apology, right after the apology that the Vietnamese deserve.
I don't see anything to "honor" them for.
This is not to say that the North Vietnamese victors' side
was any better.
A congressional race in Maine will
be decided
by ranked choice voting, making the first time this occurs in the
US.
As a citizen of Cambridge, Mass, I've used ranked choice voting for
decades in elections for the city council, and I'm in favor of
extending the practice to other offices. Other flexible
systems seem
even better.
The bullshitter denied CNN reporter Jim Acosta access to White House
press-insult sessions. Naturally, the reason
cited was
a lie.
These sessions
are worthless
anyway. CNN should show it doesn't care about this by covering
something important instead of them.
The UK is desperate to build another nuclear power plant, but
companies
keep refusing
to build one, even with
the enormous
subsidies that the UK offers.
There is speculation that the real motive for building new nuclear
plants has to do with maintaining the capability
to build
and operate nuclear submarines, and that part of the cost of the
submarines is being hidden by lumping it into electric generation.
Renewable generation plus batteries will do the job, and safely too.
(satire) Uber
Offering Discounted
Wages For Election Day.
Timid EU national leaders have
backed
down from the tax on digital stores and services, fearing this
will displease the US.
If you want your country to be a good place to live, you need to
defeat the plutocrats, including the states they control (which
includes the US). So bite the bullet and fight them.
(satire) Georgia election worker Mitchell Hamlin reportedly assured a
black man that the ballot scanner was
supposed
to sound like a shredder.
For the cheater, eliminating birthright citizenship is simply a way to
eliminate
future
Democratic voters.
The US college racket:
Sixteen
credits and what do you get?
If we eliminated college loans, a lot fewer people would get
degrees, and the employers that use "college degree" as
an arbitrary filter would have to hire people without degrees.
However, there is a benefit to society from having more people
go to college: they learn to think more carefully. At least,
it used to have that effect.
Democratic Socialists
on
the Rise as Capitalism Having Increasingly Hard Time Hiding Its
Ugly Face.
The US Chamber of Commerce and other plutocratic organizations are
lobbying
to oppose the new Socialist movement in the US.
Israeli soldiers
attacked
a Palestinian seminar near Jerusalem and arrested regional
Palestinian officials.
Israel
confiscated
tractors from Palestinians that live in the Jordan Valley. Israel
systematically practices ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians of
that area.
Supporters of Israel's occupation of Palestine tried suing a professor
at San Francisco State University, making false accusation that his
criticism of the occupation somehow endangered Jews there. Their
suit has been
finally
rejected.
Cozying up to individual fascist-leaning leaders (even when they are
anti-semitic) is
not
even in Israel's practical interest, except momentarily.
As Netanyahu allies himself ever more closely with fascist-leaning
leaders, the fascist nature of his own policies, such as
bigotry
in Israel and the occupation/siege of Palestine, becomes
undeniable.
Israel's government
wants
to make it easier to apply the death penalty to Palestinian
prisoners.
The death penalty is wrong in all circumstances, but in this particular
situation I fear that Israel will frame Palestinians and kill them.
An Israeli soldier
faces
charges for attacking a Palestinian prisoner that was bound and
blindfolded.
Things like this happen around the world; no government can magically
make sure it won't. What a government can do is adopt a clear and
firm policy against it. I will be glad if Israel turns its slogan,
"the world's most moral army," into a reality.
"Trump lost the House, but he
lives
to fight — and lie — another day."
Many of the Democrats in Congress are plutocratist today
just as they were last week. What they propose to do
sounds
good, but preventing global heating disaster is not an item
mentioned in this article. And there is the issue of the enormous
budget deficit caused by last year's tax cuts for the rich. The
Republicans
want
to use this to justify shafting the poor. If the Democrats oppose
that, what will they propose instead?
Motel 6 has
agreed
to pay damages and not tell the deportation thugs about its guests
without a warrant
If it puts the data in a computerized data base, the FBI could collect it every day with a "national security letter", and nothing stops it from giving the whole list to other agencies including the deportation thugs.
Australian Students Plan School Strikes to Protest against Climate Inaction.
Salafi Arabia is heavily bombarding Hodeida, including civilian areas, with US-made bombs.
Although Mattis called for a cease fire, that is nothing more than an idea.
David Attenborough intentionally downplays the environmental threat to the wildlife he films, to avoid "turning off" viewers.
The problem with this approach is that the environmental threat will "turn off" many of the species presented, in just a few decades, if we don't take action — and fast.
It is possible to coach parents to protect their children from the effects of familial trauma.
I suspect, though, that success depends on giving the parents enough money to protect them from the further trauma that poverty typically causes families.
New York Governor Cuomo is using strained arguments to pressure banks to stop serving the NRA.
This reminds me of how US marijuana businesses find it impossible to get bank accounts.
I support petition campaigns calling on companies to break their special deals with the NRA. These campaigns follow a legitimate pathway. I also support further regulation of guns, including prohibition of high-velocity rifles (often called "assault weapons") and large magazines.
I would also support a campaign calling on an insurance company to refuse to work with the NRA to sell insurance to other parties. (It sounds like that's what the insurance company is doing.)
However, the state should not pressure banks or insurance companies to refuse to provide lawful services to the NRA, or to any other lawful organization, based on what it stands for.
The cheater plans to pull the US out of the Universal Postal Union, which would reportedly make it impossible to mail letters between the US and any other country.
There is considerable progress in ending female genital mutilation, and great progress in most of East Africa.
The article mentions population growth there without taking note of the disaster that this portends. Girls — and likewise boys — born in Africa now are headed for a horrible fate.
The US must reorganize voting so that people running for office are never in charge of administering it.
Voting machines suspiciously failed in a suburb of Atlanta, making voters wait for hours.
Why did so many people have to vote in that one place? I suspect that too was an act of sabotage.
A US court stopped construction of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline, recognizing that the environmental impact statement was totally bogus.
Russia is hosting peace talks between the Taliban and a group called the Afghan Peace Council, which apparently includes some government officials.
I hope it leads to peace.
US journalists should stop acting helpless as the bully abuses them. They should at least walk out.
What the bully says is nothing but manipulation, so they should walk out and stay out.
A refugee in a refugee prison in Libya says that the tuberculosis medicine has been stopped, and everyone is likely to have caught it. Guards hand out blankets and cleaning products when international inspectors visit, then take them back after the visit.
It's 6 weeks to the start of winter, but a rapidly growing wildfire is about to convert Paradise, California, into an inferno.
Other wildfires threaten Malibu.
In a decade or two, there may be nonstop wildfire in California.
The Saboteur of the Interior has replaced experts with unqualified staff for judging protection of endangered species, and is disregarding science.
Making refugee minors testify in court by video will predictably give people a more negative impression of them, and thus hurt their chances for asylum.
Can't Get a Pension, Can't Get Work: a special dystopia for older women.
Around 8% of the population of Venezuela has fled to neighboring countries. That is 2.6 million refugees.
Whitaker can effectively neutralize Mueller's investigation in secret. We won't know about it except by a lack of further progress.
White House Spreads Doctored Video to Justify Temper Tantrum Against CNN Reporter.
A private spying company agreed to pay damages to the anti-asbestos campaigners that it secretly infiltrated.
