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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.
Everyone: Call on advertisers to stop supporting Tucker Carlson.
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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:
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.
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.
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US citizens: support Amending the US Constitution to say that corporations are not human beings and are not entitled to human rights.
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US citizens: call on Congress to stop arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
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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.
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Everyone: call on Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestlé to stop lobbying against bottle deposits.
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Everyone: Tell Amazon to stop developing dangerous face-recognition services.
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Everyone: call on Amazon employees to refuse military work.
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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’.
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.
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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.
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US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Green New Deal.
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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.
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Everyone: support clemency for Cyntoia Brown.
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US citizens: Call on the House of Representatives to keep HR 1 a strong protection for voting rights.
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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?
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Everyone: Tell Blackwood to stop funding deforestation.
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US citizens: urge Rep. Ocasio-Cortez to cut military funds to fund the Green New Deal (and to reduce US military activity).
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US citizens: call on congressional Democrats not to make militarist Rep. Engel head of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
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US citizens: call on Congress to block arms sales to Salafi Arabia.
To sign without running their Javascript code, use the Salsalabs method.
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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.
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US citizens: Demand real climate leadership.
The petition specifies what it means by that.
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Everyone: Tell Walmart to pay workers $15 an hour.
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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 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.
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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.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to censure Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for apologizing for slavery and supporting bigotry.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on Sinclair Broadcasting to fire Epshteyn.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on powerful Congresscritters to return large campaign donations from the military-industrial complex.
If you sign, please spread the word!
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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US citizens: call on Congress to give us real climate leadership.
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Everyone: call on Mondelez to stop buying palm oil from Wilmar.
If you have Javascript disabled, this will look strange, but it should work.
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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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US citizens: call on Paul Ryan to expel racist representative Steve King from the House of Representatives.
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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.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on advertisers to drop Fox News.
If you sign, please spread the word!
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.
Citizens of New York State: tell Cuomo you want a strong bail reform, strong enough to eliminate the abuses.
You could also call for eliminating cash bail.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on AT&T to stop funding the racist congresscritter Steve King.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Australia told Nauru to stop an Australian senator from visiting the refugees Australia uses Nauru to imprison.
Saboteur Zinke has approved an oil drilling project in the Arctic Ocean.
The whole Great Barrier Reef could suffer coral bleaching due to predicted heat this summer.
Argentina’s Gran Chaco Forest Is Being Razed for Soya.
The suspect for the parcel bombs had a van covered with support for the bullshitter.
The bully has revived the US mostly forgotten tradition of systematic political violence carried out for intimidation.
Republicans say the right-wing bomb sender couldn't be a Republican, because right-wingers are never violent.
They say that every time right-wingers commit violence.
Don't forget about the journalist Tareq Ayyoub, that the US killed with a missile, apparently intentionally, in 2003.
South Korean women are starting to rebel against the heavy social demands of maintaining required standards of beauty.
Women in Palestine Face Violence And Political Exclusion, Campaigner Tells UN.
Spain will close most of its coal mines.
"In most cases, political violence is only a big issue when it's done by our enemies."
The two main US political parties frequently manipulate election systems to obstruct candidates from other parties.
The article refers to "libertarians", but that is a misleading name for a party whose main position is deregulation. I call them "Antisocialists".
Rating US hamburger chains on their policies about using cattle raised with antibiotics.
US citizens: call on Mattis to cancel troop deployment at the border with Mexico.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Hype that claims organic food reduces cancer risk is based on a small change for a narrow segment of the population.
Congressional Democrats called for the US to reconsider Honduras' human rights certification.
Honduras has been repressive ever since the coup that Clinton winked at.
Canada has adopted a carbon emissions tax. It is not high enough, but it is a start.
The article says "The question is whether it will be sufficiently high to meet the country’s climate targets." I doubt that, because the targets tend to be insufficient. Also, there is a tendency to emit more greenhouse gas than was predicted. And some countries will not try hard enough.
The World's Billionaires Became 20% Richer in 2017.
A movement of progressive Christians points out that the bullshitter's actions are the opposite of what Jesus (as reported in the Bible) would do.
The Biblical Jesus would vote for Bernie Sanders. As for the real Jesus, but one can only guess, but he might have voted for Netanyahu.
We Don't Want Billionaires' Charity. We Want Them to Pay Their Taxes.
They have to pay a substantial tax rate, too. We must not let them starve our state.
Republicans are applying voter suppression specifically to indigenous Americans.
Fracking has been halted in England because it seems to be causing too much in the way of earthquakes.
The NRA's campaigning has blocked for decades the regulation of gunpowder used in homemade bombs.
Americans can no longer count on access to water. Projecting from available data, around 5% of American households had their water shut off in 2016.
Why "Medicare Advantage" add-on plans are not an adequate substitute for Medicare for All.
The US gives far too much value to "consent". You can be stripped of any rights whatsoever, if you can be pressured, tricked or forced into signing that you "consent" to losing them.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban organophosphate pesticides.
If you sign, please spread the word!
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.
Italy's help may make it possible to defeat the unconscionable copyright censorship article in the EU copyright directive.
It is cheaper to give homeless people proper toilets to use than to force them to defacate on the street and then clean it up.
However, it would be even cheaper, and far more effective, to require all restaurants to allow everyone to use their toilets, and to announce visibly that they do.
Casualties of the War on Drugs in Alabama: thousands prosecuted for using marijuana, and everyone else in Alabama, who bear the expense of jailing them.
If that were not bad enough, Alabama makes it nastier by selectively targeting blacks to jail. However, even if it chose victims without racial bias, the total gratuitous harm would be the same.
A federal appeals court ruled that Georgia cannot use copyright to restrict access to its laws, or their government-composed "annotations".
I would rejoice, but I don't know whether this decision will be final. It could be appealed to the plutocratist-dominated US Supreme Court.
New York State is suing ExxonMobil for concealing how future global heating could damage the value of its shares.
The fact that cheating shareholders is more susceptible to legal action than helping to kill (at least) hundreds of millions of people is a sad comment on the way the world is governed.
Facebook's former head of security warns not to let Facebook and such censor the internet.
The FBI may be feuding with the bullshitter, but it continues to be right-wing and defend the plutocrats.
The bombardment of Yemen is not indiscriminate. Often it focuses on the food industry. There is no military reason to bomb fishing ports.
Bernie Sanders: We Must Stop Helping Saudi Arabia in Yemen.
Gianforte, who pled guilty after attacking a reporter, settled the reporter's lawsuit by promising not to misrepresent the events. However, he did misrepresent them, and may have to face a renewed lawsuit.
Bolsonaro Backers Wage War on the Rainforest.
As Ebola Has Shown, the Global Health System Is as Strong as Its Weakest Link.
The EFF supports the idea of "information fiduciary" rules: "When you give your personal information to an online company in order to get a service, that company should have a duty to exercise loyalty and care in how it uses that information. "
This sounds nice, but it is fundamentally inadequate in the US because of the PAT RIOT Act, which allows the FBI to take all that company's data at any time. In addition, it is weak, because it depends on the company's good faith in interpreting "loyalty and care". If the executives are Republicans, they will do whatever suits them and call it "loyalty and care".
The adequate solution is to forbid companies from collecting most of the data at all. Then we won't have to worry about how they use it.
America's military no longer wins wars, but that's not its goal. It has achieved complete victory in the battle it really cares about — to define ever-higher military spending as unquestionably good.
The European Parliament voted to limit the bulk use of antibiotics on farm animals.
A global network of supporters enables Salafi Arabia's power.
Big Australian banks get away with cheating customers because the customers can't find any lawyers to work for them against those banks.
The context for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi: many countries in the Middle East repress journalists harshly.
Making bricks using human urine avoids most of the CO2 emissions of ordinary bricks.
If you thought Kavanaugh couldn't be worse: he is a close friend of the lawyer that argues cases for the executive branch.
Salafi Arabia uses Israeli spy software to track expat dissidents, including one that it invited to come to the Salafi Arabian embassy in Washington DC to get a new passport.
There is no evidence yet about whether it used this software to surveil Khashoggi too.
Palestinian governments repress the press in Palestine, but not as much as Israel does.
Israeli soldiers confiscated school vans used by Palestinians in the Jordan Valley.
The UK's supposed "solution" to oppressive landlords is to make a secret list of them — and so far, no one has been put in the list.
It appears that the Tories don't really want to address this problem, only pretend to have done so.
(satire) Nation’s Fact-Checkers Confirm They'll Probably Wrap Up Evaluating Trump's Statements By 2050 At Latest.
The prince (and acting king) of Salafi Arabia is trying to put the blame for Khashoggi's murder on a henchman who boasts of his total obedience to the prince.
Ajit Pai, and Florida Governor Scott, say they are disappointed with how slowly phone companies are restoring service in the areas hit by the hurricane. Their own deregulatory policies encouraged this problem.
The US government (specifically, the Department of Hostility and Sadism) seizes refurbished Apple batteries, calling them "counterfeit".
We should not allow companies such as Apple any excuse to block the supply of independent replacement parts.
Many manufacturers of "smart" devices refuses to say whether they use them to spy on customers for the state.
The article exaggerates tremendously when it claims that avoiding snooper devices is "near impossible". To avoid them in your own home may be a little harder than falling off a log, but you can do it. We should, I believe, reject any device which delivers data to a company's server.
To be sure, I won't complain about the detection of murderers and crooks; that, in itself, is good. What worries me is that the same power can easily be turned against laudable "criminals" such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. It is very good to catch real terrorists, but dissidents are often labeled as "terrorists", and all the same surveillance methods are used to catch them.
It's Repair Day: No One Should Be Punished for "Contempt of Business Model".
For the long term, what we need is to build considerably more housing in places accessible by mass transit.
For the longer term, we need to have few children so as to decrease the population. Then the existing housing will suffice.
Arizona yielded to anti-vaxers by cancelling an educational program for parents of students about vaccines.
Most of the people that objected had not seen it.
Municipal employee pensions have been underfunded in many US cities. They may be unable to pay the retirement funds that they promised.
The article argues for privatization of pensions, but that has its own dangers. Many people will be lured into speculation by sales agents that are more persuasive than scrupulous, and some of will lose their whole pensions and end up out on the street.
The latest impulse for deforestation in Malaysia is to make durian plantations.
To have a high standard of living for all humans in the future, we need to make a lot fewer humans.
The bully follows the Orwellian practice of redesignating enemies as friends on the spur of the moment, as if nothing had changed. "Cruz, or Eastasia, has always been our friend."
Since a trial in Turkey would inspire no confidence, prosecuting the murderers of Khashoggi needs to be done in international court.
How California Public Employees Fund Anti-Rent Control Fight Unwittingly (via their pensions invested in Blackstone).
The Isle of Man created marine reserves, with the cooperation of fishermen, which protect many marine species including for fishing.
Island volunteers also clean all the visible pieces of plastic off its beaches, but that is treating just one symptom of a global problem.
Amazon, Palantir and Microsoft are making millions from the bully's cruelty to immigrants, including the prisons.
Australia has a new way to set up an unstoppable doomsday machine: by starting new coal mines, and committing to pay the whole of the mines' carbon taxes in the future.
At a time when we need to reduce use of fossil fuels, to aim to make fossil fuels cheaper to use is a fundamental mistake. This is an example of setting short-term convenience over long-term survival.
The purpose of a carbon tax is to make fossil fuel more expensive to use, without making it more profitable to extract. If it had started 10 years ago, with a large enough tax rate, we might have been well on the way to decarbonizing by now. However, with time being short, it may be too slow.
We Need a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Poor people in Dakar have to spend a lot of their income paying a cartel monopolistic prices to empty their septic tanks and latrines.
The article recommends "Uber for poop", but I think that this is different from Uber in a crucial way.
Uber is an unjust democracy-threatening surveillance system that tracks customers' movements. By contrast, calling a company to empty your septic tank does not give it important data about your life. This service might be morally legitimate.
Bernie Sanders is more deeply opposed to plutocracy than Elizabeth Warren is.
I will vote for Warren for senator, and probably for president if she wins the Democratic nomination. (It would be her or the Green Party.) But my choice is Sanders.
Human Rights Watch says that Palestinian thugs routinely torture Palestinian dissidents, much as Israeli thugs do.
US citizens: call on US officials, if you don't support the hatred of the bigot in chief, resign.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In a Congressional race in West Virginia, one candidate stands for coal mine owners and the other for coal mine workers.
It looks like neither of them stands for those of us who would like to limit fires, floods, tropical diseases and insect pests, extinction, and food shortages.
Israel is pressuring European political parties to arbitrarily declare boycotting Israel as antisemitic.
Even if they say so, that won't make it true.
The UK could do without sales of arms to Salafi Arabia, but the murderous monarch can't make war without support from the UK and US.
The EFF implores EU leaders to get rid of the extremely harmful clauses of the coming copyright directive.
The bully wants to arrest and deport foreigners when their visas expire rather than let them leave. Why bother? To get an excuse to punish them.
The EU is working on a directive to eliminate most single-use plastics.
I read that a majority of the debris in the Pacific garbage patch comes from lost or damaged fishing nets. This directive is good, but fishing net waste must be curbed too.
A hurricane eliminated a small island west of Hawaii, uninhabited by humans but depended on by endangered seals and sea turtles.
This shows that global heating can wipe out species you wouldn't expect to be affected.
Global heating is causing West Nile virus to spread in the US.
Businesses force non-compete agreements on employees, even nonprofessional jobs such as security guards, which makes them effectively trapped and unable to change employers.
In some cases they are not legally valid, but the employees have no feasible way to find this out. And the fear of being sued, even frivolously, by a company which can afford a lawyer, can intimidate the employees.
I think that employment contracts need to be more tightly regulated. Companies should not be allowed to make up new demands and impose them on employees that feel they don't dare refuse.
Perhaps employers should be required to post a notice such as, "If you are paid hourly, your employer MAY NOT impose a no-compete contract. If it tries to, show your contract (dated 2019 or later) to state office S and collect a $1000 fine from your employer right away."
Refugees that Australia dumped in Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) want to get travel documents from Papua New Guinea so they can look for somewhere else to go. Papua New Guinea has found excuses to refuse.
Deep-learning AI is likely to be hit by a tangle of patents.
Gaza's water supply is severely restricted by the Israeli siege; its wells have salted up. If things get much worse, it will be fatal.
Everyone: call on Iran to free and pardon Atena Daemi.
If you sign, please spread the word!
New Zealand prohibited so-called "synthetic cannabis", which then became extremely fatal, apparently as a consequence of prohibition.
"Synthetic" is a misnomer; "artificial imitation" would fit these drugs better, since they are not the same psychoactive chemicals found in real marijuana. It appears they are addictive.
It is not stated what "urgent action" is being considered, but I doubt that they include any sort of legalization or partial legalization, even though those measures could make the drug less dangerous and less appealing to young people.
The US is not, in fact, carrying out its totally inadequate greenhouse gas commitments made under the Paris Climate Agreement.
China has constructed a 34-mile-long sea bridge from Hong Kong to Zhuhai for use only by selected individuals China wants to single out for reward.
As a transportation system, it will be a waste of money. As an instrument of influence over Hong Kong, it may prove effective. Wealthy Chinese compete for status, and part of this competition might be shelling out lots of money so as to win qualifications to be permitted the use of the bridge.
The West Enabled Khashoggi's Demise — Not To Mention All the Other Saudi Crimes.
Los Angeles teachers have voted to strike, and not only about their salaries.
South Korea threatens to imprison South Koreans for using marijuana even if they do it in places where it is legal to do so.
I dislike this article greatly. It asserts that South Koreans couldn't possibly use marijuana in defiance of that law. And it seems to endorse the idea that that law makes the South Koreans wrong for using marijuana, rather than making the country wrong for having the law.
Amnesty International: Mexico must not deport anyone to Honduras or Guatemala who would face danger there.
No matter that the US mass media are so right-wing that they praise plans to cut back on civil rights for queer people, the right-wingers claim the mass media have a "Liberal bias".
Wales will pledge not to open any new coal mines.
Most coal mining in the UK, perhaps all, was shut down in the 1980s because the underground mines were more expensive than blowing off mountaintops in Appalachia.
Wales has also banned fracking.
Many examples demonstrate that humans can practice democracy and make it work. The US is having trouble because Americans have not recognized that they need to unite to take power away from the plutocrats.
Germany has stopped arms exports to Salafi Arabia.
Two New Zealanders that Israel tried to "fine" for urging a singer not to perform in Israel write to turn attention back to the real issue: the occupation of part of Palestine and the siege of the rest.
A sample suggests that 50% of humans have microplastics in their stools. They could cause medical problems, but we don't know.
Addiction Treatment Gap Is Driving A Black Market For Suboxone.
Kavanaugh Once Lobbied for Judge Now Handling Ethics Complaints against Him.
Nowadays, Republicans scorn the idea of integrity. Is it possible that the other judge still has some?
"After what I lived through?": survivors of Brazil’s dictatorship fear Bolsonaro.
UK thugs have been fired for lying about the encounter in which they broke a student's neck, leaving him with incurable grave brain damage.
A study of international statistics shows that the "war on drugs" is "terrible at eradicating drugs, but great at upending societies."
Salafi Arabia brought a man that resembles Khashoggi to the Istanbul consulate, and sent him out after the murder wearing Khashoggi's clothing.
French students are suing over racial profiling in searching people on the street.
The environmentalist group XR campaigns for efforts to curb global heating which are proportional to the gravity of the danger. Their protesters have occupied the Greenpeace UK headquarters to call attention to the fact that Greenpeace's campaigns don't demand enough to solve the problem.
Supporting Pat Elder's campaign to be elected Democratic Whip in Congress is vital for taking the Democratic Party away from the center-right "moderates".
Municipal plastic recycling is, in many cases, a sham — nothing ensures that the plastic collected goes anywhere but a landfill or an ocean.
If you reuse a carry bag, or refill your own water bottle, the reduction in plastic use is guaranteed.
Authoritarians persecute trans people as a way of repressing women in general.
The bully has found another excuse to take refugee minors away from their parents.
Kemp de-registered an additional 100,000 citizens of Georgia simply because they had not voted for 3 years.
Bolsonaro says he would put the army on the streets of Brazil's cities.
Soldiers are trained for war, not for policing. They would cause tremendous avoidable suffering simply by responding to confusing or alarming situations as if they were on a battlefield.
Salafi Arabia is threatening to cut oil shipments, but this would backfire if tried today.
Experts say that cancelling the INF treaty is a misguided way to get Russia to comply with it.
An Italian candidate for office made video recordings of corrupt deals he was offered — even selling votes.
In Brazil as in the US, military + evangelicals = violent repression.
Over 80 US political campaigns are demonizing Muslims.
With a president that spews contempt, civility may be too much to hope for. Bill McKibben says, how about if we stop threatening to kill each other?
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to end the war in Yemen.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the WATER act (Water Affordability, Transparency Equity and Reliability Act, to provide Americans with what people in Flint and other cities don't have.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on California to reject unreliable "offsets" as an excuse for expanded fossil fuel extraction.
If you sign, please spread the word!
MPEG is developing a new format for genomic data, which will be patented, and probably off-limits in the free world for 20 years.
We should campaign for rejection of that format.
The author thinks that some computational-idea patents might be legitimate. The reasons they are all harmful is that they create a form of gridlock — and that they usually exclude free software, since the developer must pay license fee per user. (We don't know how many users our programs have.)
Therefore, we should protect the entire software field from the threat of patents.
The author says he is not against "commercialisation" of software. Interpreting the term precisely, neither am I. I am not against profiting from software, as long as it respects users freedom (it is free/libre software). However, nothing can justify a program that takes away freedom from whoever uses it.
Israel has built up the world's leading source of surveillance equipment, used by many unjust states to implement repression of dissidents, as well as groups such as queer folk that are persecuted out of sheer bigotry.
How Do You Write about Trump vs. Reality Without Saying 'Lie'? New York Times Shows The Way.
We may not have absolute, direct proof that the bullshitter is lying. That is because he does not attempt to maintain a consistent position from one moment to the next. If he looks at the sky and sees sunshine, and a minute later says it is raining, it is conceivable that he isn't lying: he could perhaps sincerely believe that statement if he has forgotten what he saw a minute before. However, if he is even halfway mentally competent, the only plausible conclusion is that he is lying.
Moscow Bans Ceremony Honouring Victims of Stalin's Terror.
Those who protect the reputation of Stalin take on a share of Stalin's guilt.
St Louis is considering a local law to give elected officials control over surveillance technology.
This could be a big step forward, but only if it leads to eliminating some of the existing massive surveillance that the article describes.
Cambridge Mass is also considering such a law.
China turned abruptly from denying it puts Uighurs in brainwashing camps to describing them as wonderfully beneficial schools.
I trust whatever China says about them about as much as what the bully says about immigrants.
Hundreds of thousands, perhaps 700,000, marched in London to demand a new referendum on taking Britain out of the EU.
We used to believe that the internet would promote democracy by decentralizing media. At present, it does little of either one.
The Saboteur of Human Disservices wants to define gender in an immutable way based on a baby's sex organs.
The article does not say what they would like to do with people born with sex organs that are intermediate or mixed.
The EU should not impose policies to curb disinformation which are based on guesswork.
Appeals Court Says Of Course Georgia's Laws (Including Annotations) Are Not Protected By Copyright And Free To Share.
This is a good outcome, if it is an outcome. With doctrinaire plutocratists now dominating the Supreme Court, I expect it to overturn every decision that goes against plutocrats.
Khashoggi Murder Exposes Trump Administration's Dependency on Saudis.
These dependencies concern the bullshitter's success, not anything that is good for the US or the world.
The US is jailing then deporting US military veterans based on infinitesimal excuses, and (naturally) lying about it.
When the US defends human rights and democracy, instead of defending plutocrats from everyone else, it might be a good thing to join the US military.
Red Cross: global heating is already contributing to conflicts, years before that was expected. "It's obvious some of the violence we are observing … is directly linked to [global heating],"
Australia is considering an escalation of the War on Sharing.
Australians, please write to your elected officials to oppose this. What I would say is that sharing is good, and sharing ought to be lawful; copyright issues should not be decided mainly for the sake of the copyright industry.
Meantime, I urge you to make sure that you personally can share with people you know. Don't watch or listen to anything directly by streaming; rather, insist on getting a local copy without DRM, so that you can share copies if you decide to.
US citizens: Tell Congress to end U.S. support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose the bully's plan to make parts of the federal government deny all recognition to transsexuals.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: see which candidates have pledged to work against fossil fuels.
The UAE hired US veterans to assassinate local leaders in Yemen. The targets were called "terrorists".
Joseph Stiglitz: how the US economy and political system were rigged to benefit the plutocrats and screw most people.
Because the plutocrats got their wealth by legalizing cheating, and hold on to their political power by lying and rigging elections, they have no moral right to either this wealth or this power. We should organize to take it and redistribute it. We need to do it soon, in time to stop them from roasting Earth's ecosphere.
Supposedly "bipartisan" seminars for US judges teach right-wing thinking that endorses deregulation.
The latest form of identity politics is to condemn straight actors for playing homosexual roles.
Since gay actors such as Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn (according to Scotty Bowers) have played straight characters (and done it well), why shouldn't straight actors play homosexual roles? Why should it matter what any actor's real orientation is? The only question that should matter is whether that actor plays the role well.
An Australian minister ordered an auditor not to discuss whether an arms contract was unreasonably expensive, on the grounds the information might harm the interests of the arms company.
This means that the Australian government is in effect a government of occupation for foreign arms companies, as well as for foreign coal companies.
Sub-leaders of the Republican cult are trying to smear Jamal Khashoggi so as to protect the repressive regime of Salafi Arabia, because their leader says Salafi Arabia is on their side.
It appears that Khashoggi covered Osama bin Laden's activities in the time when al-Qa'ida was supported by the US to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
A cop confronted a black child reported to have a gun … and behaved like a police officer instead of a thug.
He did not shoot, and the reported gun turned out to be a BB gun.
The main damage from hurricanes comes from storm surge and voluminous rain. High-speed winds do damage too, but it is much less. So we should rate hurricanes based on the expected water damage.
"It's naive to think college athletes have time for school." Evidence shows they don't have time to succeed in their studies.
Big-time college sports teams are a tumor on the side of education, a perverse way of funding colleges based on inculcating a bizarre obsession into the students (even the non-athletes). It didn't take with me; I never once attended a sports event during my own college years. I simply decided that teams were a distraction of no importance.
With public funding of college — and if we stop employers from asking about education that the job doesn't need — we could cut out the tumor.
The richest people and poor people do similar peccadilloes, but when poor people do them, people say they are bad and deserve to starve.
One of these peccadilloes, "promiscuity", is bad only in the eyes of prudes. There's no reason you shouldn't have sex with various people, if you enjoy that and have the opportunity, provided you take care to avoid spreading diseases and babies.
How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions.
A Chinese music star was jailed for singing the national anthem in a non-serious manner. She was coerced into apologizing for "hurting the feelings" of properly brainwashed Chinese.
Nobelist Frances Arnold is glad she did not patent the directed evolution of enzymes.
33 countries allowed Omar al-Bashir to visit without arresting him for the International Criminal Court.
Freedom of expression is a dangerous licence when severed from any commitment to truth, as cyber-thugs reveal daily.
However, no one has found a way to offer freedom of speech only to those who are sincere, or only to those who are right.
The UK may speed global heating by expanding a runway at a London airport.
We have no chance of saving our climate if we don't reject proposals to increase air travel. We should increase the taxes enough so that air travel does not increase; then no more airport capacity will be needed.
In the US, Democrats appear to be too weak, or perhaps too corrupt, to even propose measures sufficient to do the job.
Widespread despair about avoiding global disaster helps them get away with that weak stand.
It is not physically too late to avoid the big disaster, but we have to reinsert the world's overriding need into all issues that affect it.
Facebook deleted a video in which George Monbiot describes the atrocities that Christopher Columbus personally led in the colonization of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
It later restored the article after widespread criticism.
