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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
The bully is moving to deport children staying in the US for medical care for cancer, cystic fibrosis, HIV, and other grave illnesses, along with their parents. This is likely to kill most of those children.
Adding insult to injury (though "injury" is an understatement; they will die if deported), deportation officials are giving these people confusing information.
The US border thugs cancelled freshman Ismail Ajjawi's visa because of things his friends said on some social media platform (Facebook?).b
(satire) "We’ve been seeing some students wearing revealing bulletproof vests, so I just wanted to remind all you ladies that your kevlar must cover all your vital organs," …
Santa Monica subsidizes the rent for some of the old people who live there.
This is better than not doing so, but it has a drawback: it is a private subsidy for landlords, and as rents increase, the subsidy will increase too. It would be better to build public housing, which means that the state makes the investment and gets the profit, but less profit, because this will expand the housing supply.
California prosecutors now have permission to inform defense lawyers when a witness that is a thug has some characteristic that leads to suspicion perse might give false testimony.
This doesn't assure that they will inform defense lawyers.
The mere fact that the witness is a thug is, in itself, reason for such suspicion. The defense lawyers already know that. Alas, most jurors won't believe it.
Mercedes puts tracking devices into its cars, and getting a car loan requires agreeing to be tracked.
In the US: call on DoorDash to stop confiscating workers' tips.
You can also ask the restaurant, before you order takeout, "Do you use DoorDash for deliveries?" If it does, say "I will order somewhere else."
If you sign, please spread the word!
Journalist Dave Lindorff has been put on an FBI-controlled list for an extra search when he boards a plane to the US. He knows this because a British official told him — the FBI won't confirm it.
Fortunately for him, his harassment is minor: the usual quick explosives test, when he flies to the US. For others, it results in substantial harassment. The fact that a journalist is on the list suggests this is all politically motivated.
Brazilian Amazon deforestation Surges to Break August Records.
Global heating will make our investments in the future crumble.
India is taking hostages in Kashmir, kidnaping people in order to exchange them for specific people that the occupying forces could not find.
The US did something similar during the occupation of Iraq.
Israel has done something similar in the occupation of Palestine.
Private companies including Uber, Airbnb and WhatsApp are building a private social credit system, in which anyone can be banned arbitrarily from the very dis-services that people say they "can't live without".
If a bar or restaurant insisted on knowing who I am before letting me in, I'd leave pre-emptively.
Google uses its dominance over browsers to defend its ad business.
This exactly what antitrust law was designed to deal with. It suggests that breaking up Google would do some good. It would not go far enough, however, because it would not put an end to surveillance capitalism.
Burner Bolsonaro rejected the 20 million dollars to help put out fires in the Amazon, not for being too little, but for being too much. (More than zero is too much.)
The latest idiotic distraction is to call this "colonialism". The Brazilian government claims the power to burn every tree in Brazil.
"We need to cancel the next G7. Let's resume them when Trump is gone."
The point of the G7 meetings is cooperation (even if only partial) among the most powerful countries. The bullshitter has no interest in that. It is useless to make a deal with him, since he may break it the next day or the next month.
He will attend the meeting only to sow discord — he is the drama queen that would be king. Why make an opportunity for him?
The Koch brothers funded organized campaigns to block construction of public transport in various cities across the US.
Less public transit means they sell more oil. In a few decades, it means a bigger disaster with a bigger chance of killing you.
Vaping's Other Problem: Are E-Cigarettes Creating a Recycling Disaster?
There is an obvious solution: impose a deposit that is high enough to discourage one-time use.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights Act.
The article brings up race in a way that is not truly pertinent. The US society of extreme inequality dumps injustice on the poor, and due to racism and other forms of prejudice, members of disprivileged groups are more likely to be poor. Therefore, many unrelated injustices hit them harder, including the mistreatment of domestic workers.
But we don't need to refer to that to justify this bill, because it is a simple matter of right and wrong. Domestic workers deserve justice regardless of their demographics and regardless of whether they suffer from prejudice.
US citizens: call on media to cover the fires in the Amazon as much as they covered the fire in Notre Dame cathedral.
The G7 meetings have become useless, ineffective at doing pretty much anything.
The fact that the bully uses them only as opportunities to humiliate other countries' leaders is only part of the reason. But next year, when the US hosts the meeting, he will reduce it totally to a manipulatory event, once he has filled his pockets with government money by holding the meeting in his own hotel.
The term "autism" has been stretched so far that it is incoherent: to stretch from the mild abnormalities or Asperger's syndrome to mentally crippling disabilities.
It may be the case that they all result from the same biological cause — does science know? But even if so, we can distinguish them for moral, social and legal purposes.
The EU is considering a weak regulation on face recognition. All it would do is give people the right to be informed when their face was recognized — and not always even that.
This by itself would not protect society from massive surveillance, but the information obtained could aid campaigns to do that.
Bogus Johnson has openly told Parliament it has no authority over what he does.
He is trying to act the absolute monarch. The last time someone tried that, Parliament had him executed. The death penalty is wrong, but Parliament could sentence Johnson to life in prison.
Transgender passengers often find an encounter with the TSA traumatic.
Singapore will invite people to be tracked as they walk around the city by offering gratis tracking devices.
Cuba Drastically Reforms Fishing Laws to Protect Coral Reef, Sharks And Rays.
Bangladesh will stop classifying women as "virgin" or not, when they marry.
Chinese expat writer Yang Hengjun is being investigated for spying.
More precisely, with "committing espionage crimes", which could mean anything that China wants us to think of as if it were spying. Tyrannical governments often are very secretive and may consider ordinary journalism, picking up information from the public, as spying.
(satire) Obama Upholds In-Office Tradition By Releasing 2019 Summer Kill List.
Congressional Committees Must Require Voting Machine Vendors to Explain Poor Security Record & Practices.
The bully has done great harm around the world by cutting US contributions to important international aid and rights programs.
The US Forest Disservice proposes to eliminate environmental disclosure and public comment for over 90% of its decisions about permitting roads and exploitation in national forests.
It would be able to trash any amount of forest land provided it does so in medium-size chunks.
"Virtually any Democrat would be favored to beat [the current Republican senator] in Colorado, and virtually any Democrat is better than John Hickenlooper."
Comparing the US saboteur in chief with Bolsonaro in regard to attacking Earth's ecosphere.
The cruel structure of the gig economy — or service sweatshop economy — is illustrated by a British family about to become homeless, after the breadwinner died because he didn't dare skip work to see a doctor.
Macron tried to use the G7 meeting to push for relaxation with Iran.
So far there has been no visible effect, but it was worth a try.
A community college fired a professor for saying he supported Antifa.
It appears that someone claimed those views made per feel "unsafe". Such feelings are not justification for punishing anyone.
Aircraft Production Down 24% Globally after Boeing 737 Max Crashes.
Each airplane contributes greatly to global heating. If this downturn means less flying in the future, that will be a good thing. But we cannot leave that to chance — we need a tax to make sure it happens.
Facial Recognition: Ten Reasons You Should Be Worried About the Technology.
This may help you wake up some of the sheeple who think that powerful governments and companies won't ever hurt them.
US economic warfare against Venezuela has killed tens of thousands of people, though it is hard to be sure precisely who they were.
US banking and tax regulations are ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in other countries, who were born while their mothers visited the US and thus have US citizenship but were not aware of that.
The US should exempt foreign citizens who have not, in the past 10 years or since reaching adulthood, done anything to assert or acknowledge a connection to the US. However, in the mean time, other countries should protect their citizens.
How racism pervades the North Carolina courts in their application of the death penalty.
Bias in trials is always an injustice. The death penalty is also always an injustice.
Some of the G7 countries offered money to fight the Amazon fires, but it will take major policy changes to correct the problem.
Bolivia also has a problem of forest fires in its part of the Amazon forest, although its government has done nothing to encourage them.
In 2018 I thought I understood an article to say that military-style rifles make wounds that are more likely to kill or maim than ordinary hunting rifles. I posted about that, and referred back to it several times.
Later it was pointed out to me that the article was really comparing rifles to handguns.
This led me to change my conclusions, so I have changed that 2018 political note.
US citizens: call on Congress not to let Mitch McConnell block election security reform.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose allowing use of algorithms to implement racial discrimination in housing.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Oil extractors want big subsidies to drill in deep waters off Australia's south coast, and risk a big spill.
There will be no risk about the contribution to global disaster, however. That will be a certainty.
Planet-roaster governments are moving towards strict repression of protests.
Growing up in Australia's Nauru immigration prison causes grave mental illness for unfortunate refugees.
Americans are putting the elk of Colorado in danger simply by visiting the wilderness so much.
David Wallace-Wells feels some hope that we will avoid global heating disaster because the American public is now very concerned about the issue.
It's just a possibility, not a sure thing,
The lead in the water supply of Newark, New Jersey, is due to corroded pipes. They need to be replaced. In the mean time, the city is providing residents with water filters.
Nauru bars the foreign press, but it has enough democracy that leading politicians can lose elections.
Plutocratist "centrist" Democrats could lose the next election. They could also kill you, some decades down the line.
"Express Vote", a system that US states are buying in 2019, has two big flaws: the ballots are marked by computer with bar codes (and the voter is required to trust that computer isn't cheating), and even so the scanner can't read them all correctly.
A court prohibited the use of Georgia's voting machines, which make no paper ballots at all.
I hope Georgia won't switch to "Express Vote".
(satire) "I don’t want to keep living in a world without David Koch," said former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, one amongst a throng of weeping Republicans including Mike Pence, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, and Mitt Romney…
(satire) Christmas-Obsessed Woman Worships Christ Year-Round.
The US Export-Import Bank has resumed financing increased CO2 emissions with a gas export plant in Mozambique.
Plutocratist "centrist" Democrats joined with Republicans (always plutocratists) to restart that organization.
The secondary argument that Mozambique might itself have a use for burning that gas rather than exporting it is an example of obsolete thinking. Where that gas might be burnt is a side issue; to reduce global disaster, which will fall on Mozambique along with everywhere else, we must keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Thee is some evidence that spending a lot of time watching shallow cartoons, instead of something they might draw experience from, leads people to grow up as fodder for shallow politics.
Please don't use the term "consume" for watching or reading anything, not even for silly cartoons.
Greening Your Life Is All Very Well — But Only a Global Climate Strategy Will Fix This.
Bernie Sanders’ Manhattan Project: The Game-Changing Green New Deal.
A Texas thug whose lies led to a "drug raid" that killed two innocent people in their home now faces murder changes.
The Israel Project, which did dirty tricks against US organizations that opposed Israel's treatment of Palestinians, has shut down.
The proximate cause is that it ran out of money, but I wonder whether its supporters have moved to a new organization which has not yet acquired a bad reputation.
Assad stated he intends to conquer all of Syria.
That includes Idlib, now ruled by Islamists but inhabited by millions of Syrian civilians that would not be safe in Assad's hands. It also includes Rojava.
If Rojava has no ally to rely on, it cannot resist forever.
Simon Cheng, employee of the British consulate in Hong Kong, has been released by China after being jailed with no announcement.
It is absurd to jail someone for hiring prostitutes, but when China wants to use someone as a pawn, it will make up any sort of excuse.
A meeting of the G7 ministers in Biarritz has been the occasion to impose total repression on that town.
Orange County, California, has had neo-Nazis for decades. It should be no surprise that high-school students there give Nazi salutes.
Protesters Besiege Brazilian Embassies Worldwide over Amazon Fires.
Brazilians are protesting, too.
Why politicians, regardless of party, are less interested in interviews.
US Republicans are promoting US business to invest in deforesting the Amazon.
Newark, New Jersey, has a problem with lead in the water. This should not be an excuse to take control of the city's water permanently away from the city.
(satire) Brazilian Government Equips Firefighters With Flamethrowers To Combat Massive Amazon Rainforest.
US teachers spend an average of $450 a year buying school supplies for their classes.
This reflects the extent to which US plutocracy regards most people as trash.
Sanders's plan for improving labor rights in the US.
In "me-too" frenzy, crossed signals about sex can easily be inflated into "rape". If people rush to judgment, in an informal way, that can destroy a man's career without any trial in which to clear his name.
The racist bias that presents itself as opposition to "cultural appropriation" is in danger of being extended to roles that are Jews.
I can understand the argument that actors from visually distinctive ethnic groups should be chosen for roles of those groups because they tend to be excluded from other roles. But now that so many old plays are being redone with women in male roles, why couldn't we have non-Caucasian actors in Caucasian roles too?
That issue does not apply to Jews, because Jews have not, in general, been excluded from roles that are not defined as Jewish. Nobody suggested that Zero Mostel should not play Pseudolus on the grounds that that character was a Roman.
That sort of nonsense might happen in the future if the idea that Jewish parts go with Jewish actors catches on.
The US legal system is not effective at giving everyone a fair trial. When the US gets desperate about punishing a certain group, it has a tendency to railroad some of them. Hamid Hayat was convicted falsely of being part of a "terror network" that didn't exist at all.
Glasgow University will dedicate 20 million pounds to research on development, in conjunction with a university in Jamaica, as reparations for donated money obtained from slavery.
I support reparations for slavery (and, in the US, for the century-long subsequent legal discrimination against blacks). The reparations should be designed to correct the self-perpetuating damage that is now inflicted on the descendants of those who were legally discriminated against
I don't know what would be effective at making a long-term change, but I think it needs to be done at the level of society, not just by universities.
France and Ireland are pressuring Bolsonaro to curb the burning of the Amazon forest.
The Australian government put hundreds of refugees into prison in its client state, Nauru. When they get sick, Australia wants to keep them there till they die.
Everyone: call on the UK not to extradite Julian Assange.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US, on Sep 20, join a climate strike action.
Everyone: call on Facebook not to help the FBI spy on people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the deportation thugs to stop DNA testing of refugee families. It is an unjust surveillance system, and not necessary for keeping the family together.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on lawmakers to preserve the right to encryption.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Bezos got the Pentagon to give him a security clearance and an advisory appointment despite not having been investigated. Naturally he used this for Amazon sales.
A bureaucrat who pointed out the irregularity, through channels, and was punished for doing so.
The government should never trust businesses to run its computer systems.
Turkey is forcing Syrian refugees back to Syria — even queer Syrians who could be murdered when sent back to Idlib, ruled by Islamist rebels.
I wonder if they would be any safer in Assad's territory.
The Department of Justice sent email to immigration judges with links to white nationalist web sites.
Comedian Samantha Kureya, who satirizes the tyrannical Zimbabwean regime, was grabbed by armed men, beaten, and made to drink sewage (dangerous to health).
Adding insult to injury, they also stripped her.
Bogus Johnson and his pro-rogue supporters keep lying to the British about imaginary concessions that the EU will supposedly offer, any day now.
I think I know what Bogus Johnson intends: to get the UK out of the EU through any lies necessary, so as to force it into a much worse set of business-supremacy treaties with predatory governments such as the US and China.
One of the Koch brothers will no longer harm the world.
Those who inherit his wealth might be just as bad, or might be better.
Amazon Rainforest Fires: Global Leaders Urged to Divert Brazil from 'Suicide' Path.
Kashmiris tried to organize a mass protest in Srinagar, so Indian soldiers clamped down completely.
Monsanto lobbied Congress to pressure regulatory agencies to go easy on Roundup. When the International Agency for Research on Cancer declined to do so, Monsanto organized a campaign to cut its funding.
A real solution to America's gun violence problem goes beyond regulations on buying guns. We need to have a lot fewer guns, and more control over where they are.
Michael Moore, in Bowling for Columbine, reported that Canada has strict safety regulations on handling a gun when taking it out of the house. That might be a good idea.
Analyzing the graph structure of hate networks suggests methods of weakening them.
US citizens: call on BlackRock to stop financing destruction of the Amazon forest.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, no additional funds for the deportation thugs and their concentration camps.
If you phone, please spread the word!
Indonesia says that its colony in New Guinea has "returned to normal", but "no internet connection" isn't normal there.
Alaska used to be cold. There, as in many other places, global heating has caused a permanent change in life. Global heating denial must give way to global heating Denali.
The Democratic National Committee didn't approve a climate debate, but did decide to let candidates join to hold other non-DNC debates.
(satire) The US deportation thugs are opening an interdimensional immigration prison so they can store any number of prisoners. It will also have the capability to drop prisoners into a black hole.
Stock buybacks enabled CEOs and large stockholders to screw the rest of the world.
Google is using its monopoly power to drive searchers to Google disservices. Less than half of Google searches result in a visit to a non-Google site.
I can't access Google search: I browse through Tor, with LibreJS blocking nontrivial nonfree Javascript code, and google.com blocks such access. I find that unfortunate, because sometimes Google searches used to find interesting things I did not find in duckduckgo.com/html. But I won't accept either of those two tracking mechanisms, so bye bye Google search.
DRM is still evil, and the DMCA is still unjust.