A 10,000-year-old mummy found in Nevada proves to be closely related to indigenous American peoples.
I don't find this surprising -- we already knew that ancestors of historic indigenous Americans were living in North America somewhat earlier, in the time of the Clovis culture.
However, it is a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the mummy is associated with any particular subgroup which lived near that place in historical times, because we cannot project human groups back that far. 10,000 years is long enough for groups to merge, split, move thousands of miles, and change their identities beyond all recognition.
An appeals court ordered the bully to continue DACA.
Alas, this is not a final decision. The bully could appeal to the Supreme Court, where Gorsuch and Kavanaugh might cancel DACA finally.
Fossil fuel companies had to spend record sums to defeat Washington's carbon tax initiative.
Could they afford to spend that much in every state, every year? They only need to do it for a decade, and then it will be too late.
Several new representatives in Congress are opposed to the US's unjustified wars.
The ACLU reports on voter initiatives just approved that will reduce sources of gratuitous injustice in the US.
Australians that misguidedly sympathize with feral intrusive horses are blocking the efforts to protect native wildlife by culling the horses.
In his own cruel right-wing way, Sessions was loyal to the US rather than to the bullshitter. That's why the bullshitter fired him.
Hong Kong Arts Centre Cancels Chinese Dissident Author Event. More precisely, the venue canceled that particular talk and one other.
If the Arts Center allows itself to be censored this way without resistance, it will become a tool of the regime. It would be better to cancel the event entirely.
US citizens: call on the TSA to cancel its plans for face recognition of every airline passenger.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to fund the bully's border wall.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Tories are imposing silence requirements on organizations that get government contracts in the UK.
The UN is studying the poverty that the Tories have spread in Britain.
The people who implement this system have no excuse. Their duty is to quit.
Two states adopted ballot questions with constitutional amendments to impede abortion rights.
The fossil fuel industry bought four state-level elections last week. The elections were ballot questions for policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
One of them was for Washington's carbon tax.
A Rwandan opposition leader faces 22 years in prison for charges that are obviously political.
President Kagame has a history of such repression.
One reason so many voting machines are broken, every election, is that they are proprietary and there are few who know how to fix them.
Democratic control of the House of Representatives means that the executive agencies will face investigations and subpoenas.
The owner's manual for a widely used voting machine instructs US election agencies to practice bad security.
Coordinated Trolling Efforts Are Serving Up Small-Scale Election Interference Across The Country. It takes the form of false-flag lies — pretending to be progressive and saying things calculated to disturb others that are leaning progressive, so that they won't vote.
The "Republican" conspiracy has no respect for anything that stands in the way of its grab for power. "By hook or by crook," is its motto.
The bully has fired Sessions as attorney general, and the new acting attorney general Whitaker has declared his opposition to Mueller's investigation.
Whitaker is also connected with a company charged with cheating the public with false promises. This reminds me of Trump University.
A court must consider people as innocent unless proven guilty. That is because the court has power and its exercise of that power needs to be restrained.
We who do not have such power need not be so restrained. If the bully succeeds in preventing courts from considering his apparent crimes, that should count as proof of guilt, for the public.
Florida has voted to restore the right to vote to most of the residents that were convicted of felonies.
I've read that disenfranchisement of convicted felons was adopted with racist motives, as a way to suppress the black vote. It is well established that blacks are more likely to be convicted of a felony than whites, when they have done the same thing.
Here's a summary of state-level ballot questions that have made it easier, or harder, for people to vote in that state.
In France, "Race doesn’t exist — unless you need a job, an apartment, to get into school or if the police stop you."
I hope we will achieve a society in which race matters less and less. But we can't eliminate existing bigotry by refusing to recognize it exists.
Trump Appealed to the Very Worst in America. Too Often, It Worked.
Pakistan blasphemy case: Asia Bibi remains in jail despite acquittal.
Many years ago, probably 15 or more, I got an invitation to speak in Pakistan. I decided that the state's repression was so dangerous that I should not set foot in that country. If anything, the repression has got worse. Please spread the word: don't go to Pakistan.
The world's big banks are revising their ethical investment criteria. At the same time, several of them are contravening it directly by increasing their investment in the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Based on the harm they do to human health, WHO recommends a 20% tax on unprocessed meat, and 110% tax on bacon and sausages.
Many US companies try to pressure their workers into voting a certain way. Often it is illegal, but no one enforces these laws.
Recording votes in blockchain would not make online elections trustworthy.
The US is imposing sanctions on Russia for its use of chemical weapons to poison the Skripals.
China's methods of controlling information on the internet mostly operates by flooding the net with the state-endorsed way of thinking and making any alternative inconvenient.
It is unfortunate that the author fell for the fashionable words "consuming content", since these lead attention away from the reasons people might want to do something other than what China leads the public to do.
European countries are setting up a barter agency for trade with Iran.
It must be humiliating that the US can force them into such contortions. I expect powerful hostility towards the US to follow. If the US is lucky the hostility will follow the bully when he leaves office, but I expect Europe to prepare to be less vulnerable in the future. For instance, it may place security restrictions on the use of US-made parts in weapons, planes, cars, etc.
A right-wing university is taking liberties with its students' email addresses.
Ashurbanipal's artists depicted torture of enemy armies that surrendered.
I hope the bully does not get a chance to see this.
Since 2008 or so, the US Congress has mostly ceased to debate on and amend bills. All the decisions are made secretly, and most members of Congress have hardly any role in the process.
It should be noted that 2008 was ten or more years after democracy effectively ceased at the federal level. Since the 1990s, public opinion has little influence on US government decisions.
The polarization reported for the past decade is between the plutocratist center-right (most Democrats) and the rigid plutocratist right-wing (which, over the past two years, the bully has converted into the extremist racist right-wing).
It is no accident that US policing is racist. US thug departments are pervaded by racist thugs that support campaigns of right-wing violence, sometimes even blatantly.
When Ebola gets into a zone of chaotic war between gangs, curbing its spread is almost impossible.
Rebecca Solnit: Trump is a Confederate president.
The cheater is criticizing the Federal Reserve, perhaps so as to put the blame for the next recession on it. The article explains why reducing its independence might be an improvement.
However, breaking up the big banks and replacing them partly with public banks might be better.
Childhood obesity linked to nitrogen dioxide pollution from vehicles, especially in a baby's first year.
NO2 comes especially from diesel trucks.
Some of the voters that the cheater won over by promising to bring jobs back to the US have recognized that they were cheated.
China ordered Hong Kong to cancel an art show because of its politics.
Europeans are getting fed up with the EU's subservience to banksters. Unless the left offers a path to fix that, voters are likely to elect racists that tell beguiling lies and only want to impose tyranny.
Republican candidates have used racist lies to campaign against Democrats for decades.
Bahrain has sentenced political opposition leaders to life in prison.
The repression of dissent in Bahrain was imposed in 2011 with the help of troops from Salafi Arabia.
Used voting machines are being sold without wiping their disks, and they are very helpful for developing unobtrusive ways to attack voting machines still in use.
The man who murdered two people in Florida had published right-wing bigotry; apparently he committed right-wing terrorism.