I don't know what words Yannis Mendez used, but the article refers to publications as "content" and says it is legitimate to delete "inappropriate" publications. The term "content" disparages all publications, regardless of what is good or bad about them. There are valid reasons to delete some publications, but in order for a reason to be valid, it must be statable with some concrete word — "inappropriate" is never sufficient.
Publishing on or via Facebook feeds the power of that company. The best way to protect yourself from its censorship is to publish elsewhere.
If you access the video (or anything) on youtube, for your freedom's sake I urge you to do it with youtube-dl rather than by running the nonfree software that youtube.com sends in every page.
HIV prophylaxis medicine could, over time, eliminate HIV. We only need to make sure everyone can get it.
Dubya and Obama borrowed their assassination programs from Israel, which had set it up as part of denying that the occupation of Palestine was an occupation.
At that time, Israel occupied the whole of the Palestinian territory, including Gaza.
The US has privatized salvage archeology to companies that discard the data.
A professor at the University of Michigan was punished for refusing to write a letter of recommendation for a student's application to a university in Israel.
In general, I think professors should be allowed to boycott specific universities for any reason. However, letters of recommendation are a different issue because they are something professors do for their students. Denying a student a letter of recommendation to a university because of disapproval of that university forces the student, in effect, to boycott that university too. That choice should be the student's choice to make.
Since the bully practices murder of civilians, it is no surprise that he defends his Salafi Arabian accomplice for the murder of Khashoggi.
Up to 9.5 Million Net Neutrality Comments Were Made With Stolen Identities. Lobbyists are being investigated for this.
They were lobbying against network neutrality. It was clear at the time that the phony comments were meant to give Ajit Pai a superficial excuse to pretend that the public did not support network neutrality. It was not clear that some were identity theft, too.
Rising seas will destroy the Florida Everglades, which people have worked for so long to preserve.
Anti-fracking protesters in the UK were sentenced to long prison terms, but the appeals court cut them down to a short period (which they had already served).
This is not good enough. Nonviolent protesters should not be jailed.
"My release from prison for protesting fracking does not equate to justice."
A Republican Party official in Montana is trying to provoke the shooting of protesters.
Israel's Supreme Court decided to allow Lara Alqasem to study in Israel, based partly on the argument that she no longer campaigned for the Palestinian boycott.
How Bolsonero wins support from poor and black Brazilians who fear criminal violence.
Making life harder for the poor is, however, likely to impel more violence.
10 years after the crime, a white man who shot 3 blacks who were fleeing New Orleans has pled guilty and will go to prison.
Evidence suggests Florida governor Scott invested state money in a company in exchange for a donation to a PAC Scott controlled.
Blockchains Won't Fix Internet Voting Security — And Could Make It Worse.
Until we can rely on voters' computers to be secure, we must not allow voting by internet.
Georgia is grasping any excuse to block poor and black people from voting. The latest excuse is to claim signatures don't match.
The Republican candidate for governor, Kemp, is in charge of this, and he takes the usual Republican attitude: "If you can't stop me, I will do it."
Pirate Party Enters Parliament in Luxembourg, Gets 17% in Prague.
1600 refugees crossed from Honduras into Guatemala, so the bully demanded that Honduras catch them and bring them back or he will cut all US aid.
Remember when the Soviet Union blocked refugees from leaving? Leaving required an "exit visa" — a demand that was condemned as fundamentally unjust. What the bully demands of Honduras goes beyond that. The Soviet Union did not try to kidnap and bring back all the refugees who had managed to get out.
Much of the "aid" to Honduras props up the coup-installed fake-democratic government. Cutting off that aid might do some good for that country. But the bully won't consider doing that.
On the other hand, increased aid of the right kind might help end the repression that drives people to flee.
In the US: participate in a rally Sunday or Monday to support the youth plaintiff's lawsuit against the government for allowing planet roasters to prepare a predictable global disaster that is sure to affect them.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bill that would start a reign of terror for refugees, and imprison them indefinitely.
I am disappointed that the article uses the emotionless word "detain" to refer to imprisonment. A prison is still a prison even if you decide to call it a "detention center".
I'm also disappointed by the absurd word "Latinx". But I signed the petition anyway and I hope you will too.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Kemp to release the 50,000 Georgia voter registrations that he is blocking.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Don't let Erdoğan's pursuit of justice for Jamal Khashoggi blind you to Erdoğan's not-quite-murderous repression of Turkish journalists.
Salafi Arabia admitted that Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its consulate, but claim that his death was not intended.
This is, of course, incredible a priori, but what if it had happened? Nothing could explain denying his death and disposing of his body.
The bully plans to pull the US out of the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty, signed with the Soviet Union in 1987.
This might be meant as punishment for alleged Russian violations of the treaty. I saw reports of those accusations quite some time ago.
The caravan of Hondurans and Guatemalans crossed into Mexico by rafting and swimming, bypassing Mexican border controls.
A parking garage lets motorists pay by handing in plastic bottles.
If the bottles can really be recycled, this does some good, but we really need to make fewer plastic bottles.
For the plutocrats and fascists, global heating is not a problem. The problem is us — the people they consider superfluous — and global heating is the solution.
I see a possible way to defeat them: to prove to them now that, if they kill hundreds of millions a few decades from now, those hundreds of millions will make sure to drag them down too.
For the giant businesses that seek to rule the world, Universal Basic Income is appealing as a way to keep the masses dependent and powerless.
That doesn't necessarily mean it isn't a change for the better. However, today's politicians would be likely to make the basic income less than universal. They would pass laws to kick people off the basic income if they commit a crime, fail a drug test, protest, attract the attention of the thugs, etc.
I agree that Universal Basic Assets might be better — depending on details. At the same time, I still think that Universal Basic Income could be a good system, if the rest of the political and economic context were better.
The article's criticism of Uber omits the injustices Uber does directly to its customers:
PEN and others are suing to stop the bully from threatening to use his powers against freedom of the press.
The merger of Time Warner with AT&T ought to be forbidden simply because they are both so large — regardless of what CNN publishes.
Right-wing prudes would rather put women in danger of cancer than allow them to be vaccinated against papilloma virus at age 12.
Women in many states of the US need to get abortion drugs by mail, as the states have set up arbitrary obstacles.
Bolsonaro's plutocratic supporters are illegally sending campaign messages to millions of Brazilians.
Republicans have made it nearly impossible for the Latinos of Dodge City to vote. They have given the city just one polling place for 13,000 voters. It is outside the city, a mile from any bus stop.
They can't win an election, so they have to steal it.
If you can get to Boston, join the rally Monday at 11:30am at the start of the Juliana v United States climate damage lawsuit.
Everyone: Tell the G20 leaders that natural gas is not a "bridge fuel".
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for preserving the Flores Settlement, which limits how long the US can imprison refugee minors.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Australians: you can opt out of My Health Record.
I don't have enough details about this to judge whether it is important to do so, or whether it protects in any substantial way from state surveillance.
Everyone: Demand Justice in Police Taser Killing of Chinedu Okobi.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Small, cheap farming robots are being developed to pay attention to each individual plant, and to kill weeds without pesticides.
In growing wheat, they could be used to enable the same number of humans to do a far better job. However, the plans for broccoli would imply a big cut in employment, and that will harm people. Until we are ready to prevent efficiency from making millions of people starve in the midst of plenty, we should not allow robots to be used that way.
Meanwhile, when farmers use such robots, they deserve to run their robots with free software, and to process their data with free software too.
Small steps towards gender equality, decreasing the advantages of being male, are interpreted as oppression by supporters of the bullshitter.
In Virginia, it is a felony to protect your anonymity by hiding your face.
We must demand such laws be abolished, so we can protect ourselves from face recognition surveillance.
The world's entire insect population has decreased by a factor of 2 since 1980, apparently due to global heating.
Most of the decline has been in tropical forests, where the quantities have declined catastrophically, in some places by a factor of 60.
"New data tool can help scientists use limited funds to protect the greatest number of endangered species."
There is no inherent limit on the funds available for protecting endangered species. There is also no inherent limit on how many species human activities can endanger. So I think they are optimizing for the wrong problem.
Global heating is shifting the region of the US where tornadoes usually occur. This means people are vulnerable now who were not before.
Printer manufactures are very innovative — at blocking the use of independent replacement ink cartridges. Their "security upgrades" occasionally impose new forms of cartridge DRM. HP and Epson have done this.
"The myth of meritocracy: who really gets what they deserve?"
Meritocracy means "rule by the most worthy." But the reason we want the most capable as managers of society is not because they deserve more than anyone else, but because we presume they could manage society better.
That presumption may be valid provided they are not affected by bias or corruption. However, in practice ability does not assure honesty.
It is crazy to give homework to three-year-olds, but New York public schools are compelled to do this.
"Adults in the Room": Greens surge across Europe as centre-left flounders.
Saboteur Zinke used government funds for family boat trips.
West Virginia is allowing people to vote remotely (which in general means your spouse or boss could watch), demanding that voters give their fingerprints (surveillance of voters) and use lots of nonfree software (tyranny).
Of couse, it is insecure too.
Assassins Without Borders: Salafi Arabia joins North Korea, Russia (and the Soviet Union), Chile, Bulgaria, Israel and the US.
I would not apply the term "assassination" to most of the killing of Gazans by Israel, because that word means that a specific target was chosen and specifically killed.
Israel recently announced its soldiers would apply even less restraint before killing Gazans that come near to the border with Israel.
If Israel wants a buffer zone to keep Gazans away from Israelis, it ought to set up the buffer zone on its own side of the border.
The bully praised violence against journalists, as a general matter.
Voter-verified paper ballots seemed to have potential, but they don't work to protect the election from theft.
For a secure election, voters should vote on paper. Computers can count the votes by scanning the papers.
Florida citizens: vote to restore voting rights to ex-cons.
Guatemala did not block the caravan of migrants, which is now approaching the border with Mexico. Mexico has threatened to stop them.
An interview with a British sex worker who chose that career, rather than the alternative: her family hungry and living on the street.
Arresting her customers would have given her no help. Hampering her form of advertizing would have been no better. What she needs is proper government support for poor people.
Training unauthorized immigrants to understand and exercise their legal rights. This is necessary since immigration thugs frequently act illegally.
Nicaragua's suppression forces have killed over 300 protesters by shooting at protests. Others have been arrested and tortured.
I cannot blame the opposition for firing back, but it might be mistaken strategy.
Rep. Rohrabacher might be defeated by a former Republican running on the Democratic Party ticket.
That could mean less support for bullying and bullshit, but a plutocratist Democrat is no better than a Republican in the fight to end plutocracy and curb global heating.
"The United States must view the Saudis not as flawed partners, but rather as malign actors undermining US interests."
The cheater and his family are directly involved in at least some of the businesses that say "Trump". They claim not to be.
The world is hardly serious about reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.
Experiments are testing the planting of mercury-resistant trees in parts of the Amazon forest that gold miners have poisoned.
It's worth trying, but Bolsonaro might permit cutting down the whole forest.
The EU is designing tax rules intended to block offshoring of wealth, but a loophole was just discovered in them.
From Nail Bars to Car Washes: How Big is the UK's Slavery Problem? It is hard to count the slaves.
As the Fracking Protesters Show, a People's Rebellion Is the Only Way to Fight Climate Change.
Republicans are bending over backwards to excuse the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
They have designated the Salafi Arabian monarch as "on their side", so they will excuse whatever he does. This is pure 1984.
The former head of MI6, says that the evidence points to the crown prince of Salafi Arabia as the one who commanded the murder of Khashoggi.
The US is developing a laser weapon to attack crowds of protesters by burning off the outer layer of their skin.
Republicans are slowing down processing of voter registrations so as to block people from voting.
The Republican Party stands for "power by hook or by crook".
In many parts of the world, traditional fishing peoples that can't catch enough fish are being lured or forced to do smuggling instead.
Corrupt customs agents represent a threat to US national security.
One benefit for Europe if the UK leaves the EU: it will no longer be able to push the EU in the direction of plutocratic policies such as business-supremacy treaties ("free trade").
It will also be unable to sabotage measures to protect the environment and human civilization.
Khashoggi's Fate Isn't a Surprise: Trump Has Emboldened Saudi Arabia.
The bully has emboldened bullies around the world, including from right-wing extremists, misogynists, and tyrannical states.
DOJ's new saboteur of civil rights has a career of helping companies override them.
Australian workers are getting little share of the increasing business profits. The employers are making sure of that.
Even the IMF says that the UK's privatizations were a mistake.
This is ironic because usually the IMF forces countries into privatizations that are harmful for them in the long run.
The cheater wants to put a persistent enemy of Medicaid in charge of Medicaid.
Global heating may be causing the
tremendous
decrease in insect populations around the world, which occurs even in
places where we do not use insecticides.
American
Officials Could Be Prosecuted for War Crimes in Yemen.
The TripAdvisor prankster, who made his nonexistent restaurant number
one on that site, has now branched out into hoaxing interviewers by
sending
volunteer proxies to give interviews for him.
Republicans are
still
planning to cut Social Security and Medicare to compensate for the
supposed budget shortfall that the Republicans created by cutting
taxes for the rich.
Perhaps
a
million Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China have been put in "reeducation
camps". Inmates learn to say how great it is to be in a reeducation
camp.
We have to acknowledge that Islamist extremism has had an influence
among the Uyghurs, and some became terrorists. At the same time,
Uyghurs resented having millions of Han Chinese moving into their home
and outnumbering them. China did the same thing in Tibet, and is now
crushing
Tibetan culture.
Indonesia has done something similar, moving
millions
of Javanese colonists into the areas inhabited by less dense
populations of different ethnic groups.
It's a noted phenomenon in Chile that leaders of protest movements
turn up dead, having apparently committed suicide.
Union
leader Alejandro Castro has now "committed suicide" just a day
after leading a protest.
Leading a protest is tremendously exciting. Even participating in one
is invigorating. That's hardly the time anyone would commit suicide,
even if
perse had the
inclination.
10
reasons the US (and other countries) should stop supporting Salafi
Arabia.
The saboteurs' plan to force electric utilities to prop up
unprofitable coal and nuclear plants has been
blocked.
Many parts of the US are now
deserts
for news coverage.
Republican politicians
firmly
deny that human actions are causing global heating, and complain
that ending global heating would be a lot more expensive and
inconvenient than continuing the status quo in a fantasy world.
US
citizens: call
on Mattis, Secretary of "Defense", to make the US obey the laws of
war in Yemen.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Can
an "AI
ethics body" set up by companies that develop and use AI software
possibly be adequate?
I have no solid proof, but I doubt it.
The Chicago thug that shot Ricardo Hayes said Hayes was armed. In
fact, Hayes
was unarmed, and did nothing threatening. The threat was only in
the thug's imagination.
Scandinavia shows that having society help people do what increases
life expectancy is effective, while telling people it's their fault if
they don't do these things leads
to falling
life expectancy.
Why Is [Salafi] Arabia Under Fire Over Jamal
Khashoggi, But
Not Yemen?
College
in the US is a scam: Americans are pressured to pay for it, with
loans that they will spend a lifetime paying back, so as to escape the
income decline suffered by Americans without a college degree.
English is starting
to threaten
the survival of Icelandic.
Chief Justice John Roberts Tries to Convince the Nation That Supreme
Court Is Still
Legitimate.
69
of the Richest 100 Entities on the Planet Are Corporations, Not
Governments.
That reflects the problem that corporations don't pay enough taxes,
and that they have been permitted to merge too much.
Heavy Use of the Internet And Watching Commercial
TV Increase
[children's] Desire for Junk Food.
Security Seals Used to Protect Voting Machines Can
Be Easily
Opened With Shim Crafted from a Soda Can.
It appears that the
NRA illegally
supported the campaigns of Republican candidates.
Research Reveals That Fighting Between Youths — Particularly
Females —
Is
Less Common Where Corporal Punishment Has Been Outlawed.
US
citizens: call
on the Senate to reject Andrew Saul as head of the Social Security
Administration. He wants to sabotage it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on the BLM to protect Chaco Canyon from fossil fuel drilling.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Federal
Judge Orders
Reunification of Asylum-Seeking Father And His Two-Year-Old Son,
Who Were Separated for Nearly Six Months.
Oil pipelines in Louisiana damage swamps and bayous in ways that are
not obvious. They
even hasten
the inundation of the land.
The leader of the California NAACP is working for a campaign against
rent control — something which California
blacks very
strongly want.
Sincere and honest political activists talk about
Facebook's shutdown
of their pages, which were labeled as spam.
UK
thugs infiltrated
various sorts of UK left-wing groups for decades, including
anti-racist groups, environmentalists, even opposition to the Vietnam
War.
The UK needs
to legislate
criteria for "domestic extremists", not let the thugs decide based
on their own right-wing pro-business politics.
"I’ve seen the Antarctic’s untouched
beauty. There's still
time to protect it."
That is true, but just barely. To properly protect Antarctica
requires protecting it from global heating.
Canada has eliminated blanket prohibition of marijuana, but is
replacing it with
a patchwork
of disagreeing local laws about how to buy it, use it, carry it
and share it.
These will provide plenty of pitfalls that will endanger unwary
Canadians.
UK restaurants discard almost a million prepared meals each day.
Arranging to bring this food to hungry Britons who (due to Tory
spending cuts) can't afford food could give at least one meal a day to
almost
a million of them.
The extent of the developing famine in Yemen was underestimated.
Millions
could die from it.
An oil refinery company, Valero Energy,
has invested
heavily in using Senator Cruz to make the EPA allow more
pollution.
Reginald Andrade was walking back to his office from the campus
exercise machines when someone perceived him as a threat and called
the campus thugs. They came to his office
and started
interrogating him.
He was fortunate in that they did not kill him. He answered their
questions and was fortunate that they didn't use them to fabricate a
crime, something that the
thugs can easily do
if you answer any
questions.
Reporters have been allowed to interview the refugee minors imprisoned
at Tornillo, Texas. Many have
spent weeks or
months in prison.
They have trouble looking for a lawyer because the form they must fill
in to do that demands more English skill than they have.
US billionaires give lots of money to public schools,
while buying
elections to deny schools even larger amounts of tax money.
Genetically modified honeybees
might save
them from the effects of neonicotinoid pesticides.
However, if they are patented, beekeepers will be subjugated by the
patentholders.
Neonicotinoid pesticides
damage other
non-pest insects, too.
Turkey
is deporting
Syrian refugees back to Syria, where there is still a civil war.
FEMA's slow response to Hurricane Michael
resembles
the slow response in New Orleans.
It is too soon to say whether it is as bad as what happened in Puerto
Rico a year ago.
The confirmation of Kavanaugh was another step in the degradation of
the US judiciary. The previous step — the
Guantanamo
kangaroo courts — is still going on.
Trickle-down from arms sales is not enough to excuse US support for
Salafi Arabia's
war
of aggression in Yemen.
How the World Bank's loans to poor countries
tend
to keep them poor.
Few Democrats Offer Alternatives to
War-Weary
Voters.
Sanders will ask the Senate again to
cancel
US support for the war in Yemen.
Increasing
global inequality makes poor people desperately overrun the wild,
while it influences the global middle class to compete to consume.
That's the opposite of what the world needs.
In the first few decades of the United States, rich people were met
with disapproval. As a result, they didn't flaunt their wealth, and
people generally felt less ambition to get rich beyond their needs.
If we begin expressing mild disapproval towards people who are
inordinately wealthy, we can start that pressure going again.
Matthew Hedges visited Dubai for two weeks and was then arrested and
charged with spying. He has been
kept
in solitary for 5 months and is now being tried, effectively
without a lawyer.
My guess is that some of the questions he asked for academic purposes
were somehow sensitive to the rulers of Dubai, and they reacted in
typical Dubai fashion.
'You Couldn't Make This Up': A Bunch of
Mops,
Cleaners, and Trash Bags Delivered to Saudi Consulate Ahead of
Khashoggi Murder Probe.
Humans have
wiped
out the most evolutionarily unusual mammals, lopping off branches
of the evolutionary tree. It will take 3 to 7 million years for
evolution to replace the lost diversity.
US schools are
buying
expensive (and unproven) hardware that is supposed to hamper shooters
in schools, rather that spending the money on making a better
environment that discourages violence.
The European Parliament
voted
to let car manufacturers own a copyright on the telemetry from a
"connected" car.
In my view, the first and basic moral issue about telemetry from a car
is whether to allow it to exist at all.
Senator Sanders
called
for the US to defend democracy, both at home and abroad, by making
it effective rather than a mask for plutocracy.
Sanders for President!
The UN
accuses
Australia of arbitrary imprisonment of an asylum seeker.
Not long ago, Republican officials were eager to get rid of Obama's
medical insurance law. Now Scott Walker pretends to want to keep it
going, while
trying subtly to
make it fall apart.
As the Pentagon starts asking civilian tech companies to develop
war-fighting systems, it
increasingly
provokes resistance from their workers.
Guatemala to Reject
Caravan
of 1,600 Honduran Migrants Heading to Border.
80 days after a judge ordered the US to reunite separated refugee
minors with their parents,
136 of them still
remain separated in immigration prison.
The government has found various creative excuses.
Humanity
Is 'Cutting
Down the Tree of Life', Warn Scientists.
The disappearance of Khashoggi should remind us that Salafi Arabia is
extremely
repressive towards even the mildest of dissidents.
The right wing used to attack leftist postmodernism for rejecting
moral absolutes. Now the right-wing
rejects
the idea that there is any objective truth.
I think the term "scientific relativism" is inadequate to describe the
bullshitter. I'd call it "Humpfty Drumpfty thinking" — "the
truth is whatever I say it is".
The bullshitter pledged
a million dollars
to the charity of Senator Warren's choice if she took a DNA test
and it revealed indigenous American ancestry. She did, and it did.
Will the bullshitter pay up?
The UK government is
straining
to avoid any substantial investigation into Russian meddling in
the referendum about leaving the EU.
I suppose the fact that the government is committed to leaving has
something to do with the unwillingness to investigate.
Yemen
on
Brink of 'World's Worst Famine in 100 Years' if War Continues.
Should professors refuse to write letters of recommendation addressed
to Israeli universities? One has just been
punished
for refusing.
Like Juan Cole, I support the boycott of products made by Israel in
occupied Palestinian territory — started by Gush Shalom, which
promoted it until Israel
adopted
a law to impose unlimited damages on anyone that advocates this
boycott. I don't support the Palestinians' boycott of nearly all
Israeli institutions, though
I followed it in the speaking
tour in which I was invited by Palestinians.
Palestinians point out that each university in Israel is
directly
involved in the occupation.
Evading taxes is
standard
practice for the US rich, and the government hardly tries to
detect, stop or punish them. If the Trump family example makes us
aware of the bigger ripoff, let's put a stop to it.
The dockless rider-tracking scooters are
recharged
by low-paid piecework workers.
That is an additional reason not to use them.
Notre Dame Struck a Secret Deal With the Trump Administration to
Deny
Birth Control Coverage. Now Students Are Fighting Back.
This is more evidence that abortion rights are only the first target
of the right-wing assault.
Amazon trained an AI system to recognize good candidates for
employment, but since most of the past employees were male, the system
learned
to prefer males.
Amazon eventually decided that there was no way to fix the system,
that the flaw was fundamental.
The US deportation thugs are deporting children alone to Central
America
without
informing their dear deported parents.
Californians will soon vote on an initiative to
permit
rent control on houses, and on apartments built after 1985. Wall
Street landlords, that own lots of houses now, are spending a lot of
money to convince Californians to reject it.
If you know anyone in California, please pass the word.
Maryland uses a private company to develop voter registration
software. That is a grave error; it became a scandal just now because
the company was
bought
by a Russian oligarch.
The company might now fiddle with the software on behalf of the
Russian oligarch, who might order that for Putin.
Before the purchase, the company could have fiddled with the software
for someone else.
The state
should
always do its computing with free software, to make sure that
software never falls under the control of any private entity.
Around the world,
governments
don't provide sufficiently for mental health. This causes an
estimated 13 million deaths per year.
Prevention is more effective than cure. What is causing mental
illness to increase? I can make guesses, but guesses are not
necessarily correct.
The Communism in Cuba handled recovery from Hurricane Maria
better
than the extreme Capitalism of the US did in Puerto Rico.
The proposed
"internet
bill of rights" is a step in the right direction, but it won't
prevent all the abuses we see today.
Médecins Sans Frontières
Calls
for Immediate Evacuation of All Refugees on Nauru.
Chicago Should
Reject
a Proposal for Private-Sector Face Surveillance.
Beyond that, states should prohibit all systems for face recognition
in public places, unless they are limited to recognizing
court-designated suspects.
When a Google executive said its censored-for-China search engine was
merely a plan, he lied. In July he
told
developers it would be ready to launch in 6-9 months.
Salafi Arabia has a
history
of attacking its expatriate dissidents.
US citizens:
tell the
SEC that no CEO is too big to fail.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Washington Post is not "liberal media". In Maryland, it
supports
the candidate that would be good for Amazon.
Progressives explain
how
plutocratist Democrats impede the Democratic Party from doing what
is needed to win Americans' full support.
The UK
plans
to set up an illegal surveillance database for repression.
Suing Georgia to
stop
its eager purge of voters.
(satire) Many states
still
use outdated methods to disenfranchise their voters.
Facebook deleted hundreds of pages, calling them "spam" and
dishonesty, and it turns out to
include
honest dissidents too.
When Nauru expelled Médecins Sans Frontières, it
provided
no
other medical care for the refugees it is warehousing for
Australia.
The US may be trying to force Facebook to
insert
a back door into Facebook Messenger. It is hard to tell, because
the case is secret.
Oil prices are rising again, and one of the causes is
increased
demand.
This is a sign of danger, since increased demand for oil means faster
global heating.
The UK regularly deports people to countries it says are
too
dangerous to visit.
The US military is systematically expelling soldiers that are not
US citizens, and
lying about it.