More about the injustice of Digital Restrictions Management.
Nowadays, a cable box is malware in more than one way. It still does DRM, but nowadays it snoops on people too. I refuse to tolerate this injustice, so I do not have a cable box.
Blacks and indigenous Americans often have informal title to their land, and this has been used in the US to alienate their land. Senator Warren has proposed a plan to help them formally clarify the title.
Sanders dares to say that the rich people of the US have been fighting, and winning, a class war.
The "Blame the Poor" Playbook — Used by Republicans and Democrats Alike ‐ Is Back With a Vengeance.
[The bully's] Re-election Strategy: Pit Us Against Each Other. Specifically, teach the almost-poor to resent the meager help that poor people receive.
The fact that rich people don't pay their fair share of taxes has pushed a lot of the burden onto the not-yet-poor.
Melbourne, Australia, is losing valuable water each year by cutting down mature trees — because the young trees that replace them soak up more water.
Iran has jailed another Iranian citizen who works for the UK government.
I feel for Tyson, and for Amiri; but when he demands that the British government do something to free Amiri, he mistakes the UK for the great power that it once was. Bogus Johnson tried demanding that Iran free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and Iran responded with "You can't make me, nyah nyah!"
Her husband also wants to meet with officials to demand they "do something" more. But that would be futile again.
Imprisoning people as pawns is cruel and unjust, when Iran does it and when China does it. But there is nothing the UK can do to prevent it.
The only way the UK government could help free Amiri is with quiet, slow diplomacy. But first the UK should stop supporting the conman's plans for war with Iran.
Epstein made a new will two days before his suicide. It seems designed to prevent his victims from getting damages from him.
Planned Parenthood's decision to refuse to parrot antiabortionists' lies was the only moral choice, and the only honorable choice.
Americans that oppose abortion rights tend to be against women's rights and women's equality in general.
Their obsession about the "life" of a fetus was a rationalization.
It has become so hot in the UK that a cycad can reproduce there.
Algeria is still stuck between the democracy protesters and the military government.
Hunting intrusive pythons is becoming a passionate hobby for some in Florida.
It behooves us to think of protecting the Everglades from being inundated, too.
Science has not detected any medical effects on humans of microplastics in water.
Use of e-cigarettes does not lead Americans to smoke. On the contrary, a lot fewer Americans smoke now than in 2002.
16 million Americans will be directed to vote in 2020 with no paper ballot. This is fundamentally untrustworthy.
The bully says he will keep refugee minors and families in prison with no time limit.
When Antifa demands government censorship of right-wing extremists, it goes too far.
We all depend on the freedom to state our political views. We who oppose right-wing extremists must fight against government censorship, because if government censorship is allowed, we will be the first to be stopped from speaking.
US citizens: call on the Senate to eliminate the domestic and global abortion gag rules.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Israeli Army destroyed a water tank used by Palestinians in the Jordan Valley for irrigation. Israel is trying to chase them out, so it never gives permission to build anything, not even a water tank. This policy made the water tank "unauthorized", which was an excuse to destroy it.
The village where Rashida Tlaib's grandmother lives has lost a large part of its land due to Israeli confiscation.
Microsoft recorded users of Xboxes and had human workers listen to the recordings.
Morally I see no difference between having human workers listen and having speech-recognition systems listen. Both intrude on privacy.
A hundred years ago, there were anarchist societies on Earth, places where there was no state, no government. But that did not in all cases mean that everyone was equal. In some peoples in Melanesia, the men who were most politically adroit gained a kind of political power by drawing other men into client relationships with them. Those who had many clients were called "big men", and sometimes they would lead their clients to fight the clients of other big men.
The fighting continued until European colonial states made them stop. "Big men" continued to exist, but they were limited to peaceful means in their competition for power.
I feel an attraction to anarchy, but I do not endorse anarchism because there are many jobs we need the state to do.
A message of hope: Australians could yet succeed in stopping their government from wiping out Tuvalu and then Australia.
If peaceful means do not succeed in preventing the murder of billions, violent means will be justified. Given that Australia's present course of action will predictably kill tens of millions of people (that would be Australia's share of the billions), destroying Australia's fossil fuel facilities should be legally justified under the principle of necessity (to prevent a worse crime).
Since the operation of Australia's fossil fuel facilities and shipping will contribute to making many lands uninhabitable, including Tuvalu, they are in effect weapons of mass destruction. Perhaps Tuvalu should declare war on Australia and send commandos to destroy those facilities and sink the coal ships.
The bully said he wanted to buy Greenland from Denmark. When Denmark refused to sell, he cancelled a coming trip there, as punishment to Denmark.
I suppose Danes feel relieved rather than punished.
This is not the first time the US demanded to buy another country's territory. In 1845 the US asked to buy a part of Mexico. When Mexico refused, the US Army fought its way to Mexico City and occupied it until Mexico's government agreed to the sale. Henry David Thoreau famously went to jail rather than pay tax for that war of aggression.
The treaty promised that Mexicans in the transferred territory could keep speaking Spanish.
As Assad's forces slowly recapture Idlib province, the millions of Syrians that fled there fear being murdered by them.
Assad and Russia have systematically bombarded medical facilities there.
It appears that Turkey tried to reinforce Khan Sheikhoun a week ago, and was stopped by air attacks.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the rebel forces in Idlib, which have Turkey's support, are the Islamist militants that used to control most of Syria and used to confiscate the arms and supplies that the US provided to non-Islamist militants.
The bully wants to keep immigrant minors and families in prison without limits, perhaps for years.
The bully accused American Jews of "disloyalty" — disloyalty to what, one wonders — for being loyal Americans and voting for the Democrats who (more or less) support their views of what is good for the US, instead of supporting his right-wing extremist flunky, Netanyahu.
I think his aim is to build up the irrational anti-semitism which is one of the bases of his support, and an illogical reason is as effective as a logical one.
Australia is following the example of the US, in deporting people to places where they have not been since infancy, don't know anyone, and don't speak the language.
Maduro has been talking with the US government about stepping down as president of Venezuela.
The hard question is, how to find a replacement that won't sell the whole country to Venezuelan and American oligarchs.
Six would-be mass shooters have been arrested in the US in just two weeks.
Although these people appear feckless, I think they posed somewhat of a real threat -- more so than the Walter Mitty-ish would-be Islamist terrorists that the FBI used to arrest. Here is why.
Those people dreamed of making a bomb, but would never have been in a position to make one without help from FBI "informants" — thus, they were not really capable of hurting anyone. In addition, sometimes those "informants" persuaded people who were reluctant to get involved at all.
It appears that these people wanted to use guns, which maybe they could have obtained, and they announced the plans on their own.
China says it makes two commitments: to healthy life and the wild, and to economic growth, In practice, the latter takes priority. Neither China nor the US can easily escape from the trap of extreme capitalism.
Ranchers are burning down large parts of the Amazon forest, deforesting it in the way that contributes the most possible to global heating.
A UK mining company used an ISDS treaty to force Armenia to allow a gold mine that threatens the country's main water supply: Lake Sevan.
Armenia is rather arid to begin with.
ISDS stands for "I Sue Democratic States", and it is one of the ways business subjugate the governments that are supposed to be democratic.
Canadian election officials say that advertisements talking about the danger of global heating are illegal because of denialist politicians.
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, a planet roaster lobbying group, has got 9 US states to pass laws to imprison pipeline protesters.
A class-action lawsuit accuses US deportation prisons of failing to provide basic medical care, and sometimes even food.
US children and teenagers today are more often depressed, more often anxious, and more often suicidal. It may be because their lives are regimented and isolated all the time, like living in a reeducation camp.
The US has already tested a missile banned by the 1987 intermediate-range missile treaty which the numskull just cancelled.
Spain is sending a ship to take the refugees off the Open Arms rescue ship that Salvini forced to stay at sea.
Growing Up in Air-Polluted Areas Linked to Mental Health Issues. These include depression and schizophrenia.
"Carbon offsetting" sounds simple, but planting a tree is not guaranteed to sequester carbon later. That will happen only if the tree grows large. But it might die instead.
The tree might be cut down. It might burn in a wildfire. It might die because the region becomes arid. It might be killed by a tropical parasite that moves into the area because it is hotter.
The Moscow city government will allow internet voting, and the system is easy to crack. That election will be garbage.
China has jailed an employee of the UK consulate in Hong Kong, and is holding him incommunicado.
It is not safe to visit China. You could be used as a pawn to punish your country.
How climate mayhem will directly affect US cities.
This does not include the indirect effects of climate mayhem elsewhere, such as crop failures and expensive food.
US oil and gas extraction is expected to increase 25% in the next decade. That would guarantee global disaster, if it happens.
The saboteur of the interior is pushing a pipeline project he was employed not long ago to lobby for.
Ring Creates Insecurity for All, Including for Owners Whose Life Details Are [handed to the state and the thugs].
Firing of [thug] Who Put Eric Garner in Chokehold is Just First Step to Justice.
Nigeria seems to have eliminated polio. The last case was in 2016.
That leaves only Afghanistan and Pakistan, which suffer from the Islamist form of anti-vaxx superstition.
Queensland, in Australia, is strengthening the repression of protesters in response to Extinction Rebellion.
The cruel and callous variant of capitalism in the US, and the tight control and regimentation of workers, can be traced to the system of slavery.
Vanuatu, which will host next year's Pacific Islands Forum, calls on Australia not to be a climate obstructionist as it was this year.
(satire) Experts Confirm Doritos Bag Developed Bright, Distinctive Coloring To Warn Potential Predators That It Could Kill Them.
The campaign to ban killer robots is being held back by the US, Russia, and some other less powerful countries.
Voting machines still in use in US elections are vulnerable to cracking.
A couple of snoopphones on the table can figure out what someone is typing on a keyboard on that table.
Reducing the high rents in the cities where the jobs will require eliminating the zoning rules and laws that limit housing construction.
The people who want low density are getting it at the expense of the poor.
Israel's refusal to admit Reps. Tlaib and Omar has made it acceptable in the US to talk about cutting US donations to Israel.
I hope that this enables the US to press to shut down the Israeli colonies in Palestine (specifically, in the West Bank) and hand them over to Palestine.
Now that nearly the whole Republican Party has stretched its moral standards to accept the conman, there is little chance any of them will pay a political penalty for doing so.
Many large US corporations have officially rejected the evil principle of "shareholders above all else in the world."
Arguably, what they do in practice isn't maximizing the return to shareholders, but maximizing the CEOs' pay. Nonetheless, the rejection of that supposed obligation will be of help politically.
Appeals Court Upholds Ruling That Children Held at [US] Border Must Have Adequate Food, Bedding, Sanitation.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the bail system.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the bully not to impose internet censorship.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Wayfair to stop supplying immigration prisons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
California Is Headed Toward a Titanic Battle Over Raising Property Taxes (for commercial real estate only, not for homes).
I'm in favor of this, but I suggest also establishing a progressive tax rate for property taxes. There is no reason to limit the tax rate on mansions to the same percentage as the tax rate on ordinary homes.
Art Spiegelman wanted to compare the Red Skull, Captain America's enemy decades ago, to the Orange Skull that threatens America today, in his introduction to a book about the first decade of Marvel Comics. But the chairman of Marvel is a big supporter of the conman, and demanded Spiegelman remove it. So Spiegelman published his introduction elsewhere.
Arguing for allowing people to vote starting at age 16.
The last 120 remaining refugees dumped by Australia on Manus Island will be permitted to move to the capital of Papua New Guinea.
In a city they may have a better chance to fit in and avoid being noticed in unpleasant ways.
Here's why it is so hard for the US to end the wars that it can't win: because fools say we owe it to the soldiers that died to keep sending more soldiers to die.
We did not know in 2001 how the war in Afghanistan would turn out. Perhaps the US could have achieved a better outcome if Dubya had not conquered and occupied Iraq. But now we know that continuing the war achieves nothing except to kill more Afghans and more Americans. It behooves us to stop.
Then the Taliban can fight PISSI.
Assad's forces and Russian forces are bombing Idlib into rubble, advancing in a wave behind which is a desert. No civilians wait to be captured.
California has made it easier to prosecute killer thugs. Now they need a reasonable basis to feel threatened — just claiming to have felt threatened is not enough.
New York City has fired the thug that put Eric Garner in a choke-hold and thus killed him.
It should not have taken years to do this.
Salvini is keeping a hundred refugees, rescued at sea, bottled up for weeks on a ship where they have no room to walk. None of the refugees would stay in Italy — they already have invitations to other EU countries. But that does not deter Salivini's sadism: he hurts them because he can, to demonstrate his strength, fascist style. We know the recipe: pick some people too weak to defend themselves, call them a menace, and vent sadism at them. If they die, that proves Salvini's worthiness to rule and wreak more suffering.
US government policies, compared with racist voting restrictions, took away the land of a million black farmers, especially from 1950 to 1969.
Under Reagan, most US family farms (even those owned by whites) were wiped out by luring owners to take loans they could not pay back.
Perhaps the US voters prefer Biden because of his lack of excitement.
If so, how sad and how foolish, because he won't do anything to restrain the plutocrats, not push hard enough to save us from global heating disaster. If he is nominated, I will vote Green. I'd rather vote for a good candidate that loses than a useless candidate that wins.
Donna Green asked her boyfriend, Robert Ronald Cooper, to give her a fatal dose of heroin to end her painful illness. He did so, and has been sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Given the other stated circumstances, I could understand doubting his assertion that she requested this. But supposing she did so, he does not deserve to punished at all for helping her escape that pain.
Reportedly China is deploying robot judges.
I suppose text-to-speech is sufficient for announcing a verdict that was decided in advance.
It appears that MDMA helps alcoholics stay off alcohol.
The Iranian oil tanker seized by Gibraltar is free to leave. The question now is whether the US will seize it on the high seas.
The deceptive "crisis pregnancy centers" that pretend to be abortion clinics use a loophole to get listed in Google searches without any indication to the user that they are not real abortion clinics.
An Austrian party, likely to form the next government, says it will ban a violent right-wing extremist group.
Jamaica has charged six thugs with murder for shooting a man on the street.
The New School has dropped its investigation of Professor Sheck.
Her alleged wrong was to quote author James Baldwin correctly.
(satire) Amazon Workers Now Being Shipped In Packages To Personally Assure Customers They're Treated Well.
The mainstream media are downplaying large protests against Bolsonaro.
Feeling Down? Talk to a Stranger!
The cod in the North Sea recovered when given protection, but now they are crashing again.
The water there may now be too warm for them.
Sanders stated his plans for the criminal justice system: eliminating cash bail, shortening sentences, legalizing marijuana, ending the death penalty, and banning government use of face recognition.
I basically support these plans. Naturally I don't agree with them 100%, but they would be a great step forward. We need to prohibit most use of face recognition regardless of what entity is doing it.
I might permit use of face recognition in narrow circumstances, one of them being under a specific court order to look for specified persons in a specified area.
The next step after climate crisis denial: climate crisis nihilism. Currently it takes the form of spewing hate and lies towards Greta Thunberg.
This is a sign of how right-wing extremists have endorsed bullying and have no respect for truth.
Focusing on her excessively is a fault on the part of her supporters. They should heed her advice and take action instead.
I don't think Thunberg will regret not having had a conventional adolescence. 20 years from now, as everyone her age copes with the climate disaster, she will know that her efforts made it somewhat less. Everyone will know this.
A gang waited for and attacked UK journalist Owen Jones as he left a pub.
The FBI could fight far-right violence if they wanted to — but they don't.
New York City Raised Minimum Wage to $15, And Its Restaurants Outperformed the Nation.
Various countries, and Amnesty International, have published travel warnings against visiting the US, because visitors might get shot, or even that they might get shot by racist thugs.
Face recognition by companies and public agencies is spreading around the UK.
Shell Chemicals ordered workers to attend the conman's rally and pretend to be supporters.
A secret UK government document predicted grave difficulties at the border if the UK leaves the EU without a trade deal. This was leaked. Naturally, the Tories now in power condemn the leak, not their plans.
Russia sent tanks into Ukraine to fight for the Russian-sponsored rebels.
Cucinelli, appointed head of non-immigration, tried to make Virginia officials show support for the Confederacy.
Indonesia has arrested 43 Papuan independence protesters for nothing more than throwing the Indonesian flag into a sewer.
Conservative minds want to demand "respect" and punish people for not giving it. This is morally misguided: to get respect, you must earn it, and that goes for states as well as people.
US citizens: call your representative in the Democratic National Committee and say you want a real climate debate.
When you enter your zip code, it should show you a number to call.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the No Federal Funds for Public Charge Act (H.R. 3222). This would prevent implementation of the cruel bastard's rule change that is designed to block low-income Americans from bringing their spouses and children to the US.
Tuvalu's presentations about global heating disaster failed to penetrate the closed eyes of Australian politicians, but did spoil their pretense of reaching out in friendship to the Pacific island nations.