The sleazy and perhaps illegal campaign funding that convinced Britons to vote (very narrowly) to leave the EU has resulted in a criminal investigation of the plutocrat at the center.
These practices represent a continuing threat to democracy.
I don't think that such an irreversible change should be approved by such a small margin.
A local plutocrat family persuaded Queensland to reroute a planned railroad past its private airport, showing contempt for those who would be harmed.
Erdoğan warns of military action against prospecting for oil near Cyprus.
Although Erdoğan is acting like a bully, if the result is to prevent drilling for oil in one portion of the sea, that is good on the whole world's ecosphere — a step towards what we need, which is to ban undersea fossil fuel extraction everywhere.
If you buy any Nike products, you are helping the company buy control of the Oregon government and the University of Oregon.
Our Leaders Must Stop Killers of Journalists Acting with Impunity.
The challenge is to do this over the opposition of the murderers and bigots that have power in so many countries, including the US.
A bill would put a moratorium on mergers in agribusiness.
Republicans will not pass this bill, but it will put pressure on politicians.
I think we should make it difficult for any large companies to merge or acquire even small companies.
US immigration judges have totally different practices for deciding on asylum claims. Some approve most claims. Some reject nearly all claims.
The CIA used the internet to communicate with spies in countries such as Iran, China and Russia. When Iran figured out how to detect the CIA's servers on the internet, it caught all the spies. Iran may have told China how to do this, and they may have told Russia as well.
The CIA seems to have punished an internal whistleblower who figured out what was happening, and allowed the problem to continue.
What horrible judgment.
Our response to the massacre of Jews in Pittsburgh should be solidarity against all bigotry — no matter who is the target next time.
How about an evening vigil every evening against racist violence at the source of it: the White House?
The Fermi Paradox, considered in the light of what we now know, leads towards the conclusion that a technological civilization cannot last very long. The fact that ours seems on track to wipe itself out gives more support to that conclusion.
Nuclear war is not the only threat to our technological civilization. Resource exhaustion and global heating will stimulate various local wars which, even without nuclear weapons, could collapse the global manufacturing system. (Its very concentration and lack of redundancy makes it extra vulnerable.)
Humans are adaptable. I don't think an eco-catastrophe would wipe out our species, but we might never get another try at advanced technology on our exhausted planet.
The US border thugs are worried more about right-wing extremists that might come to the border to "support" them, than about poor border-crossers from Central America.
The Pentagon refused to send troops to the Mexican border unless the bullshitter declares an emergency, because outside of that it is illegal to use soldiers for law enforcement.
If malls in Canada are doing face recognition and analysis, surely US malls are doing it too.
We need laws to regulate what kinds of analysis and recognition they are allowed to do — as well as any and all transmission of images of faces off site.
Campaign donations from wealthy organizations have a noticeable effect on how congressional staff estimate public opinion.
UK welfare cuts, supposedly meant to make more people work, end up crushing disabled people who couldn't possibly work.
The TSA wants to impose face recognition on all air travellers, and various companies will get to use the photos for their own private surveillance.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Mueller's investigation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The saboteurs at the Department of Justice have stopped enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
It's not sending out very many monitors for voting, either.
The Election Assistance Commission has become quiescent.
At this rate they may do an even worse job of protecting our elections than of helping Puerto Rico.
About the Jewish nurse who treated the antisemitic murderer in Pittsburgh.
The use in the US of just a few models of voting machines, mainly from two companies, results in central vulnerability for rigging elections. Communications for reporting the totals are also vulnerable.
For trustworthy elections, voters should mark their votes by hand on paper.
Scum vs scum: a plutocratist Democrat vs a Republican is the plutocratic system playing good fascist / bad fascist.
This has been true for 20 years. What is changing now is that progressive Democrats are increasing. In 2020 we need to knock off a lot more of the plutocratist Democrats in the primaries.
Arms-control treaties are likely to have prevented nuclear war.
(satire) … the United States sent Laos a bill Monday for the 80 million still-undetonated bombs left in the country from the Vietnam War.
On Orango Island, the irrational traditional religion protects the forests and maintains solidarity, while the irrational evangelical church would introduce the "brotherhood" of extractivist competition.
A federal judge wants to allow a request to the jury to exercise jury nullification, shocked as he is by a 15-year prison sentence for a no-op.
Of course, I support jury nullification. That is, indeed, the reason why trial by jury is a fundamental right.
I also agree that the "interstate commerce" clause of the constitution has been stretched too far. It is hard to find anything, nowadays, that it could not cover; and if it has been interpreted as universally inclusive, that proves it has been misinterpreted. This is especially bad nowadays, seeing as the federal government is a plutocracy and democracy remains only in state and local governments (where not abolished locally by Republican election-rigging).
If we ever reestablish democracy in the US government, perhaps we should give the federal government power over activities that have major effects on the economy, social conditions or environment of the whole country or world, to compensate for narrowing the interstate commerce clause.
I would never make, or propose to make, a recording or photo of sex, or of a nude woman, if she did not mean it for publication, or at least insist that its publication wouldn't bother her. I am sure I would never publish it against her wishes, but she might not be as sure of that as I am. Then there is the risk it might leak or be stolen. The existence of the image would cause her avoidable anxiety. I'd rather avoid the anxiety by not making the thing at all.
A general weakness of democracy in the English-speaking countries is that people demand low taxes above all.
I want fair taxes, meaning that the rich can't get out of paying their high, fair share.
Fanatical Hindus assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Now their successors are trying to take over universities so that Gandhi cannot be taught.
The bigot-in-chief has discovered where the line is, as important advertising channels reject his racist ad.
The Montreal treaty is healing the ozone hole. With enough political will, we could curb global heating the same way.
If you're a lawyer in Florida, offer to help the Gillum campaign with the recount. Write to volunteer@andrewgillum.com and send your name, count(ies) you can assist in, days available this week, best phone number, and best email address.
US citizens: call on the US press to boycott the bully's "press conferences".
I don't agree 100% with this petition. It urges the press to boycott the worthless "press conferences" until the bully permits Acosta to attend them. I think the press should shun these lie opportunities as long as that's what they are. However, the petition is close enough to that as to convince me to sign it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The American Association of Pediatricians says that spanking children, and punishment in general, tends to make them more aggressive and to cause other mental problems.
My limited experience suggests that parents are more likely to be harsh to their children when they (the parents) feel stress. For instance, when they are poor. The children's resulting mental problems will tend to keep them poor.
A good welfare system can interrupt this generational cycle of suffering.
By international standards, US elections don't qualify as free and fair.
Khashoggi's sons demand his body so they can bury it.
The inability to produce the body will embarrass Salafi Arabia even more, especially with Muslims.
When Newsrooms Are Dominated by White People, They Miss Crucial Facts.
I deplore the use of virtue-signifying terms such as "of color" and "Latinx", but the point is valid. News reporting is an area where representing demographic groups is directly pertinent to doing the job properly.
Air Pollution: Everything You Should Know About a Public Health Emergency.
I think the word "emergency" is ill-chosen because it means a transitory problem. This problem could go on indefinitely until we correct it.
Some of the refugees that Papua New Guinea imprisoned for Australia got badly sick and were being treated in a hospital in Port Moresby, capital of Papua New Guinea. But an international summit is about to take place there, so Papua New Guinea sent the patients back to Manus, interrupting their treatment.