These soldiers joined up as non-citizens, and were welcomed as such.
It was an advertised path to citizenship.
Putin's supporters repeatedly postpone a local election
because
they know an opposition politician is going to win it.
Reportedly Turkey
gave
the US recordings that demonstrate that Salafi Arabian officials
murdered Jamal Khashoggi in the consulate in Istanbul.
In the moral vacuum created by the bully's rejection of human rights
as a global goal, pressuring Salafi Arabia for the apparent murder of
Jamal Khashoggi falls to
businesses
and the media. While it is good that they are helping out in the
case of Khashoggi, in general I don't think their support is very
reliable.
Everyone: tell
Greyhound not to let the border thugs into its buses.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: affirm that fossil
gas is
not a "bridge fuel".
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Fox News to drop out of Salafi Arabia's investment event.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A Future Where Everything Becomes a Computer
Is as
Creepy as You Feared.
The first step in stopping this is to insist on buying only
nontethered devices, and break the connectivity of any tethered
devices that you are stuck with.
The second step is political organization against tethering devices
to servers.
Canada has joined the US and Australia, etc.,
in demanding
back doors in computers, while pretending that what it is asking
for is not back doors.
Don't Believe the World Bank —
Robots Will
Steal Our Wages.
The argument is stronger than Elliott presents it. When he says,
"Automation will bring growth," implicitly that assumes we have
unlimited resources that we could safely use, so the limit on our
production is our ability to use the resources. But if we are limited
by the resources we dare use — and I think that the case now
— automation won't produce more, it will only produce more
cheaply.
All the savings will go to the owners of the robots.
UK thugs seem to practice extreme racial profiling when searching
people "for no particular reason" for drugs. Blacks
are nearly
10 times as likely to be searched as whites.
"At
the precise moment science reveals women have the bigger 'need' to
be sexually adventurous, society clamps down on infidelity."
Australia’s
chief scientist says the question facing the nation’s energy
future is not about renewables versus coal but how best to create "a
whole-of-economy emissions reduction strategy."
The goal needs to be a zero-emissions society.
How Profit-Driven
Inbreeding Could Bring the World Dairy Herd to Its Knees.
Around
200,000 protested in Berlin against right-wing extremism.
We
Should Talk
To al-Shabaab Now.
I think that al-Shabaab's military position is weaker than a few
years, and the government now has some real support. This could
be the right time for the US to get reasonable peace deal.
Political discussions about a possible change in UK law about
transgender rights are
being shut
down by campaigns of intimidation.
The article does not state what the disagreement consists of, and I
can't begin to guess what my position would be if I knew. However, it
is clear that British people need to respect freedom of speech more,
just as the British government does.
Using
AI to select targets for missiles will make the US war machine
more of a global force against peace.
Lara
Alqasem has
taken her case (for being allowed to enter Israel to study at
Hebrew University) to the Israeli Supreme Court.
The World Bank tells the world's poorest countries
to reduce
workers' rights.
If they do, they will lower the floor level for workers' rights, and
pressure other countries, not quite so poor, to follow in the same
direction. That is exactly what global plutocracy aims to do to every
country,
imposing business-supremacy
treaties to push the process along.
To reduce the use of resources that we are running out of, or whose
use threatens to destroy civilization, we need to move away from an
economy that prioritizes growth, since
that causes
it to push against reducing dangerous but profitable industries.
"Green growth" may be possible in specific activities for a time. But
if it operates by replacing an overused resource with another resource
which isn't used very much — not yet — then we cannot
assume it can be ramped up very far, without studying how far that
process of replacement could continue without exhausting the
substitute resource.
"The oil and gas
industry is
gaslighting you" — pretending that global heating is
happening because you let the lights and water run too long.
Nonprofit service organizations, as a general tendency, work to
protect poor and vulnerable people from the harmful effects of the
plutocratic economy and political system, but do so in a way that
reinforces
the system itself.
"For pity’s sake, let’s
end
the indefinite detention of immigrants now."
Rise of Robots "Could See Workers Enjoy
Four-Day
Weeks" … if we elect progressives into government.
Otherwise, you'll work four days a week and get 4/5 of what you make
now.
Fishermen that captured fish in a protected area in France have been
sentenced
to pay "environmental damages".
James Hansen accused the UK of
ignoring
science and "aping Trump".
We Need Tax Police — And They
Should
Go After the Likes of Donald Trump.
When Lara Alqasem arrived in Israel to study at Hebrew University,
Israel
arrested
her in the airport because she supports the Palestinian BSD
campaign.
Later a court ruled that she could not be jailed for this, so she is
now free to go back to the US. She remains in the airport waiting for
her court case which will decide whether she is allowed to study in
Israel.
WHO Voices Alarm as Academics
Denied
Visas to Visit UK Conference.
New cures for cancer are being developed, but companies will charge so much
that
most
American patients will have to die instead.
Exxon supports a bill to establish a carbon tax — because it has
a rider that
would
cancel Exxon's liability for the damage caused by the climate
mayhem resulting from what it has already done.
Salafi Arabia has made a practice of
grabbing
dissidents from other countries so as to punish them.
The IPCC report says that
we have 12
years to curb global heating, but that is assuming we don't hit a
tipping point first.
Since we don't actually know where the tipping points are, we need
to act even faster if we want to be (fairly) safe.
From Kiribati to Australia:
stop
making our islands uninhabitable.
Orbán amended Hungary's constitution to
permit
severe repression of homeless people.
If you find it annoying to find homeless people living on streets in
your neighborhood, think how annoying it is for them to be homeless.
How about participating in providing them with decent housing?
Parents
can
oppose turning US schools into fortresses.
The article does not even mention the biggest danger of armed guards
in schools: if they are not merely armed, but also have the power to
arrest, they will feed students into the
school-to-prison
pipeline.
Most school thugs will pass their whole careers without shooting
anyone, but they are likely to arrest several students each year.
The University of Texas owns lots of rural land which is
leased out for fracking.
I wonder: what steps can the university lawfully take that would
reduce the amount of fracking on the land it owns? I expect that at
the very least it could refuse to sign any more fracking leases. Is
there a way it can go further than that?
Trudeau plans to apply two counteracting forces to fossil fuel use in
Canada: a steadily increasing carbon tax, along with
direct
state investment in increasing production.
The latter ensures that the former won't reduce emissions much.
If you live in Nevada, call your election commission by Oct 18
to see if your voter registration has been cancelled.
(At least 90,000 registrations have been cancelled.)
If it was, you can reregister by Oct 18.
Please pass the word to anyone you know in Nevada.
US
citizens: call
on House Democrats to support Barbara Lee for a leadership
position in their caucus.
If you sign, please spread the word!
California has
put impossible
regulations on handing out food to the homeless.
Amazon patented the idea
of analyzing
the user's voice to check for signs of illness or upset.
What I find most scary is that this would be used by insurance companies.
Dear Progressives: Craig Kelly, Abbott and Trump
Are Making
You Their Stooge.
On-line gambling in some US states is legally required to do
location
tracking of users.
To sacrifice privacy (vital
for human
rights and democracy)
to protect profits for one gambling company over another
is disproportionate at the level of values.
Israeli
soldiers shot
Palestinian protesters in Gaza, killing seven and wounding over
250.
45
Out of 50 Electronics Companies Illegally Void Warranties After
Independent Repair, Sting Operation Finds.
I wonder whether Apple's planned brick-it-if-repaired malfeature also
violates the Magnuson-Moss law. I suspect that the idea of banning
independent repair through DRM did not occur to anyone when that law
was passed.
US border
thugs pressured a
five-year-old refugee to sign away her legal right to a hearing.
I don't think she had any way of understanding the meaning of what she
was signing.
Israel is trying to apply its censorship law globally. It
has imposed
fines (dressed up as damages to "harmed" individuals) on New
Zealanders.
Israel's censorship law says that the artificial plaintiffs were not required
to demonstrate that they had suffered any damage. But even if they had, the
law would still be unjust, since all they did was state a political position
and suggest a response to that. The law was designed specifically to punish
expression of that political position.
New Zealand should not take any risk that its courts will apply this judgment.
It should pass a law to assure that they don't.
Beaten, Terrified And
Disappeared: China
Cracks Down on Faulty Vaccine Outcry.
Saboteur Wilbur
Ross admitted to
court that he consulted with Bannon and Kobach about asking a
citizenship question in the 2020 census.
This may help plaintiffs prove that question was based on racist intent.
Egypt dares to
torture even
US citizens.
Torturing Egyptians
is nothing
special there.
The US gives Egypt lots of money, and if the US insisted, Egypt
would have to stop.
Several
countries that trample human rights are being elected to the UN
Human Rights Council.
This trend threatens to make that organization
useless or even antagonistic to human rights.
US abortion
doctors face
retaliation at their other workplaces, especially when a workplace
gets bought by a religious organization.
Many US law
students held
a strike demanding impeachment of Kavanaugh.
The UK puts people in prison when it might want to deport them. They
may not even have entered the country without permission. Prisoners
say it
is worse
than the prison for criminals.
Everyone: Tell
USA Today and other news publishers to stop publishing the
bullshitter's lies without fact-checking.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Recordings
Prove Jamal Khashoggi Was Killed, Turkish Investigators Claim.
Nauru's tyrannical
government condemns
Médecins Sans Frontières for the temerity to treat some of the
refugees.
Never mind that doing so was part of their contract.
Some
UK politicians object to the latest proposed "counter-terrorism"
law on the basis of freedom of speech.
In areas where there are so many wild horses that they cause harm to
the ecosystem, Americans have an
inaccountable opposition
to killing the excess.
Louisiana's Undocumented Seafood
Workers Unite
to Fight Workplace Abuses.
Corbyn proposes
a way to confront slavery and imperialism in Britain's past more
deeply than with simple "pride" and "shame".
Facebook's new "smart camera" offers people the opportunity to
completely surrender
the privacy of their home to that company. Perhaps it will help
others wake up to the danger.
"Food deserts" are areas in which junk food is the main food available.
They
promote obesity.
The Tories have taken another step to increase future fossil fuel
consumption in the UK. This time it
has cut
subsidies for low-emissions cars.
Salafi Arabia is
receiving some
nongovernmental pushback for disappearing Jamal Khashoggi.
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp Is Helping His Gubernatorial
Campaign by
Putting 53,000
Voter Registrations on Hold.
The targets are mainly blacks that are likely to vote for the
Democrat, Stacey Abrams.
Washington State
has ruled
the death penalty unconstitutional.
This is due to the details of the state's law, so it would not be impossible
for the state to reestablish the death penalty. I hope that this can be
stopped.
US
citizens: call
on the CFPB to fire Eric Blankenstein, whose racist statements
disqualify him from his post in charge of stopping financial
discrimination.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A privatized US immigration prison gave
prisoners rotten
food, and never enough. As well as no medical care.
Hurricane
Michael flattened
towns in Florida, and inundated some islands completely.
It would not have done so much damage without human help.
State courts may be giving custody over refugee minors
to unrelated
American families, which could block them from ever being reunited
with their families.
The British Army is permeated
by right-wing
extremist views, which follow from its colonial traditions.
Bahraini Arab Spring
Dissidents Sue
UK Spyware Maker,
saying that it knew the surveillance software would be used to
find dissidents so as to repress them.
A South African elected
official compares
Israeli apartheid to the apartheid of South Africa.
The UK Supreme Court ruled, much like the US Supreme Court, that
bakers have a right
to refuse
to make a cake which stated support for same-sex marriage.
I agree with this decision, when it concerns individual bakers or a
privately held corporation whose individual owners can validly think
of it as theirs. I disagree with their views but I support their right
to express those views.
I see no reason to extend a similar right to publicly traded
corporations, however. They are not people and
not entitled
to human rights.
Isn't it easy to write any message you like on a cake, with frosting,
after you buy it?
The newest form of US racial bias: thugs questioned a black man and
two children, suspecting him
of babysitting
while black.
Texas
thugs seized
a political sign showing an elephant with its trunk up a young
girl's skirt. They threatened to arrest the owner if she did not take
it down.
The sign exaggerated by presenting a child as the victim, but that's a
small detail; if it had shown a teenager or an adult woman, it would
have been straight on target. In any case, it is lawful political
speech, and the thugs were abusing their authority.
(satire) NFL Urges Pass Rushers To Try Reaching Peaceful Resolution
With
Quarterbacks Before
Resorting To Tackling.
How Boston
can mitigate
the rise in housing prices caused by large luxury condominiums
that rest on land where non-rich people used to live.
As the bullshitter pushes the US towards war with Iran, the public
(guided by the mainstream media)
are paying
little attention.
Pipeline protesters facing felony charges were permitted to present a
necessity defense, but the
court rejected
their expert witnesses.
It appeared they were doomed, and then the
judge threw
out the charges and declared them not guilty, on grounds of
necessity.
Huge
Reduction in Meat-Eating "Essential" to Avoid Climate Breakdown.
We Label Fridges to Show Their Environmental Impact
— Why
Not Food?
Workers at the Acropolis, and hundreds of other sites and museums in
Greece,
are going
on strike against rumored privatization.
The Euro-banksters are pressuring Greece to sell or privatize everything,
even if it is nailed down.
The Australian official in charge of supervising various intelligence
agencies says that the proposed new compulsion-to-help-them-spy law is
dangerous.
The US has put
4,000
mentally ill prisoners in solitary confinement.
Solitary confinement tends to make people mentally ill even if they
were not so before. For those who already are, it is the opposite of
treatment.
Majority of Top U.S. Newspapers
Failed
to Feature Bombshell Climate Report on Homepage.
A study in the UK found that
rise
and fall of parents' incomes correlate with fall and rise in
children's mental illness and criminality.
Scientific proof that the income changes cause those behavioral and
mental changes would take a lot more experiments, but it is clear that
rich countries are making life far too hard for poor people, and that
the resulting stress does lasting harm for their children.
Various pieces of circumstantial evidence
tie
Salafi Arabia to the disappearance of dissident Jamal Khashoggi.
However, Turkey seems to have decided to play down the incident.
Europe is
now
aware that Putin tries to cause trouble all across Europe.
China has started banning specific foreign reporters from visiting
Hong Kong
based
on their political leanings.
The second Russian poisoner has been identified as a
military
medical doctor that works for Russian military intelligence.
The US reacted energetically when DDT, useful though it was, was
discovered to be a threat to birds. We
must
do the same for fossil fuels.
An appeals court
ordered
the Netherlands government to bring about bigger cuts in
greenhouse gas emissions with a 2020 deadline.
A million Australians have signed a petition against using the Sydney
Opera House to promote gambling. There were
large
protests at the opera house itself.
This issue is
more
important than its immediate practical consequences would imply.
Obama's
Resistance
to Investigating the Bush Administration['s torture] Allowed Brett
Kavanaugh to Skate Onto the Supreme Court.
A Venezuelan opposition politician was arrested on returning from
visiting the UN, and
within
a few days "jumped" out a window and died.
There is no proof he was pushed; but if he really did voluntarily
jump, the thugs must have done or threatened some horrible treatment,
which would still make them responsible for his death.
Software developers are
starting
to object to working on drone AI projects and censorship projects.
I admire their personal refusal, but the refusal of some engineers and
researchers will not by itself put a stop to these projects. What it
could do is spark a larger movement that might achieve that goal.
Queensland is
planning
to prohibit taking photographs of shark nets, even when whales are
caught in them.
"Kavanaugh could become the deciding vote on an administration
official
caught lying in
public statements can claim that executive privilege shields him from
having to testify about those statements."
In
Brazil,
Only the Grandest of Coalitions Can Now Defeat [the droolingly violent
right-wing extremist] Bolsonaro. He may get a mandate for
mass
murder of the poor.
Destruction of Threatened Species Habitat Taking Place on
'Scandalously
Huge Scale' [in Australia].
This is the result of government policies chosen intentionally to
favor extractivism.
We can probably avoid 1.5C of global heating, but we need to push hard
to reduce emissions in
all sections.
The Australian government
directly
opposes the very idea of trying.
In the US, Republicans are
arguing
not to bother cutting greenhouse gas emissions because it's too
late — global disaster is now inevitable.
That's like saying, "We can't avoid the collision, so don't bother
using the brakes."
US
citizens: call
on Democratic leaders, donors and consultants not to work for
Senator Manchin, who voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An amendment to the treaty that ended production of ozone-destroying
chemicals
could delay
global heating for a while.
This would give civilization a breather, but would not by itself save
us.
Schools are
now invading
student's privacy through cheating-detection systems.
I would not object to a school's running my papers through something
like Turnitin, as long as they did not tell Turnitin who wrote it, or
even say that all my papers were written by the same student.
However, I would never let the nonfree proctoring software onto
my computer. (Besides which, it would not run on my operating system.)
I would be willing to take the test on the university's computer,
running whatever software the university happens to run, since the
exam is communication with the university.
People once again propose geoengineering
to reflect
sunlight into space as a way to counteract global heating.
However, ocean acidification would continue unabated, with the effect
of eventually wiping out all coral, and all molluscs with shells.
Many species of sea
animals depend
on coral reefs, and they would be wiped out too. The food supply
for a billion people would be lost, just as plants
are producing
less protein due to the higher CO2 levels.
Banksy auctioned a painting in a frame
that shredded
the painting shortly after.
I appreciate this as a bizarre hack. The person who had won the
auction (but had not yet paid) could have been very disappointed, but
was not in fact disappointed.
Russians
are losing
trust for Putin in response to his pension cuts.
Mississippians are campaigning
to reject
the racist myths they were brought up with.
For decades, local governments have increasingly traded integrity and
public spirit by renting out civic buildings for commercial publicity.
They even name the buildings after companies, for a price. However,
Australians now say that using the Sydney Opera House walls
to project
ads for gambling is going too far.
If this had met no objection, the state might next have renamed it to
the "Horse Race Gambling Opera House" and put pictures of race horses
all around it. That would fetch a higher fee.
Looked at superficially, this is a nice opportunity to bring in money
without directly hurting anyone. Looked at deeply, it conveys the
message to "forget about civic spirit — everything in this city
is for sale."
Global [heating] Must Not Exceed
1.5C, Warns
Landmark UN Report.
"Climate change is
occurring earlier
and more rapidly than expected. Even at the current level of 1C
warming, it is painful."
In fact, this
report understates
part of the danger.
Meanwhile, fossil
fuel business sails on, disregarding the disaster it is bringing.
Citizenship considered
as a fob key, the first and least selective of a series of
increasingly limited fob keys.
The
EU has
a grand project to restore substantial parts of some vast forests
that existed before modern times.
The project has a crucial prerequisite, not mentioned in the article,
without which it will fail: to curb global heating soon. Without
this, the ecosystem they are trying to preserve would not be able to
survive where it used to exist, and perhaps not anywhere on Earth, not
even unmolested. But it will surely be molested, by tropical pests,
floods, drought, and/or fire. This project would fail, just as
walling out the rising sea will fail.
"No More Torture," Says
France. Not
So the United States.
Famatta Massalay was handed by her parents to another family that
promised her education in the US. Instead they made her a domestic
slave, who was forced into sex as well. Now she heads
a campaign
against trafficking.
Brett Kavanaugh's Confirmation Isn't Democracy. It's a
Judicial
Coup.
Elections do not amount to democracy when they are rigged by a
conspiracy of a minority.
An journalist's investigation of the disappearance of 43 Mexican students
shows that
The difference between a good neighborhood and bad one can make a tremendous difference in children's subsequent lives.
We can't make all neighborhoods above average, but this difference suggests there must be something that would make them all better.
New North American Trade Deal Has Bad News for Canadian Copyright.
I suggest Canada legislate that copyright last until either 70 years after the author's death, or such time as is at least 50 years after that death and this treaty is no longer in force — whichever comes first.
That way, the treaty will not have a lasting effect if it is cancelled.
EFF: California has adopted a bill that requires labeling of influence bots while respecting privacy.
Amazon is creating subsidiaries that act like "third-party" sellers, to compete with the real third-party sellers.
This is one more example of how Amazon cooperates with various other parties so as to get more power, then betrays them. Amazon has done wrong to readers, authors, bookstores, as well as its workers. And now to the companies that accepted it as a nearly-monopolistic market.
More reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon.
Many federal agencies, asking for public comment, are bombarded by lobby-bots.
How [Salafi Arabia's] Money Keeps Washington at War in Yemen.
Turkey says that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered inside Salafi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul.
Neither of those states is known for its respect for human rights, or for honesty. There is no hard evidence. However, if Salafi Arabia cannot produce Khashoggi alive, we will have to consider the accusation proved.
It would not surprise me for Salafi Arabia to assassinate dissidents, given that it has sentenced dissidents to death. It does surprise me that it would do so in a way that is implausible to deny and would cause a diplomatic incident.
Saadia Muzaffar has resigned from the advisory panel for Toronto's "smart" city, because the project is not seriously attending to citizens' privacy concerns.
As usual, "smart" means "spy".
Most campaigns to protect privacy aim for an inadequate target: regulating the use of data collected. That is not enough to protect people from being harmed by the data collected about them.
I don't see anything in this article to suggest that Muzaffar, and the citizens that complained, are trying to go further than that.
Since the FOSTA advertising censorship law was passed, more sex workers are working on the street, making them vulnerable to arrest, violence, and subjugation by pimps.
Finding clients through the internet used to enable them to avoid these dangers.
Everyone: call for giving Flint residents real inspections for lead in the water.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Kavanaugh from the Supreme Court.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An experiment to eliminate an isolated population of the mosquito Anopheles gambiae with a gene drive has succeeded. Should we eliminate that species of mosquito, together with the other few that carry most malaria?
I think we should do so. There are over 400 species of Anopheles mosquitos, so wiping out a few of them probably won't lead to big changes in ecosystems. Other mosquitos will replace them, and bats and birds will still have food.
Human activity is on track to wipe out a large fraction of all the species on Earth — not intentionally, only as a byproduct of causing global disaster. Instead of sparing a few species that really do hurt us, we should try to protect the hundreds of thousands of species we are likely to extinguish unthinkingly, by curbing our population and our greenhouse gas emissions.
Americans are still in prison, decades after being convicted of arson based on false theories of how fires spread inside a house. The falsity of those theories was recognized over 15 years ago.
Apple plans to lock out independent repair by designing MacBook hardware and software to brick the machine if anyone else replaces the screen.
Recycling is regarded as a feminine trait, so some men reject recycling so that they will not be regarded as "effeminate".
"Consent" for data collection is meaningless because it is impossible to express what actions the consent is for.
Fifty thousand Germans protested to demand and end to burning coal, and to protect a forest that is scheduled to be cut down for coal mining.
Republicans succeeded in putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, with help from Manchin, who calls himself a Democrat but votes with Republicans on all the important issues.
A loophole permits the UK export of surveillance systems to tyrannical states.
Since even states that are not generally considered tyrannical abuse massive surveillance, I think it is becoming necessary to block sale of surveillance systems to any state whatsoever.
An artificial intelligence, or even an artificial non-intelligence, could wield political power by having control of a corporation with no official human owners.
Schools have been closed in London because many harmless spiders have appeared in them.
It's good that Amazon is giving its workers a raise, but the overall effect of Amazon on workers in general is very harmful.
That's not to mention the harm it does to customers' freedom by tracking them and requiring they run nonfree software.
Arguing that Putin's popularity is superficial, and his continued domination of Russia is not assured.
Nauru has ordered Médecins Sans Frontières to stop treating the refugees that Australia has sent there for imprisonment.
Fast food stores are driving obesity, and restrictions on their marketing practices have done nothing to hold them back. They find ways around the restrictions.
Maybe that means we need stricter measures. The spread of obesity is a disaster almost at the same level as global heating.
How Nietzsche's work was altered, after his death, to make him look like a right-wing bigot.
US citizens: Support Sen. Udall's new bill S.3517 to prevent war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Salafi Arabia has jailed or forced into exile most of the women who campaigned for the right to drive a car.
It seems that that the ruler intends that to be the one and only step towards equal rights.
Nadie Murad, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, tells how she was made sex slave by DAESH (*), which made a detailed plan for enslavement of its captives (after killing all prisoners except attractive women).
She later escaped to Germany and started a campaign against enslavement.
* My usual term, PISSI, feels too flip for this context. I've read that the Arabic acronym DAESH means, more or less, "What crushes things".
Rwanda's president Kagame has repressed dissidents for decades. Now he has released over a thousand political prisoners.
He is reputed to govern fairly well in areas other than human rights. He should be able to get reelected honestly, so his repression was gratuitous as well as wrong. I hope he is learning to stop it.
A crowdfunding campaign to support Senator Collins' eventual opponent (but only if she votes for Kavanaugh) has received around 2 million dollars in donations. Recently the site crashed because of the high volume of donations.
I wanted to post a reference to that campaign, but I determined that there was no way to contribute to it without running nonfree Javascript code.
Selling the US Postal Service would be a grave error.
Its financial problems result from a requirement that is not imposed on private companies. Converting it to a private company would fix the problem, to be sure, but simply removing that special requirement would fix it too.
Australian documents show that Australia worked with Nauru to set up Nauru's policy of blocking access to reporters.
The Australian government directly lied about this, pretending that it had no control over its puppet.
The National Council of Churches called for Kavanaugh's Nomination to be withdrawn.
Naturally, Republicans didn't listen.
Nicaraguan protest leader Nahmoy Urbina had to flee the country after being charged with terrorism. Her mother and grandmother were arrested by thugs looking for her.
Other female protesters continue heroically despite repression, defying threats of rape and murder.
The thug that killed Laquan McDonald has been convicted of second degree murder.
Occasionally they are held accountable. It needs to happen more often.
The polygraph is nothing more than pseudoscience — it should be called a "fear detector", or better "anxiety detector", rather than a "lie detector".
Many Facebook posts show person A that B and C are doing something together without A. They tend to make A feel sad and think less intelligently.
Almost all US elected officials are from a privileged background. The article presents several reasons this happens.