The CITES meeting offers, perhaps, one last chance to prevent extinction of the vaquita porpoise, and many other endangered species.
In the UK, even thug departments are resisting face recognition.
A town in the UK is installing extremely expensive toilets that will be designed to harass anyone that tries to sleep or have sex in them.
And if that's not bad enough, they plan to charge money to use them.
Republican saboteurs are permitting rapid destruction of US public lands.
The insecurity of wireless networks is making them dangerous for phone users.
Is your bank pressuring you to use biometric ID? If so, please write to rms at gnu dot org. It could be useful if you document what is happening.
Huawei Technicians Helped African Governments Spy on Political Opponents.
"They (unionized Goodyear workers) are not mad at the workers in Mexico. They are mad that Goodyear went down there and underpaid those workers. They are mad that Goodyear is taking our work and moving it there."
Google Employees Protest Proposed Contract with [border thugs and deportation thugs].
The Answer To Burn-Out At Work Isn’t "Self-Care" — It’s Unionizing.
When Apple suspects a user of fraud, it judges the case secretly and presents the verdict as a fait accompli. The punishment to a user found guilty is being cut off for life, which more-or-less cripples the user's Apple devices forever. There is no appeal.
Planned Parenthood is on the verge of losing its federal funding, which will cut off a large fraction of its activities.
Apple charges a high price for storage on "Apple's cloud", which turns out to be a cloudy thing: it farms out the data to other companies.
Sudan Opposition And Military Sign Final Power-Sharing Accord.
Some politicians call for a "war on terror" in the US which would surely include general repression and denial of our human rights.
The Nuclear Arms Race Is Back … And Ever More Dangerous Now.
Hawaiians say that blocking construction of a telescope is fighting "corporate culture".
Notice the words "it is said" which the article used to cast doubt on the practical reasons to put the telescope there, while saying nothing about what they are.
Some obvious reasons why Mauna Kea is an unusually good place to put the world's biggest telescope: Mauna Kea is high (better seeing conditions); the air is clean (better seeing conditions); there is very little light pollution (fainter objects are visible); it is fairly close to the equator (can view nearly all the sky); there is already a good road down to facilities not far away (makes construction cheaper).
Blocking the telescope would do no actual good for Hawaiians and would be a loss for all humanity.
'Plastic Recycling Is a Myth': What Really Happens to Your Rubbish?
(satire) We Need a Wizard Who Can Appeal to the Moderate Orc Voter.
Some Massachusetts politicians want to repress marijuana purchasers with face recognition.
Hundreds of prisoners go on hunger strike each year in the UK's immigration prisons.
There was a protest in favor of democracy in Hong Kong in Melbourne, Australia. State-managed Chinese social media stirred up a lot of young Chinese expats to rally against them. A physical tussle developed.
The article does not say, but I expect that the supporters of China started the tussle. Propaganda has taught them that the cause of China's power is sacred and that anyone who questions it is evil.
Many Chinese students go to Australia, and China has a history of using them for political intimidation in Australia. It is important to develop systematic ways to expose students from China to other values while they are in Australia.
One idea that occurs to me is to have a kiosk which can tell people whether their mobile phones, which they have "switched off", are really off. It would be interesting to tell students from China whether China is snooping on the conversations around them. It would be interesting for everyone else that carries a Stalin's Dream device, too.
The bully's latest act of contempt for the non-rich is to forbid them from bringing spouses or relatives to the US.
Ironically, the effect of this is much worse because of the decreasing real wages that employers in the US have been permitted to pay.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the balanced budget amendment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support the states' lawsuit against the Sprint/T-mobile merger.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Uber drivers are unaware of the cost of wear on their cars, but it adds up to 11 billion dollars a year.
Mexico's president threatens to require mobile phones to pay for gasoline, road tolls, and public transportation.
Former MSNBC Reporter Spills Details On Pro-Establishment Bias In Media.
If You Are Looking for Evidence of WaPo Media Bias Against Bernie Sanders, Here It Is.
(satire) Why English is a weird, incoherent, insane-sounding language.
The snooper wants to extend the "USA Freedom Act", which gave the NSA power to spy on Americans.
Meanwhile, the rest of the U SAP AT Riot Act was already made permanent, but we need to get rid of it.
Israel offered to allow Rep. Tlaib to visit Palestine on "humanitarian" grounds — so she could visit her grandmother.
However, this included a condition of staying silent on politics, which she decided she should not accept.
Meanwhile, Israel bars some Palestinians in Gaza from visiting their sick relatives getting treatment in hospitals in Israel.
"The extent to which the Israeli government has designated opposition to its policies as not just illegitimate but also illegal is now plain to see."
"Reverse warrants" threaten privacy because they permit the state to investigate thousands of people at once.
(satire) Epstein Guards Placed On Disciplinary Leave For Allowing Selves To Be Distracted By Mischievous Monkey That Stole Key Ring.
Australia's overt contempt for the global heating threat to islands in the Pacific opens the door to Chinese influence.
China is contributing massively to global heating, but there is no such thing as domestic public opinion in China, so you're not as likely to hear about it.
Australia could prosper by dropping fossil fuels, but the rich people that the right-wing government obeys would not profit as much.
[US thugs] Promised Witnesses [gratis] Ring Surveillance Cameras If They Testified Against Neighbors.
Zuckerberg gave a false answer testifying to Congress about Facebook's audio surveillance.
Many articles are being published which describe slavery in Virginia as starting in 1619. In fact, the Africans arriving then were indentured, like many of the white settlers. It was several decades later that this was replaced with slavery and racism.
Being indentured was rotten, but still left some minimal rights, and the indenture ended after specified term of years.
Compostable bowls contain PFAS, a persistent environmental toxin.
This article explains why that matters.
Salafi Arabian deportation thugs treat Ethiopians the way US border thugs treat Hondurans, but with less hesitation.
White supremacism is seeping into ALEC.
I don't think racism is any part of ALEC's mission. ALEC is a dooH niboR campaign and focuses 100% on promoting class injustice. But it's impossible nowadays to package lots of Republican plutocratists without finding crumbs of white supremacism mixed in.
Hong Kong protesters have adopted as their hero and symbol the woman whose eye was shot by thugs.
"Social media must not rob us of the right to change our minds."
That is what Twitter does.
I refuse to be part of a "tribe" of people who have to agree.
I hope to persuade you of various views, but I don't want to lead a tribe in which people would be compelled to follow my views.
Germany and Norway have cut off donations to a Brazilian fund that is supposed to be used to protect the Amazon forest.
Bolsonaro has undermined the activity this was supposed to support.
Big Brother Watch warns of a global "epidemic" of face recognition cameras.
Sanders Says, If Israel Wants to [refuse admission to] Members of Congress, It Should Not Receive Billions in US Military Aid.
Buenos Aires Judge Bans Delivery Apps After Road Accidents Spike.
The company PR department said its first priority is the health of its couriers, but the dispatcher was evidently taught to value the product more. How can we interpret this contradiction? I suspect that the dispatcher was taught the company's real values by the real pressures placed on per.
Nothing teaches managers to avoid work accidents like making the company pay for them. That's what worker's compensation is for. But the piecework sweatshop economy makes the workers "independent contractors", so they don't get workers' compensation. Change that, and the companies may learn to truly value the workers' health.
Proposing to help more people sit in crowded German regional trains by making all cars second-class.
The Pacific Island Forum almost failed to reach any agreement on a communique, because of the dispute between some countries threatened by global heating and the planet roasters of Australia. After many hours they reached a compromise which calls for some action — but which Australia will not heed.
I think it was a strategic mistake to compromise with Australia.
These callous right-wingers will continue working for disaster no matter what they say. It would have been better for the event to split and make a statement condemning Australia (and China, and the US, etc.).
Proposing a Hippocratic oath for mathematicians and software developers.
Listening to people's problems and their causes can sometimes find an amazingly simple social solution.
Netanyahu decided not to allow Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to lead a tour of members of Congress to Palestine.
This has earned him a lot of criticism already. But I think he has become a supporter of his fellow right-wing extremist, the bully, and does not care about alienating Democratic US Jews.
US citizens: call on Democratic Presidential Candidates to take the "NoKXL Pledge" — to cancel the Keystone XL planet-roaster pipeline first thing if elected.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Walmart to publish plans to stop using HFCs as refrigerants.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use lynx.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Zimbabwe's new dictator has deployed thugs in advance to intimidate a planned protest.
In the UK as in the US, searching people on the street with no specific suspicion does little to reduce street crime, but it's a great way to harass minority groups and make them resentful.
No wonder Bogus Johnson wants to do more of it.
"The Third Way", a think-tank for plutocratists in the Democratic Party, published a report in favor of business-supremacy treaties with funding from the Koch brothers.
Americans who oppose racism are going nuts, and treating racial slurs as unutterable taboos, rather than the insults that they are. Even to quote a use of the taboo word, regardless of why, unleashes condemnation.
In fear of that taboo, a famous writers' famous quotation was altered and missed its intended point, and a professor is being investigated for calling attention to that.
I urge people to familiarize themselves with the difference between using a word and mentioning it. I don't use racial slurs, because I don't want to insult people, but it is impossible to discuss racism clearly without mentioning (talking about) those slurs.
Likewise, I never use the term "intellectual property", but I mention it to say why it spreads confusion.
Humanity's Destruction of Oceans Nearly Doubled Over a Decade, Scientists Warn, and Could Double Again Without Urgent Action.
Military power and its use considered as the national religion of the US.
Saboteurs in the Department of Energy want to use clean energy funds to build a fossil fuel storage facility.
A gang of LA thugs came up suddenly at Ryan Twyman as he was sitting in his car, and quickly began shooting. Then they harassed his family.
The US has a long history of violence against Hispanics; initially Mexicans.
"Free movement of goods" includes free movement of plant diseases. Many species of trees will be wiped out in many countries.
India is requiring Bengali-speaking inhabitants of Assam to prove their ancestors lived in Assam before 1971, or face being declared stateless. Many of them are illiterate and can't understand the documents they need to search for. If they can't prove they are descended from Indian citizens at that time, they will be presumed stateless.
This seems to be a scheme to eliminate Muslim citizens from India.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold corporations accountable for knowingly poisoning Americans with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
Iraq's harvest has been greatly reduced due to an unusual number of farm fires, some of which are due to arson.
I wonder if global heating is partly responsible. July set a world temperature record as hottest month since records began. Did it set a temperature record in Iraq, too?
US citizens: call on California governor Newsom to block all new fossil fuel developments and cut back use of existing fossil fuel facilities.
Salafi Arabia and its allies covered up attacks on civilians, so any promises it makes about how it will use arms that are sold to it are worthless.
In other words, if you sell bone saws, don't believe promises from Salafi Arabia that they won't be used for murder.
Belize has banned fishing in 16% of its waters, including waters near the coast, and enforced fishing licenses. As a result, its fish stocks are stable.
(satire) Harvard Streamlines Admission Process By Directly Growing New Students From DNA Of Top Donors.
When I posted that assault weapons should be banned because they fire with higher muzzle velocities, and therefore the wounds they cause are more grievous and more likely to be fatal, I misinterpreted the article I was referring to. This was pointed out to me by a reader.
The comparison actually described by the surgeon was between high-powered rifles and handguns. The point is that all high-powered rifles produce wounds that are more harmful and more likely to kill, than the wounds made by handguns. This means I need to change the conclusions I drew.
My revised conclusion is that we should require high-powered rifles owned by the public to be designed to hold a small number of rounds, contained in a fixed part of the rifle rather than in a magazine that can be quickly replaced.
India is treating Kashmir like a country it has just conquered.
Some Kashmiris expect India to treat Kashmir the way Israel treats Palestine.
I was thinking the same thing myself.
By these criteria for effective altruism, the free software movement is a good choice to have a high impact. Their criteria are
The "cancel" culture — one strike and you're out.
The US is already adopting an anti-protection agenda for threatened and endangered species.
The plutocrats regard these species as obstacles to untrammeled exploitation of the whole world.
How researchers deduce that the increase in methane level since 2000 is mainly due to fracking in the US.
It Is Time to Haul Boeing Executives Before Congress to Testify Under Oath.
The CEOs of big US companies now get an income (on average) of 275 times what the workers get.
The expression "1000%" is somewhat inflationary — I think the CEOs' income has increased by a factor of 11 since 1978.
In India, government lies used for political manipulation have become accepted as normal.
Comparing it to the credulousness of today's US Republicans, it appears not to go to the same lengths, but covers a majority of the people.
Japan conscripted 240,000 Koreans during World War II. (Japan was able to do this since it had conquered Korea in 1910.) After the war, South Korea called them traitors. Their families have little information about what happened to them.
The people in those families were wronged twice, and I am sorry for them. But sorry also that they put so much importance on scraps of information that wouldn't change anything about those wrongs.
No good can come from obsessing about the corpse of someone who died in 1943. Every Korean, and every Japanese, is familiar with the basic ideas of Buddhism. This attachment causes suffering, and only suffering.
It would be so much wiser to redirect the feeling of loss into efforts to avoid future wars, future conscription, and future suffering.
A proposed Oregon ballot initiative would legalize use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in carefully managed situations.
The Chinese plan to defeat Hong Kong's democracy movement is subtle and cunning.
Drawing them into violence and into annoying other Hong Kongers is part of it.
'Frightened, Angry And Exhausted' Hong Kong Protesters Apologies for Airport Violence.
It looks like they understand the game Chine is playing.
Fracking is the major cause of increased methane emissions.
The San Francisco school board has decided to hide, not paint over, the controversial paintings that showed George Washington's involvement in fighting indigenous peoples and owning slaves.
If the problem is presenting these paintings without context, the solution is obvious — provide context!
Museums of natural history are showing very graphically what human activities are doing to wildlife. This makes a powerful impression on children.
Netanyahu plans to respond to the killing of an Israeli with collective punishment: expanding Israeli colonies in Palestinian territory.
Netanyahu assumes that the killing was politically motivated (therefore terrorism) and done by a Palestinian, but that is just a surmise. The facts are simply not known. But he does know who he wants to punish.
Basra's Chaldean church has been renovated, but there are few Christians left in Basra, and not many in Iraq. The upheavals caused by US wars have chased them out.
When they come to the US, is that one of the "faith-based initiatives" that Dubya wanted?
The IHRA definition of "anti-semitism" is being used to demonize criticism of the occupation of Palestine as anti-semitism.
Real anti-semites, including Nazis, find the IHRA definition useful for defending themselves -- they argue that they support Israel, so we should ignore the fact that they hate Jews.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say, "No vote on NAFTA 2.0 until it's fixed."
I think 1-855-973-4213 is a number you can use. Here are points you can mention.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Tell ABC and Univision that we need a real health care debate.
Facebook admits having presented audio recordings of conversation between useds for purposes of improving its speech recognition.
I think this is a secondary issue. The job being done is not malicious in its own right.
What I find more worrisome is that Facebook (or Google, or Apple) could transcribe conversations automatically and use the results automatically for purposes such as surveillance capitalism, censorship, and repression.
More about the split between various Yemenite groups that were previously supported by the "coalition" intervention.
The "government" of Yemen has no particular legitimacy. It was "internationally backed" in the sense that Salafi Arabia and the UAE (two cruel and vicious states) supported it, along with their unsavory allies.
May the rest of the world help the Yemenite factions make peace, instead of stirring up war.
Abdurahman Memet published the propaganda letters his relatives in Chinese prisons were forced to send, and now he has disappeared.
Australia's planet-roaster government was unable to buy approval from the island states that Australia is helping to inundate. The host of the Pacific Islands Forum said that no amount of funding makes up for Australia’s failure to cut emissions.
Israel's ruling party suppressed the Arab vote by setting up video recorders inside voting places where many Arabs live.
Israel is trying to drive the Palestinian inhabitants out of a region of occupied Palestine by cutting them off from water. This includes destroying their water pipes and blocking trucks.
Imprisoned feminist Loujain al-Hathloul in Salafi Arabia was offered release from prison if she would say, for a published video, that she had not been tortured. She refused.
What courage!
Of 6,000 prisoners that the deportation thugs kept in solitary, 40% had mental illness.
Statue of Liberty Shown Cuffed and Arrested by Immigration Officials in New Mural.
Bogus Johnson has followed the bullshitter in ceasing to hold press conferences where journalists ask questions.
Stacey Abrams will lead a national campaign against voter suppression.
Sugar cane farmers in Australia a funding a tour by a denialist ex-professor who pretends that agricultural runoff from cane farms doesn't harm the Great Barrier Reef.
The goal of this is to scrap regulations that would protect the reef.
This denialism won't fool the coral. It will die anyway. Then the farmers could argue that it wasn't the runoff, it was the ocean heating and the dissolved CO2 that did it.
Indeed, we must stop all three to save that reef, and all the other coral reefs in the world.