Supposedly this is to make space in the hospital in case delegates get sick. I suspect, though, that Australia demanded this so that the people attending the summit can't talk with any of the refugees.
Outrage over the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi helps focus the world's attention on every level of Salafi Arabia's repression and injustice, and on all the ways other countries support it.
The long-term way to weaken the vicious monarchy there is with a carbon tax, that will make the country's oil lose commercial value, while slowing global heating.
Kris Kobach, Republican candidate for governor of Kansas, has been involved for a decade with organized white-supremacist bigots.
It was obvious that Wang Yam's trial was a recipe for injustice. Evidence for his defense was ignored.
Now a European court is considering whether he deserves a new trial.
A secret trial is an unjust trial, an opportunity to impose a political outcome and call it "justice".
Shooting is a major cause of death for minors in the US. And it's a lot more so in states that don't properly regulate guns.
Toddlers kill their parents with guns, too.
Joseph Stiglitz warns other countries that the calamity of plutocratist minority rule, seen in the US, can happen to them too.
Salafi Arabia executed an Indonesian domestic worker for defending herself from rape.
I bet the other nine men that raped her afterward were left alone because, under Shari'a law, a woman's testimony is worth only half a man's testimony. Islamic Law shows contempt for everyone's human rights in various ways.
In the UK, as in-vitro fertilization becomes more effective, adoption declines. Some children can't find parents, and that tends to hurt them badly.
This is yet another reason to discourage IVF.
Indonesia's low-priced airline Lion Air appears to reduce costs by skipping maintenance.
Airlines would do this in other countries too, but it depends on being able to corrupt the aviation safety inspectors.
The bully approved Scott Walker's plan to kick unemployed people off Medicaid.
"Happy Birthday, we're sending you to prison." The deportation thugs artificially delay the release of imprisoned refugee minors for months, so it can have a chance to move them permanently to prisons for adult refugees.
A Swedish ISP, which has been ordered to block access to Sci-Hib, has blocked Elsevier.com as well, diverting it to a site that condemns Elsevier as a parasite on science.
Islamist terrorists in Egypt attacked a bus and killed seven Christian pilgrims.
They have used a strained excuse to scapegoat Christians for the military coup — this reminds me of what the bully does to his preferred scapegoats.
Australia has been hit by a nationwide outage of digital payments and ATMs.
This is a superficial reason to carry cash and pay cash. It will presumably be temporary.
I hope people will see the deeper reason to carry cash and pay cash, since that is likely to be permanent unless we can get the world to adopt our anonymous digital purchase payment system, GNU Taler.
Thousands of Google staff demand the company respect the rights of employees that make accusations of sexual harassment.
I support this cause, but since the victims of this particular wrong are limited to Google's workers, I think that Google's injustices to its users (nonfree software, surveillance and tracking, soon perhaps censorship in China) are overridingly bigger wrongs.
The "solutions" Google promotes for surveillance and tracking, which include "transparency" ("We tell you roughly how much we track people for the state") and "security" ("We protect your data from some sorts of misuse by parties other than Google and the state"), are fundamentally inadequate. And Google does not even recognize nonfree software as an injustice, whether in web pages or in phones, and nearly all Google products and services offer no way to escape nonfree software except the one I use: reject them.
What Google needs to do, to avoid injustice to its users, is stop collecting data about individuals, stop asking users to run nonfree software, and refuse to censor for China or any other state.
"No matter what cause you feel most passionate about, ending America’s culture of militarism would benefit it." But young Americans tend to disregard the US's global war.
The US's global war is spread across many countries, low intensity in most of them, and often carried out via proxies such as Salafi Arabia. These things make it easier for Americans to ignore.
We have 12 years to avoid global climate disaster — and we need to start the work long before that. The work includes region-level and global actions, which require political decisions.
The US electric power system does not need to keep old coal and nuclear power plants running.
However, we need to move away from fossil fuels faster than that. We should get moving constructing energy storage so that we can move completely to renewable generation.
Some of the bully's cruel policies pay off tremendously for some of his billionaire backers.
The election results will affect whether the bully dares to fire investigator Mueller.
The US government keeps over a thousand refugee minors prisoner in Tornillo, Texas. To make sure they will stay a long time, the US demands fingerprints and background checks for everyone that lives with the family that wants to sponsor them.
Demanding someone's fingerprints is asking too much. I would not give my fingerprints for almost anything unless I am coerced into it. Because that demand drives off possible sponsors — and not to mention that someone else living there may not dare call the attention of the deportation thugs — this policy is a gratuitous cruelty to the prisoners.
It is a mistake to call them "children". Some of them are 16 or 17 years old, which is too old to be called that.
Just 56 [billionaire plutocrats] Funnel Nearly Half a Billion Dollars to Super PACs.
That is more than 1/3 of the campaign spending for this election. If their attempt to buy the election is successful, it threatens to lock the US into lasting domination by those enemies of democracy.
Here is information on the 20 biggest spenders.
Some of them are labeled as "Liberal", but in several cases the PACs they donate to seem to support plutocratist Democrats — not really Liberals as I understand the word.
(satire) … the nation’s wealthiest residents assured the rest of the American public Friday that the heavily armed city being built in the sky high above the central United States had nothing to do with anything and could just be ignored.
The sad thing is, they are really doing this, but in a less visible way.
(satire) … the White House revealed Friday that it was concerned Ryan Zinke had made a land deal without giving a cut to President Trump.
Applying the lessons of Sanders to a state house district in Maine.
US courts approved Republican voter-suppression policies that target everyone in Dodge City, and indigenous people in North Dakota.
(satire) A former Christian extremist from Florida feels right at home as a Muslim.
A court has rejected another one of Kemp's schemes for rigging the Georgia election.
US deportation thugs jailed Guadalupe Plascencia, refusing to believe she was a US citizen, and treated her with contempt.
Part of this was a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes. However, treating prisoners with contempt is wrong even if they are not citizens.
Nigerian soldiers shot at a crowd of protesters, killing quite a few, after some started throwing rocks.
Officials said they were getting their human rights guidance from the bullshitter.
Rocks are weapons, but not very effective weapons, especially when thrown by hand by people without special training. (Since they cited David and Goliath, keep in mind that David reportedly used a sling to throw the rock hard, and had trained his aim through hunting.) The soldiers were presumably protected by armor including helmets, and in hardly any danger. They should have held their fire.
This shooting is likely to lead to worse violence.
It's not unusual for officials to make zero-tolerance their god, and cause harm in the name of strictness, their god.
One child's effective treatment for epilepsy might propel the UK into legalizing medical marijuana.
The ACLU: how to correct Ohio's 12-to-4 Republican gerrymander.
ACLU: The State Officials Who Have the Power to Suppress the Vote.
Be sure to vote to replace the Republicans.
US citizens: Call on congressional Democrats to champion a progressive agenda and not shy away from conflict with the bully and his plutocrats.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Google now requires all users to run nonfree JS code in order to log in.
It says this is for "security" — security against entities other than Google. However, running Javascript code controlled by Google's web site, or by any other web site, makes you vulnerable. If the Javascript code carries a free license then we are legally allowed to maintain our own modified versions to use instead.