San Francisco has accepted a statue recognizing women forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army.
Many of those women felt so ashamed that they never went back to their families afterward. Their culture taught them that they were to blame for what had been done to them, rather than the perpetrators who did it.
You can only be to blame for what you do, or fail to do, never for what others do to you.
The thugs who shot pipeline protester Marcus Mitchell in January 2017 in the eye, and maimed him, face no punishment. But they seek to imprison him for two years, on charges that are evident exaggeration.
His neck is likely to break from his injuries within two years, rendering him a paraplegic.
Some Italians have commissioned a ship flying the Italian flag to rescue drowning refugees. Minister Salvini will not have the authority to block that ship from docking.
America's New Aristocracy Live in an Accountability-Free Zone. No matter what crimes they commit, they are never punished.
ACLU: San Francisco thugs have arrested blacks for selling small amounts of drugs, but never whites.
Green Party Calls for Free Time Index to Replace GDP Measure.
I agree that the GDP is a bad index of how well the economy serves people in general, but I haven't seen a good replacement. It would be good to include something like the Free Time Index, but that alone can't do the job. To take an extreme example, if a lot of people are unemployed and starving, they have lots of free time but it isn't a good situation to be in.
Therefore, a good index needs to include other things. It needs to include some measure of whether people have enough income for a comfortable life, as well as not being overworked to get that income.
Professor Gérard Mourou, who just received the Nobel prize, made a video with students which refers playfully to sex.
I see no wrong in it, but I fear that prudes will try to crucify him.
"My classroom has asbestos and bats": a Message for Betsy DeVos.
"Charge €30 a tonne for CO2 to avoid catastrophic 4C warming."
The wording of the article suggests that when they say "carbon price" they mean a carbon tax. If so, I agree with them, but they are not making the point clear. The same term is used also to refer to emissions trading, which has been ineffective because it was so easy to game.
When UK undercover thug Mark Kennedy pretended to love Kate Wilson, he took notes on her activities of all sorts, and manipulated her life so he could spy on other activists she knew.
US farm policy promotes overproduction, and directs the money towards large intermediaries rather than farmers.
Kavanaugh lied in his testimony about the meaning of the slang that he used in his yearbook.
Here Are the 30 People the FBI Needs to Interview in its Kavanaugh Investigation.
If, that is, it were going to do a proper and thorough investigation.
From London to Shanghai, World's Sinking Cities Face Devastating Floods.
Interpol-China scandal #2: the chief of Interpol, who is Chinese, was disappeared last week on a visit to China.
Interpol-China scandal #1: the head of China's secret police was made chief of Interpol.
Scandal 2 brings discredit on China. Scandal 1 brings discredit on Interpol.
The International Court of Justice ruled that US sanctions against Iran violate a treaty, and that they interfere with humanitarian aid. It ruled that the US should drop these sanctions.
In response, the US cancelled the treaty.
Union of Concerned Scientists: The cheater wants to nominate a saboteur to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Disappeared Chinese actress Fan Bingbing has communicated again after months, with a public confession.
I don't know whether Ms Fan is guilty of tax evasion. I won't claim that is not so. However, mere guilt can't possibly justify holding a prisoner incommunicado, nor torture.
I wish China would stop holding prisoners incommunicado in horrible circumstances. Even more, I wish the US would stop. One expects injustice from China, but the US is supposed to follow a higher standard.
Peru: Decision to Overturn Fujimori Pardon Confirms That Victims’ Rights Must Take Priority Over Political Decisions.
Animal rights activists entered a chicken farm in California and found chickens that were very badly sick. They were arrested and charged with felonies for "stealing" some chickens, which were so ill that veterinarians would not send them back to the farm.
The idea of "rescuing" chickens, especially chickens that are so sick that they couldn't survive anyway, is is a gimmick and doesn't impress me. However, gimmick aside, I support their efforts to reveal the true conditions of farms.
Meanwhile, the cheater plans have the USDA endanger Americans who process or eat chickens: speeding up the processing in a way previously determined to be unsafe.
We Need to Talk About Masculinity.
Somehow I escaped being taught to judge myself in terms of masculinity. I judge myself based on success or failure, but I never took up "having sex with women, regardless of circumstances and feelings" as a goal. Instead, I learned to want to feel loved and wanted by women, and for women to be glad to feel loved by me. My goal will never lead me in the direction of trying to pressure a woman into reluctant sex.
The toxic masculinity goal is sometimes called "scoring", because it treats sexual relations like a game where one gets points. Those points have no meaning, and that imaginary competition can't lead to happiness. It's only an excuse to tell yourself you're "winning". If you are playing that game, I hope you will recognize how pointless it is.
Scientists Say Halting Deforestation 'Just as Urgent' as Reducing Emissions.
"Jeff Bezos runs a powerful monopoly that causes him to exert huge power and control. We shouldn’t be praising him but tackling his power."
A federal court ruled that the bully cannot terminate Temporary Protected Status for people that fled El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Sudan.
The basis of the ruling was that the bully based his decision on racism, rather than on the criteria he is supposed to apply.
Schumer and Feinstein say that the FBI "investigation" of Kavanaugh was a sham.
DARPA is funding a system to use insects to deliver viruses to crops. DARPA says that is meant to benefit farmers, but maybe it is actually for biological warfare.
If the crops are friendly and the farmers are willing, you don't need the insects.
A plan to save samples of the highly diverse intestinal bacteria of people in remote communities.
Nonviolent protesters blocked a deportation flight out of London. Now they are on trial and face possible life imprisonment. Their defense is that they were preventing a crime.
Canada wanted to deport Ebrahim Toure, considering him a menace to Hollywood. But he was totally stateless, so there was no country Canada could send him to. So Canada put him in prison, where he has been for six years, in service of an impossible goal.
A Christian extremist movie says that the bullshitter was sent by "god" to save the world's morality.
According to the restored morality, people will lie and cheat all the time.
This movie's success further demonstrates that the Republican Party has become a cult.
A letter written by Kavanaugh in 1983 provides more evidence that he lied to the Senate about how he lived then.
Wildfires, increasing in many areas due to global heating, are polluting water supplies — sometimes long after the fire.
The fires also release mercury, which ends up in wildlife, which can be unsafe for people to eat.
If civilization survives, we ought eventually to deploy a system to concentrate mercury from the environment, so we remove it from the environment.
Genetic engineers are developing nitrogen fixing bacteria to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (which is made using fossil fuel).
Will these new bacteria be designed to limit how much fixed nitrogen they make? Without negative feedback that would limit the production based on circumstances, what would avoid that?
I also worry about the issue of patents and what this will cost farmers. Patents on the bacteria could make farmers even more dependent. On the other side, if the protection against an excess of these bacteria, and a consequent excess of fixed nitrogen, is that they don't survive very long, does that mean farmers would have to buy more bacteria each year?
Runoff has made the rivers of Iowa toxic — people can't the fish or drink the water.
This runoff includes phosphate as well as nitrate. The bacteria to fix nitrogen would perhaps eliminate the latter but not the former. And no substitution of fertilizer will reduce the outflow from animal feedlots — they only consume the plants.
An Italian right-wing extremist, who wasn't elected when he ran for the right-wing extremist League party, shot immigrants at random as an act of racial hatred. He has been sentenced to prison.
Puerto Rico Has Not Recovered from Hurricane Maria.
US citizens: Boycott the bully's State of the Union speech.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Citizens of California: call on Governor Brown to sign SB 1017, which would phase out use of drift gillnets for fishing.
Drift gillnets kill various species that are not targets for fishing, including dolphins and some whales, and endangered sea turtles.
A federal court ruled that a secret watchlist does not give US border thugs the power to jail people indefinitely with no grounds.
"Lie detectors" are not only pseudoscience, ineffective at determining whether someone is lying, they also enable racial bias.
Australia is suffering rapid deforestation under the policies of its extractivist government. Almost 3000 square miles of native forest have been cut down in 5 years.
Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to break up financial companies that are above a certain threshold — amounting to 8 of them.
900 US law professors have signed a petition calling for rejection of Kavanaugh, saying that he lacks the temperament and impartiality every judge is supposed to have.
NYC is considering limiting the thug department's use of surveillance technology. The first step is simply to make the thugs say what they do.
The EFF is challenging New York City's law requiring room rental platforms to give a lot of personal data about those who rent out a room.
I agree with the EFF. The city has a valid right to get some limited information, because the public has a valid interest in limiting the amount of loss of rooms people can live in. But it shouldn't get more than what is necessary for this.
Please don't refer to rental as "sharing".
Democratic senators have proposed to require border thugs and deportation thugs to use body cameras.
Body cameras can be an effective check on violence by thugs, but they require systems to ensure that they record at the right times, and laws to stop them from being used to record the full interior of every place that thugs enter and every person that thugs pass.
Especially we need to prohibit passing those people's faces to a face recognition system if they are not observed committing some specific crime.
EPA saboteurs are setting up a two-stage process for cancelling the limits on how much mercury coal plants can emit into the air. They are planning to do likewise for radioactive fallout emitted by coal plants, citing a convenient crackpot theory.
Because India's biometric identification system depends on fingerprints, it often fails for people who have done manual labor for many years and eroded their fingertips.
If the sincere intention is to identify people for welfare benefits, they should be able to take prints from some other part of the body — one which (1) doesn't leave prints on what you touch and (2) won't get worn away.
The report that a daycare center requires children to wear helmets is only partly true, and it isn't totally outrageous. However, the overall issue is real.
Arguing that the aim of everyone in capitalism is to escape from capitalism.
I think that idea has a lot of truth in it, but not 100%. To construct a single thing that nearly everyone in capitalism is trying to escape from, you need to put in more than just capitalism. You need to expand it to include the need to do work (whether for pay or not) and the constraints of living in a society with others. The billionaires are clearly aiming for all of that.
US citizens: call on Daily Kos to make its candidate portals function from a browser that disables JavaScript, so that voters can consult them without having to surrender some of their own freedom.
You can communicate with the site by clicking on General Inquiries on the site's footer, followed by Contact US.
You will be asking for a favor, so please use a friendly tone.
US citizens: support the Justice For All Civil Rights Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Amazon's decision to raise wages to 15 dollars an hour may have been a response to Bernie Sanders's proposed BEZOS act.
Hooray for Bernie Sanders!
In the UK, however, Amazon is canceling out half of the pay increase by reducing bonuses.
Researchers say that psilocybin should be treated legally like prescription sleep medicine.
New Zealand's new law about searching digital devices of people entering the country has an apparent step forward, in that it requires specific grounds for suspicion. But the thugs don't have to say what it is, so the step forward is more apparent than real.
The people that live in Washington DC voted to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers, in effect to put an end to their dependence on tipping. The city council, influenced by money from restaurant companies, is in the process of overriding that decision.
The article uses the confused term "people of color". I agree with the article's position but not with that term.
Here's a summary of various kinds of harm that Canada would suffer in the field of copyright if it adopts the NAFTA replacement.
The article confusingly presents a few harms in the area of patent law. It looks like the author is following the confused practice of lumping together several unrelated laws and calling them "intellectual property". The confusion in that term is why we should refuse ever to use it.
The article also uses the word "content" so much that I groan inwardly as I read it. I would have preferred to link to some other article to present this information, but the information is important and I don't know of one.
Former federal prosecutors say that prosecutor Mitchell examined Prof. Blasey Ford only, which is far too little to constitute an adequate basic investigation of her accusations, but Mitchell's report passes it off as one.
This is just one of the flaws they describe, which suggest it is politically motivated.
It looks like the FBI is cutting the Kavanaugh investigation short under pressure from Republican politicians.
However, Senator Collins is now insisting on a thorough FBI investigation of Kavanaugh.
The article presumes, and I agree, that her shifts on the issue are a matter of how seriously she takes the political pressure from various sides. I can't see what pressure could be responsible for her supporting Kavanaugh as much as she has done until this point, despite knowing that her constituents will resent it, but it must be awfully powerful.
I am relieved to see that the anti-Kavanaugh pressure is capable of outweighing that.
Bipartisan Legislation Would Stop ICE from Targeting Immigrants Who Want to Sponsor Migrant Kids.
Detroit protesters, charged with protest-crime, are refusing to accept plea bargains, making the state put them on trial. These trials will put unjust state policies on trial.
Rep. Nunes lets his voters think he has a farm in California in the district. In fact, he sold it in 2006 and gives interviews from someone else's farm.
Many countries prevent the teaching of evolution. Israel and Turkey are joining them.
Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident from Salafi Arabia living in Turkey, entered the Salafi consulate in Istanbul and did not emerge again.
[The bully's] Mocking of Christine Blasey Ford Shows How Women Are Silenced.
(satire) Nation Urged To Be Extra Sensitive To Men Reliving Trauma Of Not Getting Something.
Text messages of Kavanaugh's friends show he was aware of Deborah Ramirez's accusations before they were published. That proves he lied to the Senate about that point.
NAFTA version 2 would weaken the ISDS provision. However, it would make it harder to resist pipelines.
It would permanently limit the EPA's use of scientific research results, and weaken food safety regulations, and facilitate use of toxic pesticides. It would also expand fracking.
It would also extend the length of copyright in Canada, a sad loss for Canada.
When the UK expelled the population of the Chagos Islands, it allowed them to live in the UK. But their grandchildren face deportation to places where they have no connections.
Proposed changes in US laws to prevent future presidents from sabotaging government ethics rules as the bullshitter is doing.
(satire) Paper Towels On Amazon Surge To $2,000 A Roll After Crippling Cost Increase Of Paying Workers A Living Wage.
Amazon has indeed agreed to pay all its workers $15 an hour, but low pay is not the only way it mistreats them.
The cheater presents himself as a "self-made man", but he got $400 million from his father through tax-dodges, some of them alleged to be fraudulent.
The Palestinian Authority sends lots of money to Gaza every month. With the US and Israel crushing the Palestinian Authority, and cutting off its funds, Abbas may decide to stop paying Gaza. This could start a war. It would be rational for Gazans to fight before they starve.
On the other hand, other powers might decide to provide Gazans money to live on.
The "secret nuclear fuel warehouse" Netanyahu claims Iran has is really a known archive of nuclear program records, according to a US official.
States Can't Punish Businesses for Boycotting Israel, Federal Judge in Arizona [rules].
Palestinian prisoners say Israeli guards gave them polluted water to drink, which made some of them sick.
The US does not make a serious effort to provide psychological and psychiatric care to the seriously mentally ill.
It would cost a lot of money, which means we need to tax the rich to pay for it.
George Monbiot: By reducing politics to a celebrity obsession — from Boris to Trump to Corbyn — the media misdirects and confuses us.
Banks and card networks are pushing Britons into using digital payment systems that give them a cut of every payment — and track people, to boot.
Germany has accused right-wing extremists of plotting to overthrow the government by attacking foreigners on the street.
The planned to attack journalists and politicians, too.
The Supreme Court refused to consider the Grand Canyon uranium mining ban, so the ban will stand.
The right-wing Australian government wants to legalize some corrupt campaign donations.
The bullshitter has come out of the closet, affirming that he and President Kim have fallen in love.
I am glad for the two of them, but should the US have a president that is in love with the ruler of another country? Is love an emolument?
Kavanaugh got into a fight in a bar in 1985, and was questioned about it by thugs. A witness described Kavanaugh as "belligerent and aggressive".
This contradicts his statements about being a sober and nonviolent person.
He has been working to recruit witnesses to testify on his behalf. There is a report he was working on countering Ramirez's testimony as early as July. If this is true, it demonstrates another instance of false testimony.
The UK is putting the capstone on its system of massive surveillance of everyone: a system to give every thug access to the surveillance data.
Whole Foods Employees Have Begun to Organize resisting changes Amazon has made. "They want us to be robots."
Australia outsourced the government department that is supposed to help people find jobs. It is 'leading to anxiety rather than jobs.'
A series of prominent Iraqi women who don't stick to traditional restraints have been assassinated.
A New Zealand company with hundreds of employees is moving to a four-day, 32-hour work week with no decrease in salary. It has already tested this approach and decided to adopt it completely.
The Indonesian government has fallen down in delivering food and water to tsunami-hit Sulawesi.
Maybe there should be a National Housing Service to provide housing to everyone.
Studying the contagion of memes, including disinformation.
US Christian fanatics are now seriously trying to eliminate access to birth control. The bully has put a saboteur in charge of the funds for women's medical care to achieve this.
I think these Christians want to force women to have children. Stopping women from ending a pregnancy is half the job — forcing them to get pregnant is the other half.
Convicted kidnaper Equan Yunus was imprisoned and then released, but because he kidnaped a minor (the son of a rival gangster), he is still punished by being placed on the sex offender list. His crime had nothing to do with sex; this is an arbitrary rule.
Some teenagers have been placed on the sex offender list because they were advised to plead guilty to "crimes" even though their actions were innocent.
Even for those who have committed sex crimes, it makes no sense to impose restrictions on them that are impossible to follow.
These restrictions have been heaped on following worst-case thinking. They assume, unrealistically, that everyone on the list is prone to commit all kinds of sex crimes. Any real criminal is prone to commit certain kinds of crimes and not others. The restrictions on any one criminal should be based on what that person might plausibly do.
Citizens of Georgia: the state purged 10% of registered voters last year. By Oct 9, the deadline for registration, call your local election authority to see if you are still registered — and, if not, do register.
I learned of this from a mailing with a reference to a site I can't access, so I am passing on the crucial message this way.
US citizens: oppose the proposed federal voter ID law.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Kellyanne Conway Proves Patriarchy Has No Gender.
In an unequal society, the aristocrats can easily recruit others as their lieutenants, by giving them power over most of the people. In that society, this is the only way for someone other than an aristocrat to get some power, within the system's rules. To change the inequality requires that people seek such change rather than seeking to compete for more power or wealth for themselves.
New iMonsters urge users to use face recognition instead of passwords. That makes it trivial for state agents to unlock them.
I would expect that armed thieves can do the same thing.
The weakest link in cybersecurity is no longer the users. Rather, it is the companies that pressure or lure people to entrust data to them.
Blacks face discrimination in FEMA disaster recovery loans.
A voluntary code to suppress fake news includes a plausible definition of it.
The error of smugness: "By dismissing the masses as fools, progressives confirmed all the culture warriors’ claims."
The Supreme Court refused to hear millionaire Vinod Khosla's case about the California beach from which he seeks to exclude the public. That means the California public access law will stand.
McConnell wants to have a vote on Kavanaugh before the FBI finished its hasty investigation.
US immigration thugs have moved hundreds of minors who are prisoners to a military camp where they will be out of sight and impossible to visit.
How white southerners put over the heroic myth of aristocracy, at the same time they were lynching.
Facebook blocked posting of some news stories about Facebook's data breach affecting 50 million of its useds.
The cracking of these Facebook accounts was made more harmful because Facebook encouraged using its accounts to log in on other sites.
Perhaps that sort of relationship between sites should be prohibited.
This suggests that plans to "eliminate passwords and log in with your phone" are a bad idea, too.
The US needs to reform its system for appointing justices of the Supreme Court; the current one is crippled by partisanship.
Labour leftists want to take Britain out of the EU because it is wired for neoliberalism.
The UK drove Owais Raja and his family into destitution by labeling him a "security threat", and canceling his visa, because he discovered and corrected an error in his tax return.
The UK government has now given him a visa. I hope it will compensate him for the harm done by its deliberate policy of erring on the side of harshness.
Most of all I hope it will change that policy.
A judge reports on sleazy and dishonest practices by prosecutors in regard to plea bargains.
'I Feel like a Slave': St Louis' Workhouse Denounced as a Modern-Day Debtors' Prison.
The Maldives has a chance to move to democracy, but there are many obstacles.
The fanatics that condemned The Satanic Verses launched a global war against freedom of speech. No longer limited to Muslims, it now aims to silence anything that would offend some group of people.
The right to offend is an essential part of freedom of speech. If we are forbidden to offend some groups, sooner or or later we will be forbidden to offend Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, right-wing extremists, rich people, and other groups with political power. Unless you are namby-pamby and timid, sooner or later you will be the victim of that censorship.
Please support the ACLU in defending freedom of speech, including speech that offends someone.
Republican candidates are trying to tell right-wing voters they will ban abortion, while hiding this from the mainstream media and the general public.
Fact Check Shows That Kavanaugh Is a Skilled Liar … But Still a Liar.
Another threat to increase copyright power would allow the Copyright Office to impose fines and injunctions on people without a fair trial.
California thugs that want DNA samples from minors will be required to get a court order, or consent from the minor and parent or guardian.
This is not quite enough; the law should prevent them from obtaining consent by offering or hinting at any quid-pro-quo.
Furthermore, samples (except those of convicts) should be linked to a specific case, and discarded whenever that case is closed.
Vermont has adopted a law to regulate data brokers.
The right way to regulate data brokers is to prevent them from getting their hands on most information about people.
Facebook collected its used's phone numbers for "security" but uses them for advertising.
European investigators report on how Israeli thugs torture Palestinian prisoners.
Alan Singer: Trump Administration Declares Me an Anti-Semite.
I think this is what Singer refers to.
I disagree with the claim that the existence of Israel is racist. By the standards of the day, every nationality deserved a homeland, and Jews desperately needed one. However, the Arabs of Palestine suffered a real injustice and they deserve justice too.
Here's how Uri Avnery presented these two demands for justice.
Everyone: can you find out whether this new Google "smart" thermostat is just or unjust in certain ways?
US citizens: call on the US not to deport parents for claiming benefits for their US citizen children.
Denying medical care and food aid to children can cause them lifelong harm.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Mahatma Gandhi tested his resistance to sexual temptation by sleeping with young naked women, and doing nothing sexual with them.
I find his religious ideas irrational, but I see no harm in what he did. Today's narrow-mindedness would call for putting him in prison.
Gandhi is not the Indian I most admire. That is Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, a firm rationalist and even firmer campaigner against bigotry.
US Justice Department Sues California over New Net Neutrality Law.
The FCC already said that states could not adopt stricter rules, so this confrontation was predictable. That's why some other states decided instead to adopt rules about what ISPs the state could do business with.
I hope California wins, but that is unlikely if Kavanaugh has anything to say about it.
As a Wealthy, Warm Country, the US Would Benefit from Implementing a Carbon Tax to Slow Global [Heating].
The FBI investigation of Kavanaugh will be very limited. The FBI will not interview several pertinent witnesses.
The bullshitter says he did not impose those limits, but that could be bullshit.
Brace for Impact, as the Climate "End Game" Has Arrived.
When new fathers take care of their babies alone, their relationship with the babies' mothers becomes much more stable.
Israeli troops have recently shot and killed Palestinian children as young as 11.
Apple's "smart" watch could get you arrested by calling 911.
Based on results in psychology, there is a lot of evidence that Kavanaugh is lying.
His background of privilege teaches many people to think they are empowered to lie and entitled to do so.
Bernie Sanders calls on the FBI to investigate whether Kavanaugh has lied in his testimony.
Houston Officials Halt Proposed Plans to Open First US 'Robot Brothel'.
The hostility towards this business, which would employ no human sex workers, demonstrates that repression of sex work is based to a substantial degree on prudish disapproval.
To help the people that do sex work reluctantly, we should not repress sex work for those who choose to do it. What we should do is give poor people a bigger share of income.
To free those who are enslaved and forced to do sex work, let's use methods that will also free the people who are enslaved doing other kinds of work.
Huge Protests in Brazil as Far-Right Presidential Hopeful Returns Home.
He seems to be a lot like Do-dirty.
A few parents who were deported without their children are sneaking into the US to find them again.
Australia is thinking of demanding back doors to install different software into computers and phones, claiming this would be something other than a "security weakness".
Elizabeth Warren is considering running for president in 2020.
I will vote for her if she is the Democratic nominee and Sanders is not running, but I'd rather elect Sanders. His criticism of plutocracy is deeper and broader.
Amal Fathy posted a video criticizing sexual harassment she experienced at a bank in Egypt. She received an absurd assortment of criminal charges and has now been sentenced to two years in prison.
For your own safety, stay away from Egypt. Spend your money on some other country.
Zimbabwe's New Artistic Freedoms Are Tested by Film on Matabeleland Violence.
Arguing that Nobel prizes don't fit into the modern form of scientific research.
Instagram and WhatsApp will be fully integrated into Facebook's surveillance network.
I never trusted them to be truly separate.
Afghanistan is planning a parliamentary election for Oct 30, but it has been delayed for 3 years and may not be possible now.
An interview with the founder of Bellingcat.
World 'Nowhere Near on Track' to Avoid [heating] Beyond 1.5C Target.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a report admitting that the world is on track for 4C of global heating in this century.
However, the same report supports cancellation of vehicle efficiency rules on the grounds that that alone wouldn't be enough to avoid disaster.
Of course it wouldn't — that's why more and broader measures are needed, and proposed.
That's one of the tactics in the planet roasters' playbook: to oppose each measure because "this alone wouldn't be enough."
While Everyone Is Looking at the Senate, the EPA Is Being Taken Apart.
Senator Collins is misrepresenting the criticism and opposition she is now getting from Mainers.
"It's fairly obvious that Kavanaugh cannot be trusted, but there's more to it than that."
The UK encourages universities to act like businesses and treat students as customers. The result is that they mislead and cheat their customers like businesses.
(satire) Kavanaugh is greatly impressed by the Supreme Court's hazing rituals.
When Police Use Disappearing-Message Apps, It's Not Just Bad for Accountability — It's Illegal.
US citizens: keep phoning your senators at 1-844-778-3056 to tell them to reject Kavanaugh.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Climate Risk Disclosure Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Interviews with the protesters that convinced Senator Flake to demand a delay in confirming Kavanaugh.
Macron dares to point out that Africa needs to reduce its birth rate, not scrabble desperately to keep up with it.
The latest example of totally inadequate "privacy protection" laws, this one assumes the danger to users of the Internet of Stings is limited to unauthorized access by third parties.