Falling snow is full of microplastics which it concentrates out of the air. Are they causing lung cancer?
Mainstream Media Smear Sanders for Saying That the Mainstream Media Smear Sanders.
Clothing has been designed to appear to license-plate readers as a license-plate.
Iceland commemorates the first vanished glacier.
Despite the blatant evidence of global heating, a few lingering organized denial campaigns (including the Heatland Institute) struggle on with their eyes wide shut.
The fossil fools have plenty of money, and as long as they gain a little from these campaigns, they will keep funding them.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency ordered California not to put warning labels on glyphosate about its tendency to cause cancer.
The EPA was formerly the Environmental Protection Agency, but the saboteur-in-chief took control of it and turned it against its intended purpose.
I hope California will have a chance to overcome this in court.
Yemenite forces backed by the UAE are fighting with Yemenite forces backed by Salafi Arabia. Those two countries were supposedly intervening in Yemen as allies.
Cathay Pacific's solution to the risk of data breeches: demand nominal "consent" from passengers to collect data from cameras and other sources, and keep it as long as the company wishes.
This is an example of the "manufacture of consent," and shows why "you must get the surveillance object's consent" is ineffective for protecting privacy.
The UK government was closely involved in CIA torture.
A list of companies that some people are boycotting because of connections to the bullshitter.
They explain why they don't advocate boycotting Facebook. I also do not advocate boycotting Facebook. I advocate protecting yourself from Facebook (including Instagram and Whatsapp) by not letting them use you. Don't be a zucker!
The saboteur-in-chief plans several changes to undermine protection of species.
With global heating putting more species in danger, this is the other arm of the pincers: undermining efforts to protect them. Both measures will assure maximum destruction to Earth's natural ecosystems, getting them out of the way so that plutocrats can build, mine and farm anywhere they like.
US citizens: call on the US government not to make food stamps harder to get.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Wireless substitutes for car keys make car theft even easier.
The wireless switch can screw you even without a thief. Once two of us were borrowing a car, and my friend drove to an errand without having the key. (We didn't realize it was in my pocket.) It worked fine on the way to the errand …
Faced with trade controlled by business-supremacy treaties, which were designed to boost the rich owners of companies, the idea of being "tough on trade" only repeats the bullshit that national interests are competing.
What we need from officials in the area of trade is that they be honest rather that stooges.
Since Burma continues expelling Rohingya, and is buying arms from North Korea to attack other minorities, Congress should impose sanctions on businesses owned by the Burmese army.
Global heating has only started melting Greenland's ice, but it is making traditional ways of life impossible for Greenlanders.
Extreme weather at the North Pole, including lightning, may be related to a new record for loss of sea ice.
ACLU: Say No to the "Cashless Future" — and to Cashless Stores.
I have made "cash-only" my firm policy for buying any product. Aside from flights — which cannot be bought anonymously anyway — I never use my bank cards to pay for anything. Once you make this a firm policy, you won't be tempted to make any exceptions.
Don't be apologetic about refusing to pay by tracked digital methods.
A store which tries to pressure you into identifying yourself is doing an injustice to you and the public. Show indignation when you say no!
Developers in London are increasing the amount of "affordable housing" by stretching the definition of "affordable".
Rain in the Rocky Mountains is polluted by plastic microfibers.
Salman al-Odah has been a political prisoner in Salafi Arabia for two years, ever since he suggested, two years ago, that it resume friendly relations with Qatar. He has been tortured and brainwashed in prison.
He is likely to be executed.
American supporters of India's Hindu-nationalists pressured a US congresscritter into apologizing for a letter which criticized India's repressive suppression of Kashmir.
People in London seem to be bothered by face recognition cameras, except for those that have already surrendered to Big Brother.
You can help inspire them to un-surrender by standing firm against use of snooping technologies yourself.
(satire) Christ announced Monday that He has called off plans for His return upon coming to the realization that He has been gone so long at this point that coming back "would just be weird."
A salmon farm on a small island in the middle of protected wildlife could do many kinds of harm.
(satire) the Pentagon awarded Oscar Mayer a five-year, $102 million contract Monday to develop military-grade hot dogs, complete with all the fixings.
New York State says that Exxon's subpoenas to its investors are meant to intimidate them from testifying in court against Exxon.
Remember to avoid the solecism of pronouncing "Exxon" like "exon" ;-).
Foxconn's "pay us to make jobs" deal with Wisconsin is complete crap, and can't be fixed to "benefit" the state even when judged by the foolish standard of "getting enough jobs for the money."
"Subsidize a business to make jobs" is a form of trickle-down: making welfare payments to businesses so that a fraction of the money will reach non-rich citizens. As governments do this, they help businesses pressure them to do ever more of it.
Wisconsin should cancel the Foxconn deal the way New Yorkers cancelled NYC's Amazon deal.
The FBI Told Congress Domestic Terror Investigations Led to 90 Recent Arrests. It Wouldn’t Show Us Records of Even One.
The US pharma system was designed so that the public pays for the research, and the profits go to rich owners. It was set up this way by a scheme advised by right-wing economists and carried out by business lobbyists.
More recently, private equity companies have taken over many pharma companies and drive the gouging.
Pharma is one of the areas where patents do special harm.
It is unfortunate that the article occasionally says "IP" when it means patents. This encourages the confusion that the bogus overgeneralization "intellectual property" embodies.
The article suggests using compulsory licenses to knock down these patents when they endanger the public. I'm entirely in favor of that, but I think we need to cure the disease, not just treat the symptoms.
The cure I recommend is to take the testing of drugs out of the hands of drug manufacturers, thus eliminating their argument for artificial monopolies, and turn them into generic manufacturers.
In opinion polls, Sanders beats the bullshitter by the same margin as Biden.
So they are equally electable. However, Sanders would make a dent in plutocracy, while Biden would protect it.
China now offers any would-be totalitarian state the technology to watch and control everyone.
Mobile robots with face recognition now spread state control on streets.
China invites users of social media to act as stool pigeons in case any dissent goes unnoticed by the professional monitors and AI.
A study of college football players' brain scans found most of them showed signs of brain injury after just one season.
I think schools should not promote football.
(satire) The bully shows his rejection letter from the KKK to prove he is not a racist.
I can't tell whether the bully is really racist, or cynically faking it for the sake of political manipulation. Perhaps he is doing both at once. I don't think it makes much of a moral difference, though.
Massachusetts Governor Baker wants to use an invalid method to determine whether a driver is high on marijuana.
This is clearly unjust. And there is no pressing need to punish stoned drivers, because they are much less of a danger than drunk drivers. It is better to wait until there is a test for being stoned.
In the mean time, it should be possible to test whether a driver is currently mentally impaired, never mind the reason (marijuana, illness, lack of sleep). If so, it is possible to lead the driver to a place to pull over and rest.
Is it ethical to use AI to trace connections between homeless people so as to more effectively convince them to use condoms?
I don't see anything wrong with using AI for that, but it is wrong to collect that social network data in any way except by interviewing them for this specific purpose, and the data should be discarded afterward.
Refugees seeking asylum in the US are totally vulnerable to whatever immigration thugs write on their forms. If the thugs lie, and make the refugee look bad, there is no way to disprove the lie — unless it is so absurd that it disproves itself.
Versace humbled itself to Chinese nationalist market power with a cringeworthy apology for the mistake of presenting Hong Kong and Macau as countries.
It is true that they are not independent countries (unfortunately for them). If the shirt is meant to be factual, it would make sense to correct it. But there is no justification for the knowing.
Carole Cadwalladr explains the hidden, criminal Facebook advertising (implemented by Cambridge Analytica) which manipulated the UK's referendum about leaving the EU.
Her investigation and reporting made this known. But Facebook is still blocking further investigation.
Collecting data about people is an injustice. Profiling people is an injustice. Instead of looking for the smallest tweaks to prevent this problem, we should sweep away profiling and targeted advertising.
On Tulsi Gabbard's ties to violent Hindu extremists in India.
US thugs kill at least 25 dogs a day when they raid houses.
Recently one tried to shoot a dog, which was not actually threatening him, and killed the dog's owner instead.
The bully is "farming out" violence to individuals and private groups that are prepared to go further than official thugs.
Unlike the writer, I will not presume that the bully specifically intended that people respond to his scapegoating only with actions that fall short of murder. He's seen enough acts of right-wing terrorism in the US that he knows that some people respond that way.
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to endorse restoring Obama's network neutrality regulations.
True network neutrality goes further than those regulations. An ISP should not be allowed to make a dossier of your network contacts unless a court order says to do this specifically to you.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Leaked Draft of Trump Executive Order to 'Censor the Internet' Denounced as Dangerous, Unconstitutional Edict.
Refugee Behrouz Boochani, forcibly dumped on Manus Island by Australia, has won Australia's national biography award.
Bogus Johnson is aiming for a cheap and meaningless "success" by punishing harder the bulk of street crime, which is falling anyway.
Meanwhile, the kind of crime that Britain is not effectively handling is rape. But this needs changes in investigation and trial, not more thugs on the street.
Russia is developing a cruise missile powered by a nuclear reactor. It could fly for hours, perhaps days, on an evasive path, making defense very difficult — if it doesn't explode on the ground and release fallout.
A US neo-Nazi leader, who adores the bully, has been ordered to pay 14 million dollars in damages for leading a campaign of harassment against Tanya Gersh.
It is unfortunate that the article promotes the incoherent term "intellectual property". Since it "refers" to many unrelated kinds of assets, it would have been clearer simply to say "assets".
There is now a more-or-less cure for Ebola. When people seek treatment quickly, over 90% of them can be cured.
Invasive species threaten 40% of US forests.
The death of trees means that trees will not absorb CO2 as we expected them to. In addition, it means that planting trees will be less effective that it might seem. Planting a sapling does no good unless it lives to become a large tree.
If a tree is going to die anyway, it could be better to cut it down and soak it in something that will kill the pests and keep the carbon in the wood, than to let pests convert its carbon into CO2.
US government saboteurs are making it hard to protect species that are one step away from bring endangered. To start the protection later means more chance they will ultimately become extinct.
Goldsmiths College in London has banned selling beef on campus, because of its greenhouse gas impact.
This is in addition to divesting from fossil fuel companies.
I support this change. However, the article errs when it says that the best way to reduce your climate footprint is to avoid meat and cheese. The real best way is to avoid having children.
Fiji is proposing a strong greenhouse gas reduction plan, hoping it will exert moral suasion at the coming Pacific Islands Forum.
At the forum: Tuvalu Children Welcome Leaders with a Climate Plea.
Analyzing NPR's biased coverage of Venezuela and other countries in Latin America.
Large animals that live in rivers are rapidly being wiped out, around the world.
Foxconn hires workers 16 years old, then illegally has them working at night and in overtime.
Even worse, their work is to make spy devices intended to seduce users into leaving them on and listening. What Mata Hari only pretended to have done, these devices really do.
This is bad enough when presented without distortion, so let's avoid the exaggeration of calling 16-year-olds "schoolchildren".
Ricardo Galvão, formerly in charge of protecting the Amazon, says that if Bolsonaro's attack continues, the forest will be ruined.
Arguing that "the intensity and polarization of the US gun debate makes much more sense when understood in the context of whiteness and white privilege."
Black men who carry guns lawfully are likely to get killed for it, because a thug will feel threatened by it and kill them, so in practice that is a privilege for white man only.
Why [the bully's] "Maximum Pressure" Foreign Policy Yields Minimum Results.
20 years after No Logo warned against colonization of people's thoughts by brands, "The biggest change since… is that neoliberalism has created so much precarity that the commodification of the self is now seen as the only route to any kind of economic security."
I point out that I do very little that directly boosts Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft. It is not as hard as the article makes it out to be. Just reject services that mistreat you.
US citizens: call on Japan, and some big Japanese companies, to stop funding more coal plants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An Israeli government web called a Palestinian human rights defender a "terrorist", which inspired comments calling for murdering him.
A proposed law to make certain crimes even more illegal would also make it possible to charge anyone that sells drugs to a sex worker with "sex trafficking", and likewise anyone that trades drugs for sex (even with someone that isn't a sex worker).
Drought is killing German forests.
The article does not specifically relate this to global heating but they surely are connected.
The bullshitter is following Hitler's methods — and not by coincidence. He studied Hitler's speeches.
Here's substantiation for what it says about his having a copy of Hitler's speeches.
It is strange to include rejection of business-supremacy treaties, or even outright protectionism, in a list of similarities to Hitler's methods. Protectionism was standard practice in the 1930s, while business-supremacy treaties as found today did not exist then.
But the overall point is valid even without those. The agreements Hitler tore up included arms limitation treaties, and the bullshitter is doing the same.
US public libraries are to continue "lending" unjust ebooks on terms that no one should stand for.
"The good old days? Look deeper and the myth of ideal communities fades."
Amazon is spending lots of money to defeat Seattle city councillor Kshama Sawant.
Let's give our support to defeating Amazon.
Bolsonaro wants to give thugs a license to kill with impunity.
Philippines: US Rights Volunteer Branded "Enemy of State" Shot Outside Home.
Study if the idea of "ethical AI" often suffers from a lack of firm starting principles to base it on, which makes it easy to be stretch to serve the interests of whoever in charge of the system.
An estimated 10% of the population of Eritrea has fled the country to escape from forced labor, which can continue for any number of years.
50,000 people marched in Moscow for free elections for the city government.
"Even with major efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, 80% of the [Joshua] trees’ habitat will be whittled away by the end of the century."
A species confined to a small territory is vulnerable to any sort of local accident. If the Joshua trees become extinct, the other species that depend on them will be extinct too.
The UK continues the Tory cruelty of making disabled people destitute if they miss a welfare appointment (because, for instance, of being in the hospital).
Monsanto Manipulates Science to Make Roundup Appear Safe.
"Attorneys have cited internal Monsanto records that they say demonstrate how the company has manipulated and corrupted the scientific record with respect to the herbicide’s safety."
The US-China trade war has slowed the increase in use of oil.
That's good, but not enough. We need to reduce world oil use, not just slow its increase.
Marine heatwaves kill coral instantly — and it is already happening in tropical reefs.
The death of the coral animals doesn't just leave the reef static. The exoskeletons that make up the reef degrade. Many marine species could go extinct as a result. And half a billion people could starve.
Perez, head of the Democratic National Committee, has proposed a vague resolution calling for climate defense action — instead of a candidates' debate about climate.
(satire) critics unanimously accused lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret of promoting unattainable beauty standards Friday with the release of their new 3-cup bra.
Because China's big banks are mostly government-owned, they cannot collapse, and the state doesn't let them shut down a company that is useful to society.
Israel confiscated a shipment of hiking boots to Palestine, saying that they were "hidden in a shipment of civilian goods".
Hikers need pants, too, but don't tell the Israeli government that.
A SWAT team thug shot 12-year-old Amir Worship as he was sitting on the bed with his hands up. He will never be able to walk normally again.
Plutocratist Democrats in Congress want Rep. Maxine Waters to squeeze campaign funds out of big banks and share it with them, but she decided to champion their customers' rights instead.
Unesco Demands Answers from Peru over Impact of New Machu Picchu Airport.
People often wonder why thee are two c's in "Picchu". It's because the first c is pronounced separately. In Quechua, at least in that area, a c at the end of a syllable stands for the Spanish j sound. So if it were written using Spanish orthography, it would be "Pijchu."
Democratic Socialist Lawmaker Persuades Fellow Denver City Council Members to End Contracts With For-Profit Prison Operators.
(satire) infant-mobility giant Graco issued a recall of several stroller models Thursday after discovering that the company’s branding was not visible enough.
Viewing logos from the earliest age is now considered crucial for babies' mental development.
Cars nowadays send lots of data to the manufacturer through a cellular data connection. A proposal in Massachusetts would require manufacturers to give users access to that data — through a nonfree app.
Yuck! This is oppressive practice of the Internet of Stings: making you communicate with the products you own via the manufacturer's server.
The cellular data connection enables the phone network to track the car's movements, but it wouldn't surprise me if the data includes GPS location. (Does anyone know for a fact?)
The right thing to require is that the car offer a data-only interface, such as a slot to put a memory chip into and the car will write the data on it. This way you could show that data to an independent repair shop when you want to, even though you disconnected the cellular data antenna and the GPS antenna just after you bought the car.
Proposing an ecological-social curriculum to complement the Green New Deal.
Extending the same ideas into computing, it incorporates the free software movement.
A US judge ruled that transgender students have the right to use the toilets corresponding to their gender identities.
This decision is only tentative, since the appeal is likely to go up to the Supreme Court, which is dominated by right-wingers.
Tesla users claim Tesla force-installed software to cut down on battery range, rather than replace the batteries.
Everyone: call on Walmart to stop selling guns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US, on Sep 20, join a climate strike action.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: ask your senators and representative to confirm they've read Daniel Ellsberg's letter about preventing nuclear war.