The descendants of black slaves owned by the Creeks, and taken with them to Oklahoma, are suing to be recognized by the Creek nation.
Unauthorized immigrants are in great danger if they go to a courthouse in New York City. The deportation thugs prowl around looking for targets to deport.
When they are defendants, they get worse verdicts and sentences because the usual options offered are impossible for them in immigration prison.
Or they may be witnesses, in which case others are denied justice due to the lack of their testimony.
The nastiest thing is that city thugs seem to be reporting them to the deportation thugs.
How Big Oil Dodges Facebook’s New Ad Transparency Rules. Apparently they are rather weak rules.
1/3 of the endangered plant species produce "recalcitrant" seeds which can't be saved in a seed bank, because they can't survive being dried and frozen.
The problematical plants include oaks and mangoes.
Pakistan has bowed to fanatical Muslims by stopping Asia Bibi from leaving the country. This will give the fanatics what they demand: a chance to murder her.
US banking sanctions against Iran will block the import of medicine and food. This will kill sick people.
Something similar happened with the US sanctions against Iraq in the 90s: nominally food and medicine was exempt, but in practice importing them was difficult.
A broken (financial) police force is great for the super-rich. But not for the rest of us.
Senator Biden's privacy bill has admirably firm sanctions, but still has the usual flaw that it regulates mainly the use of data rather than trying to stop it from being collected.
This means that the data bases will still be waiting for the FBI to hoover up everything about everybody's activities using PAT RIOT Act.
Russia, China, and Norway killed the proposed Antarctic ocean nature reserve.
Salafi Arabia responded to US talk of a cease-fire by increasing the intensity of the war.
More about how the plutocratists are making the US banking system more vulnerable again.
Fanatical Muslims' protests in favor of killing people for "blasphemy" brought Pakistan to a halt.
Canada should close more fishing areas to protect North Atlantic right whales, which are headed for extinction and often killed by fishing gear.
Former Maldives President Nasheed has returned from exile.
"Spate of caravans [from Central America] doesn't mean that more people are migrating [to the US] — they are just doing so in a more visible manner."
The Australian government says it will remove all children (does that mean all minors?) from prison in Nauru by the end of the year, along with their families.
The children will not be allowed to stay in Australia, so where will they go? Will Australia drop them in another island tyranny?
The adult prisoners are also being driven mad by their conditions.
Fracking in the UK is running into trouble with standards for how big an earthquake it is permitted to cause.
Naturally, the frackers respond by saying, "Relax the standards." I expect the Tories will do that sooner or later, since the planet roasters are one of their principal sponsors.
The vital reasons to ban fracking are the danger of contaminating water supplies and, above all, the contribution to global heating. All extreme fossil fuels need to be protected from extraction, and most of the rest: in all, 80% of known reserves must be left in the ground.
Sri Lanka's parliament will meet to decide who is Prime Minister.
That resolves the immediate constitutional crisis, but the prospect of giving power back to the murdering and torturing Rajapaksa is still present.
A town in Burma is being steadily inundated by the sea. The town's well now yields salt water. Annual rains have become rapid, flooding 150,000 people off their land.
Republican state officials have closed thousands of polling places to make it harder for typically Democratic demographics to vote.
Mattis's push for a cease-fire in Yemen reflects i pressure in the Senate for an end to US support for Salafi Arabia's invasion and bombardment of Yemen.
Singapore's censorship makes it a crime to insult people, especially dead rulers of Singapore.
Singapore also joins in the world-wide trend to prohibit blasphemy against any religion, which dents freedom of speech in many parts of the world.
The cheater has given US banks permission to run closer to the edge of another financial crisis.
The financial crisis of 2008-2009 caused big paper losses in the stock market, but they were temporary. Meanwhile, it gave banks a special opportunity to take millions of Americans' homes by fraudulent foreclosures. Maybe they would like to have another crisis.
The US government used to funds efforts to deradicalize potential right-wing terrorists. The bully shifted it to focus on potential Islamist terrorists.
Apparently he wanted to demonize Muslims (whether Islamists or not) and legitimize right-wing terrorism.
But now he plans to shut the program down entirely.
A thug who beat up and kicked a teenager that he was arresting, and stated the intention to frame him, has been charged.
The thug committed two distinct acts that are, or ought to be, separate crimes. One was physical violence with no need or justification. The other was threatening to frame someone.
Either one should disqualify him from working for any thug department ever again.
The reaction to Khashoggi's murder may make it possible to end the war in Yemen.
Most of the world's remaining wilderness areas are in Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada.
All of them are ruled by extractivists.
China has fully imposed its book censorship on Hong Kong.
US citizens: call on Congress to put a stop to social media monitoring for purposes of repressing protests.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The EPA's pages on climate mayhem were taken down a year ago for an "update". Apparently that is Republican-speak for "deletion".
Hawaii's supreme court approved construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.
I support construction of the telescope. Advances in astronomy serve all of humanity. The claim that "the whole mountain is sacred because we have rituals in various places" is too weak to justify blocking anything. No religion merits the level of political power that is being claimed here.
Bolsonaro says he will align Brazil with the Israeli occupation of Palestine by moving Brazil's embassy to Jerusalem.
ISTR that Bolsonaro is an evangelical. Many evangelicals think of Jews as their allies in the end of the world … up to the last stage, in which the Jews are to be bullied into converting to Christianity.
It is possible in principle for Jerusalem to be shared as the capital of Israel and the capital of Palestine, but Netanyahu would never tolerate such a just solution.
Manifest global heating effects: heatwaves in the UK last more than twice as many days as they did 50 years ago.
Palau will ban most sunscreens because they contain chemicals that are damaging the coral in the lagoon.
Better measurements of temperatures in the oceans show that they have absorbed 60% more heat than scientists previously believed.
In the 1970s, when unions in Britain were strong, unionized jet-engine repairmen grounded Pinochet's air force by refusing to overhaul its engines.
(satire) … representatives from Brian Kemp’s gubernatorial campaign were reportedly energized Thursday after perusing early voter suppression numbers. "It's very exciting to see that with five days to go before the election, thousands of Georgians have already unsuccessfully attempted to cast their ballots…"
Right-wing and racist views motivate 70% of political violence in the US.
Left-wing views were behind a minuscule 3 percent.
Most of the world is subject to increasing censorship, surveillance and manipulation of the internet; the index of internet freedom has been declining for eight years now.
US veterans tell soldiers: "You should refuse his orders to deploy to the southern U.S. border should you be called to do so."
The planet roasters are spending millions to defeat state-level voter initiatives to try to reduce global heating.
Texas Voting Machines Have Been 'a Known Problem' for a Decade.
Denmark says that an Iranian state agency planned an assassination in Denmark.
I speculate that this agency is controlled by the unelected mullahs, not by the elected (but less powerful) president of Iran. Does anyone know?
Canadian glaciers are shrinking even faster than was expected.
Salafi Arabia gives money to the UN for humanitarian aid for Yemen, and requires that the aid agencies support Salafi Arabia's propaganda for the invasion.
Black farmers in Louisiana face persistent harassment and sabotage, apparently racist, aimed at driving them out.