Fracking Chemicals Dumped in Allegheny River a Decade Ago Entered Food Chain. They were found in the shells of mussels that were growing that year.
Mussels grown since that discharge was prohibited still show signs of those chemicals.
Freshwater mussels are endangered and this probably contributes to the danger.
Canadians, watch out! Canada might follow the EU and US in censoring the internet in the name of copyright.
The article gives undeserved support to the companies that want to impose these restrictions by calling music-sharing "piracy" and referring to it as a "sin". Sharing is virtuous! The first step in defeating the copyright industry is to refuse to spread its propaganda.
If Canada wants to punish the bullshitter, it should do so by legalizing sharing of all published works. Indeed, it should do that regardless of what the US government is doing.
"Evidence shows that privileged families will stop at nothing to prevent their children being overtaken [by anyone else's children]."
Society needs social mobility so that we don't end up with incompetent aristos in charge and so that people from poor families get heard. But social mobility is not a solution to the problem of poverty. The small chance of becoming wealthy is of no benefit to the poor children who don't become wealthy (which is most of them).
Growing up in poverty and hardship stunts children's growth, including their mental growth, so when judged on their "merits" later they will be consigned to poverty.
The solution to poverty is to redistribute the wealth and income. When no child grows up in hardship, no child will be stunted. Indirectly, this will help social mobility too.
The text of Christine Blasey Ford's statement.
Sanders and some Democratic senators have introduced a bill to explicitly disallow a US aggression against Iran.
John Hancock insurance is pressuring people to give their personal data to Apple or Fitbit.
The insurance company should offer an alternative which collects only the exercise data, not people's locations or the time of day when they walk, and sends it only to the insurance company, which will store only the overall totals that are pertinent.
The only rational need for life insurance is if you have long-term dependents. If you do the wise thing and avoid having children, you probably won't need life insurance anyway.
SCROTUS's lawyers made discussions about Deborah Ramirez's testimony break down by switching from phone calls to written communication. They also demanded a full description of her evidence in writing before they would even decide to invite her to testify. Sounds like they wanted the negotiation to fail.
Then they blamed it on Ramirez's lawyers.
Hurricane Maria gave vulture funds an opportunity to buy Puerto Rican debt cheap. It looks like they want funds supposedly for Puerto Rico's rebuilding to be given to them instead.
Puerto Rico deserves an opportunity to declare bankruptcy and make those debts disappear. That the vultures will lose a lot of money is an additional secondary reason for this.
Don't treat Salafi Arabia like a banana republic!
For one thing, it's not even a republic. It is an absolute monarchy with an imposed religion.
Big tech companies propose a federal data privacy law that is intended to do an inadequate job while prohibiting states from doing any better.
They want the law to be weaker than the EU's GDPR, which itself is not strong enough to do much good.
Anything that regulates mainly the use of their collections of personal data, and fails to limit what data they can collect, is missing the point.
Senate Republicans agreed to delay the final vote on Kavanaugh by one week for the FBI to investigate the various rape and groping accusations against him.
Is one week really enough to do that?
Normal FBI investigations of nominees do not examine their conduct as juveniles. But even if they did, they had no reports to look into until the recent accusations were reported.
"Kavanaugh has revealed the insidious force in global politics: toxic masculinity."
Articles that opposed the conclusion that glyphosate causes cancer turn out to have been secretly arranged by Bayer (formerly Monsanto), which even paid some of the authors.
51 unauthorized immigrants in the US are living in churches that have offered them sanctuary. One, Edith Espinal, has spent a whole year in refuge in a church.
In the US: say that you believe Christine Blasey Ford.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Just after Kavanaugh cited his approval by the ABA, the ABA called for suspending the process of confirming him, so the FBI can investigate.
(satire) A Coca Cola water tanker ship exploded off the coast of Mexico, leaving marine animals drenched. Water is now washing up on the coast.
ARPA-E funds projects for efficient energy storage. Congress has not let the bully kill it.
Evidence suggests many patent examiners are influenced corruptly by the prospect of future employment by businesses that get patents.
The future employment they seek is, effectively, lobbying patent examiners on behalf of those businesses.
A store sold its old servers, and the disks were sold with customers' personal data which is now being used to harm those customers.
The obvious way to try to prevent repetition of this specific problem is with a law about disposal of servers' disks.
The deeper way to fix this and many other problems caused by stores' personal data is not to allow stores to collect any. Stores should not be allowed to track their customers.
McDonald's workers held a one-day strike against sexual harassment on the job, which they say often includes groping by supervisors.
Dubya offered Americans paths to have their student debts "forgiven", but those paths are strewn with obstacles and your chances of reaching the goal are roughly zero. Loan companies neglect to inform people of the fine print, leading them to fail.
Fan Bingbing's Disappearance Shows No One Is Safe from Beijing.
I know very little about that actress, and I have no reason to conclude that the charges are political. For all I know, she might be guilty of tax evasion. Or not.
But this is not the way suspects ought to be treated.
The Mexican federal government took direct control of the Acapulco thug department and arrested thugs suspected of working with criminal gangs.
The War on Drugs fuels those gangs. If limited to other kinds of crime, the gangs would not disappear, but they couldn't get as much money.
Court Won't Let FBI Dodge Lawsuit By Removing American Citizen From No-Fly List Shortly After Being Sued.
About the teenage activist pushing for Right to Repair in Michigan.
Sad to say, the article does not hint at the ethical points. Americans have been taught that businesses are fundamentally entitled to treat customers in any way that customers will go along with, and only certain kinds of arguments can be used against that.
Journalist-investigators say they have identified one of the poisoners of the Skripals as a Russian intelligence colonel.
Half the world's orca population will be killed by PCBs that continue leaking into the ocean.
A treaty calls for destroying the PCBs that were produced decades ago, but only the US has actually tried to do it.
The former governor of Veracruz has been sentenced to 9 years in prison for corruption.
UK anti-fracking activists, jailed for nonviolently blocking fracking activities, stand firm and say that they will win the battle against fracking.
ACLU: Greyhound continues to let US border thugs board a bus and demand to see passengers' id — and pretends that it has no choice.
Google is trying to fudge the wrong of censoring for China by denying that it's censorship.
Platform Censorship: Lessons From the Copyright Wars. Basically, forcing web sites to censor "fake news", "terrorism" or "hatred" will censor a lot more than that.
As I read the article, the repeated use of "content" as a noun irritated me. I also grit my teeth when I see some publications referred to as "unlawful" when really they only infringe copyright, and by the verb "monetize".
I linked to the article despite that because its point is important.
I wish there were another article I could link to instead.
The speculative investment vehicles that gave us the fiscal crisis of 2008 are banned, but banks are selling something quite similar.
Tesla's giant storage battery in Australia has recovered 1/3 of its construction cost in one year.
Clearly the world needs a lot more storage batteries.
Selling blood products for big profit led to disaster in China; it spread HIV among the donors and perhaps a million of them, perhaps more, died from that.
The US blood system is heading in the same direction. depending on testing carried out by people whose imperative is to work fast.
Adultery Is Not a Crime, India's Supreme Court Rules.
This is to say, a wife is not her husband's property.
Describing corruption in Argentina as the 'main structure of power'.
A large illegal fishing operation threatened to wipe out sea cucumbers off the coast of Washington State. The authorized fishing operations were cut way back to give the sea cucumbers a chance to increase their population.
Most US children, age 8-11, spend too much time using digital screens and not enough time sleeping.
This is associated with poorer cognitive development, but that leaves the question of which causes which.
Perhaps starting school at a later hour would help them get more sleep.
Anger at Dutch Plan to Ask Race And Religion of Gun Licence Applicants.
Political views, too.
The sacking of Puerto Rico began long before Hurricane Maria.
Disaster capitalism (through their subsidiary, the US government) demanded crushing cuts in all public services including education and medicine; to get this, it eliminated democratic government there.
Italy's right-wing government is making a bigoted right-wing liar president of the state radio/tv broadcaster Rai.
Palestine: The Testbed for Trump's Plan to Tear up the Rules-Based International Order.
Israel Gives Palestinians Eight Days to Leave Khan al-Ahmar.
A delegation of European parliamentarians warned Israel that demolishing Khan al-Ahmar could be considered a war crime.
Khan al-Ahmar unites the two halves into which Israel has divided the West Bank. If it is destroyed, Palestinians will be unable to travel between the two except by passing through zones controlled by Israel.
Edward Snowden describes Malkia Cyril, a campaigner against surveillance in the US.
The EPA's Inspector General reports that the EPA is too quick to grant "emergency" special approval for pesticide use, and that it fails to measure properly the risks of harm to humans and wildlife.
Facebook gets advice about what news is "fake" from two partisan organizations, the National Democratic Institute (representing "centrist" plutocratist mainstream Democratic Party) and the International Republican Institute (representing the theocratic-plutocratist Republican Party).
Naturally this tends to label anything that doesn't sustain plutocracy as "fake".
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-248-4061 and call on them to hold Kavanaugh's confirmation process for an FBI investigation, and vote against him if that isn't done.
If you phone, please spread the word!
In another act against Americans' safety, the US has canceled a rule requiring oil trains to upgrade to computer-controlled brakes.
The saboteur in charge was convinced by the argument that the cost of upgrading the brakes exceeds the worth of lives that might be lost in explosions from runaway trains.
If you would like to stop the US deportation thugs, one way is to boycott companies that serve the US deportation thug department.
There are many reasons to boycott the big banks and Amazon.
A deradicalization system in Australia explains how it operates: finding people holding an intense grudge who might get tipped into an insane desire for violence, then working with them.
Some of these grievances might be due to real injustices.
One Somali boy was "mistakenly accused of swearing at police." The word "accused" has a range of meanings. Did someone merely say that the boy uttered curse words at some thugs? That's a valid meaning, but it seems unlikely to have resulted in a lasting grudge.
I have a hunch that insulting a thug is a crime in Australia, and that the boy was charged with this "crime". That would not justify terrorism, but it would justify the grudge.
If that is what happened, Australia should repeal that law and apologize to everyone prosecuted under it. Insulting people is part of freedom of speech. People deserve the right to curse at thugs, at elected officials, at you, even at me.
Some US electric utilities are running their expensive coal plants and charging customers extra to pay for that, rather than buying cheaper electricity to resell.
One issue where the bullshitter is right: he condemns the idea of surrendering the state to globalization — to the power of foreign business.
The ironic part is that he bows down eagerly to business on all other aspects of policy.
The ever-bubbling civil war in the DR Congo impeded vaccination against Ebola.
Saboteur Nielsen, head of the Department of Harsh Sadism, chose a policy recommended by staff as a way to deter unauthorized immigration and that they acknowledged would mean taking children (and teenagers) away from their parents. Subsequently she lied repeatedly about those two facts.
Important Democrats in Congress now support a resolution to stop supporting Salafi Arabia in attacking Yemen.
Julie Swetnick swears that Kavanaugh and Mark Judge used to put drugs in the punch at their house parties so as to make girls lose their inhibitions, or even incapacitate them so a series of boys could rape them.
She was once drugged to the point where she could not resist being repeatedly raped. She doesn't claim that Kavanaugh was one of the rapists, but they allowed it to happen.
Several friends of Prof. Blasey Ford have signed statements that she told them about Kavanaugh's rape attempt years ago, as far back as 2012. To some she said his name; to another she said, "He's now a federal judge."
The Jailing of Fracking Protesters Tells Us We Are Winning This Fight. However, the UK is escalating repression of nonviolent protest on many different issues.
The author is one of the leaders of the UK Green Party, and was arrested (but not jailed) for a similar nonviolent protest.
The saboteurs' elimination of the methane leaks rule will make natural gas as dirty as coal.
Civilian casualties in Yemen have more than doubled since June.
George Monbiot: While Economic Growth Continues We'll Never Kick Our Fossil Fuels Habit.
Privacy International: UK Intelligence Agency Admits Unlawfully Spying on Privacy International.
India's supreme court ruled that many important activities may not require a biometric id number. However, since paying taxes does require it, in practice it is impossible for Indians to escape.
Glaciers can move up to 80 feet per day. Global heating has made many glaciers move fast enough to change visibly from day to day.
EU, China and Russia set up a special financial institution to help insulate their trade with Iran from US sanctions.
The stockholders of American Outdoor Brands voted to require the company to record what its gun company subsidiary, Smith and Wesson, is doing to monitor and reduce gun violence.
Of all the countries on Earth, the US is the second-most-vulnerable to damage from global heating.
China is building more coal capacity that would amount to a 25% increase.
Could it be that China wants to provoke disaster because the US will lose more from it than China will? That's the same as the bullshitter's attitude towards a trade war. No, I'm not seriously proposing that theory.
The most vulnerable country is India, which China is not particularly friendly toward either.
Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of patients getting blood transfusions in the UK around 1980 were infected with HIV in the process. An investigation has found that their medical record suffered deletions and even fake additions as a cover-up.
Similar infections occurred in the US and France. The medical systems were not designed to prevent this sort of thing.
The sadist's officials are dragging their feet in obeying the court order to reunite immigrant minors that were taken away from their families. Almost 200 have not yet been reunited.
Kavanaugh's acquaintances and record present him as frequently violent and frequently drunk, and motivated by hatreds.
In several fields, business funding for research serves to distract research from issues the businesses don't want explored, and distorts public policy.
Paris Man Jailed for Three Months for Slapping Woman's Bottom.
I agree with this decision. He physically attacked her.
If it were just a matter of his verbal remarks, I would disapprove of them (it is nasty to insult strangers for no good reason), but insults should not be a crime.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter and senators to cosponsor the LYNE act, which would stop the development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons which are more conducive to actually using them.
US citizens: tell Saboteur of the Interior Zinke to drop the plan to charge high fees for protesting in Washington DC.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators and congresscritter, and call on them to remove the drone shoot-down provision and the biometric surveillance provision from from the FAA reauthorization bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: contribute to the Medicare for All PAC.
All you need to do is send a check to
PO Box 21912
Seattle, WA 98111
Arguments for a global ban on nuclear weapons.
The bully is now terrorizing authorized immigrants, threatening to deny them permanent residency if they get get federal benefits for the health of their children, who are entitled because they are US citizens.
Adapting Dutch technology and spending $15 billion dollars could enable Houston to avoid a much larger sum in flood damage from future hurricanes.
The sad thing is, the US has become so downtrodden that it no longer has the gumption to tax companies so it can do important jobs. Thus, this job can be done only if companies graciously bestow their sponsorship. Then they will ask us to be grateful for it.
Campaigners Fear Creeping Privatisation of El Salvador's Water.
Climate Gentrification: the Rich Can Afford to Move — What About the Poor?
Ex-UN Chief Ban Ki-moon Says US Healthcare System Is 'Morally Wrong'.
He also acknowledged that businesses are blocking a national health system for their profits' sake.
Philippine Senator Trillanes, who had been sheltering in the senate hall, has been arrested.
Joshua trees may disappear from Joshua Tree National Park as a result of global heating effects.
The Republican Party Is About to Face the Wrath of Women.
Existing US border walls along parts of the border with Mexico damage infrastructure and the environment.
They don't stop people from trying to enter the US illegally, but do push them into more risky routes on which a greater fraction die.
I think that is the border thugs' intention, judging from the way they destroy water supplies left by humanitarians.
China is gaining influence in the UN's defense of human rights, and won't use that for good.
Whether it will do more evil than the US directed by the bully remains to be seen.
Glyphosate can harm honeybees by damaging their normal intestinal bacteria. This is in addition to other indirect forms of harm.
France and the US are pressuring for a permanent arrangement for Idlib and for the removal of Iranian forces from Syria.
If you discuss political activity as a game between teams, in which the sides can win or lose points, you're missing the point.
US citizens: call on the FCC to investigate failures of Puerto Rico's communications infrastructure after Hurricane Maria.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose SITSA, which would give the attorney general the power to ban any drug arbitrarily.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US parents are now invited to track their teenage offspring like convicts on parole.
Australia has permitted Nauru to block badly ill refugees from being brought to Australia under a court order. The Australian judge ruled that Australia is responsible for that difficulty.
Victoire Ingabire, a Rwandan opposition leader, has been released from prison and vows to continue the struggle despite the danger she will be imprisoned again.
President Kagame represses human rights harshly.
Italy pressured Panama to cancel the operating permission for Médecins Sans Frontières' ship that rescues drowning migrants.
Low Pay, Poor Prospects, And Psychological Toll: The Perils of Microtask Work.
The Endangered Species Act functions very effectively. 99% of the species that have been protected are still living.
Perhaps that's why Republican saboteurs are trying to destroy it.
Shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument Is a Disaster for Paleontology.
Researchers have discovered how to hide voice commands in other audio, so that people cannot hear them, but Alexa and Siri can.
US national parks are heating up faster than most of the US. Some are forecast to suffer 9C of heating (16F) in this century. Today's local species will go extinct if they can't move elsewhere.
What is Glacier National Park if it doesn’t have glaciers anymore? To an environmentalist, it's a tragedy. To an extractivist, it's an opportunity for mining.
Thousands of Americans are moving to higher ground, fleeing from global heating.
In 30 years it will be hundreds of thousands.
Some decades later, it will be millions. We can't predict how many millions; the climate models don't allow for the methane that will be released by melting permafrost, since we don't know how much that will be.
Currently 30,000 households are being squeezed out.
China has banned the Hong Kong independence party entirely.
China is stepping up its control and repression in Hong Kong by steps. Just a few years ago it banned individual candidates from the election for advocating independence.
As long as it faces no penalty for this, China can keep pushing.
India's government offers gratis medical care for all the poor.
I hope it includes the most effective forms of birth control.
Deborah Ramirez accuses Kavanaugh of attacking her sexually while he was at Yale.
Two other women make accusations against Kavanaugh, not yet publicly.
Big Pharma companies route their profits through Ireland so as to avoid taxes in various poor countries.
My tax proposal would prevent that.
Kavanaugh claims to be a strict constructionist, following the text of the Constitution literally — but that's only when he can use that to justify deregulation. Sometimes he rules for deregulation by inventing a fanciful interpretation of the Constitution.
Apparently his approach to the Constitution is better described as, "Deregulation by hook or by crook."
A terrorist attack in Iran may have been funded by Salafi Arabia with the purpose of pushing Iran to retaliate and give the bully an excuse for war.
OPEC predicts that coal and oil usage will increase for decades.
If that happens, it won't continue for the rest of the century. The poverty, hunger and wars will stop it. However, that is not a second-best solution; that is failure.
President Yameen of the Maldives was defeated. Apparently he was unable to rig the election.
Plutocratist governments in Central America are forcing peasants off their land and converting it to plantations or mines. Sometimes women organize and stop them.
Since 1990, 1/4 of Australian [ex-]Ministers Go on to Work for Lobbyists or Special Interests, according to a study that tracked each one's career.
The author of the report said that this is not necessarily bad, Perhaps I'd agree, if each one had been surprised to receive a cushy job after leaving government office.
Let's not be naive. Government officials know they will be offered such work, and their decisions while in office are likely to be influenced by the prospect. Accepting a job that is unofficially contingent on their policies is morally equivalent to taking a bribe.
I've always found this quotation inspiring: "I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to stop the world from changing me."
I used to attribute the quote to Thoreau, but it seems that was mistaken: it is actually from Ammon Hennacy.
I have succeeded in changing the world to some extent, and I am still trying to achieve more. At the same time, I see how the use of nonfree software, and digital dis-services, has changed others for the worse. Millions surrender their freedom and privacy without moving a muscle to protect it. They run freedom-denying software that snoops on them constantly. They let Facebook use them. They play nonfree video games for hours, killing time which they could have used for something meaningful, and learning nothing except how to retreat from society.
Even if they would find it hard work to resist these evils 100%, there are surely parts they could easily resist. It sure looks like malicious technology has changed them for the worse.
Please don't let it change you!
Right-wingers are posting long lists of supposed non-citizens who are voting, presented as proof there is a big problem of invalid voters.
They are being sued by US citizens whose names they falsely posted.
"Land-based bird populations are becoming confined to nature reserves in some parts of the world—raising the risk of global extinction—due to the loss of suitable habitat."
Cambodia has pardoned Australia documentalist Ricketson on the recommendation of the tyrant that had him prosecuted, calling making photos of a rally "spying".
This is a common ploy for governments enforcing unjust laws: prosecute someone, who is of course convicted, then pardon the victim. It serves to scare people into obeying the unjust law, while avoiding the odium that would follow from keeping journalists in prison.
Prof. Blasey Ford agreed to testify to the Senate on Thursday, but other details have not been agreed on.
This includes such as whether they will call in some lawyer to talk with her (being too cowardly to do so themselves).
The bully's saboteurs are going to cut Head Start and cancer research to fund their prisons for immigrant minors.
The article says "children", but I am pretty sure the prisoners range up through age 17. Some are children, and some are teenagers.
Citizens of North Carolina: fight against Republican voter-purging.
I can't test this, since I am not from North Carolina and should not sign. If you find that this petition can't be signed with Javascript disabled entirely, and can't be signed with LibreJS active, please email me (rms at the GNU project site) so I can delete it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
One of the bully's appointed federal judge disregarded the facts to make a partisan decision in favor of right-wing counterprotestors.
The bully's policy of arresting unauthorized immigrants if they go to court succeeds in scaring many of them away from seeking protection against domestic violence.
It took the US State Department just one week to publish a sham environmental review of the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline.
Protests are planned at the Salesforce annual event, demanding that the company stop serving the US border thugs.
(satire) Trump Asks Why Kavanaugh Accuser Didn’t Just Immediately Request Hush Money.
Israelis Experience Palestinian Home Life in Virtual Reality.
They see the home of a specific Palestinian family that volunteered for this.
Sessions has ordered immigration judges to be cruel, strict, callous and merciless.
The reason Republicans intend to vote for Kavanaugh no matter what is that he is part of the same plutocratist group as four other right-wing justices. They will turn the US into hell for all except the favored classes.
Pompeo condemned China for putting around a million Uighurs in brainwashing camps.
Someone else called this "The pot calling the kettle black", but that is not correct. What Chine has done is comparable to putting a million people in Guantanamo. The US put only a thousand people, total, in Guantanamo. Even today it is possible to be worse than the US.
When Pompeo talks about "stealing intellectual property", he spreads confusion. That term invariably has that effect because it doesn't fit reality.
US mainstream media covered Hurricane Florence, but very rarely connected it to its human cause.
An Italian judge freed the Tunisian fishermen, victims of the right-wing attempt to criminalize the act of rescuing migrants from drowning.
This won't end the threat. Right-wingers trying to pervert justice never give up.
SCROTUS have delayed the last Kavanaugh hearing rather than tell Ford "Too late!"
NASA Launches Satellite to Precisely Track How Earth's Ice Is Melting.
I wonder if the denialist will order the satellite deorbited in December.
Maine is moving to prohibit protesting by projecting images onto the state capitol building.
The practice does not hurt anyone, but there is a general tendency to repress effective protest in the US. If it can attract the attention of substantial numbers of people, politicians that don't represent the public will find some excuse to stop you.
Call on mutual fund companies to support the shareholder resolution to make American Outdoor Brands stop supporting the NRA, and be clear about what it is (and what it isn't) doing in claimed efforts to reduce gun violence.
The company is a conglomerate, but its main business is guns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The cheater wants to reduce capital gains taxes, to offer the rich yet another handout. Rather than change income tax law, he wants to disregard it.
The UK denies citizenship to teenagers for petty crimes, and seeks to deport them to countries they would hardly remember and where they may not know anyone.
Citizens of New Jersey: call your state legislators to support the law that stores must accept cash.
You can support cash (and your privacy) more by actually insisting on cash when you buy things in stores, and refusing to give your name. I do this, and so can you.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject building more prisons for immigrant families.
The problem is not space to imprison them, the problem is imprisoning them.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Kavanaugh (as an appeals court judge).
If SCROTUS put him on the Supreme Court, we will want to impeach him from there. Convenient that there are several valid grounds already, including attempted rape and lying to the senate at least twice.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Removing the bullshitter from office using the 25th amendment would run into the same obstacle as impeachment: requiring a 2/3 majority in Congress.
The UK thug chiefs said they never approved of letting infiltrator Mark Kennedy pretend to love Kate Wilson, hoping she would forgive them. Now we know that they were lying.
The new "expressvote" voting machine offers to print a paper ballot for the user to check — but invites the user to speed up the process by saying "skip the check."
Alaska's salmon are threatened once again, by several kinds of human activity.
Kavanaugh's defenders decided to fabricate an accusation that a specific man, other than Kavanaugh, was the one who tried to rape Professor Blasey Ford.
That's libel, isn't it?
Duke Energy, in North Carolina, is directly partially responsible for the hurricane's flooding in that state.
Cuts to Cancer Research, Head Start, and Women's Shelters Among $226 Million Diverted to Pay for [imprisonment of immigrant minors].
Senator Grassley's staffer admitted that Republicans plan to confirm Kavanaugh "no matter what."
The citizens of Washington, DC, voted for an initiative to increase the minimum wage. The city council decided to cancel it, showing it represents the businesses, not the voters.
Oakland is setting up sheds for homeless people to move to.
It seems like a positive step for me, but we shouldn't accept as a permanent solution that poor people have to live in sheds. The US is not so poor that it can't afford housing for everyone at the usual standards.
The US government is refusing passports to natural born US citizens, saying that their birth certificates are not good enough.
A Republican Member of Congress Wants [gratis] Public Access to Judicial Records.
It is a good idea, and I won't criticize it because of who supports it.
Verizon blocked people in North Carolina from getting their email and storm updates, saying "Pay for higher priority if you want any service."
The Seattle Mariners squeezed another 135 million dollars out of the city of Seattle. The city council came close to rejecting the demand, but did not quite get there.
I think there should be a federal law that prohibits cities and states from subsidizing sports teams either directly or indirectly.
Oregon's bottle recycling program now handles refillable bottles for breweries. They don't need to be ground up and melted and made into new bottles.