To sign without running nonfree software use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Bahrain released political prisoner Najah Yusuf, who was imprisoned specifically for criticizing the tyranny that rules Bahrain.
Bahrain crushed protests with the help of troops from other Arab countries and subsequently applied repression to the majority of Shi'a.
The economy of Zimbabwe is collapsing. It seems to be partly the fault of local corruption, and partly the fault of IMF-imposed policies to let the poor starve.
The author thinks that allowing foreigners to own local businesses is a change for the better; but that is a neoliberal policy which is meant to enable foreigners to drain the country's money (instead of the local elite which does so now). I would guess that was imposed by the IMF. Does anyone know?
In the long run, if poor people keep increasing the population, they are driving themselves into ever-deeper poverty.
The Ring company (before it was bought by Amazon) gave customers rewards for getting together to snitch on whoever they thought was "suspicious."
Election support systems are supposed to be kept off the internet as a security measure, but at least 35 US localities disregarded that precaution.
Many US summer camps maintain parents' engagement with their web sites by showing them lots of photos of their kids, whom it identifies using face recognition.
With this goes a team of photographers to make sure that every activity is monitored.
Journalists operating in Kashmir say that days of curfew have enraged almost everyone in Kashmir, even people who were not separatists. The populace is ready to explode.
People are running out of food. Sick people cannot get to the hospital and some are surely dying. The BBC saw 10,000 people protest; the Indian forces fired tear gas at them, because protest is forbidden.
Jeffrey Epstein appears to have committed suicide in his cell. Or perhaps he was murdered — it is not unusual for prisoners to murder prisoners accused of sexual crimes.
Epstein was accused of trafficking: bringing people long distances on false pretenses and then pressured them into sex or prostitution. He also reportedly raped some of those people. I believe those accusations, and I think he deserved to be imprisoned.
Some of his victims were legally adult. Some were teenage minors. I don't think that makes any moral difference. I don't think rape is less wrong if the victim is over 16.
Millennial generation parents are teaching their own parents to protect the privacy of their young children.
Alas, they are probably also snooping on those same children 24 hours a day.
But appreciation of any aspect of privacy is a step forward.
The next step is to spread awareness of how companies and schools spy on their children.
Making a federal law against "domestic terrorism" is superfluous in regard to real terrorists, but would endanger others who might be falsely labeled as terrorists.
This includes animal rights activists who have already been labeled as "terrorists".
It might also lead to injustices against non-terrorist right-wingers, comparable to those that have been inflicted on US Muslims.
However, I tend to think that their political power will more or less protect them from that.
Plant researcher Lewis Ziska quit the Department of Agriculture in protest against its political censorship of scientific work (especially, but not only, his own).
The planet roasters fund propaganda campaigns to undermine respect for science. Now they think they are in a position to kill off the science. They have thrown out reference libraries, killed of repeated measurements so that there won't be a series of comparable measurements to study later, and now censoring scientific publication.
Remember how global heating denialists argued that past climate measurements could not be analyzed over decades because they were not all made the same way?
When there's a new system of measurement, scientists must do careful work to correlate the old measuring system with the new one, and even after they arrive at the best correlation, it offers the denialists an avenue for injecting and magnifying doubt.
By killing off repeated measurements. the denialists hoped to create another opportunity to do that in the future.
Honduran President Hernández's campaign has been accused in the US of taking money from drug dealing and using it for bribes.
What we know for certain is that he is in office as a result of the coup that Clinton apparently approved when she was Secretary of State.
Ever since then, the government in Honduras has been plutocratist.
The American myth that a poor person can succeed on per own is used to distract poor people from the collective actions that have a better chance of really helping them.
This situation exists because of the combination of low social mobility and too little help for the poor. I think we should correct both of those problems, but the second one is the more important one.
Some cities operate "gun buyback" programs.
I think it makes sense to run a buyback program for guns that are no longer available to buy. Under those circumstances it is a way of reducing the number of such guns available to the public.
Facebook Reportedly in Talks with News Publishers to Offer 'Millions' for [the stories they publish].
This plan would help counteract the harm Facebook does to newspapers' finances; but it would cement and increase Facebook's power. Thus, overall it would make the situation worse.
Please do not refer to publications as "content". That adopts a point of view which treats them as a fungible commodity.
The former acting chief of the FBI has sued, alleging that the bully arranged with Wray and Sessions to oust him and others who did not put the bully above the country.
Uber has always intentionally operated at a loss. This enabled Uber to undercut competition. However, lately it has been losing more than a billion dollars a month.
This makes Uber vulnerable. Drive in the stake — cut off Uber now!
Global heating has caused a plague of oak processionary caterpillars in Germany. They release tiny toxic hairs.
Large numbers of them might kill some oak trees, too.
US citizens: call on Congress to oppose the Senate's anti-asylum bill.
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire) The Republican's backup plan to get rid of immigration is for right-wing terrorism to make the US so dangerous that people will feel safer in Guatemala.
US citizens: call on Faux News to stop supporting white-nationalist talking points.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Apple is putting DRM on batteries, and the system software turns off certain features when batteries are replaced other than by Apple.
Suggestion: avoid the word "taxpayers".
It focuses attention on the part of the public that pays taxes rather than on the whole public which the state exists to serve.
Cary Gillam: "I'm a journalist. Monsanto built a step-by-step strategy to destroy my reputation."
India has converted Kashmir from a state to a pair of territories.
This means less possibility of any kind of self-government.
India has blocked all communications and travel. If this continues, people will have to rebel to survive. It is effectively military occupation, even more strict than the occupation of Palestine.
The brief history of creative adventure playgrounds — before obsessive safety culture started crushing childhood.
Canada Announces Regulations to Cut Price of Prescription Drugs.
The prices are much lower in Canada than in the US because Canada doesn't have the US laws that were adopted to keep the prices high.
After a deadly terrorist attack in France by Palestinian terror group Abu Nidal, in 1982, France made a deal with the group: France would not hassle the group as long as it did not attack in France.
To avoid environmental disaster, we need to eliminate consumption competitions and consumption pressure — such as the "fashion industry".
Wet wipes, aka moist towelettes, can't be broken down by sewage treatment plants. When they get into a sewer, they give structure to fatbergs and make them hard to break up.
It is better to avoid these wipes. I never use them.
Four squares of two-ply toilet paper, folded four times and wetted, make something that works to wash your behind with, and no plastic in it.
Biden is being attacked for a minor verbal slip.
He contrasted "poor" with "white", when saying that children of both groups have the same potential. Maybe he meant to condemn racial discrimination, or maybe he meant to condemn economic discrimination, but he got the two confused and ended up condemning a mixture of both.
Is that a bad thing? We know that the two discriminations often operate in parallel.
I will not vote for Biden, but that's for reasons of substance: he does not oppose the plutocracy which promotes racism and is makes economic discrimination so bad.
Jimmy Aldaoud had never been in Iraq, and knew no one in Iraq, but he was an Iraqi citizen. So the US deported him there, where he predictably became homeless, and predictably died from lack of insulin just two months later.
The US targeted refugees associated with Iraq, including Aldaoud, as part of the bully's "Muslim ban". Ironically, Aldaoud was a Christian, but that didn't save him.
Microsoft Contractors Are Listening to Some Skype Calls.
(satire) a local iPhone was reportedly growing paranoid Wednesday that its owner knew it was working with the FBI.
(Every one of them does that, if the FBI wishes.)
The felony murder rule punishes criminals for murder when killings happen incidentally in a crime they participated in, even slightly.
It is evidently unjust, and when the state presents it as justice, it distorts the basic idea of justice.
The mention of Ryan Holle in the article is somewhat misleading. He was aware that his roommate wanted the car that day for a robbery.
It would have been just to prosecute him as an accessory to robbery.
It is clear on the general principles of penology why this bonus punishment does nothing to deter other crimes: the situation is so unlikely to arise (when people carry out some other crime) that it is effectively a freak accident. It won't affect the mental calculations of anyone planning a robbery.
Making freak accidents worse is not a service to the public.
Someone is being prosecuted for bribing AT&T employees to unlock phones, and later to plant spyware in AT&T's systems.
Planting spyware should be a crime — too bad they don't prosecute companies for making software that spies on users but there is nothing wrong about unlocking phones, because it is an injustice to lock them in the first place.
Selling locked phones is an example of the "suffer injustice now, pay later" business model that is a major factor in sucking freedom out of life.
Developing methods to guide parents away from anti-vaxxer FUD.
Private medical insurance in the US is a totally lousy system.
Medicare for All means getting rid of it entirely — and good riddance!
"Adversarial interoperability" led to useful competition among many manufacturers of PCs. Various bad US laws have created obstacles which contribute to today's systems as prisons.
Businesses are working hard to convince workers (and retired workers) to bet that they will do better at investing a lump sum than their pensions will do. It's a sucker's bet.
(satire) Mitch McConnell Wonders If He Could’ve Done More To Harm People In Private Sector.
An Israeli soldier was stabbed and killed in the occupied West Bank (part of Palestine). Israelis presume it was done by a Palestinian.
Suppose that was so. If the killing was done for a personal motive, then it was murder. If it was done as an act of resistance to occupation, it was war. In neither case does it qualify as "terrorism", because terrorism means making war on civilians.
If Palestinians attack Israeli noncombattant civilians, that is terrorism. If Israelis attack Palestinian noncombattant civilians, that too is terrorism.
Climate Crisis Reducing Land's Ability to Sustain Humanity, Says IPCC.
The article mentions population growth as one of the causes of this problem.
Agriculture produces almost 1/4 of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Considering also the long-term effect on ecosystems shows farming to be even more destructive.
Ralph Nader: Message to Congress: Big Pharma’s Trail of Greed, Power, and Cruelty Must Be Stopped.
Hong Kong thugs arrested a protester for carrying a laser pointer, so others held a laser-display protest.
Impeachment was designed for presidents like the bullshitter.
Alas, it was designed for a country without political parties, one in which almost everyone in Congress would want to kick out a president that is a slimeball.
Coal miners in Kentucky are blocking a coal train because the mine declared bankruptcy and is cheating required workers.
I am in favor of smoothing the transition to renewable energy.
However, survival of civilization requires cutting off coal mining, and soon. Whatever suffering this causes to the discharged workers, that will be much less than the suffering continued extraction would cause.
The sooner we do it, the more resources will be available to help the ex-miners.
We could give all the ex-miners what they deserve, if we can tax the rich. But we have to stop the mining whether we can tax the rich or not. At the point of desperation, it is better to save some than save none.
About the campaign to save old footpaths in the UK, which are in danger of being legally eliminated if they are not redocumented by 2026.
Several officials have resigned from the US State Department for reasons of conscience.
B'tselem: Israeli soldiers use teargas canisters as deadly weapons by firing at people's heads.
Israeli orders say soldiers should not fire them even near to human beings. The soldiers who do this are evidently hoping to kill someone.
This practice is not limited to Israelis. Thugs in Portland, Oregon, did something similar.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the EPA's new excuse to conceal information about pollution.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Take Away My Employer-Based Health Insurance. Please.
(satire) The New York Times announced Tuesday that it had amended a headline from the morning’s front page reading "Hero Trump Disarms Would-Be Shooter". "The original headline did not live up to our standards of objectivity…"
(auto-satire) [The bullshitter] Praises New York Times Headline That Sparked Uproar after Shootings.
Israel sited the annexation wall as close as possible to Palestinian buildings. Now it says that the Palestinian buildings the wall runs close to are a security threat and use that as an excuse to demolish them.
Representatives Tlaib and Omar are organizing a congressional visit to Palestine to counteract the customary congressional visits to Israel.
The visitors will get a chance to see what life is like under occupation.
Israeli thugs interrogate young Palestinian children, age 4 and 6.
The thugs could pressure and intimidate them into saying almost anything the thugs wish.
California's coasts have been eroding for a long time, but sea-level rise and stronger storms, both due to global heating, are accelerating the erosion.
Hong Kong's lawyers (3,000 of them) protested "political prosecutions".
The UK is repressing protests by disabled people by reporting them for the welfare payments bureau, which then treats presumes them guilty of cheating.
Officials from El Paso told the racist bully to stay away; the mayor of Dayton encouraged the city's residents to protest when he comes.
EU countries are proposing to make people register for trains as they must for flights.
Please, EU citizens, organize to fight this. At very least, phone or send small mail to your MEP.
Tropical prawns can be farmed on land even in temperate-zone countries.
This farm is surely better than getting prawns from Asia, but I can think of two sustainability questions not addressed in the article.
Are millenials lonely because society in general doesn't value friendship enough?
"Hatriots" — a funny word to describe the bully and his racist followers.
We could lose most insect species by the end of the century, because neonicotinoids are killing them.
Each year the US uses them, they build up in he soil in greater concentration, increasing the toxicity of the environment for all kinds of insects. There is no way to remove neonicotinoids from the soil. Today they are found only in some areas, but over time they may spread everywhere.
We need to stop adding more of them before it is too late.
Steve Melia, Extinction Rebellion protester convicted in the UK of making an annoying protest, calls for action.
Turkey, the US and Rojava have made a sort of peace deal including a plan for a buffer zone of some kind between them.
Luxembourg plans to legalize marijuana.
Boston thugs picked a few disabled homeless people, stole their wheelchairs and their other meager belongings, then threw it immediately into a garbage crusher truck. This was to make sure that their cruelty could not be reversed.
Nothing delights a sadist like the chance to hurt someone who is totally helpless.
The climate researcher's grief — and rage — on seeing the developing global disaster that it is still barely possible to avoid.
The rate of melting of Greenland last week reached a level that was forecast to occur only in 2070.
Wasteful military spending in the US is justified in the name of "creating jobs", but it doesn't even do that. The main military contractors have reduced their US employment even as they have received more money.
Aside from being counter to fact, the argument is fundamentally misguided, because it would justify spending government money on anything whatsoever that involves paying workers. How about building a pipeline to pipe water across Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson River? How about hiring a thousand workers to manually power the pumps?
Creating jobs can be one of the valid reasons for the state to hire people, but let's put them on a job that will produce useful results as well.
Lessons learned by studying the histories of many perpetrators of mass shootings.
They made a possibly unwitting bad side point by referring to publications as "content" and reading/watching them as "consuming".
Their avoidance recommendation applies only to violent "content&qout;, but that implicitly applies "content" to all publications, including their own article.
The whistleblower that revealed Australia was spying on East Timor's negotiators has pled guilty.
It seems that the the whistleblower's name has been concealed.
It looked like the bullshitter might have achieved a move towards peace with North Korea, by deciding to drop the impossible demand that North Korea get rid of nuclear weapons. But this turns out to have been a mirage. North Korea is taking its traditional belligerent attitude again in response to US-South Korean war games.
It looks like the bullshitter's weakness of character led Dictator Kim to think of pushing him around with bluster.
When Portland thugs attacked the antifascist counterprotesters a year ago, a thug fired a flash bang grenade straight at Michelle Fawcett, who was just standing around. It exploded on her arm, scarring her and causing nerve damage that may never heal.
Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister, says he was invited for White House talks and threatened with sanctions if he did not attend.
What a cloddish way to make an overture for negotiation.
(satire) before leaving to pursue his solo career, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fronted an ultra-popular Viennese boy band.
(serious) The bullshitter read a speech which condemned racism (but not his own).
(satire) Trump Aides Go Into Crisis Mode After President’s Errant Remarks Condemning White Supremacy.
"Stochastic terrorism" is a term used to describe the practice of stirring up hatred so that occasionally some weak-minded person will commit a "random" act of murder.
It is used by various right-wing causes. In the US it started in the "pro-life" anti-abortion movement. Nowadays it is practiced by white supremacists and Islamist extremists.
Mexico's president advocates laws to sentence protesters to 20 years in prison.
UK Too Desperate to Secure US Trade Deal.
Or at least, to get anything but a crappy deal.
Amazon Is Coaching Cops on How to Obtain Surveillance Footage Without a Warrant.
A new e-cigarette is designed to require authorization form a mobile phone, using a nonfree app that collects data about the user.
I suspect that app also tracks the user's movements all the time.
The Christian Science Church is shrinking rapidly.
That in itself is a good thing. However, the Christian Science Monitor used to be renowned for serious coverage of important news topics. Its decline is a loss to all of us.
Business organizations in the US spend a billion dollars a year to pressure for the interests of business.
If the El Paso Shooter Had Been Muslim …
A one-day general strike in Hong Kong was very effective. However, China is threatening to attack and repress.
Marijuana stores are using face recognition against giant databases of people who are not in any way suspects and have not done anything wrong to or in the marijuana store.
This should be illegal.
Beto O'Rourque held the bully responsible for the mass shooting in El Paso.
We know this is true. It is important that prominent people say it.