People who grew up using screens instead of doing physical hobbies have trouble learning surgery in med school, because they have never practiced making things with their hands.
The US has a practice of building up Afghan "strong men" on the premise that they can hold down the Taliban.
The Burmese government is erasing all signs of the Rohingya villages whose inhabitants were violently chased out.
Nonetheless, Bangladesh plans to start sending some Rohingya back to Burma. To where in Burma?
Schools are installing face-recognition surveillance. The system is designed to recognize only a list of specified undesirables, not to track students. This reduces the harm it does, but it can still cause problems. It could still train students to accept face-recognition surveillance as normal.
The bully claims he has the power to override the Constitution and deny US citizenship to the children born in the US to foreigners.
With the world's carbon sinks diminishing in effectiveness, we need to eliminate use of fossil fuels.
But don't forget the deforestation, and the cows, that also emit greenhouse gases.
With 300,000 brown bears living in the US, they increasingly enter into conflict with humans.
What population level of brown bears do we want to have?
If the Men of Tomorrow Are to Respect Women, Parents Have to Teach It.
Since the Supreme Court accepted suppression of North Dakota's indigenous voters, a campaign has organized to help them satisfy the onerous requirements so they can vote after all.
Climate mayhem shares responsibility for driving refugees out of Central America.
After Win by Brazilian Fascist Jair Bolsonaro, World's Capitalists Salivate Over 'New Investment Opportunities'.
The word "investment" is misleading: these opportunities are for asset-stripping (extraction).
"It seems clear that US far-right extremism is a hotbed of hatred against both Jews and Muslims, and that its proponents mix the two up."
Right-wing Christians are trying to blame Jews for the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
2000 years ago Christians tried to blame Jews for the execution of Jesus, which (as far as we can tell) was done by the Romans who considered him a rebel leader. Elaine Pagels says Christians did this hoping to avoid being considered rebels too.
Teaching medical students to teach their future patients about how global heating will affect their health.
The Tories announce they will end their policy of cruelty to the poor, saying it has done its job. But they don't really plan to end it.
At least, not in a substantial sense. They have proposed substantial tax cuts, almost entirely for fairly wealthy people.
Local governments face ever more funding cuts.
To truly end the cruelty policy would mean restoring to the poor the way of life that they had before. Tories will never do that, because the job they are trying to do is that of dooH niboR, and his work is never finished.
Christian ministers rebuked Sessions for lacking charity in an event supposedly in favor of religious freedom. He had them removed.
In legal terms, Sessions was within his rights. The First Amendment doesn't grant a right to be in a private meeting if the organizers do not wish it. However, in moral terms, their point was irresistible.
The EU's Link Tax Will Kill [free publication of news] and Creative Commons News.
The synagogue used as the terrorist's target was known for aiding and defending immigrants in the US.
What the bigot in chief practices is "stochastic terrorism": stirring up others to commit terrorism against randomly chosen members of groups he demonizes.
The hate groups in which people speak in favor of violence, in a way that will sooner or later bring about real violence, can be described as "collective incitement to stochastic violence."
Perhaps this can lead to a good criterion for judging the proper boundaries of freedom of speech, which have never included incitement to violence.
Right-wing bigots target George Soros as a stand-in for Jews in general. What they are doing is anti-semitism.
Now that anti-semitism is a real danger, in the US and other countries, with help from the bigot in chief, let's make sure not to confuse the issue by mixing it up with support for the human rights of Palestinians.
90% of World's Children Are Breathing Toxic Air.
The particulate pollution causes permanent damage to their mental capacity. The fact that the plutocratic system refuses to act to fix this demonstrates its moral bankruptcy. However, fascists would not be any better — I expect they would rejoice that the public will be less intelligent 20 and 40 years from now, and easier for them to manipulate into supporting fascists.
Real democracy, even the imperfect democracy that we used to have, did a better job.
Salafi Arabia wants to invest in promotion of its good name by sponsoring another form of football competition.
Don't forget the 1978 football world cup, with which the Argentine military dictatorship tried to use to distract from murderous tyranny.
In the US: Call on REI to give its workers better wages and working conditions.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the bill to break up big banks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
It may be possible to mass-produce food far more efficiently by growing bacteria using solar-generated electricity.
I hope it doesn't all taste and feel the same.
Republican political ads in 2016 were designed to link economic issues with bigotry in a calculated way.
Parts of Germany are now dominated by violent neo-Nazis like the ones that the bully encourages in the US.
Asia Bibi has been freed after 8 years in solitary confinement in Pakistan, on charges of "blasphemy".
Now she needs to flee into exile or be assassinated by fanatical Muslims.
A Green member of the European Parliament declares her willingness to get arrested for protests to stop fracking and other planet-roasting activities.
Dubai has released Matthew Hedges on bail, but he shows the ill effects of almost 6 months of solitary confinement.
He will have to face a bogus trial represented by a lawyer he cannot communicate with.
I am sad to say that the US also keeps prisoners in solitary confinement for long periods of time and gives some of them bogus trials or no trial at all. This does not excuse Dubai.
The tripartite world order, with frequent small wars and constant cyberwar, will create lots of situations where a nuclear war could start. "Small" nuclear weapons, much larger than the Hiroshima bomb, could make it easier to start using them against conventional armies.
We need arms control treaties more than ever.
Refuting urban legends about Halloween "dangers".
With Midterms in One Week, Bernie Sanders Says GOP Effort to Strip Healthcare From 32 Million Should Be Highlighted 'Every Hour of Every Day'.
Cholesterol denialists are very persistent in the face of mountains of facts.
Netanyahu condemned the murder of Jews in Pittsburgh by a right-wing bigot, while continuing to praise the right-wing bigot that fomented this — and is his main foreign ally. And he's not the only one.
B'Tselem: The Israeli left-wing camp and human rights organizations seem to have woken up and are ready to fight the Netanyahu government and its occupation policies.
Bolsonaro is ideologically opposed to protecting the environment, and said he would eliminate the Ministry of the Environment.
Global heating has made the Amazon forest vulnerable. Continued attacks could make it disappear shockingly fast.
He also proclaimed a campaign of genocide against indigenous peoples that live in the forest.
FedEx is terminating its program of discounts for NRA members.
A Hungarian was acquitted by the Supreme Court of kicking and tripping refugees rushing past her.
Her excuse is bullshit. A person could indeed reasonably be frightened of a mob of people running toward per; but kicking and tripping them as they hurry past reflects not fear but malice.
I suspect therefore that this decision was a political stand disguised as justice.
The last election in Papua New Guinea was rigged and stolen.
Humans have eliminated 60% of the world's population of wild vertebrates since 1970.
A non-free social network program for schools, which invited students and teachers to enter students' personal data, demonstrated how much it violates students' privacy by allowing everyone to see that data.
Of course, that flaw will be fixed -- but all that data will remain accessible to some parties, including some companies. That's what parents should really object to.
An Ecuadorian court ruled that Julian Assange must obey the rules that the Ecuadorian embassy placed on him.
I think it is entirely reasonable to require him to clean his space, feed his cat, and pay for his laundry. The other rules I've read about seem legitimate too, including that he clear visitors with the embassy staff in advance. He is the embassy's guest, and he should act like a good guest.