It is good to see such beginning steps, but if we don't scale it far up we are still screwed.
Rice University will spare low-income and middle-income students the need to borrow money.
The FCC has rewarded the giant wireless companies at the expense of US cities.
Just reminds us of who the FCC now tries to serve.
Normally anyone investigating an accusation of rape is fortunate to have another witness, a chance to find the truth. The fact that SCROTUS did not call him to testify is yet more proof that their goal is to cover up the truth.
The weakness of truth in contending with lies is like a deficiency in society's immune system.
The report about how the bullshitter will not accept corrections even on insignificant details suggests that he considers himself infallible, and that he is out of touch with reality. Is that enough to judge him mentally incompetent and institutionalize him?
The US deportation thugs imprison children as bait to deport relatives that offer to receive them.
How Congress Can End the War in Yemen. It looks like Congress's will is moving slowly in that direction.
There is no legitimate reason for the US to involve itself in Yemen's civil war. No reason for the US to maintain special hostility to Iran, either. That country is dominated by a repressive theocracy, but it is not as repressive, nor as harsh in its theocracy, as Salafi Arabia, which the US is supporting.
"Dr. Blasey Ford has zero to gain from lying and everything to lose. Brett Kavanaugh on the other hand has a repeated and well documented history of lying to and misleading the Senate Judiciary Committee."
The coup-running "president" of the Maldives seems to be trying to rig the coming election.
I suspect that "president" Yameen's coup was organized by fossil fuel interests.
In recent years he has put the country in China's pocket by accepting loans for unnecessary projects, such as a bridge that in a few decades will connect one patch of ocean to another patch of ocean.
We need an international system for countries that have emerged from dictatorship to repudiate the debts imposed by tyrants and corrupt rulers. That will teach plutocrats to stop trying to enslave countries through lending to those rulers.
When the islands are awash and no one lives there any more, China will foreclose on them and build a naval base there.
The bullshitter is systematically removing regulations that protect birds. He has even allowed shooting birds with lead, which tends to poison carrion eaters and introduce lead into the whole ecosystem.
Australia has refused to resume sending ships to oppose Japan's "commercial" whaling, but holds out as consolation that it just perhaps might launch a legal challenge of some kind.
I would be glad if Australia really did that, but I think this is just a way of letting people down gently step by step.
Yet another danger of Kavanaugh: he could eliminate California's law that requires public access to all beaches.
The thug that killed Botham Shem Jean while he was minding his own business has been protected from normal investigation of suspects through the schemes that thugs have set up to protect themselves from justice, as well as unofficial privilege.
A former US border thug is reporting on the cruelty towards migrants that he found to be standard practice in the thug agency.
It must be worse under the influence of the bully. His views will have empowered all the thug commanders that are looking for someone to be cruel to.
A former official says that, by usual standards, the FBI should investigate the attempted rape accusations against Kavanaugh.
The US ordered two Chinese government "journalism" organizations to register as foreign agents.
That seems legitimate to me.
Calling on Spain to repeal its law against blasphemy.
Valentino Dixon was wrongly convicted of murder in a trial that hardly bothers to respect the rights of the accused. He had a lucky break and received national attention, after which it was discovered that his conviction was based on insufficient evidence, and he was freed.
We ought to give every murder case this sort of attention the first time.
MDMA makes octopuses sociable.
This indicates similarity between brains whose evolution has been separate for 500 million years. Perhaps with all animal's brains.
Private firefighting companies remind us of how the Roman Republic turned into an empire.
Marcus Aurelius Crassus became the richest man in Rome with his private firefighting company. When a house caught fire, he offered to buy it immediately for a low price. If the owner sold him the house, Crassus put out the fire.
[Weakened] environmental regulations heighten risk during natural disasters.
Hurricane Florence caused the worst flood in the history of the American east coast.
The US has imprisoned almost 13000 immigrants that are minors. (Some hundreds were taken away from families; most arrived alone.) Many of them are being forcibly drugged with sedatives.
Don't get a laptop that charges through USB-C. It is inherently vulnerable.
It is a shame that the article uses "hacker" to mean "security-breaker". Please distinguish the two by calling the latter a "cracker".
In a boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy, the traffickers generally force one passenger, at gunpoint, to drive the boat. If that one is not up to the task, another passenger may take the controls so that they don't all drown.
Whichever migrant drives the boat to Italy is likely to be jailed and charged with "aiding illegal immigration".
Barriers at the edges of undersea glaciers could retard them from sliding into the sea and raising sea level.
The US is planning to treat pipeline protesters as terrorists.
The attack on Hodeida by Salafi Arabia, with US support, has made food expensive. Any worse, and famine will affect millions of children. Some are already starving.
Air Pollution (NO2) Linked to Much Greater Risk of Dementia.
AI censors were unable to distinguish between terrorist propaganda and evidence of atrocities.
The distinction is a matter of the overall statement, not merely what images contain, and making the distinction requires actual understanding — a trained neural network can't do it.
Countries just now reported to the UN Human Rights Council for arbitrary imprisonment include Australia, Burundi, China, the Congo (which one?), Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Israel, Pakistan, South Korea, the US, Zimbabwe. Maybe more.
The US is trying to hijack UN drug policy and drag it in the direction of repression.
The Capitalist Manifesto: Let Poor People Die. Or, as I put it, plutocrats want a laissez-faire, laissez-mourir economy.
I must point out that having over 7 billion humans, and perhaps someday 11 billion, is not merely a job that plutocrats prevent us from handling. It is a grave problem in its own right, and the only way to truly handle that population growth is to reduce the birth rate enough that the population declines. No economic system could keep us out of poverty indefinitely with an increasing population. We are using Earth's resources almost twice as fast as Earth can replace them.
Several women are suing Facebook for implementing gender discrimination in employment advertisements.
The agreement between Turkey and Russia over Idlib is only for one month.
Thugs in London arbitrarily search people people based on no concrete reason (aside from race or ethnicity). They search some people repeatedly, even many times a day.
This is not only unjust, it provokes crime.
Republicans have set up an inadequate hearing to smear Christine Blasey Ford, while excluding any other testimony except Kavanaugh's.
That assures it will be "he said, she said", which will be their excuse to disregard the matter.
People that claim to — maybe really try to — help refugees on Nauru often try to stop them from speaking to the press and the public.
Gulf Petrodollars Are a Destructive Addiction - the UK Must Kick the Habit.
A participant in a Pussy Riot protest in Moscow was, it seems, poisoned in court or in jail.
UN Investigators Publish Report Detailing Evidence for Accusation of Genocide against Burmese Military.
Canada gives hundreds of millions of dollars per year as subsidy to fossil fuels.
The bullshitter is planning to send a text message to every American at once through a FEMA broadcast system.
It has been delayed from the planned date.
The article says phone users cannot block receiving the message, but that probably means only that you can't ask the phone network not to deliver it. If your phone is running Replicant, you could modify it to drop messages from the bullshitter on the floor. If you do as I do, and refuse to carry a Stalin's dream device, you need not to anything — you won't receive it.
However, let this annoyance not distract us from the truly harmful things that Republicans are doing, such as imprisoning and deporting more immigrants, attacking voting rights, banning abortions, killing poor people, and roasting Earth's ecosphere.
Belgium refused to extradite Spanish rapper Valtònyc to Spain for speech crimes.
The song lyrics suggest the possibility of violence but do not directly advocate violence.
Issues about the FISA court's secret rules for surveillance of journalists.
(satire) Senate Republicans Seek To Delay Kavanaugh Vote Until Accuser Properly Smeared.
(satire) White House Raises Official Hurricane Florence Death Toll To -17.
California citizens: call on the state government to stop Nestle from pumping out scarce ground water without paying for it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Putin is making use of the UK laws designed to help all money-launderers.
Uganda's opposition leader (and pop star) Robert Kyagulaniy returned there after fleeing briefly to the US (he had been tortured in Uganda). On returning to Uganda, he was arrested.
French police seized models of the Eiffel Tower that were being sold to unauthorized immigrants to resell to the public.
No word on whether they found gold in some of the confiscated models. ;-)
When I was in Paris, I saw the Eiffel Tower. What an eyeful!
The US army has been building up eroding beaches for 30 years, by dumping sand on them. It's fine as long as it works, but global heating and sea-level rise will make this ineffective at an increasing number of places over the coming 30 years.
Besides which, Republicans will need the funds for more wars.
Efforts to reduce the extent of extreme poverty in Africa are faltering because people in sub-Saharan Africa are having too many children.
These efforts are like trying to bail water out of a boat while the leak gets bigger and bigger.
The funds and aid aimed at increasing people's well-being there should be redirected toward avoidance of births there. This will increase people's well being, over time; it will also help prevent the disaster. Once the population is stabilized, and global heating disaster reduced or avoided as a result, we will have a better chance to raise the people of that time out of poverty.
Cody Wilson has been charged with "sexual assault" on a "child" after a session with a sex worker of age 16.
I have never been the customer of a sex worker, because I would not want sex with a woman who did not feel desire and affection for me. However, I have been friends with people that sometimes did sex work by choice.
There are other prostitutes that have been enslaved and forced into sex work. It is possible that the prostitute Wilson did business with was enslaved. We don't know, and Wilson probably didn't know.
Some people reading earlier versions of this note seem to have got the idea that I condone enslavement of prostitutes. Quite the contrary — I consider enslavement a grave crime, regardless of what work the slave is forced to do, and I support campaigns against enslavement provided they don't use unjust means.
Where I part company with the mainstream view is in regard to laws that make it a crime to do business with someone who turns out later to have been enslaved, or someone who might have been enslaved. This is why I oppose FOSTA, for instance. There are non-repressive ways to oppose trafficking, ways which don't punish anyone except traffickers, and we should use them energetically. (Those who participate in an activity, knowing someone else in it was enslaved, are accessories, so there is a legitimate basis to punish customers if they know.)
To help prostitutes who have been trafficked, or have fallen under the control of pimps, or simply would prefer not to do sex work, we need to stop prosecuting them or their customers, since driving them underground makes them more vulnerable, then provide them with the support they need to get out. That may include another source of money to live on. We can afford all of that, and the many other things we need to do for a just and kind society, if we tax the rich as we should.
The article refers to the sex worker as a "child", but that is not so. Elsewhere it has been published that she is 16 years old. That is late adolescence, not childhood.
Calling teenagers "children" encourages treating teenagers as children, a harmful practice which retards their development into capable adults.
In this case, the effect of that mislabeling is to smear Wilson. It is rare, and considered perverse, for adults to be physically attracted to children. However, it is normal for adults to be physically attracted to adolescents. Since the claim sbout Wilson is the latter, it is wrong to present it as the former.
The term "sexual assault" is stretchable but usually means forcing something sexual on someone. It is not impossible that he did such a thing, but a priori it is unlikely. In general a customer does not force a prostitute into sex, but rather pays the agreed-on price. To associate this with the word "assault" is another smear. Whatever our views about what Wilson (or anyone) actually did, we should not smear people.
I do not like the idea of 3D-printed guns that can't be caught by a metal detector, but that issue is entirely unrelated to this.
The Senate is holding a hearing about "data privacy" and has invited only data-collecting companies to participate.
This is a sure sign that the only policies they want to consider are rules about how to store and use the data — with a giant loophole, the PAT RIOT Act, which says that the FBI can copy it all and then use it in any way.
Real protection for our privacy entails stopping companies and governments from accumulating data about people.
Most of today's "consumer advocates" won't propose that, because they think of the matter as one of consumers' interests rather than one of human rights.
Ralph Nader: ten important questions about the US situation that no one seems to be investigating.
Workers are on strike against McDonald's, demanding it make real efforts to stop sexual harassment of the staff in its stores.
Kavanaugh, in a speech given in 2015, said, "we had a good saying that we've held firm to to this day, … 'What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.' That's been a good thing for all of us, I think."
The transcript of that speech, published later, omitted those words.
Deportation thug Matthew Albence said a family "detention center" was like a summer camp, but refuses to say whether he'd send his children to that prison.
North Korea has offered to shut down its missile test sites and its nuclear complex, as part of a deal.
However, the deal would have to include US concessions too, as part of a gradual process.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to stand for breaking up the big banks, and regulate all banks so they can't do damage.
Every deregulation of the banks leads to increased corruption.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on senators to reject Kavanaugh.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Russia's elections commissioner will annul a vote because of signs of centralized fraud.
Aid to people without electricity due to Hurricane Florence shows bias based on race and class.
The melting of Arctic permafrost, and release of its stored CO2 and methane, creates a tipping point. We may have passed it already and be doomed to more than 2C of global heating. If not, the remaining "carbon budget" is much less than previously expected.
Kudlow, one of the cheater's economic advisors, says that SCROTUS will attack Social Security and Medicare if they retain control of Congress.
Republicans are willing to give Christine Blasey Ford's accusations just enough lip service to invite her to be smeared in the senate committee, before they confirm Kavanaugh anyway. They picked a date without consulting her, and are already blaming her for (they presume) failing to be there.
Republicans set up the Guantanamo prison as a justice-free zone. Now they aim to do the same thing to the whole US.
Their death threats have forced her to go into hiding with her family.
Even the plutocratist "centrist" Democrats are not as bad as that.
She knew she was taking a risk of retaliation by revealing her accusations.
Ford wants the senate to wait for an FBI investigation, which is the best way to get independent evidence about whether Kavanaugh is guilty.
Former federal prosecutors say her accusation is credible, has some corroboration, and calls for an investigation.
Republicans would prefer not to recognize the corroboration, and not to find any more, so they can dismiss the matter as "one person's word against another's."
'People will die', says a former Obama official, due to the scapegoater's cuts in the number of refugees the US will accept.
A Year After Hurricane Harvey, Some Cleanup Workers Are Still Unpaid.
Wage theft is common in the US, and it is common because the government has shown it doesn't care. That, in turn, is because the plutocratists have discouraged poor people (typically, victims of wage theft are poor) from voting.
Shell and Exxon researchers predicted in the 1980s not only the future increase in CO2 but also some aspects of the disaster that would result.
Mosquitos eat microplastics as larvae, then grow up to be eaten by other animals, which ingest the microplastics. In this way, they move up the food chain and are ingested by humans.
There are reasons to think they can harm all the animals that consume them.
George Soros writes that he urged Obama to make bailed-out banks hand over part ownership rather than giving them loans. He argues that Obama's decision hurt the non-rich, and Americans recognized that Democrats were responsible.
Economic records such as tax payments show that the Republican tax attacks resulted in no significant increase in wages.
The Israel Project (a lobbying group to support Israel's occupation and siege of Palestine) sets up pages for various causes (women's rights, protection of the environment, others) so as to associate their campaign with those causes. It veils its relationship with those pages.
Since the article mentions the six-day war, I should point out that Egypt had already attacked Israel by blockading shipping to Elath. A blockade, whether of Elath or Gaza, is recognized as an act of war.
Israeli courts now legitimize houses built by Israelis on land taken from Palestinians, against Israeli law, and authorize demolition of Palestinian homes that are inconveniently there.
(satire) FEMA Airdrops Emergency Cyanide Pills For Residents Stranded By Hurricane Florence.
Democratic senators have sued to demand an answer to their FOIA request for Kavanaugh's papers.
Former senate staff lawyers explain how Kavanaugh lied to the senate before, and how he is lying now.
US citizens: call on the FCC to block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The UK wants to question people without lawyers at airports, and then when they finally do get lawyers, listen to their conversations.
This is what you'd expect from a country that imprisons people for the "crime" of being suspected.
The UK may increase its use of coal, as natural gas is getting more expensive.
The planet-roaster response to the situation is fracking. The civilization-saving response is renewable electricity.
If not for the Tories' highly effective campaign to slow development of renewable electric generation, the situation would have been corrected already.
The bully's fear agents are now holding 12,000 immigrant minors prisoner.
Some of them are children, and some are teenagers.
In the past, most of them were sent to stay with families, but cruelty suits the bully's purpose of demonizing them.
On Christine Blasey Ford's work in psychology.
A proposed new criterion to determine whether a household lives in poverty.
Universities which received funds, centuries ago, from participants in the slave trade are taking steps to educate the public about this.
I don't think that the universities are guilty for having received those funds, but educating the public about the slave trade and its influence is a good thing to do.
The point at which accepting donors from evildoers becomes a moral issue in itself is when they use you to buy public approval for their acts and undermine your responsibilities to the public. For instance, today, when planet roasters have positions on the boards of organizations that do science education, such as WGBH and the American Museum of Natural History, and when Bill Gates donates "Gates Buildings" for university computer science departments.
Advice to journalists about how not to be played by right-wing extremist liars.
Berta Cáceres Murder Trial Delayed after Judges Accused of Abusing Authority.
The US-Led Global War on Terrorism Has Succeeded… in Creating More Global Terrorism.
Microsoft and Dropbox are pushing against the "CLOUD" Act, which would enable foreign governments to get any US company's data about Americans (and others).
We should instead be getting rid of the PAT RIOT Act, that allows the US government to any US company's data about Americans (and others).
The US government has special rules permitting many kinds of spying on journalists, through the FISA court which admitted it normally rubber-stamps all requests.
The government of Ontario is passing a law to override a court decision that blocked its attempt to abruptly and arbitrarily reduce the number of representatives in Toronto's city council.
US citizens: call on Senator Grassley to cancel the Sep 20 committee vote on Kavanaugh's nomination.
Sign this, too.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone senators Collins, Murkowski, Corker and Flake to call on them to oppose Kavanaugh.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators at 1-844-515-2798 and call on them to heed Christine Blasey Ford by not confirming Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Russia and Turkey agreed to make a buffer zone in Idlib to protect civilians.
The UK government is using "national security" law to gag reports of possible fiscal misconduct in two different projects.
One of the projects is installing "smart" meters for electricity. For "smart", read "spy"; "smart" meters generally spy on the public. They could be designed to respect privacy, but they won't do so unless we force them to.
I Worked In an Amazon Warehouse. Bernie Sanders Is Right to Target Them.
Guatemala's president has exiled the head of the anti-corruption commission. A court ruled he must be allowed to return.
Berta Cáceres Murder Trial to Be Monitored by International Lawyers.
The "one-man revolution", according to Thoreau and Hennacy.
I had not read either of them, but I started one.
Brian Kemp, Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, is currently Secretary of State, and has put the state's unauditable digital voting system under his personal control.
To trust a Republican not to rig an election, given the opportunity to do so in secret, is like putting your money in the safe keeping of a used car salesman.
Christine Blasey Ford has discussed Kavanaugh's rape attempt with therapists over the years, but was intimidated out of telling the public because she expected Republicans to defend Kavanaugh's confirmation by demonizing her.
The IPCC's predictions of global heating disaster are only the lower bound. We cannot tell how much worse positive feedback cycles will make it. And we don't need to know — because what we do need to recognize is that global heating disaster is already starting.
Social Security benefits go to retired and disabled Americans, but when they spend their benefits, they boost the local economy where they live.
Gush Shalom: The Oslo accord did not fail; rather, Israel did not carry it out.
US government flood insurance should stop paying to rebuild buildings that are sure to be flooded again.
When a building is totaled, leaving the land vacant should be a condition for receiving the insurance payment.
Call on the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to stop funding global heating.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your senators to oppose increasing funds for ICE in the continuing resolution that will be passed to fund it.
If you phone, please spread the word!
CVS is the sole supplier of drugs for many "managed care" medical plans, and gouges both the patients and the plans.
Furthermore, it tries to stop states from publishing the data to show how much it gouges.
There has been a lot of concentration in the pharmacy business in the US. That surely helped put CVS in a position to do this. Thus, it is misguided to judge business mergers in terms of direct, short-term effect on the retail price of their products. A large company is ipso facto dangerous.
Republican and Democratic State Legislators Release Letter Signed by 300 Colleagues From Coast to Coast Urging End of ISDS in NAFTA.
The American Psychological Association considered a motion to allow its members to work in the Guantanamo prison. 1/3 of the members voted for it, arguing that this would enable them to help the prisoners suffer less.
To assuage the suffering caused by that prison would be a good thing if it did not grant legitimacy to the prison and help it continue. We need to put an end to that "no-human-rights zone".
Bombing Yemeni School Children for Profit.
Putin is saying, "We killed on [British] your territory and now we are laughing at you." This open contempt for the truth is dangerous, just as when it comes from the bullshitter.
Journalism and research should have access to study what Facebook and Twitter are showing users.
For many people in the Philippines, "the internet" means "Facebook". So when Do-dirty made Facebook the platform for his propaganda, much of the populace found it hard to access anything that disagreed.
Professor Christine Ford described how Kavanaugh attacked her sexually during a party, tried to take off her clothing by force, and then gagged her. This was in the 1980s when Kavanaugh was in high school.
He might not act the same today, but there is no reason to think his attitude has changed.
This goes well beyond the sexual pressure that Clarence Thomas applied to Anita Hill. The Senate approved Thomas despite her testimony. Ford may have expected to be demonized as Hill was.
SCROTUS want convicts being released from prison to have to struggle for food. This will push some of them back into crime.
With over 43% of Americans living in economic difficulty, the war on poverty begins at the ballot box.
Birmingham, England, agreed to host the Commonwealth Games in 2022 but it can't afford to do so.
People depend on the city's support and services for important needs. It should not let this frill, which would benefit businesses but not the poor, get in the way. Cancel the games!
Many academics have called on the EU to prioritize wellbeing over GDP. That means, more or less, to reduce inequality and give the non-rich a better life, instead of increasing totals.
I agree completely. The rich would be just fine if they were only half as rich.
Spotify can tell whether users are happy or sad, based on what they listen to. It will use that data to manipulate them. The data will sooner or later be combined with other personal data, to control people according to the corporate will.
To protect yourself from this tracking, do as I do — get an actual copy of the song, and listen to it with free software. Then no company will know what you are listening to.
As if the UK didn't have too much censorship already, an MP wants to impose censorship requirements on all private discussion groups with more than 500 members.
Apple handles a lot of recycling of electronic products — mostly not Apple's own products — and requires the contractors that do the work to shred all the component parts, rather than save those that are still usable.
Several US states have tried cutting off donations of paper books to prisons, allowing only e-books which are unjust in the usual way.
Some have even cut off paper mail in favor of permanently stored and censored email through one imposed email service.
This sort of policy tends directly to encourage recidivism. If the goal of US prisons were to discourage crime, prison authorities would know better than to do this.
If, however, the true goal is slave labor, then it makes sense.
The US Department of Agriculture has authorized outsourcing of processing of US-grown chickens to China, and there will be no US inspection of the processing.
Not only is this unsafe, it is also a gratuitous increase in outsourcing. The bullshitter likes to pretend to be fighting outsourcing, but his "successes" are bogus yet he allows it when it's not merely disadvantageous but unsafe as well.
The US threatens to deny entry to Canadians that have used marijuana in Canada, even though it will soon be lawful there.
Even people that have had jobs in producing and selling marijuana could be absurdly banned.
There is no sensible reason for this, no motive besides opportunistic harassment.
6000 Chicago hotel workers are on strike.
Matt Taibi: The financial crisis of 2008 was the predictable result of allowing banks to make bad loans and turn them into a Ponzi scheme. The large banks were so tied together that they would all have crashed if not "rescued".
The result of the rescue was to make the big banks even bigger, give them special advantages, and repeatedly let them get away with crimes.
Public pressure made Sony release its claims to have a copyright on Bach's music.
Wherever automated copyright censor systems exist, a stream of such false claims will pour into them, and each one takes far more work to remove than to create.
New business-supremacy treaties are moving from the full-strength ISDS (I Sue Democratic States) clause toward more limited variants.
I don't have information on whether these are significantly less of an impediment to democracy.
Prozac kills bacteria, the same way as some antibiotics, so it provokes some bacteria to evolve resistance to those antibiotics. The effect would occur in the bodies of patients using the drug, but also in rivers and lakes. Sewage treatment is not designed to degrade such drugs.
Many countries' central banks, totally independent, are buying stocks, putting them among the largest investors.
In general this pushes the stock markets up, but they also manipulate markets, causing and popping bubbles that they can take advantage of.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate Kavanaugh's false statements to the Senate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose the second round of SCROTUS's tax attacks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
PISSI has reshaped itself into a guerrilla force; the Iraqi army is unable to fight it effectively.
PISSI gets support from some of the Sunnis, who generally feel repressed by the majority Shi'ites. Their experience with being ruled by PISSI was worse than the Iraqi state, but now that the Iraqi state rules them again and PISSI does not, they seem to be forgetting that lesson.
Justice Department Attempts to Suppress Evidence That the Border Patrol Targeted Humanitarian Volunteers.
Duke Energy was very slow in removing the coal ash from an insecure waste dump next to a coal plant that shut in 2013. As a result, the ash was still around for Hurricane Florence to wash pollution out of it.
Now that Obama is starting to lead "mainstream" Democrats to endorse a single-payer medical system, we will have to campaign to ensure it isn't watered down into something much less.
I propose this watchword: if it still offers private insurance companies a role, it doesn't go far enough. Those companies are already scamming patients by leaving large expenses uncovered.
Doctors and hospitals should not be allowed to bill patients directly for any part of the care covered by the system, except system-approved co-pays, and those should exist only for outpatient care.
The US takes so long to decide whether sick prisoners are eligible for "compassionate release" that many of them die before it can make up its mind.
"My father’s murder in Algeria shaped my life. That’s why Macron’s apology is so important."
Adani's plan to open up a massive new coal mining region in Australia has collapsed, but it may still open a single large mine there. For the sake of avoiding global disaster, we need to push hard against that and against every new fossil fuel facility.
Michael Bloomberg, who wants to run for president in 2020, went to a business-dominated "climate summit" and mocked environmentalist protesters.
I won't vote for him.
When US parents demand schools "do something, right away" to prevent a shooting, the measures schools adopt make them feel (more) like jails. This does little for safety but a lot to create an atmosphere of distrust.
School shootings harm few students each year; the school to prison pipeline harms far, far more.