Republicans are trying to evade responsibility by saying that the killers must be mentally disturbed. Perhaps they are. However, when people are predisposed to follow some hate campaign or other and commit violence for it, they look for a hate movement that is powerful. Politicians that support certain hate movements help draw killers to support them.
Iranian programmer Saeed Malekpour was sentence to life in prison for releasing a program for "uploading photos to the web". He has escaped somehow from Iran.
The US had three mass shootings in one weekend.
Only a small fraction of US gun killings are part of mass shootings, but mass shootings seem to inspire more mass shootings, and they are often acts of terrorism inspired by hate movements.
The first of these two shootings, in Dallas, was an act of right-wing terrorism and so was one other.
These are clearly inspired by the bully's support of racism and violence.
He surely knew this would happen; it isn't the first time, after all. Therefore it must be intentional. Even people who already agreed with white supremacism are encouraged to leap into violence by their crowds of supporters.
He has converted the whole Republican party into supporters of racism and violence.
Some may not entirely like it, but they haven't the courage to resist the mob that boils around them.
The US military has installed lots of Hikvision internet cameras. This is a problem for two reasons: Hikvision is Chinese, and the cameras have (reportedly) a universal back door.
Even if the company weren't Chinese, the universal back door should make people distrust these cameras.
Temporal AI for marketing attempts to predict when you are in the mood for any given product. They rely on collecting and correlating the data collected by many surveillance systems.
If we prohibit the collection of data like these, systems like this will be entirely impossible. Otherwise, they will make a worse dystopia.
The decoy effect is a powerful way of manipulating people into making one choice rather than another.
I suspect that a policy of dismissing options that are clearly inferior and writing down a list of only the options you are really considering would help resist the decoy effect. It is worth doing this for many reasons if the choice is important.
And stay away from flight connections that are just 60 minutes, because that makes a significant risk of a missed connection. I would choose option B for those flights, by intentional policy, regardless of C. If I had seen only option A, I would have asked my travel agent, "Can you find a longer connection time?"
Some US thug departments give Amazon special access to 911 call data.
The question about paying the costs of global heating is not "Can we pay" but "Who will pay".
The article does not mention all the ways global heating is killing people. For instance, it doesn't include the people killed, directly or indirectly, by the Syrian civil war and PISSI even though global heating was a major cause of that war.
It also doesn't mention the tropical diseases that are spreading north, or the people that lose their income and then die because they can't afford medical care.
A list now exists of which books published in the US before 1964 are in the public domain because the copyright was not renewed.
Private equity companies own "doctor groups" that gouge patients with enormous bills.
Hospitals send patients to those doctors without informing them — sometimes even when they are unconscious.
What this shows is that two of the big sicknesses of the US economy are linked.
We should make sure that future genetic enhancements are not limited to the rich or their children. One part is preventing them from being patented.
In addition, we need not and should not rely on private investment for development of these enhancements. The government funds a lot of medical research and it can fund this.
We won't have such treatments soon. You wouldn't want to give an embryo that will develop into a your child a treatment intended as an enhancement until its safety and efficacy have been verified. But we don't know how to verify that except by trying it. With gigantic advances in simulation of fetal development we might someday have another way.
Senator Warren's progressive approach to trade treaties includes allowing democratic participation in negotiating them, require joint crackdown on business tax-dodging and greenhouse emissions, and reject the secret aim of dooH niboR.
A proposed analysis of why Nazis are drawn to commit massacres.
This shows a parallel with how PISSI has changed its approach since losing its territory: turning from group actions to individual massacres.
Thousands of people live in vehicles in the San Francisco area, and the city hits them with repression.
I heard of a person who lives in a house in San Francisco and got an RV, which perse kept outside the city, but using it for a vacation was difficult because the punishment for parking it for even a short time near home was so strict. This came up in conversation as a curious side effect of repression.
In Eskilstuna, Sweden, it is forbidden to beg for money unless you have money to pay for a permit.
Candidate Marianne Williamson raised some deep issues that other candidates don't.
She is too flaky for me to vote for her, but I hope she has influence with deep points.
India's Hindu extremist government plans to permit Hindus from other parts of India to colonize Kashmir.
This reminds me of Israel's colonization of occupied Palestine.
India promised Kashmir a referendum on whether to be part of India, but never held the referendum.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass stricter gun control.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to expand Social Security, not privatize it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A video presents men wearing with Mitch McConnell supporter shirts engaging in violence against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
This looks like support for stochastic terrorism. The photo seems to have been taken at a rally to support McConnell, so they seem to be real supporters of his. Will he denounce them firmly, or only with a wink, or not at all?
A new form of repression by the Russian state; threatening to take away protesters' children for bringing them to protests and exposing them to the violent repression of the Russian state.
Blaming Mass Shootings on Mental Illness Leads to Stigma, Experts Warn.
The New York Times let itself be manipulated yet again by the bullshitter's bullshit.
Yes, it was a mistake to report something the bullshitter said as if it were sincere. But the first mistake was to pay so much attention to something he said.
Here is how The Onion satirized what the newspaper did.
The US froze Venezuela's assets in the US.
As is generally the case with economic sanctions, this is likely to hurt the public more than Maduro.
It may be difficult for Venezuela to buy food, which could increase the shortages.
A plan in Australia to encourage people not to drink alcohol to excess were evidently greatly influenced by the alcohol companies, which suggests they were designed more for show than for effect.
UK Woman Says Cyprus Police Forced Her to Retract Rape Claim.
Modi, India's Hindu extremist ruler, has imposed total repression on Kashmir. He has arrested the elected leaders of Kashmir, and cut off phones and internet.
The order to allow outsiders buy land in Kashmir is based on arbitrarily negating` an article in India's constitution.
What does a constitution mean if the government in power can arbitrarily sweep it away? Nothing.
I think Modi is planning something far worse than allowing non-Kashmiris to buy land there. I suspect some horrible act of repression is in the works, something that will look so horrible that he wants to make sure the world can't see it.
Republicans are trying to distract attention from the violent effects of their racism by asserting that one of the shooters last weekend supported Warren for president.
Perhaps he did, but that is not a valid parallel, because Senator Warren doesn't spew hatred the way Republicans do.
A Nigerian woman accused a powerful Christian preacher of raping her.
The response was a collection of criminal charges against her.
The US collects data from many sources to identify and prosecute whistleblowers. After publication, this includes information from many databases about which employees contacted a journalist.
The article suggests how messaging software might help protect whistleblowers; but this won't keep them safe for very long after the leak is published.
Above all, the article explains why the US must eliminate the practice of prosecuting whistleblowers for "spying" is fundamentally wrong anyway.
Meanwhile, real spy chiefs want to make things worse by banning secure encryption, and thus put our freedom in more danger — from them.
Russian protesters are more stubborn now than in the past. Arresting some of them has not made them give up.
Both Republicans and Democrats (plutocratist "moderate" Democrats) harp on right-wing racism to avoid confronting plutocracy.
Facebook is still showing zuckers targeted political ads to serve right-wing causes, and it's a secret where the money comes from.
Revealed: Johnson Ally's Firm Secretly Ran Facebook Propaganda Network.
Al-Qa'ida is still operating, but instead of trying to draw attention using shocking attacks on the West, its method is to build support in various parts of the world.
Since this is not a direct threat to the West, perhaps the West has no reason to fight it. However, any region that al-Qa'ida comes to dominate will suffer a great loss of human rights. The US should not intervene militarily, since that would only create an Afghanistan-like situation. But if local people want to fight back, it would be good to give them support while leaving the effort mainly in their hands.
A father plans to let his two conjoined daughters die rather than approve an operation that would probably save one of them.
This is a real-life variant of the trolley problem, with a crucial difference: in this case there was time to study the issue carefully and establish with near certainty what each choice would lead to before making the decision. He cannot rationally deny that his choice of "do nothing" means death for both of daughters.
His choice is a form of moral cowardice. The kind of cowardice that makes someone lose a tooth rather than get a filling. The kind of cowardice that makes someone die of late-stage cancer rather than get early treatment and survive. So even though I empathize with his distress at the need to choose between horrible and doubly horrible, I can't excuse his decision. The daughters deserve life. If you can't save both, at least save one.
I don't think that we should be more concerned about the couple because they have four other children. Having so many is a bad thing to do, but it has no effect on the issue of saving these daughters.
Global heating helps tick populations grow, and this makes Lyme disease more prevalent.
Freezing ovarian tissue and reimplanting it later could enable women to delay menopause for decades.
I hope this won't require them to actually menstruate. I also hope it won't lead to more births.
An EU agreement provides for southern coastal countries to receive refugees who will be distributed to other EU countries.
Trolls attacked MP Rosena Allin-Khan for trying to convince Israel to let Gazan parents of sick children getting medical care in Israel to visit their children.
MP Allin-Khan describes the abuse as "antisemitic", but what I see in the examples quoted is condemnation of Israel rather than anti-semitism as such. I agree, however, that these examples were unjustified exaggeration. Her attempts to convince Israel to loosen some of the restrictions of the occupation is not support for the occupation.
It is one thing to say that a small step is not a full solution to a problem. It is another to say that the small step is bad. We should make sure campaigns for small steps don't distract us from advocating a full solution, but that doesn't require condemning them.
Students from Hong Kong protested in an Australian university. Some Chinese people (perhaps students, perhaps not) physically attacked them and surveilled them; some protesters later received threats, clearly organized by China.
Many Chinese studying abroad remain so connected to the state-controlled Chinese systems of state control that they do not question the propaganda. I think the university should impose requirements on Chinese students that they reduce their involvement in those systems, so that they are not dominated by them. It should be a requirement for educational purposes to expose themselves to other ways of thinking.
A few months ago I met some Chinese students in MIT CSAIL and urged them to take advantage of being in the US to read extensively the things that China does not want them to know. I specifically recommended the book, Life and Death in Shanghai, by Nien Cheng, which describes surviving the cultural revolution of the 60s and 70s.
Bogus Johnson is tossing out pledges to spend money to correct little pieces of Tory budget cuts. Sometimes a new pledge is just part of a larger previous pledge.
The UK media are using the same bad approach that the US media use with the bullshitter: taking his promises seriously. The proper response any time Johnson says he will do some good thing is, "If he really does this, we will take it seriously."
Third Mexican Journalist Killed in a Week Amid Record Murder Rate.
Andrew Yang's proposes a universal basic income as a substitute for various existing welfare benefits, and he doesn't intend to curb the political power of business.
His proposed policy for limiting surveillance is similar to the GDPR, and inadequate in the same ways.
It seems to be designed for a world in which a person entrusts specific information to a service so it can do specific jobs with that data, the data comes directly from per, and the service labels it explicitly as from per. A world in which there is plenty of competition among services, and no one ever feels compelled to use a specific service which perse knows will misuse that data.
And it ignores what the US government might do with that data after using the PAT RIOT act to collect the whole database.
A UK local council blocked an annual fund-raising event for Palestinian children because they thought criticism of Israel could be labeled as anti-semitic.
"Unboxing" videos which show adults playing with toys, when sponsored by the toy manufacturer, are in effect advertising to children.
They may be illegal. They are certainly manipulative.
Some Italian fishermen save drowning migrants because they live by the law of the sea.
China is trying to play the US game of intimidating countries that grant asylum to Chinese political refugees.
One background flaw in the article is its use of the term "intellectual property", which always spreads confusion because it lumps together various unrelated laws that affect different issues.
This article seems to use "intellectual property" to refer to trademarks. In many other articles about "intellectual property" and China, the term refers to trade secrets. Trademarks and trade secrets have nothing to do with each other, but that bogus over generalization tries to lead you to think they are one single issue.
Dallas thugs killed Tony Timpa by grinding him into the ground, gleefully disregarding his cries that they were killing him. It took his family three years to pry loose the video which showed what happened.
San Francisco airport will set an example by banning the sale of plastic bottles of water. Other disposable plastic items are being limited, too.
Greenland’s ice sheet shrunk more in past month than in an average year.
In just one day, 12 billion tons of ice melted.
Putting immigrants in privatized prisons is giving privatized prisons the bad name they always deserved.
Mayor de Blasio, also running for president, has proposed big tax increases for the rich,
as well as the financial transaction tax (also known as the Tobin Tax and the Robin Hood Tax), whose principal benefit is to stabilize financial markets, but which would also bring in some useful revenue.
This isn't enough to convince me to vote for him instead of Sanders or Warren, but it's a good target for approach to the issue of taxation.
Food aid for the poor benefits the US economy as a side effect. To cut it would be spiteful, and irrational unless the goal is to scapegoat the poor.
US citizens: call on your city officials to block the thug department from conspiring with Amazon to establish video surveillance in your city.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to stop the EPA from hiding information from the public.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Women in the US are happier, on the average, if they do not marry or have children.
In some countries, which give more support to parents, that is not so.
Nonetheless, the birth rate continues to decline in developed countries.
This is a positive change, given that the world's population is still increasing. Now if only we could bring about a decline in the countries which still have a high birth rate. The survival of civilization depends on this.
Sudan's protesters and military have announced a sort of transitional constitution.
Italy Grants Asylum to Eritrean Man Mistaken for Years for Trafficker.
Everyone makes mistakes, but they should not have been so slow to believe the victims who said he was the wrong man.
Human-monkey chimera embryos raise theoretical moral questions about possible future mixture between humans and monkeys. Should such beings be permitted to be born? Or come close to being born?
I recommend reading Cordwainer Smith's science fiction
Some US cities are paying to subsidize the "private" installation of Amazon surveillance cameras.
Economics systematically leads to bad (even disastrous) decisions because the mathematics are based on simplifying assumption which are often not even close to the truth.
Indeed, the neoliberal policies founded on those economics have moved reality even further from some of these assumptions — for instance, by allowing massive concentration of many industries.
Wondering whether the far-migrating turtle dove can be saved in England.
The Democratic presidential debates are run by Republicans, and the "moderators" are Republicans. They manipulate the debates in a biased way, trying to make progressives look bad and to provide Republicans useful information for the campaign.
Unfortunately, to the extent that the plutocratist-biased DNC controls the debates, that is bad in other ways.
We are still pushing it to hold a debate about global heating and approaching climate disaster.
The IPCC warns that global heating's major effects show the need to change agriculture, and in particular, eat a lot less meat.
Jake Inslee used his short speaking time in the Democratic presidential debate to emphasize the need to curb global heating. That was good use of it.
It may be true that global heating underlies the other major issues. But, more fundamentally, plutocracy underlies all the other major issues and global heating as well. This is why I believe that a firm enemy of plutocracy is our best hope for defeating the planet roasters.
Amnesty International reports that Assad's forces are systematically attacking medical facilities in Idlib. The UN ha called for an investigation.
Ads influence many people unconsciously, even people who are trying to pay attention to something else.
US citizens: call on the Forest Service not to eliminate public consultations about mining and logging on public land.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to keep the good provisions in the House's version of the National Defense Authorization Act.
To sign without running nonfree software, please use the Salsalabs workaround.
I replaced their suggested line about the Korean War with
—support a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.because it's not as if a hot war were still raging there.
If you sign, please spread the word!
More effective than punishing grieving parents: a practical scheme to help parents avoid forgetting babies in a car.
An idea that occurs to me is an button the baby can push, which makes a soft and fun sound when the car is switched on, but makes a loud one-minute alarm outside when the car is switched off.
(satire) EPA Administrator Proves Carbon Emissions Not Harmful By Inhaling Directly From Truck’s Tailpipe.
(satire) Theaters across the country pulled the film Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw Friday following reports of the on-set mistreatment of (underage) cars.
Several Pacific island nations rebuked the countries that don't cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
Knowing that Ronald Reagan was secretly a racist helps make sense of his public statements that were designed to win support from racists.
What is different about the bullshitter is that he overtly declares support for overt racists.
A symbolic protest against Macron's lack of climate defense policy: carefully removing his photo from public administrations.
They are being investigated by the "anti-terrorism" thugs, which exemplifies the world-wide tendency to use "anti-terrorism" laws against nonviolent protesters. This is why those laws are a threat to democracy.
How global heating endangers the North Atlantic right whales.
Salafi Arabia has given women equal rights in regard to travel and employment.
They are still a long distance from legal equality.
To encourage climate-saving use of trains instead of planes, employers could offer extra "journey days" on top of vacation time, for those who use them to travel by train.
The Pentagon has developed wide-area total surveillance systems, which track all cars' movements in an area 25 miles across.
We should make sure that the state does not operate these systems to look at anything but a war zone.
The "president" of Uganda demonstrated he is a dirty, delinquent dictator by jailing a poet whose poetry was called "offensive and vulgar".
Russian Protesters Threatened with Jail on Eve of Planned Rally.
US citizens: call on Congress to get facial recognition technology out of public housing.
It should be illegal for landlords to impose facial recognition or internet-connected locks on tenants in any rental housing.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on the California Senate to pass AB 1215 to ban use of face recognition on body camera videos.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on HSBC to fully divest from fossil fuel and arms companies.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Right-wing death threats were posted against Amnesty International in Israel.