Tracing violent male bigotry to a root in men's violence against women.
The theory is interesting and could be true, but the article doesn't try to demonstrate it; instead it seems to say, "Too bad you don't pay any attention to this," which is not helpful and somewhat unfair.
The article also says this connection leads to ways of acting to prevent both of those kinds of violence, but it only hints at what those might be. I am curious to learn more, from some article that would try to inform readers rather than rebuke them for not knowing.
A storm caused especially high flooding in Venice.
How many feet of sea-level rise could Venice survive? I think it would need the lagoon to be dammed off from the Mediterranean.
Could we possibly dam the Mediterranean off from the Atlantic? Hundreds of old cities on the shore of the Mediterranean will be flooded otherwise.
This dam would require a system to transfer salt, and that would be expensive. But it might be cheaper than the alternative.
Donald Trump's Rhetoric Has Stoked Antisemitism And Hatred, Experts Warn.
The Trump family business is being sued for luring people to "invest" in a scheme designed to swindle them.
Brazilians opposed to state terrorism plan to hold protests across the country.
US Muslims Raise More Than $120,000 for Families of Pittsburgh Shooting Victims.
Cutting off rural bus service in Canada means that the people who live in small towns, and can't pay for a car, are simply unable to travel anywhere.
A new requirement to reduce sulfur emissions into the air from ships could be met by using low-sulfur fuel, or by scrubbers, and the cheap scrubbers dump the sulfur in the water.
Dumping substantial quantities of sulfur residue in the small area of a port could cause local harm, but if the dumping occurs in the open sea, will it have any significant effect on the sea? The answer is not obvious to me -- what do scientists say?
A fancy hotel in Qatar is using trafficked workers who have to pay to get a job. They have to work for a months, even years, to pay back the debt, or else face punishment by the state.
Black, gay, female, indigenous and leftist Brazilians are now in danger from a president that has called for torturing and killing them.
The UK's domestic intelligence agency will start investigating suspected right-wing terrorists.
The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Either Tyranny or Revolution. The author went to school on a scholarship with children of the uber-rich, and reports on what they were like.
Foreign workers in Australia are systematically paid less than the minimum wage, and apparently Australia will do nothing to prevent this.
Many Republican candidates are now explicitly spouting antisemitism.
Europe is replacing the old ban on "blasphemy" with an even broader ban on offending the believers in whatever religion.
Analyzing the politics of recent decades in terms of confused, upset, ambivalent feelings.
A PAC that opposes the power of big pharma is attacking various candidates that support those companies.
The US is not experiencing high levels of unauthorized immigration; for the past decade, the rate has been around 1/3 of what it was in 2000.
"To trust each other again, we need to become more equal."
About 2% of babies are born with genitals that are not entirely male or female. The bully's new proposal to impose a nominal gender on each person based on per chromosomes can't cope with them at all.
The bully is trying to make the UN rigid about gender, too.
Bezos is funding advertisements attacking a candidate for Congress, claiming that criticizing US policies is a kind of treason.
Those ads oppose the freedom and democracy that America is supposed to stand for; I accuse them of being un-American.
Amazon actively pitched its face recognition systems to the US deportation thugs. They could set up cameras in streets, schools, hospitals, courts, and municipal offices, all to find people to deport.
Even more dangerous is the possibility that the government could use such systems to detect dissidents and heroic whistleblowers. I call for laws restricting all face recognition systems so that they can't help do that.
Can Dündar and Pussy Riot speak about facing state repression in Turkey and Russia.
Most of the UK's undercover "child" agents were actually age 17. The youngest was 15. None of them was a child.
FAIR: Salafi Arabia didn't lead the US astray. Supporting cruel regimes is standard US practice.
A catalog of the bullshitter's public lies. About 200 are listed; more installments coming.
Puerto Rico's imposed nondemocratic government plans to pay too much to the creditors, using implausible forecasts of economic growth as an excuse.
Any payment to the creditors is too much. Puerto Rico's debt should be canceled.
Nowadays, anyone can spend any amount of money on influencing US voters, as a result of the Corporations United decision.
GM tracked the choices of radio programs in its "connected" cars, minute by minute.
GM did not get users' consent, but it could have got that easily by sneaking it into the contract that users sign for some digital service or other. A requirement for consent is effectively no protection.
The cars can also collect lots of other data: listening to you, watching you, following your movements, tracking passengers' cell phones. All such data collection should be forbidden.
But if you really want to be safe, we must make sure the car's hardware cannot collect any of that data.
Judge Orders Georgia to Stop Tossing Absentee Ballots, in Rebuke to GOP Candidate (Kemp).
I am sure Kemp will try to appeal this; I expect that the right-wing extremists that dominate the Supreme Court will invent some stupid excuse to permit Kemp to rig the election, just as they invented an excuse to make Dubya "win" in 2000.
Indiana is trying to prohibit abortion if done on the basis of the sex, race or disability of the fetus, and Kavanaugh could be the deciding vote to approve it. This concept of nondiscrimination makes logical sense, if you accept the irrational assumption that a fetus is a person.
I've warned for years that the campaign against sex selection by abortion endangers abortion rights in general. That theoretical threat has now become real.
The campaign to prohibit sex-selective abortion is motivated by disapproval of the sexist bias that usually motivates sex-selective abortion.
I too disapprove of that bias. However, the practice of voluntary sex-selective abortion does not mistreat any women (unlike most other manifestations of sexist bias, which do lead to real wrongs to real women). To ban the practice would not prevent any wrongs, only make a symbolic declaration against sexism.
I think we should defend women's right to have an abortion for any reason whatsoever, and use other methods to make symbolic declarations against sexism.
A rap festival in London has been ordered to ban "swearing" from the presentations.
Note how the censorship requirement (inexcusable) has been snuck in alongside a limit on sound volume (justifiable).
The UK plans to make it a crime to look at publications deemed "terrorist", and to give thugs power to search and interrogate anyone entering the country. This would threaten freedom of the press.
The UK already imposes broad repressive censorship and has too much power to search and question people. Who needs hostile foreign states when your own state is so hostile to liberty?
White-supremacist agitators have been arrested for inciting violence in Charlottesville last year.
After the bully's persistent encouragement of violence, it is only natural that someone sent bombs to various people he targets.
The UN investigating mission says Burma continues repression of the Rohingya and more of them are fleeing into exile.
US citizens: file a comment against the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Here's the comment I sent:
The Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline is likely to do major local damage to water supplies for wildlife and for humans that live near the lakes and rivers it comes in contact with.Even worse, it will rush the whole world towards global climate mayhem by accelerating global heating. Several years ago, scientists told us we must leave 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. Based on newer results in climate modeling, that figure has probably increased. The first fuels to leave in the ground are the highly polluting ones, in particular tar sands oil.
Your Environmental Impact Statement is a sham and based on flawed data. You must do a proper, honest study, taking account of all the dangers; it will surely demonstrate that this pipeline should not be built.
The head of MSF's psychotherapy on Nauru reports that five years of enforced pointless idleness have made the refugees more or less suicidally depressed. They say that parts of them are already dead.
A Tragedy in Three Parts: Corporations, Coups, and Crazies.