Republicans are chiefly to blame for "natural" disasters in the US. Directly so because they corrupt FEMA, so that the physical events cause a much bigger human disaster.
When the physical event is extreme weather, Republicans are also responsible indirectly because they have forced global heating faster.
Democratic officials do a good job with FEMA. Against global heating, plutocratist mainstream Democrats are not as bad as Republicans, but not good enough to avoid global disaster.
A UK supermarket chain will replace plastic bags for fruits and vegetables with cornstarch bags.
The problem with cornstarch is that it is made from corn, and the corn has to be grown. If all the plastic packaging now used were replaced with cornstarch, what fraction of the world's corn crop would that use? Can anyone find the data to make a rough estimate of this?
If I receive a good answer, I will post it.
Activists have tied the recent nerve gas poisoning suspects to the Russian Ministry of Defense, and caught them in other lies.
Based on all the information that has been published, I consider it nearly certain that they committed the poisoning.
Facebook Suppressed a Story About Brett Kavanaugh's Opposition to Roe v. Wade. We’re Republishing It.
Once again, proposing to build solar power satellites using material from the moon.
The L5 society campaigned for this around 1980. I supported it.
Solar power satellites could indeed give us plentiful renewable electricity. The obstacle to building them is the large initial investment before the first one is running. States starved for funds by tax-competition have trouble making such an investment.
New cities are being built in coastal areas liable to be flooded in some decades. These "investment vehicles" might turn out to be submarines.
We need to start moving people away from some coastal areas.
Australian farmers demand more effort to curb global heating.
Global heating is making category 6 hurricanes possible; we will surely see them in the future, and they could submerge entire cities.
Europe is producing more cattle than the environment can stand, and will have to cut in in half.
Progressive organizing among the Amish.
The UK increasingly represses mere insults. It started with insults based on bigotry, but now it is expanding to all insults.
I disagree with the author on one point: I think it is correct to punish crimes of violence more heavily when they are based on bigotry, such attacks represent a campaign of violence that could tend to spread. It's proper for the state to act to stamp that out.
The ocean off Tanzania is overfished — more boats are going out, and the catch is declining. A large cause of the decline is the foreign fishing boats that fish illegally.
In the long term, what Tanzania needs is fewer births, not more food.
Massachusetts state thugs accidentally leaked the fact that they have bookmarked several progressive political groups to follow.
Either the thugs are much more progressive than one would expect, and are looking for opportunities to show support, or they are biased against these groups.
Theater of Security Agency staff insisted on swabbing the top of a passenger's prosthetic leg to see if it had been in contact with explosives. They threatened to arrest her if she did not let them.
The article ends by giving the TSA undeserved legitimacy by asserting that it has actually made flying safer. This is unlikely — the TSA acknowledges that terrorists are not targeting airplanes any more.
Palestine's chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, says that the bullshitter is trying to eliminate peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine by taking Israel's side on every important issue.
At this point, Palestine could reject the idea of including the US in talks, and ask some other power such as the EU or Russia to mediate peace talks.
That can't advance negotiations now, since Netanyahu refuses to consider any concessions, but it will put a little more pressure on Israel and the US.
Amazon's subcontracted delivery workers suffer wage theft and various other mistreatment.
Farmer Lobbying Group Accused Of Selling Out Farmers On Right To Repair Laws.
When the Berkeley thug department arrested protesters for bogus crimes and posted their personal details, this was part of an explicit PR campaign meant to intimidate protest and make the department appear powerful.
Those thugs brought the law into disrepute. Every one of them who participated in these actions, including those who approved the plans, should be fired for that.
After the leader of the Church of England (the Archbishop of Canterbury) criticized zero-hour contracts and the piecework sweatshop economy, someone called this a "hypocrisy" because some churches hire on zero-hour contracts and the church invests in Amazon.
The stated rebuke that you should "put your own house in order before" criticizing an abuse is misguided. If we accept that as a principle, it would come down to "Only saints are entitled to criticize", which would give abusers a shield to deflect pressure to correct abuses.
The right response is, "Don't forget to include your own organization in this criticism." We should focus on correcting the abuses, not on loathing everyone somehow associated with them.
I think the accusation of hypocrisy is invalid with regard to the zero-hour contracts, given that the archbishop doesn't control those hiring practices in other church organizations.
The issue of investing in Amazon is a different one. Shareholder activism has proved to be ineffective, and the church could do more to change those companies' behavior (and get their taxes increased) by divesting from them and condemning them. I don't know how much influence the archbishop personally has over these investments, but that is how he should use it henceforth.
"Centrist" Democrat Governor Cuomo defeated Cynthia Nixon, but 6 of the 8 "Democratic" collaborationists that have kept Republicans in power in the state legislature have been defeated by progressive Democrats.
The head medical officer of Sloan Kettering Cancer Center resigned in a scandal for not reporting conflicts of interest in his relationship with businesses, including a large drug company.
Making researchers report these conflicts of interest is just the first step. If we want research to be honest, we must end the practice of letting businesses choose whether to fund it. They should fund it indirectly, through taxes.
The Demise of Democracy (in the US).
Heavy rain from Hurricane Florence has washed toxic pollution from coal ash dumps into water supplies. Even from one inactive dump that was capped, supposedly to make it safe.
This is because the coal companies make more money by not moving the ash away from waterways, or letting it be recycled into concrete.
A scientific recommendation that 50% of the Earth's surface be protected wildlife areas by 2050, to avoid massive extinction.
If we want to protect more than desert and mountain species, protected lands will have to include a lot of places that could be used for agriculture, at least for 20 years till they are exhausted. To protect them, we need to keep human farmers away. That will be difficult, but keeping the birth rate down will make it a little easier.
In addition, protected areas may not serve their purpose if global heating makes them unviable habitats for some of the species that live in them. Curbing the human population will also make progress towards reducing global heating.
On 10th Anniversary of Wall Street Crash, Warren Says: Break Up the Banks and Jail the Bankers.
Senator Graham is the paradigmatic example of a Republican who can see no wrong in anything the bullshitter says or does.
The Republican Party is no longer a political party in the usual sense. It is a cult.
Google already developed a prototype censored-for-China search engine.
It also identifies who searches for something "suspect".
I think the US should make it a crime for a US company to censor politically for other countries. Other countries that wish to be considered free should do likewise. Even though this will mean that tyrannical states such as China will block access to them, the fact that they are blocked will communicate a message of freedom to those who cannot access them.
The UK government permitted rigging the referendum on the EU in favor of the leave campaign.
US citizens: call on the State Department to stop denying the citizenship of Americans of hispanic descent.
Please join me in rejecting the absurd and unpronounceable word "Latinx".
US citizens: call for shutting down criminal megabanks like Wells Fargo.
"If Jeff Bezos wants to help low-income people why not just pay them better?"
Mexican farmers say the proposed new agreement with the US is bad for Mexican agriculture.
The cheater wants the agreement to be approved without showing it to the public. It must be bad.
(satire) Freeloading Refugee Children Taking Up Thousands Of Prison Cells Meant For Real Americans.
Some US government officials knew shortly after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico that the death toll was higher than the government claimed.
The Democratic Party can't formulate what it stands for.
What it should stand for, above all, is to end plutocracy and restore democracy.
Various countries including the US are competing to tax businesses less.
This is a "beggar thy neighbor" race which harms all the competing countries and benefits mainly the rich that own most of the stock.
A study concluded that states, cities and businesses can bring about greenhouse gas reductions in the US that come close to this Paris agreement pledges.
Alas that means not enough.
Governor Brown of California went to open a business-oriented "climate summit", but thousands of activists protested him for permitting many new fossil fuel wells in the state.
Setting a target for 2045 is just talk. The new wells are real.
(satire) Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency confirmed Tuesday they were frantically writing the apologies they will issue for screwing up their response to Hurricane Florence.
Over 800 million people now don't have enough to eat. The number is increasing because of global heating — and because of population growth.
1/4 of young children are stunted by malnutrition. People who can't feed all their children need to have fewer.
Population growth accelerates global heating as well as decreasing crop yields. It will also reduce the nutritional value of many staple foods.
Please do your bit — don't have (more) children.
The Pentagon published a ridiculously low estimate of the costs of the wars of this century, $1.5 trillion instead of $4.5 trillion, and the mainstream media are repeating it without question.
Thanks to Obama Bailouts and Trump Tax Cuts, (the) Five Largest US Banks Have Raked in $583 Billion Since 2008 Crash.
In a case against Google, the European Court of Justice is considering whether the EU can impose a "Right to Be Forgotten" on the entire world.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled that GCHQ's bulk communications snooping violated human rights.
We will need another Snowden to find out whether GCHQ ceases the practice. It will probably claim to have stopped, but that might mean only that a few details have been changed, with no alteration of the result.
(satire) Trump Unfairly Claims Credit For Rise In Economic Inequality That Occurred Under Obama’s Watch.
Cuomo defeated progressive challenger Cynthia Nixon.
Cuomo has taken somewhat more progressive positions since Nixon entered the race, but I fear they will not last long now that she is out of it.
The workers in Amazon's warehouses are so remote-controlled that they are effectively robots with human brains inside.
Disabled and poor Americans can't afford to evacuate when a hurricane strikes. They can't board up their own windows, either.
A competent, helpful government would help them.
Progressives should not abandon the concept of "liberty" to right wingers.
We, not they, are the true libertarians.
The president of Guatemala, relying on implicit US support, said he will shut down the agency that investigates official corruption. It was investigating his corruption.
Evidently-corrupt army officers cheered.
President Do-dirty has encountered resistance from various state institutions which have blocked him from arbitrarily arresting opposition senator Trillanes.
Trillanes continues living in the senate.
Refugee families split up by US border thugs are suing, demanding damages and therapy for the trauma that has not gone away.
Palm Oil: Pledges to Protect Orangutans Have Failed — the Industry Needs to Act.
Or else we need laws, but plutocratist states would rather let plantations destroy all rain forests.
Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gases, too.
California has passed a law setting a target to end carbon emissions from electric generation by 2045.
This law is a step forward, but long-term targets don't do much to reduce emissions in soon. Indeed, the target may not even be met. And what about agriculture, transport, and deforestation, the other big sources of greenhouse gases?
I'd be more impressed by a plan to reduce emissions in the next few years, even if not to zero.
(satire) Obama Urges Young Voters To Ignore How Many Lousy Candidates Democratic Party Runs.
Perhaps that's not news — he's been doing that since 2009.
Toxic coal ash dumps become very dangerous when a hurricane threatens to wash them into your water supply.
Spain found an excuse to proceed with selling bombs for Salafi Arabia to drop on Yemen.
If weapons to hit precisely where they are aimed, that won't protect children in a bus if the weapon is pointed at that bus.
Palestinians Still Live under Apartheid in Israel, 25 Years after the Oslo Accord.
Indeed, it is worse now that the government has made apartheid overt and official.
The EU plans aggressive censorship rules for "terrorist" postings.
Platforms that can't afford to hire people to work 24 hours a day to carry out deletions would be wiped out immediately. And if they are big enough to pay for that, they still won't be able to develop automated filters.
The automated filters can't really understand what is "terrorist" and what isn't, so they will be designed to err on the side of caution and delete lots of other publications.
Well, if you delete everything, at least you can be sure you deleted everything that is "terrorist".
(Please don't refer to publications of any sort as "content" https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#content.)
New York State has reduced solar power subsidies, causing a slowdown in installations.
I understand that net metering has a problem — sometimes solar installations have more power to sell than the grid can use. So adopt some other system to subsidize solar installations. It will be cheap compared with the costs of global heating disaster.
South Carolina officials refused to evacuate prisoners from a prison that is in danger of being flooded.
The prisoners could be left for days with no food, water, medicine, even sanitation. Isn't that cruel and unusual punishment?
Hurricane Florence's rainfall is likely to be 50% greater due to global heating.
Venezuelan opposition leaders are once again looking for US help in overthrowing the government.
Today's government is much less legitimate than that of Chavez, but willingness to conspire with the US neonazis shows that what they intend for Venezuela is lousy.
UN truce talks broke down, and Salafi Arabia is now intensely attacking Hodeida, through which most food and other supplies arrive in Yemen.
US citizens: call on the EPA to preserve the methane leak regulations.
If you sign, please spread the word!
France Admits Systematic Torture During Algeria War.
The European Parliament voted to put sanctions on Hungary because the right-wing ruling party has imposed repression of dissent, and basically wiped out democracy. All in the name of demonizing foreigners.
The UK Tories voted to defend the Hungarian quasi-fascists.
Australia's carbon emissions have reached a record level. This probably has something to do with government's years of steadfast support for fossil fuels.
In a tentative court agreement, the US said it will give hundreds of deported parents another chance to file an asylum claim. This is because border thugs intimidated them into waiving their rights based on illegal threats.
Saboteur of State Pompeo certified that the US is taking sufficient steps to protect civilians in Yemen.
In other news, the President certified that the US is taking sufficient steps to respect the human rights of border-crossing children, and that he has not grabbed any pussies in the past 10 years.
EU countries warned Israel not to demolish a Palestinian village that was built up using EU aid funds.
The prosecutor investigating right-wing minister Salvini for illegally imprisoning migrants on a coast guard ship received a right-wing death threat.
The US National Adacemies have published a report on election security, recommending that all votes be recorded on paper, to keep voting systems off the internet, and to carry out "risk-limiting audits" to make sure the ballots were counted correctly.
Cory Doctorow explains the continuing fight to block Europe's horrible copyright changes.
A Spanish prosecution for blasphemy — "insulting God and the Virgin Mary."
Republicans want to charge protesters the cost of whatever the state sees fit to do in response to their protests.
More US cruelty to visitors and immigrants: rejecting applications for the slightest mistake.
US citizens: refer to the Democracy Scorecard to see how your federal legislators stand regarding measures to reduce the influence of the rich in federal elections.
Big tobacco companies illegally funded advertisements against Montana's cigarette tax increase, which will fund medical care for almost 100,000 poor people in that state.
The saboteurs took money from FEMA to pay for deportations and prisons.
Los Angeles residents will vote on whether to establish a public bank for the city.
One good thing public banks will inevitably do is take money out of the hands of the big US banks that caused the financial crisis, and lobbied to block laws that would restrain them from causing another.
The bully invited sheriffs to a meeting, and they applauded as he demonized the press. Some of these sheriffs have rational reasons to hate the press, which exposed their wrongdoing.
In the past, reduced inequality has generally been the result of great disasters.
Today's inequality, the power of plutocrats, has locked us on the path to global heating disaster. The survivors may live in reduced inequality if they are all poor.
Everything bullshitter says is good about the US economy is bullshit.
Israel Legalizes Theft of Christian, Muslim [individuals'] Lands for Illegal Jewish-Only Settlements.
Report: Israel Using Judicial System to Facilitate Settlement Project.
Israeli Court Drops Mask on Support of Occupation.
Occupy Venice: "We are the alternative to the death of the city".
In some European countries, "occupation" is the term for "squatting". Maybe that is true in Italian too.
Australia Deports Iraqi Asylum Seeker Whose Appeal Was Due Next Week.
Australian officials are making a monkey out of Australia's laws.
(satire) Apple offers customers the chance to trade in their old iPhones for nothing.
Bolton's real motive for attacking the International Criminal Court seems to be to block an investigation into US torture practices.
The Medicare for All PAC offers a way to support the campaigns of candidates that endorse Medicare for All.
They will all be strongly progressive. If you don't have time to study candidates, and figure out which ones need funds most, this is a good way to donate.
McDonalds Workers Set to Strike over Sexual Harassment.
Evidence of additional perjury by Kavanaugh.
No wonder the bullshitter is concealing his white house papers.
War Profiteers: The U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes.
Nauru's judicial system is so small that it often uses Australian courts. An Australian court has rejected Nauru's politically-motivated prosecution of various opposition leaders for bogus "crimes".
Nauru recently created its own court of appeals, which will probably obey orders by nullifying this decision.
Nauru is doing all this to serve the government of Australia as a prison for refugees.
"White supremacy and fascist flirtations are not ideas that need to be 'exposed'. We just need to fight them."
Italy and Malta have effectively blocked the operation of ships to save the lives of migrants.
The EU's new greenhouse gas law is likely to encourage chopping down forests all around the world so as to burn the wood in the EU.
Copyright Directive: the Cultural Industry and Press Publishers Feed on the Crumbs of the Mass Surveillance Business.
EDRi: EU Parliament flip-flops backwards on copyright.
In the UK, parents get their children into government-funded religious schools by pretending to belong to that religion.
The bully plans to imprison a lot more migrant minors.
Over 300 New York thugs and firefighters have died of
medical problems
caused by working in the vicinity of the September 2001 attacks.
Some US officials are considering putting sanctions on China because
of its
oppression
of Uighurs.
Migrants arriving in the US are
imprisoned
in harsh conditions — crowding, heat or cold, barely edible
food if there is any, hungry children wailing all the time, disease
spreading.
This can't be coincidence. It has to be cruelty.
North Carolina took global heating denialism to a legal extreme by
requiring
that planning be based on denying it.
The suffering the EU has imposed on Greece
extends
to tourists that get sick. Naturally, the medical system is
damaged like all other systems in Greece.
Sri Lankan Asylum Seekers
Forcibly
Deported from Australia Despite Torture Risk.
Dangerous natalism
from
the president of Tanzania: if you don't have a big family, you are
"lazy".
Dangerous natalism
in
China: pushing to boost the birth rate.
The inconveniences of a slowly declining population can be handled.
Population increase is leading towards disaster. Chine is still
increasing its fossil fuel use, and (I suppose, since it would be hard
to do otherwise) still intensifying agriculture. But not nearly as
much as it would be doing if it had millions more people.
The thug that killed Botham Jean as he was minding his own business
in his apartment has
changed
her story. Not very credible.
Japan is
pushing
to resume commercial whaling, saying that certain species have
recovered enough to make the practice sustainable.
I think that whales are too intelligent to be hunted and eaten.
The occasional atrocity by US troops that attracts attention in the
US, such as
bombing
a wedding or a schoolbus, are just a hint of the unending stream
of atrocities funded by the US government and carried out around the
world.
The hurricane that hit Puerto Rico killed thousands of people, but not
directly or immediately. Rather, it was
the
incompetent US government response that was directly responsible.
The incompetence went far beyond ordinary levels; it suggests that the
officials in charge had no idea how to do their job.
I don't think that could have been due to random murphism alone. I
suspect that budget cuts drove honest, competent people out of the
agency and that they were replaced by political appointees who were
totally lost when they faced a real emergency.
The Jones Act prohibits outsourcing US internal shipping to
foreign-registered ships that might pay their workers less and
maintain their ships to a lower standard. I support that, and I don't
believe it would have hampered competent emergency managers from doing
a good job. Apparently the not-so-competent managers of today were
not up to the task.
Extreme weather caused by global heating is causing a
world-wide
food shortage, whose effects mostly hit countries with other
problems.
1/9 of the world's human population is
chronically
hungry. This should be a
wake-up call to
reduce the birth rate in the affected regions.
Fossil Fuel Dependence Poses
'Direct
Existential Threat', Warns UN Chief.
Almost 7 weeks after the court deadline to reunite migrant families,
over 400 minors remain imprisoned in the US and
have not been
reunited with their families. There is no way to determine how
many are children and how many teenagers but 22 of them are under 5
years old.
In effect, the bullshitter is using this as an opportunity to
disregard the authority of the court.
Facebook has given the right-wing Daily Standard "fact-checking"
authority, and it is now censoring left-wing articles
based on points
that are mathematically small.
Bolton
bombastically
threatens sanctions and prosecution of the ICC judges and
prosecutors, as well as companies and countries that cooperate with
the ICC.
I don't think he can find an excuse to prosecute them. I think that
is typical trumpery. However, he might be able to do parts of this,
and that in itself could be enough to shield corrupt toadies of the US
government.
There is reason to suspect Kavanaugh may have taken a bribe.
SCROTUS
declined to
investigate his finances.
Kavanaugh
would have plenty
of cases he could use to help Republicans make abortion illegal or
impossible — and even contraception.
EPA
Admits
Scrapping Regulations Will Put More Methane into Atmosphere.
Irish protest plans
dissuaded
the bullshitter from visiting there.
New research shows the meditative exercise
improves
mental health, reduces stress and can prevent reoffending.
Running prisons as cheaply as possible is a false economy
if the goal is to reduce crime.
"The left
must
restore the ties between antisemitism and other racism."
Assad's bombers are already
attacking
parts of Idlib.
China has
imposed
strict censorship on religion.
Kavanaugh should be impeached as a federal judge for
lying
to the senate under oath.
Intentional divestment from fossil fuels is
starting
to impact oil companies financially.
Alas, they still think they can defeat civilization and natural world
through the governments in many countries that will defend them to the
death. (Our death.)
In the states governed entirely by the Democratic Party, they don't
introduce progressive policies — because too many of them are
sell-out
plutocratist Democrats.
The UK wants to deport an opposition politician who
fled
Zimbabwe in fear of his life.
It is sickening that the state even thinks about doing so.
The Dallas thug who killed a man for supposedly being in her apartment
(though actually it was his apartment) has been
charged
with manslaughter.
The mere fact that someone is (you think) in your apartment is not by
itself a reason to kill per.
Bolton is
leading
a US campaign to effectively destroy the ICC.
The war in the DR Congo is causing a food shortage that is
likely
to kill 300,000 children this year. Other wars add an equal
number.
Kavanaugh's
Views
on EPA's Climate Authority Are Dangerous And Wrong.
The saboteurs in charge of the EPA are crippling it by driving out
crucial staff. So far,
1600
have left.
This could render the EPA incapable of functioning by the time it is
asked once again to do its job.
A UK commission proposes replacing "religious education" with study of
comparative
religion, including major world religions as well as the
nonreligious stances of atheism, agnosticism, humanism and secularism.
We Need
Public
Ownership of Banks to Stop the Next Financial Crisis.
Republicans
aim
to forbid cities from banning glyphosate.
Republicans generally say they want "small government", but what they
really want is a government of the richest, by the richest, for the
richest.
The UK government is threatening teachers that inform voters about
school
budget cuts and their effects.
In 18th century naval warfare, the UK
kept
permanently all the letters carried by captured ships.
This was gratuitously cruel. The senders of those most of those
letters were not officials or soldiers. Their mail should have been
handed to the country of destination.
Strong evidence suggests the Skripals were
poisoned
by two Russian agents that made a brief visit to Britain. Their
movements have been pieced together from many security cameras.
Bellingcat claims to have identified a Russian intelligence officer
who was
in
charge of the antiaircraft missile unit that shot down flight MH17
over Ukraine.
The cited phone discussion, about plans to shoot down Ukrainian
military planes, confirms that Russia did not intentionally attack a
civilian airliner. That makes the incident comparable to the one in
which a US ship in the Persian Gulf shot down an Iranian airliner.
mistaking it it for an attacking military plane. The US acknowledged
the mistake, somewhat
reluctantly.
Guatemala is
considering
a law to punish women if they are believed to have had abortions.
Even women who had natural miscarriages will be punished.
Other countries in Latin America
already
do this.
The bill also represses queer people.
One scientist has been measuring the
CO2
levels on top of Mauna Loa for 60 years — simple proof of
how CO2 levels have risen.
The Guardian View on Jeremy Corbyn's Labour: it must be an
anti-racist
party.
Alarm as Guatemala
Bans
Head of UN Anti-Corruption Body from Country. He's a "threat to
public security".
Australian thugs responded to a woman's complaint of domestic violence
by
erasing
the video evidence that the man threatened her.
Comparing the
junk
food offered in every store to a "swamp" is unfair to real swamps.
Paraguay has
moved
its embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv, rejecting decision three
months ago to follow the US in supporting Israel in rejecting peace
with Palestine.
The religious extremist prime minister of India has swept away the
limits on repression by
arresting
advocates of Dalits' rights and calling them "terrorists" and
"communists".
The balance sheet of making banks a big success: they enriched the
banksters
at
the expense of everyone else.
US
citizens: demand
dropping charges against Jacqueline Dixon.
I am unhappy that the petition cites Alabama's "stand your ground"
law, since that law shouldn't be necessary to justify killing someone
who is already attacking you.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Serious,
rational leftist populism can compete against the scapegoating
pseudo-opposition of right-wing populism.
The bully
"almost
sent tweet that North Korea would have seen as warning of attack".
President Do-dirty has ordered thugs
to arrest
a senator, who is compelled to remain constantly in the senate to
be safe.
The senator launched coups against a former president, and was pardoned.
The Consequences of Steve Bannon's Ideas Need to Be
Interrogated, Not
Just His Words.
The awareness of coming climate
disaster makes
parents doubt whether it was right to have their children.
This is a change for the good, but people need to have these
doubt before they have children — and choose not to
have them.
The Bretton Woods monetary system kept the banksters down and reduced
inequality. Then the banksters exploited disunity between the
participating governments
to destroy
that system, and began grabbing a lot of wealth for themselves.
The question is, how can we defeat the banksters and stop them from taking
so much away from the rest of us?
My progressive
sales tax system might help.
The bullshitter wants to destroy Medicare and Social
Security in
order to "save" them.
EFF: Last-minute amendments that pretend to fix the EU copyright
directive proposal actually make
it even
more of a menace.
Cory Doctorow: merely regulating giant tech companies
is insufficient
to resist their threats to freedom and democracy.
The bullshitter
is telling
various government agencies to publish one-sided, cherry-picked
propaganda against marijuana.
If you find any negative information about marijuana coming from the
US government, distrust it.
Lithuania asked Walmart
to stop
selling shirts that carry a hammer and sickle and state support
for the former Soviet Union.
I would not want to present support for that tyrannical state,
and I would not want to buy anything whatsoever from Walmart,
but it is wrong to ban the symbol.
Leaders of Trump's campaign
rallies direct
attendees when to applaud.