That's the right wing for you.
The Politics of Petulance — nihilism whipped up by telling people that it is impossible to make our situation any better.
In the US, the bully has laid out a simple plan to make things much better: reverse all the changes he has made. That plan may not be the best possible choice — perhaps we could agree on a handful of things he has done that we should keep — but clearly it would be a big step forward. Beyond that, we know other things we need: single-payer medical care, the Green New Deal, prohibiting mass surveillance, and others.
The bully, whose general policy is to come close to nuclear war, has killed the intermediate range nuclear missile treaty and is not trying to negotiate a replacement.
About the campaign of protest which got that treaty started.
The bully claims to want a "better" agreement with Iran, but his sanctions against Iran's foreign minister will prevent negotiations.
Here is what experts recommend as the way to reach a new agreement.
This note was a false alarm. Old steam trains which run old cars at low speeds can continue doing so.
Advertising considered as a cancer on society.
I largely agree. I think that the worst aspect of today's advertising (and the reason there is so much of it) is the collection of personal data — but the article identifies other ways in which advertising corrupts society which don't depend on knowing anything about who sees the ads — for instance, paid-for articles (I won't use the euphemism "sponsored" or the derogatory term "content" for this) and individuals who are paid to insert advertising into their lives as "influencers".
However, if you are like me, you probably wouldn't notice what brand of coffee appears in your friend's photo, so it would fail to exert any influence.
The Democracy for All constitutional amendment would narrowly reverse the Corporations United decision which ruled that corporations have a "human right" to spend money on electioneering.
I prefer the more powerful proposed amendment which would reject the idea that corporations are entitled to human rights.
Lamar Johnson was convicted of murder, but the real killers confessed in 1998 and 2002. Even though it was known that the "evidence" him was falsified by a thug, it took him until now to win a new trial.
This is because many judges and officials would rather keep an innocent man in prison for years than admit that their system made a mistake. They think that if they never admit a mistake, we will believe they never make any.
Republicans are hard at work removing blacks and poor people from voter lists.
They know they can't win an election, so they put their efforts into rigging elections. The bully was "elected" this way and so in 2018 was the governor of Georgia.
20 Republicrook senators have asked the Treasury Department to change a rule so as to cut taxes on capital gains.
This would benefit billionaires enormously, middle-class people a little, and poor people not at all.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop private equity buyouts that profit from destroying a company.
US citizens: call on Senator McConnell to stop blocking election security upgrades.
A right-wing murder-incitement campaign targets Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.
The bully knows that when he targets people for hate, this sort of hate campaign is likely to come along. And they all know that this sort of hate campaign has a good chance of inspiring murders. The fanatic who shot Gabrielle Giffords didn't kill her, but injured her so gravely that she could no longer serve in Congress. From the point of view of right-wing murderers, that's success.
Some US cities require evicting a whole family from an apartment if any one of them commits a crime.
The US has a general tendency to of heaping various secondary punishments on top of the actual sentence. Ex-cons can be barred from education, barred from many kinds of work, barred even from places to live. Ultimately they are barred from anything except a life of crime.
Legalization of assisted suicide is spreading to more US states, but it is limited to people expected to die anyway in under 6 months.
The people who need this the most are those who are condemned to many years of suffering, by a condition that keeps them helpless or in horrible pain, and could continue for decades.
Australia's planet-roaster government has set up a scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The cuts are so small that it will make no real difference.
Bolsonaro has fired the head of Brazil's space institute, calling the satellite measures of deforestation "lies". We know who is the liar, of course.
Bolsonaro's men are trying to set up a second system for monitoring deforestation, perhaps with the aim of reporting a smaller amount of it.
Burma is a jigsaw puzzle of different ethnic groups that want to be independent. To a large extent, in practice, they are.
Militarism can encourage people to tolerate and downplay men's violence against women. It carries an imperative to "stand by our troops" even when they rape
A right-wing nut wants to make it a felony to throw water at thugs. Unfortunately, that nut is a state legislator in New York.
I wonder if the Burmese water festival is celebrated anywhere in NYC. Under that proposed law, if thugs show up there, they could arrest lots of the participants.
Hong Kong is charging protesters with "rioting", which is defined in such a way that almost any protester can be found "guilty" of that.
There are 11 thousand square miles of wildfire in Russia now.
This releases massive amounts of CO2 which will exacerbate the heat that is responsible for the fires.
A proposal for how the UK could fix its shortage of housing over the coming decade.
The bully hopes that totalitarian surveillance will stop people from fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to the US.
The reason I don't think so is that the governments will control the surveillance and the governments are not interested in making those countries safe for ordinary people. The surveillance won't eliminate the gangs because the gangs are too powerful
When Israeli soldiers demolished Palestinians' houses in the West Bank, saying they were too close to the border between land that Israel claims to have annexed as part of Jerusalem and land Israel does not claim to have annexed, they attacked a number of solidarity witnesses.
For instance, British solidarity witnesses were in the bathroom, so soldiers threw in tear gas which had no way to dissipate. And that was only the start of the violence against them.
The attackers broke the witnesses' bones and in some cases maimed them.
The US has giving misguided training to thugs in Central America.
Everything Cops Say About Amazon's Ring Is Scripted or Approved by [Amazon].
It should be a crime to set up such an agreement: the thugs that sign it should be criminals and so should the company they make it with.
Meanwhile, Ring's massive video surveillance is dangerous in substance.
The Netherlands' ban on covering your face in public transit and public buildings turns out to be problematic to enforce.
That is good — because face coverings are the only known way to block face recognition personally. The ban harms anyone that wants privacy in movements.
Uighurs Challenge China to Prove Missing Relatives Are Free.
With the state control over communications, it would be easy to kill people and claim to have released them.
We still know nothing of the fate of the new Panchen lama, disappeared by China while still a child, and his family.
We would not trust claims by the bullshitter's agents about what has become of arrested refugees, so why believe what China says.
Subsidies for fossil fuels, globally, amount to 4 times the subsidies for renewable energy. Shifting 30% of the fossil subsidies to renewable energy could make renewable energy so advantageous that the world would switch quickly.
That is not enough by itself to avoid disaster. We need also to cut down on cattle and growing crops to feed cattle.
We need to increase forests instead of cutting them down.
We need to put an end to energy-expensive bitcoin mining.
But we could do those things, if we do the big job.
CO2-removal technology could be useful, but the obvious methods can't remove enough to save us. We must not allow planet roasters to treat these technologies as an excuse to keep pumping out greenhouse gases.
What should we do with radioactive nuclear waste?
Bogus Johnson, from whom lies are expected, could poison the honesty and objectivity of the civil services.
The bullshitter has already done this in the US.
On the bad implications of the word "migrant".
Kamala Harris's medical care plan is a step up from today, but has many flaws compared with Sanders's Medicare for All.
In particular, it supposes that the companies that sell medical care plans operate from good will, instead of the chiselers and gougers we see.
Harris was persistently harsh to the accused as attorney general of California, opposing criminal justice reform. When she does take a progressive stand, she sometimes changes her mind under pressure.
More about her past as a prosecutor.
She also championed a law for internet censorship, which equates ignorance to guilt.
The overarching political issue of our times is democracy vs plutocracy; an official that works for the plutocrats is not going to help restore democracy.
As Biden falls in the polls, plutocrats are moving their investment to Kamala Harris (and Buttigieg).
Harris accepted campaign funds from pharma executives this year.
Kamala Harris Set To Raise Money With Former Wells Fargo Executive.
US citizens: oppose Eugene Scalia's nomination as secretary of Labor.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Scientist Rod Schoonover worked for the US State Department to prepare a report about how global heating would affect US national security. He has resigned because saboteurs working for the bullshitter blocked him from presenting it to Congress.
Referring to organized, well-paid denial of evident truth as "skepticism" gives it a kind of legitimacy exactly where it does the most harm. Likewise the term "climate change".
Please avoid using those terms.
A regional thug chief in the UK said that adding more thugs will not work to reduce crime without also canceling the Tories' starve-the-poor policies that make people desperate and offer them no help in avoiding crime.
A Florida thug is being prosecuted for framing a series of people on phony drug charges.
It is important to punish thugs for false witness in all kinds of situations, not only when it is a followup to killing someone.
As a separate matter, we should end the war that's on drugs.
President Do-dirty seeks to use a state of martial law, aimed initially at a branch of PISSI, to crush an indigenous group, the Lumed.
The Christian extremist that sparked the "purity" movement in the US has repented and apologized.
"(Irish prime minister) Leo Varadkar looks like an adult because the UK is acting like a spoilt toddler."
ALEC helps plastic companies lobby against laws to limit plastic bags.
Bogus Johnson's principal aid acknowledged 2 years ago that the Tories do not care about poor people or the NHS.
It was helpful for him to admit that the Tories are lower than vermin.
Will
Britons take their blindfolds off and see this?
Johnson And Trump's Close Ties Risk Disaster for Planet, Says Corbyn.
California has passed a law requiring all presidential candidates to
release their tax returns in order to get on the ballot.
There is surely something in his tax returns that might have cost him
votes in 2016. But would it have that effect on today's Republicans,
who have become inured to lies, hatred and racism? It might seem like
small potatoes compared with the vicious things that Republicans are
already inured to.
I can imagine that the conman might abandon California (since he has
little chance of winning there) to defy this law. But if a swing
state does this, he might have to yield.
The Gilroy murderer advocated white supremacists, which suggests that
his shooting was an act of white supremacist terrorism.
A father forgot his children in a car all day, and they died. Does it
make sense to prosecute him?
Does it make sense to make a law against leaving
children in a car for a few minutes?
The Drug Enforcement Agency has been stalling for three years over an
application for a permit to grow marijuana for research.
Hong Kong protesters are trying to identify thugs by their faces,
now that the thugs have stopped wearing identification badges.
The thugs generally have an advantage in this kind of conflict.
When the NSA says it deleted a database, it sometimes finds another
copy later.
The new head of the Bureau of Land Management wants to privatize all
public land by selling it to rich people.
I suspect the rich buyers will get it at a very low price.
Tech executives are making a show of apologizing for the damage their
companies have done … without having to fix it or even halt it.
The Democratic debate was "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren v the
'No We Can't' Democrats."
Stop arguing with Bogus Johnson — it only feeds the troll.
What is needed is action, not disputation.
José Ramos-Horta, former president of East Timor, calls on Australia
to drop charges against the whistleblower that revealed how Australia
was spying on the negotiations between those two countries.
I agree completely. I also agree that it was wrong of Australia to
steal oil located in what was to become East Timor's waters. But the
biggest wrong was that Australia allowed that oil to be burned,
contributing to global heating.
If East Timor had extracted this oil and allowed it to be burned, that
would have been almost as bad. For a just outcome, just to humanity
and nature, we need to leave that oil in the ground.
Pharma companies will be fined 70 million dollars for conspiring to prevent
the making of generic drugs.
A student from a town near Detroit faces criminal charges for throwing
a ball that injured another student, in a game similar to dodge ball.
I was unable to play volleyball because I was afraid to be hit by the
ball. If you are afraid of being hit by a ball — whether for
emotional reasons like me, or valid medical reasons like the student that
was injured, you really should decline to play.
US border thugs have separated over 900 minors from their parents
since a year ago. Almost 200 of them are children under 5 years old.
There are valid reasons why a compassionate state might do this in
some cases, but when a state and its officials have explicitly
declared hatred for migrants, we must expect it to distort those
reasons into excuses to do harm.
The number of remaining vaquita porpoises is between 6 and 19.
The species might survive if Mexico cracks down on use of gillnets.
It is too late to be sure of that — if there are just 6, and none is
a female capable of reproducing, it's too late — but we should try.
India has almost finished abolishing the one-sided law for divorces
among Muslims. Men alone had the right to declare a divorce
unilaterally.
People should have equal rights in divorce, but I hope this doesn't
result in making divorce too difficult for everyone.
Nigeria shows how extreme inequality of income can spread poverty in
an "economic boom".
The European Court of Justice ruled that a web site with a Like button
is responsible for the tracking it does.
This ruling won't make a big difference if the site can make the issue
go away by adding one more clause to its terms of service. But it
might make a small difference, if sites can no longer show a Like
button to a visitor who has not yet explicitly accepted the terms of
service.
Kamala Harris claims to support Medicare for All, but her version is ersatz.
This year, Earth Overshoot Day is calculated to occur on August 1.
After just 7 months, humans have used what the Earth can regenerate in
a whole year.
The population of wild boar is exploding in Europe, and many have
moved into cities where they injure humans.
Fortunately, they taste great. If you are in Europe, try some.
In Pete Buttigieg, Venture Capitalists See a Campaign to Invest in.
That shows he's on the plutocrats' side, not ours.
Reminder of some arguments against the death penalty.
Tanzania has arrested a famous investigative journalist, Erick
Kabendera.
One must suppose he investigated something the government didn't want
the public to know about.
Mass Protests in Colombia and Abroad Decry Killings of 500 Activists Since Peace Accords.
Under Geneva conventions, every occupying power has an obligation to
compensate any damages it does members of the occupied population,
whether to their bodies or their property. Israel has changed its
laws so that it almost never gives Palestinians the compensation they
are owed.
A local leader of India's ruling Hindu extremist party called for gang-raping Muslim women.
She was expelled from the party, but men who said similar things have
generally been tolerated.
When foreigners enter Xinjiang (China) from Kyrgyzstan, Chinese border
guards have taken their phones away to put malware on them.
The malware searches files in the phones for various things that China
considers hateful. It might do other things as well.
I have to point out that people suspect the US of doing similar things
to people entering the US, and in other circumstances as well.
Enforcement of food and drug safety regulations has fallen by 33%
under the corruptor.
Ocasio-Cortez pushed past border thugs so she could speak to
imprisoned immigrants. This enabled her to find out how they were
mistreating the prisoners.
The thugs had gone to extreme lengths to block visiting congresscritters
from observing or finding out the prison conditions, and the visitors
felt menaced by them. Sounds like a visit to North Korea.
A major US insurance company has announced it will stop insuring coal companies (or investing in them).
Saboteur of the Interior Bernhardt gave his former client influence over
the department's decisions.
The department has adopted new secrecy rules, too.
When you buy a record, or pay for music streaming (even via ads), the
money usually goes to some company, not to the musicians.
I've proposed systems for supporting musicians without depending on record companies, and in a way that encourages sharing.
Al Franken now
regrets
resigning from the Senate. Some senators that pushed him to
resign
now
regret that too.
The first (main) article does not state clearly whether Franken
touched Tweeden in the process of making the photo, but it seems he
did not. If that is correct, it was not a sexual act at all. It was
self-mocking humor. The photograph depicted a fictional sexual act
without her fictional consent, but making the photo wasn't a sexual
act.
If it is true that he persistently pressured her to kiss him, on stage
and off, if he stuck his tongue into her mouth despite her objections,
that could well be sexual harassment. He should have accepted no for
an answer the first time she said it. However, calling a kiss "sexual
assault" is an exaggeration, an attempt to equate it to much graver
acts, that are crimes.
The term
"sexual
assault" encourages that injustice, and I believe it has been
popularized specifically with that intention. That is why I reject
that term.
Meanwhile, Franken says he did not do those things, and the other
actors he previously did the same USO skit with said it was not
harassment, just acting. Tweeden's store is clearly false in many
details.
Should we assume Tweeden was honest? With so many demonstrated
falsehoods in her accusations, and given that she planned them with
other right-wing activists, and that all of them follow a leader who
lies as a tactic every day, I have to suspect that she decided to
falsify accusations through exaggeration so as to kick a strong
Democrat out of the Senate.
I have no proof of that suspicion. It is possible that she made the
accusations honestly. Also, in a hypothetical world, someone might
really have done them. Supposing for the moment that those
accusations were true, should Franken have resigned over them?
I don't think so. They are misjudgments, not crimes. Franken
deserved the chance to learn from the criticism that surprised him.
Zero tolerance is a very bad way to judge people.
However, the most important point is to reject the position that if B
feels hurt by what A said or did, then automatically A is wrong.
People judged Franken that way, and he judged himself that way. But
that way degrades the concept of "wrong" into a mere expression of
subjective disapproval. What can legitimately be asserted
subjectively can legitimately be ignored subjectively too. To judge A
that way is to set B up as a tyrant.
If B's feelings were hurt, that's unfortunate -- but is that A's
fault? If so, was it culpable, or just a mistake? That is what we
have to judge, and if we want others to think our judgments worth
following, they must be based on objective facts and objective
standards, including objective standards for what words and gestures
objectively mean.
Traister is wrestling with a solvable problem. She says, "When you
change rules, you end up penalizing people who were caught behaving
according to the old rules." Maybe people do, but that is a sign of
carelessness. It isn't really hard to change the rules and then judge
old actions by the old rules. We just have to remember to do so.