Plutocrats convinced the public to disarm themselves of the one weapon suitable for keeping the plutocrats' power in check: a powerful and democratic government that recognizes them as dangerous.
Ann Cavoukian tried to apply a careful and strict standard of privacy for Google's "smart" neighborhood in Toronto: don't store data that identifies people. She resigned because Google was trying to create loopholes for surveillance.
"Work was once the way to a better life. Not any more."
Chinese agents are systematically contacting French officials to try to recruit them as spies.
More about how a hedge fund destroyed Sears.
Sanders and Varoufakis will launch an international progressive movement.
Toxicologists call for banning all organophosphate pesticides because they damage the health of fetuses.
I refuse to refer to fetuses as "prenatal children" — that term will tend to help the theocratic campaign to ban abortions. Causing damage to a fetus that then develops into a human being is wrong because that human being will suffer the damage. We need not try to support this conclusion by equating the fetus to a child.
New Hampshire passed a law to suppress the votes of college students.
Uber drivers in Australia frequently face violent attacks and theft.
I don't know whether this relates directly to the other injustices of Uber. If it does, I am very interested to know how.
Toronto commissioned Google to make one neighborhood a "smart city". Privacy expert Ann Cavoukian resigned from the project, saying she hoped it would be a "smart city of privacy", but in fact it is becoming a "smart city of surveillance".
A data base of personal data, once collected will be misused. So the only way to make a "smart city" respect privacy is to make it not collect personal data about where people go, what they do, and who they communicate with.
If instead the project aims to "protect" the personal data, it has already gone astray.
A series of American violent right-wing terrorists said they were inspired by the bully.
A killer shot 13 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, inspired by antisemitic right-wing extremists. This was clearly an act of right-wing terrorism.
US citizens: call on the EPA to restore Dr. Ruth Etzel as the chief of the Office of Children's Health Protection.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Predatory asset-strippers destroyed the companies Toys-Я-US and Sears, deciding that their assets were worth more than keeping the companies going.
I did not sign the petition, because the only message I want to send them is "drop dead." The response we need is a campaign to change laws so that no one can do this again. Electing progressives is a necessary step on that path.
If the US government deports someone for criticizing the government, does that violate the First Amendment?
If it doesn't, that is a loophole for the US government to attack democracy, which hurts everyone in the country including US citizens.
Facebook "support groups" must be a windfall for Facebook's profiling and advertising. They are also used to lure people into expensive "therapy".
The president of Mexico invited the migrants from Central America to remain in Mexico.
That is a kind act. However, Mexico is so violent that they may not feel safe there.
By the time they reach the US, they may not feel safe here either.
The Tories' redesign of welfare benefits, with various delays, cuts and punishments designed in, is boosting homelessness in the UK.
Russia, Germany, France and Turkey called for a lasting cease-fire in Idlib.
Since Russia is Assad's main backer, it might actually lead to that.
The president of Sri Lanka is trying to put the former tyrant, Rajapaksa, into power as prime minister, unconstitutionally.
This is all very strange, since President Sirisena was elected by defeating Rajapaksa in the presidential election.
Amazon is in such a position of surveillance that it can exert substantial control over people's activities.
This is dangerous, and we should not allow Amazon to continue to track people as it does.
Is transplanting endangered species into cities a good way to preserve them?
One of the reasons that protection programs for specific endangered species are effective is that they need to protect their habitats, and thus protect many other species that live there — even species that we don't know about.
To save one species by transplanting it elsewhere is not going to have this effect. At best it would save the one species that gets transplanted.
The unrealistic picture of sex presented in most porn harms men as well as women in their sex lives (though in different ways). Their sexual miseducation starts in adolescence, but many never learn better.
Our society's taboo cuts adolescents off from any way to learn about sexual relationships and lovemaking other than from porn and from other confused adolescents. Everyone learns the hard way, often slowly, and in many cases learns bad lessons.
The more effective the taboo, the deeper the ignorance. In 18th century France, teenage girls of good family emerged totally sexually innocent from education in a convent. Totally innocent and totally exploitable (see Dangerous Liaisons).
Contrast this with Marquesan society, where adolescents are not kept ignorant by a taboo on sex. They have various relationships with lovers of their choice, so they have many opportunities to see what pleases and what doesn't. Any one lover can please them more, or please them less, but can't mislead them — they have standards for comparison. In that society, even adolescents understand lovemaking better than a lot of American adults.
Inevitably, everyone starts out ignorant; the question is, how can society offer people a path which leads them to learn to do things well, rather than learning painfully to do them badly.
Breathing polluted air is killing 7 million people a year and harming billions more.
Postal bomb sender Sayoc had his house taken by fraudulent foreclosure in 2009, by the bank owned mainly by Steven Mnuchin.
Obama and Holder protected the bank (and other banks too) from prosecution for this, and supporters of the bullshitter helped protect it later.
Thousands rally in Sydney and Melbourne against imprisoning refugees in other countries.
How Australia Finally Started to Care About Asylum Seekers And Refugees on Nauru.
Super Typhoon Yutu devastated the island of Tinian, destroying homes, the main roads, and the electric and water supply.
The island has no capability to repair so much damage.
"While the Rest of the World Burned," Billionaires Made More Money in 2017 Than Any Other Year in History.
All at the expense of the rest of the world, both human and not.
(satire) The Saudi crown prince reportedly touted the hundreds of Yemeni lives saved by so much time focused on killing Jamal Khashoggi.
With the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis, calls to imprison political opponents were linked with violence against them.
The public rarely sees, and thus rarely thinks about, proposals to take action that would suffice to prevent global heating disaster.
I am not convinced it is necessary to eliminate capitalism entirely. Clearly, however, it is necessary to eliminate plutocracy. Perhaps the author identifies the two; many progressives do.
I don't think it is necessary to eliminate computers, the internet, or entertainment. They do not have to consume a lot of rare materials and energy; they don't inherently need to be built to last a short time. Rather, the general tendency of the modern economy towards planned obsolescence affects computers just as it affects coffeemakers.
Meanwhile, I urge people to have no children. Why drag more people into impending disaster? Having no children will reduce the size of the disaster, even as it spares some potential human beings from having to undergo it.
Global heating threatens many everyday foods.
The official that moved Dodge City's sole polling place out into the countryside claims to have done it for the sake of pedestrian safety. We are asked to believe that Republicans think it is safer to have pedestrians cross a state highway than to have them cross a local street.
I expect Republicans will really believe that, once they get the instructions to believe it.
A special SIM card blocks all non-Tor data communication, so that mobile services can't tell the user's real IP address and perhaps not per location either.
However, the phone network can still determine the user's phone's location.
SCROTUS' proposed cuts to benefits programs equal the amounts they gave away to the rich in last year's tax attacks.
If you decide to debate with white supremacists, be careful not to endorse their claim to victim-hood while you do it.
How tax havens corrupt the US government, the world economy, and economics.
New Exemptions to DMCA Section 1201 Are Welcome, But Don’t Go Far Enough.
We should replace this law, which makes breaking Digital Restrictions Management a felony, with a law making DRM itself a felony.
A public scandal embarrassed the UK government into granting a visa to Syrian journalist Humam Husari to attend a ceremony in the US where he may receive an award for his coverage of the civil war.
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