US
citizens: Ask
your state rep to propose a state resolution calling on Congress
to deny the President the power to launch a nuclear attack
unilaterally.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
Comparing
ways of taking away people's citizenship, in Nazi Germany, in
Bahrain, and in the US today.
Prisons
to Take
Florida Inmates' MP3 Players, discarding the files they paid for.
Hundreds
of thousands of Americans joined the Rise for Climate Jobs, and
Justice.
Google Caves
in to Russian Demands, Censors Videos Promoting a Protest Rally.
Dallas [thug] Who Shot Man in His Home
[also] Wounded
[another] Suspect in 2017.
US
prisoners ended
their strike, which was planned to be temporary, and plan now to
campaign for restoration of voting rights to ex-cons.
I am sad that the issue of wages for prison labor has been deemphasized.
Almost
4,000 people in Argentina are formally leaving the Catholic
Church.
Google Pulls
YouTube Ad by Putin Critic Alexei Navalny.
How
to recognize that the US is a plutocracy.
Hungary represses
gender studies and research into migration.
Teaching refugees is now criminalized.
Some indigenous groups in Canada are asking to be bought off. They
will support
a planet-roaster pipeline designed not to pollute their water
supplies, in exchange for money.
This shows the weakness of focusing attention on the local dangers
rather than the global danger. I have criticized the term "water
protectors" for this reason.
"Gitmo
for Children": Trump Administration Reveals Plan to Imprison
Families With Kids Indefinitely.
US
citizens: call
on the Department of Harshness, Hostility and Sadism not to
imprison migrant families indefinitely.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: Support
the STATES act, to protect state-legal marijuana businesses from
federal interference.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
Intensifying Protest Against 'Sham' Confirmation,
Democrats Release
Kavanaugh Documents GOP Didn't Want Public to See.
Some Democrats in
Congress propose
to remove Yemen from the authorization for US use of military
force.
Joseph
Stiglitz comments on the danger that AI and big data give
businesses an advantage over individuals.
He does not touch on the danger of what the state will do with that
data after taking it from the companies.
Trash-collecting systems are
being deployed
in the Pacific Ocean to pick up floating plastic, which will then
be taken — where?
There is something fishy in the figures in the article. If the system
removes 5 tons per month, that is 60 tons per year. To remove 80,000
tons would require 1333 1/3 years.
Perhaps the 5 tons per month figure is for one structure and they plan
to have 33 1/3 of them.
The article lists reasons why this method, even if it works, cannot be
a full solution to the plastic waste problem.
Too much focus on measuring the success of
organizations tends
to mess them up.
"In every realm in which performance metrics are tied to rewards,
practitioners find tools to fudge the data."
"Often, the things that aren’t measured are
unmeasurable. They also tend to be things that are essential to the
enterprise."
A few decades ago there was an obsession with using statistics to
determine whether code was clear and understandable. Various
statistics were found which correlated with clarity. But when
programmers were taught to write to improve those statistics, their
code did not get clearer, This seems to be a general phenomenon,
that the statistics correlate with what really counts only as long
as nobody but researchers study them.
"Populist turbulence, viral panics, experts under attack: instinct and
emotion
have overtaken
facts and reason in the digital age."
To win back trust for science, we have to root out the corruption of
science by big business, including
the pharma
industry,
the food
industry (protecting sugar by blaming fat),
the tobacco
industry, and
the fossil
fuel industry.
A political
trial in Egypt sentenced hundreds of protesters to prison and 75
to execution.
An appeals court decision
has invalidated
laws against sleeping in the street, in California and several
other western states.
George Monbiot: "We won't save the Earth with
a better
kind of disposable coffee cup."
Convincing individuals to make personal changes is not enough:
we need to change the systems that have big impacts.
That requires politics.
The right-wing officials blocking some of the cheater's evil acts, in
order to protect the rest of them,
are no
friend of the American people or of the democratic system.
Email Marked 'Confidential' by GOP
Shows Kavanaugh
Pushed for John Yoo, Legal Architect of Bush Torture Program, to
Be a Federal Judge.
Russian expat Nikolai Glushkov, who was strangled in London this year,
reported in 2013 that two Russians had poisoned him. An
electrocardiogram showed
a very
strange heart rhythm.
A
Democratic threat to make the Senate almost cease to function
might be a strong enough threat to block Kavanaugh.
Due to automated copyright censorship, youtube deletes performances of
18th and 19th century music because various companies have told the
company
that they
own those compositions.
Rep. Pelosi (may she be primaried soon) rejects all Democratic
proposals that
would increase the deficit.
Since the US has an economic boom (limited to the rich), in principle
this would be the right time to run a surplus. However, as long as
Republicans are enacting huge deficits with useless spending and tax
cuts for the rich, there is no reason to be deficit-pure at the
expense of the non-rich.
A senate
committee passed
a bill to end use of gillnets on the US west coast. Gillnets kill
many dolphins and sea turtles, as well as other protected species.
ACLU
Launches State-by-State
Blueprints with Roadmaps for Cutting Incarceration by 50 Percent.
Five months ago, the UK apologized to Caribbean immigrants who were
denied the citizenship rights they were entitled to. Some of them
are still
forbidden to work in the UK.
SCROTUS
is planning
another tax cut for the personal "small businesses" through which
billionaires receive their income.
High US officials
are restraining
the bullshitter from doing wanton damage.
However, they are right-wing plutocratists and the "successes" they speak
of are sabotage.
Trump’s Enablers Boast of Saving Nation But
Reveal They’re
Looting the Nation.
US
citizens: call
on Congress not to give the deportation thugs a bigger budget in
the continuing resolution.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: call
on cabinet ministers, if they think that the bullshitter is unfit
and a threat to the nation, to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove
him from office.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call
on Oklahoma to decertify thug Shelby's course on how to present
yourself as the victim after you kill a black man who has his hands
up.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Kavanaugh committed
perjury during his hearings for appointment to the appeals court.
Senator Grassley tried just recently to cover it up.
Many streets in New York City are named
after prominent
investors in the slave trade.
Many parts of current US voting
systems connect
to the internet, or transmit over the internet, and that makes
them insecure.
Hospital Care in America
— the
$10 cough drop.
We used to mock government contractors for selling products to the US
government (especially the military) for far more than they cost in
civilian life. Now hospitals are doing the same thing to people
like you and me.
Demanding freedom for political prisoners,
Nicaraguans held
a general strike that shut down much of the country.
High
temperatures forced
the shutdown of several nuclear power plants in Europe.
And in some cases the exhaust water was so hot that it killed fish.
Many important internet cables and their connections
are in
danger from sea-level rise even by 2030.
The sadist wants to imprison migrant children
for unlimited
lengths of time.
Some
Syrian Kurds in Idlib support Assad against Arab rebels and
Turkey.
I hope this means that the Kurds of Rojava can maintain autonomy and continue
to respect human rights. Assad is not an Islamist and won't oppose them
for being secular. However, a bloodbath in Idlib would be horrible.
The head climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States
says it
is almost
too late to save Fiji, the Maldives and other islands from rising
seas.
"Hero swimmer" Sara Mardini, who swam to rescue a small boat
containing Syrian refugees and pull it to Greece,
faces charges
of human smuggling for working for an organization that aids
refugees.
The thugs say that the organization was corrupted and carried out
actual smuggling, but why charge individual volunteers?
Anyone corrupt would know better than to let them in on it.
Australia at the Pacific Islands
Forum tried
to weaken the resolution on the danger of global heating.
It's
the same
thing the US did in the Paris climate conference.
When a planet-roaster government succeeds in undermining resistance to
its deadly policies, that is the first step. Having agreed to the weakened
accord, it then looks for ways to avoid substantially implementing it.
US citizens, tell
Congress: Pass the Protecting American Votes and Elections Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US
citizens: phone
Senators Collins and Murkowski to oppose confirmation of
Kavanaugh.
If you phone, please spread the word!
UCLA's Patent War in
India Prevents
Access to Prostate Cancer Treatment Worldwide.
The supposed reason for allowing patents on medicines is to enable Big
Pharma companies to collect the money needed to fund large tests of
their safety and effectiveness. However, allowing companies to control
these
tests corrupts
them.
We should have the government directly fund these tests.
Then it will be easier to do without patents on medicines.
Australia's planet-roaster government
is delighted
to point out that the Paris climate agreement doesn't actually
require Australia to take any steps to reduce global heating.
Therefore, Australia can go hurrying global disaster without actually
violating the treaty.
Qatar
will permit some — but not all — foreign workers to
quit and go home if they wish.
Provided they can get their passports back.
Threatened Species Inquiry Told Public
Servants Think
Australia Is Failing.
Other countries in the Pacific
Ocean consider
Australia an obstacle to protecting themselves from climate
mayhem.
The right-wing government of Australia supports business profits over
both nature and civilization.
Schools in parts of the US
are letting
students out early because of the serious heat wave.
India's Supreme Court
has overturned
the law against homosexual acts.
Mauritania follows shari'a law, so women who report being raped can
be found
guilty of adultery.
This is true in some other Muslim countries as well.
US schools
are turning
to unqualified teachers as so many qualified teachers have quit.
Good teaching costs money. Plutocratist governments think it's not
worth the money to educate the common people, so they don't spend what
it costs.
The Healthiest Menu for Poor
People? An
Extra Helping from Government.
Italy's right-wing extremist party has been convicted of fraud and
will
have to shut down. I wonder if the voters will find this
disturbing.
The
cheater personally
ordered editing of photos of his inauguration to make it appear
there were more people.
Populists Aren't a Silent Majority —
They're Just
a Loud Minority.
Dealing with
cancer is
not a "battle" — that ailment may be dangerous but it is not
an enemy.
Response to an infection is, in a sense, a battle, but the enemy is not
conscious.
Salafi Arabia has started admitting that some of its air attacks in
Yemen
have killed
groups of children.
(satire): How
did the bullshitter come to believe Woodward was lying when
quoting criticism of the former by his staff?
US
citizens: phone
your senators at 1-844-515-2798 and point out that Kavanaugh has
contradicted his claim that Roe v Wade is safe from him because it is
"settled law".
If you phone, please spread the word!
Tunisian fishermen towed a boat with migrants to Italy
and face
charges of "smuggling" them.
How Weak
Schools Serve
[the exploiter's] Agenda.
(Supposed Labour leader) Tony Blair
has 'friendly,
positive meeting' with Italy's (semi-extreme right wing) Matteo
Salvini.
They have a lot in common — the lots
of plutocratist
money of their backers.
Australia
has blocked
Chelsea Manning from going there to speak. She will present her
talks through remote video.
Progressive Ayanna
Pressley won
the Democratic primary in my congressional district.
Many years ago, I went with a group of progressive Democrats to press
Rep. Capuano to take a progressive stance on some issue. He said, "If
you want someone to stand for that, vote for someone else!" This year,
I followed his advice and voted for Pressley.
Not because of her race or gender — they make no difference in a
candidate — but because of what she stands for.
The
bullshitter lied
blatantly to Bob Woodward about Woodward's own actions, apparently
trying to bully Woodward into a false confession of incompetent
journalism.
I suspect the recording is not accessible without nonfree software, so
here's
a transcript.
If seagrass meadows are lost, the bonnethead
shark could
be lost as well.
Will
thugs repress,
surveil and frame protesters against Keystone XL of terrorism as
they did the protesters against the Dakota Access pipeline?
Final
lessons from a Polish Jew who fought in the underground Home Army
against the Germans, and survived the war.
"There is no such thing as a 'heroic nation' — or indeed an
inherently malign or evil nation either." There are, however,
societies where myths that tend to encourage atrocities become
widespread, and right-wing extremists are working hard around the
world to make this happen. In the US the non-extreme but amoral
power-seekers have been using such myths for decades
to carry
out atrocities.
Latin American governments are deciding whether to
sign the
Escazú Agreement, which calls for strengthened enforcement of
environmental law and protection of environmental protection
activists, who are often murdered by extractivist businesses.
80 years ago, many US
Christians were
socialists.
A
UN report says that the US coalition has committed many war crimes
in Yemen.
Brazil's National Museum Blaze Blamed on
Austerity
Cuts Amid Olympics Spending.
The cheater occasionally does something potentially good. He is
attacking
the World Trade Organization.
The WTO is a
business-supremacy
treaty. It has been responsible for eliminating laws to protect
the environment and other things that are worth protecting.
I don't have confidence in the cheater not to replace it with
something worse.
ICE (the US deportation thug agency) is Deporting Mauritanians Back to
Modern-Day
Slavery.
Private schools for the wealthy
make
society more unequal for the future.
Due to the danger of heat waves,
we
must consider access to cooling a human right for those whose
lives and health are threatened by heat.
Nauru has developed into a dictatorship in which
protests
are forbidden and even members of parliament are imprisoned for
dissent.
The press are effectively banned, and the reason is basically
the
abuses
committed against the refugees that Nauru imprisons for Australia.
US citizens: phone each of your senators and call for rejection
of Kavanaugh.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Preventing
Nuclear War: A National Campaign Emerges [in the US].
The Labour
Party bowed
to pressure to adopt the definition of "antisemitism" which
includes some kinds of criticism of Israel's treatment of
Palestinians.
[The cheater] Succeeds in Making Insurance for People With Health Problems
Unaffordable.
A new
German progressive movement has been launched.
A debate about the precise criteria for the crime of
genocide is
a distraction from what are clearly enormous crimes against the
Rohingya.
Nauru arrested
a New Zealand reporter for interviewing refugees. Nobody is
supposed to be able to talk with them.
Local governments in the UK that oppose fracking
are investing
pension funds in fracking.
We
have wiped
out eight species of birds since 2000.
Don't Demonise
Beggars. It Won't
Solve the Problem of Homelessness.
The FCC plans
to cut
off 7 million poor Americans from subsidized phone service.
Trays in airport security carry
a substantial
amount of viruses.
I wonder how the risk of contagion from these compares with that of
being in the airplane cabin for a few hours. I would guess that the
risk from the trays is negligible by comparison, but I can't be sure.
The UN and the bully both wanted Russia and
Assad not
to carry out a bloodbath in Idlib.
Perhaps Turkey will take real steps to prevent it.
Everyone: urge
Gov Dayton of Minnesota to block the Line 3 pipeline.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
European research funding agencies aim
to put an
end to paywalled journals.
I've called
for this for 17 years.
Healthy
Babies at Risk, Warn Experts, as Trump Fearmongering Drives
Immigrant Families Off Nutrition Assistance Program.
In Britain, all sorts of public places to meet people and hang out
are closing
in large numbers.
Over 60% of Americans support unions,
but just
over 10% are union members. This measures the effectiveness of
repressive anti-union laws.
The bully
has cut
off US funds to support Palestinian refugees.
One can criticize the Arab governments of 1949 for deciding not to
integrate Palestinians into their populations, but that hardly excuses
starving them now.
In the 10 years since the fiscal crisis, the richest 10% of Americans
have gained 30 trillion dollars in wealth. Meanwhile, the poorer half
of Americans have lost
around half
a trillion in wealth — from an average of $11,000 per person
to $8,000 per person, a loss of over 25%.
Thus, the new wealth created in the US since 2008 has gone entirely to
the rich, and they have taken what the poor could not spare. This is
dooH niboR at work.
Right-wing parties in the European
Parliament chose
a denialist to write a paper on global heating.
The Denver
thugs physically
attacked, and arrested, a journalist taking photos of their
interaction with someone they had handcuffed on the street. As usual,
they made absurd excuses that showed contempt for the law they are
supposed to uphold, as well as for human rights and justice.
If the thug chief does not fire those two thugs, that will make per
complicit in their contempt for the rights of the people that thugs
generally claim they "serve and protect".
Bank of America has demanded that many customers prove they are US
citizens, and closing their accounts
otherwise. It refuses
to admit that this policy exists.
Bank of America is one of the large banks that has too much power.
Why not move your money into a smaller bank this week?
Two thugs
were caught
illegally selling soda in a school in Connecticut. They were not
punished for this.
This cute story describes a minor peccadillo done in one place by some
thugs in a school. Meanwhile, all the thugs stationed in US schools
arrest students from time to time and send them down the
school-to-prison pipeline.
Software that
predicts outbreaks of cholera has enabled medics to do a pretty
good job of suppressing the epidemic.
If only they could predict outbreaks of cluster bombs and drone
missiles.
The ISPs/phone companies leaked their lobbyists' talking points by
mailing them to a
journalist. This
article describes them and refutes them.
Google made
a deal with Mastercard so as to use credit card data to detect
when an ad effectively lead to a sale.
This is one of the reasons why I pay my bills by check, not by credit card.
Malaysia
has punished
people with caning for having homosexual sex.
Pulling scallops off the sea bottom is done
by extremely
destructive dredging.
Paranoid US parents are now
invited
to use surveillance technology to spy on their children
everywhere.
Here's an idea for a story: a US teenager from 2025 inexplicably goes to 1970
and learns to get used to not being tracked. Then
perse returns to 2025
and finds family tracking intolerable.
There were large protests in Russia against a
planned
increase in the retirement age. Arresting Navalny did not stop
them.
The brain damage suffered by some US diplomats in Cuba and China might
have been caused by
"microwave
weapons".
Such weapons may be possible, but I can't see any sensible reason why
Cuba and China would want to use such weapons against US diplomats.
If microwaves were involved, was it necessarily an intentional attack
using a weapon? Maybe the microwaves were emitted by something else,
such as a security device or spy device set up by the US in the
embassy, and the effect on people's brains was an unexpected side
effect.
A classic example of how "smart city" projects claim to protect
privacy while
ignoring the danger
of massive surveillance.
This mentions that someone is "accountable" for the use of the data
the snoop city collects — which gives no reason to think the
rules seriously protect our privacy — but shows no attempt to
protect against a massive increase in tracking and collection of
personal data.
Arab members of Israel's Parliament praised Corbyn for
refusing
to define criticism of Israel as "antisemitism". They praised his
opposition to all forms of racism, antisemitism included.
Exxon still
gives
money to global heating denial organizations although it claims to
acknowledge global heating now.
The Tories are using withdrawal from the EU as an
excuse
to negate environmental protection.
The basic functionality of a "smart" TV is to
report
what people watch on it. For "smart", read "snooping".
The Prime Minister of Samoa said
officials
that deny global heating belong in a mental hospital.
They should be put in a padded cell and not allowed communication
except with relatives and doctors.
The Burmese Army has published a book accusing Rohingya of atrocities,
showing
photos from past wars in other countries.
Australian journalist James Ricketson has been convicted of "spying"
in Cambodia. Cambodia
doesn't
recognize much difference between journalism and spying.
Sad to say, neither does
Australia,
nor
the
UK.
US citizens: phone your senators and call on them to demand to
see
the full papers of Kavanaugh's White House advice to Dubya.
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Everyone: Call
on the USA to stop supplying arms for use in bombarding and
attacking Yemen.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
A underwater drone has been constructed that
can recognize
and destroy the starfish that are eating the Great Barrier Reef.
The biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef (and most of the
ecosphere) is fossil fuel combustion. Could we design a drone to
recognize and destroy oil wells?
Russia is putting people on trial and labeling them as "extremists"
for posting
irreverent jokes.
South
Korea and the US disagree about how to deal with North Korea.
Trump Administration Helped Banks Rip Off Student
Borrowers, Official
Alleges.
Russia and Assad are preparing for
a bloody
reconquest of Idlib, the last region of Syria where Arab rebels
have control.
Those rebels
are Sunni
Islamists;
if they had taken over Syria,
things would have gone badly for other groups.
However, if Assad takes Idlib, he
is likely
to torture and kill thousands more prisoners.
I can't see anything that anyone could plausibly do to prevent this,
and that's what is the great shame.
Prisons
are putting
strike leaders into solitary or transferring them to other
prisons.
(satire) Florida candidate Desantis regrets causing offense with his
"monkey this up" comment, saying it was intended to
go unnoticed
as a dog-whistle to his supporters.
Some
US cities and states are planning to reduce their greenhouse gas
emissions, but the existing plans do not come anywhere near what is
needed to avoid global disaster.
The
cheater cancelled
a planned wage increase for federal workers on the grounds that
the money was already spent on his tax gifts to the rich.
Iran continues
the nuclear deal even despite painful US trade sanctions.
European countries should take steps to prevent their export products from
depending on the US in any way, so that the US cannot have a veto power
over their future exports.
Kavanaugh Sided With U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Big Businesses Associations in
76
Percent of Cases.
Trump’s Policies Toward
Workers: Drop
Dead.
The cheater plans to give wealthy people
a bigger
tax shelter for retirement savings, dressed up to look like it
will benefit working people who can't even afford to pay their debts.
(satire) Pelican Bay supermax prison warden Earl Daniels has divulged
that he is
struggling
to find methods of punishment worse than the inmates' current living
conditions.
Expected August 31 NAFTA Notice: A Final Deal Must Be Judged on
Whether
It Will Stop NAFTA's Serious Ongoing Damage.
There is also the danger that the replacement deal will increase
copyright repression, as the WTO did.
Kavanaugh's record shows that he
favors
the power of the federal government, and especially the president,
over any possible restraints in the constitution or treaties.
Noted journalists have been
arrested
by the UK for leaking information about a massacre 24 years ago,
that was connected with the sectarian violence there.
The US government
denies
passports to citizens of Latin origin, claiming their birth
certificates are fake. Some citizens have been exiled to Mexico.
Republicans
Will
Let Florida Drown. (Along with much of New York City, Washington
DC, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc.)
A panel of UK thugs
ruled
that strip-searching Konstancja Duff was legal because she denied
active cooperation such as answering questions.
I think the thugs' main crime against her was to arrest her for
handing a card with legal aid information to someone they had decided
to search without specific suspicion (which usually means, to harass
based on racial profiling).
Republicans propose to give American parents paid parental leave at
the expense of their retirement pensions. An economic study describes
the
effects that would have.
For some poor people in the US,
jail
is the only place they can get proper medical care.
A bill to
put
a moratorium on mergers of large corporations in agriculture and
processing and selling food would take a small step towards
restoring the antitrust law that we used to have before Reagan.
Before Reagan was elected, he
made
a deal with Iran in which Iran agreed to keep US soldiers prisoner
until after the US election. Later he rewarded Lebanese
hostage-takers by
paying
a ransom in the form of arms.
Legal Analysis Exposes Kavanaugh's
Long
History of Siding With Corporate Power Over the Common Good.
In the US: participate in
a Rise
for Climate rally on Sep 8.
Here's
the
idea of the protest.
US citizens: support Senator
Warren's corporation
reform bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
ACLU of California Changes Position
to Oppose
Bail Reform Legislation.
The
bill was
modified to create a different system for putting too many people
in jail before trial.
15
Ways the Democrats Can Lose the November Elections.
Kavanaugh's judicial
record shows he would make the US more plutocratist, more cruel,
and more unjust.
A thug who killed a black man for no reason is
now teaching
classes to thugs about how get away with killing.
Global heating will enable agricultural pests
to do
a lot more damage.
The government of Brazil's President Fear
is imposing
poverty on the country, much like the US Republicans.
Politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka musician Bobi Wine, has
been banned
from leaving Uganda to get treatment for the effects of torture.
Amazon misrepresented
its treatment of workers when arguing with Senator Sanders, by
forgetting about all the temporary workers.
An
appeals court blocked the Unkinder Morgan tar sands pipeline.
"Energy drinks" are loaded with caffeine and sugar. The UK plans
to ban
their sale to minors.
Chen Guangcheng, Chinese
dissident, implores
Google not to censor for China.
A part of New
Zealand plans
to ban cats in order to protect the native birds.
Mice and rats are intrusive species in New Zealand, like cats. In a
few decades it may be possible to eliminate all mice in that country,
as well as all rats and all cats.
"Security" censorship in Australia: a man that the state won't
identify is accused of planning a violent crime solely on the strength
of having
a copy of some information.
The state admits that the man could not have committed an actual crime.
Which means the alleged "planning" would have been just a fantasy.
Trade of Coastal Sand
Is Damaging
Wildlife of Poorer Nations, Study Finds.
This is one of many ways in which human economic activity is
unsustainable, and eating up the ecosphere. We need to reduce
the human population, and the humane way is to have fewer children.
Australian right-wing extremists
are pushing
to ban Chelsea Manning from going there to speak.
Ten Years after the Financial Crash, the Timid
Left Should
Be Full of Regrets.
Yes, but someone who serves the banksters as Obama does was hardly
part of the left.
Italian Minister
Salvini is
being investigated for imprisoning 100 refugees on the Italian
coast guard ship Ubaldo Diciotti.
That ship docked in an Italian port and Salvini would not let
the refugees off the ship.
Aggressive Israeli right-wing "settlers" are attacking peace activists
ever
more frequently.
If you imagine the kind of right-wing total domination that the
bullshitter's supporters are aiming for, that is what Israel has become.
Protesters in
Paris ruined
public urinals because they consider it unfair to reduce public
urination by men until women are allowed to breastfeed.
I support the latter cause, but that doesn't make it desirable for drunken
men to piss on the sidewalk.
Prominent Indian activists, for human rights or more income for the
poor, have
been arrested because of their political views.
The hurricane that hit Puerto
Rico killed
about as many Americans as the 2001 terrorist attacks, so why not
have a Global War on Global Heating, or at least a War on Puerto
Rico's Poverty?
I think the difference in response is that the damage in Puerto Rico
provides an opportunity to seize property from Puerto Rico. By
contrast, the opportunity provided by the terrorist attacks was for
"security" (massive spending and massive surveillance).
(satire) Trump Revokes Puerto Rico Recovery Funds After Learning
Hurricane
Maria Had
Fewer Survivors.
Senator Schumer claims to be a Democrat but is making deals
to approve
extremist Republican judges.
50
years ago, Chicago thugs rioted and crushed nonviolent peace
demonstrators — and journalists — at the Democratic
Convention.
(satire) SC Johnson & Son recalled every single product from their
Raid brand of insecticides Tuesday after realizing the food chain
would simply
collapse without bugs.
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