One big danger of surveillance is that
people
come to believe that breaking a rule is impossible, and then it
becomes unthinkable.
If you use Twitter,
unfollow
the bullshitter. Posting your outrage does not hurt him —
it's what he wants.
Your Family Is
None
of Their Business.
You, too, are none of their business, but that point is more radical.
The Tories have made it easy to get away with mistreating workers in
the UK. They have
cut
the funding to employment tribunals to the point where it takes 8
months for a case to be heard.
The UK
privatized
applications for student visa renewals. Naturally the company
gouges the students, using a dark pattern in which there are supposed
to be gratis appointments but in practice they are not available.
This particular work has a peak season in September. In a government
office, the staff would focus on this during the peak season, then
most would shift to other tasks for the rest or the year. A private
business may not have an opportunity to do that. Its staff is less
stable than civil servants, and its other contracts come and go.
This adds to the
other
reasons that government services should never be privatized.
Occasionally some government service can simply be eliminated.
Can You Afford To Be
Green
When You're Not Rich? I Kept a Diary to Find Out.
The article shows that many forms of conservation are made far more
difficult by the fact that society's current pushes people in the
other direction.
The most important choice, to reduce your contribution to the
ecological footprint of humanity, is not mentioned in the article.
It is to choose
not to have a child. The
writer apparently does not recognize that that was a choice.
Isolated, uninhabited Henderson Island receives
tons
of plastic deposited by the Pacific Ocean. Scientists visited for
two weeks and collected 6 tons to study it.
60% comes from fishing. This accords with reports that most plastic
waste in the ocean is from fishing. That should be much easier to
eliminate than waste from a billion consumers.
If the fishing was done near Henderson, it was illegal. But this
trash could have floated for thousands of miles.
How Stonewall Reversed a Long History of Justifying Police
Surveillance (and entrapment and jailing) of gays.
Revealed: Rampant Deforestation of Amazon Driven by Global Greed for Meat.
The new business-supremacy treaty between the EU and Mercosur trade blocks
could speed up the deforestation.
After mangrove trees die, they emit lots more methane.
(satire) God ordered His followers to swallow cyanide capsules Monday
in preparation for their voyage to Alpha Centauri.
ICANN has eliminated the limit on fees for having a .org domain name.
It disregarded almost complete opposition to the move in the public comments
it received.
The .org domain overseer would make the same amount of money
by collecting $10k for each of 1000 domains as it would by collecting
$10 for each of a million domains. And the former would be a lot
less hassle. I fear that is what we will see.
Americans, remember the refugees that tried to flee from Hitler.
All countries turned them away, and they were killed by Nazis.
Venezuelan navy captain Rafael Acosta was arrested on June 21 and accused
of plotting a coup. Since then he has died, showing signs of torture.
Maduro calls for investigation of the accused torture rather than trying
to deny it.
The wife of Dubai's emir has fled and wants a divorce. The emir
thinks of her as property and wants the UK to forcibly send her back
to him.
He got his daughter back by sending commandos to grab her.
An employee of Eli Lilly, a Pharma company, reports on when the goal of
maximizing profit replaced that of saving lives.
Bernie Sanders Is Right: 3 Billionaires Really Do Have More Wealth
Than Half of America.
Ethiopia is trying plant 4 billion trees this year. Each citizen is supposed
to plant 40 at least trees.
If they are planting the right kinds of trees, in places where forests
can grow, these trees might do good, if they don't die.
Due to global heating, trees may not survive the next 20 years
in places where they used to grow. However, it is better to try
than not try.
We should ban use of lead shot for hunting. The lead pellets remain
lying around, birds eat them, and die of lead poisoning.
Eating the poisoned birds, including the birds shot with lead, poisons
people.
Scientists suggest making a Geneva convention to give wildlife and
nature reserves protected status in conflicts.
What about museums with unique objects,
and libraries of rare books?
I think they should have similar protected status.
Even accidental destruction of these special places should be considered
a crime — the crime of negligence.
Barr Says Police Need Encryption Backdoors, Doesn’t Mention [Cracking]
Tools They Use All the Time.
China is getting children started early on being tracked all the time.
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects web site
operators from liability for what their users post, is being attacked
in Congress. This puts all sorts of Internet commenting in danger.
An Indian teenager accused a politician of raping her. A truck collided
with the car she was in, killing two of her relatives and injuring her
and her lawyer.
There is suspicion that thugs beat her father to death.
The UK is forcing women into sex work to get a place to live.
Thugs in Harrisburg have a predilection of beating up prisoners
and causing them serious injuries, then not taking care of them.
Measles attacks the immune cells that guard the memory of resisting
past infections. It takes 4 or 5 years for those immune cells to
regrow and provide immunity again to those past infections.
Thus, if you get measles, you become vulnerable again, for several
years, to infections you were previously immune to. And they can kill
you.
China's First ‘Cyber-Dissident’
Jailed
for 12 Years.
If the UK needs to make a new trade agreement with the US, the US will
impose
disastrous
permanent deregulation.
The bullshitter's billionaire backers want this, and Bogus Johnson
will surely rush to obey. But it would not have been much better
under Obama, or any previous US president since the 1970s.
Global heating is
making
whole families flee Guatemala. The seasons have changed, there is
less rain, and crops fail.
US citizens:
call
on CNN to ask the candidates about net neutrality.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens:
call on CNN,
and its head, Zucker, to stop giving Nazis a platform.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone:
call
on the European Investment Bank, and the governments that own it,
to adopt the fossil fuel divestment proposal and fully implement it.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Bogus Johnson, the new prime minister of the UK, has appointed as his
chief aide a man that has been censured by Parliament for
refusing
to testify about fake news activities.
A study reports: Countries with higher levels of unionization have
lower
per-capita carbon footprints.
The Supreme Court allowed the cheater to use $2.5bn in Pentagon funds
to build a border wall.
British "honours" (non-military medals) named after the
no-longer-extant British Empire cause a moral quandary to some
recipients, whose ethnic background includes a group that was colonized
by said empire.
Rep. Shiff, head of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Mueller's
testimony provided the basis to consider impeaching the conman.
It seems to me that we had plenty of basis already.
Moscow thugs have arrested 1300 pro-democracy protesters, but the
protesters are not daunted.
All they demand is that the candidates they nominated be allowed to run.
Gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon have attacked and captured an
indigenous village and killed the tribe's leader.
Experts Call for Ban on Glass Skyscrapers to Save Energy.
They need extra cooling to make up for the greenhouse effect of the glass.
Hong Kong thugs indiscriminately attacked subway passengers who were
simply trying to ride the train.
Some of the passengers had previously been in a protest.
UK women have become more willing to report rape, but only 2% of the
cases are actually pursued. This discourages the victims, who say
"forget about it."
An analysis of the Hong Kong political situation.
Let's look at the argument that Hong Kongers should surrender their
rights to assuage the hurt feelings of a billion Chinese. Are their feelings really hurt? That could be a fiction fabricated by Chinese state.
But let's suppose that 30 million really do have hurt feelings. It
could be so. If so, why are their feelings hurt? Why do they even
pay attention to Hong Kong? It's because they are more or less
Xi-ple; the state media tells them to feel hurt, and they do not doubt
what they are told.
Any number of people who demand your surrender because they herded to do so
amount to no reason for you to do that.
Extreme Weather Has Damaged Nearly Half Australia's Marine Ecosystems Since
2011.
Some were damaged irreversibly.
The crucial points are that (1) this is surely not limited to
Australia and (2) it will get a lot worse unless we stop it soon.
MSNBC alters arithmetic to make Sanders look bad.
A big right-wing PAC turned out to be much less effective than
it might have been, because the organizers directed much of the money
to themselves.
The Department of Justice approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint.
The political power of large companies is such a threat to democracy
that we should make sure they do not merge with or acquire other
companies.
In the EU, online credit card payments will require two-factor identification
using a mobile phone.
Many people are up in arms about the inconvenience of this, but that
is only the superficial level. A mobile phone tracks you, and buying
on the internet tracks you. The wise thing to do is to go to a
physical store and pay cash.
The US made Guatemala agree that the US should call it "safe"
so that refugees that cross Guatemala (from Honduras, El Salvador
and Nicaragua) have to apply for asylum in Guatemala.
That policy is ridiculous and unjust because it is based on a falsehood.
Australia's ruling planet-roasters are
facing
pressure from Papua New Guinea to help curb global heating.
Bullshit won't be enough to quell this.
Planting
a lot of forests in Europe could reduce severe storms there.
In a human advance, Israeli snipers are now
being
told to shoot (unarmed) Gaza protesters in the lower leg.
This reinforces the point that when they shoot someone in the head, it
is
no accident.
US major media
continually
print interviews with supporters of the bullshitter showing that they
have not changed their stance.
This promotes their talking points, but it isn't news any more.
US citizens: call on Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
If you call, please spread the word!
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
US citizens: call on Los Angeles DA Lacey to stop pushing for the death penalty.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the MORE Act to legalize marijuana
in a thorough way.
If you call, please spread the word!
The Capitol Switchboard
numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Everyone: call on Walmart to let staff wear shorts.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on Alabama Governor Ivey to give clemency to Rocky Myers.
The reason he could not present these arguments in an appeal
is the law past under President Clinton to sharply limit appeals
against death sentences.
If you call, please spread the word!
Why are companies rushing to replace human workers with robots based
on machine learning? Because that is a way
to make
the rich richer, and the poor poorer as a byproduct.
Additional robots are greatly reducing the number of jobs in
manufacturing, and are likely
to continue doing so.
The fact that one particular factory in the UK has more staff now than
in 2007 is neither here nor there. Evidently a bigger fraction of the
country's manufacturing has been concentrated there.
The increase in productivity is a benefit to whoever owns the factory,
and the small fraction of people employed there. But it is not good
for society overall unless those benefits are shared with society
overall.
It is a mistake to see the issue in nationalistic terms as a
competition with other countries. It does no good to country C to
have robot factories there rather than in D, E and F, if the benefits
go in each case only to the few owners. What matters to country C is
making sure the people there who don't own plenty of stock in robot
factories can nonetheless enjoy the products of these factories, and
everything else one needs for a good life.
Portland thugs harassed and attacked antifascist counterprotesters,
based
on accusations that may be phony.
However, it seems they really did attack the right-wing journalist,
Andy Ngo. We should not do that.
A sheriff's office and a special gouge-'em prison phone company
conspired (in effect)
to record
prisoners' privileged phone calls with lawyers.
The substantive policies of Mexican President López
Obrador put
business and the US first.
If this is a "win for Mexico's left", then Clinton was a progressive.
Privatized UK probation officers
say bigger
caseloads and unrealistic targets prevent them from following
their professional standards.
This is the standard result of privatizing a government service.
We should renationalize all privatized government services.
China is now ruled by a networked
totalitarianism, "Mao
2.0".
When the article says what "we" believed, the author should speak for
himself. I never believed that capitalism would by nature bring
democracy. Democracy is how the non-rich organize the state to
protect them from the power of the rich.
Back when capitalists needed lots of factory workers, that gave the
workers one advantage in their fight for democracy. But it did not
guarantee victory. And now that advantage is gone.
Courtney Irby took her husband's guns to the thug department because
he had been trying to kill her. The
thugs charged
her with burglary and jailed her.
Trudeau gave
Canada's approval to the Transmountain tar sands pipeline. This
makes a mockery of the climate emergency declaration Trudeau made this
week.
The new NAFTA improves many specific points, but its fundamental
effect is still to give businesses more power and democracy less
power, and thus to transfer
income from
workers to business owners.
A mesh network
is providing
true internet service to large parts of New York City.
I used to think that community mesh networks could not be more than
toys, but it's a great surprise to see this is not so.
Senate Republicans
blocked
bills to improve the security of US elections.
Progressive US district attorneys are making inroads into the cruel
"tough
on crime" approach to street crime.
Toughness for toughness' sake causes a lot of collateral damage
and can backfire by increasing crime.
The case where toughness is exactly what we need is for business
crime, whether against workers or against customers. For instance,
stealing
workers' pay and
foreclosing
on millions of Americans' homes using fraudulent papers. The
perpetrators do this for profit, and if it ceases to be profitable,
they will stop doing it.
If we have recourse to a billionaire to defeat the impositions of
other billionaires, the result will be to
ensconce
plutocracy more deeply.
A society where a small number of the powerful compete for power could
turn
into an empire.
Mulvaney is pushing
deregulation
of business in many areas of the US government.
By contrast, the bully wants more regulation of
activities
that help poor people,
refugees,
and
women.
US citizens: call on presidential candidates to commit to ending federal attacks on abortion rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Google to shut down its location tracker Sensorvault.
Sensorvault stores the locations tracked in great detail by Android
apps, which do this even when location tracking is "turned off".
This is what you have to expect from nonfree software.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democratic and Republican parties to denounce and reject disinformation tactics.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate illegalities in use
of soldiers to patrol the border.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your Mass legislator to pass the ROE Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Hatred of unusual sexuality still causes gratuitous suffering
around the world.
Even some "progressive" Congresscritters voted the Pentagon's bloated funding deal.
Jewish religious leaders reminded Congress that rejection and cruelty to
refugees can hurt anyone.
(satire) … Russian operative
Pavel Artemyev reportedly expressed disappointment Friday that
gerrymandering has taken all the fun out of hacking the 2020 election.
Comparing Warren with Sanders on foreign policy.
I disagree with the author on some points. Russia and China do
threaten the security of Americans, though not as much as the
bullshitter does. I think the US should keep troops in Rojava (the
Kurdish part of Syria) for as long as Rojava wants them.
If we care about democracy in the Middle East, we should defend it
when it is threatened.
Detroit is playing games to expand the thugs' video surveillance and obfuscate
its relationship with face recognition.
The remaining refugees imprisoned on Manus Island have been invited to
move to New Zealand, but Australia's right wing hate regime won't let
them.
It is good that the bully did not stop the US from accepting many
refugees from Manus. As for the ones that have moved to Port Moresby,
the capital of Papua New Guinea, I wonder what their lives are like
there.
Australia is still ashamed of its actions there. An opposition
Australian senator went to Manus Island and asked to visit the prison.
Not only was he denied permission, Papua New Guinea immediately
deported him.
It is clear that Papua New Guinea's government is acting as a puppet for
the Australian minister in charge, Dutton.
By the way, Dutton is the same minister that could have you imprisoned
if you disobey secret orders to sabotage your clients or your free
software. Don't go to Australia.
The UK parliament voted to authorize abortion and same-sex marriage in
Northern Ireland. These were blocked because the parliament of
Northern Ireland ceased to function some years ago.
Important advice about militarism that President Roosevelt received in 1940,
but the US is forgetting.
(satire) A woman's soul complains of gender bias in purgatory.
There is surely gender bias in CIA torture, too.
Biden didn't just vote for Dubya's war with Iraq. He championed it.
Israel has decided to legitimize Israelis' houses on Palestinians'
land, if the Israelis dealt "in good faith" with the Israeli
government.
Israelis are not required to show "good faith" to Palestinians themselves.
Contrast this with how Israel grabs for excuses to make Palestinians
demolish their own homes.
The weight of the evidence supports Iran's claim that the US spy drone
that Iran shot down was over Iran's waters.
Making war plans and running war games do not strike me as matters of
special concern. Those kinds of preparations are, in most cases, not
followed by an actual war. Thus, if the bully does attack Iran, I
won't consider that planning to be the cause.
The US has cancelled and violated the nonnuclear accord with Iran but still
criticizes Iran for not obeying it.
Amazon keeps Alexa recordings and transcripts indefinitely.
"Unprecedented": More Than 100 Arctic Wildfires Burn in Worst Ever Season.
In some places the peat is burning and could burn for months.
The relation between this and global heating is direct in both
directions. The Arctic has heated much more than anywhere else on
Earth, and that temperature makes for fire. And the fire spews CO2
which will increase global heating.
A person's pattern of using a mobile phone allows deducing a lot about
per personality.
Phone companies around the world could use this to help profile people.
In order for planting trees to be environmentally beneficial, they
need to be the right trees, in a suitable place.
I conjecture that a good rule would be to plant trees in places that
used to be forests a few centuries ago, and plant the trees that used
to live there.
The EPA plans to allow polluters to appeal rulings but not allow
pollution victims to do so.
Plutocratists have directed that agency to do the opposite of its job.
That is why I now call it the Environmental Poisoning Agency.
Moscow Police Arrest up to 200 Ahead of Election Protest.
Putin openly visits contempt on democracy as an act of intimidation,
like what the bully does in the US.
In the Guardian
we read,
Who or what does "them" refer to? The testicles? The woman?
Notwithstanding my delectation in occasional wildly funny ambiguities
such as that one, I continue to advocate systematically avoiding them
by using singular gender-neutral pronouns
when referring to just one person.
In this particular case, since the person is specified as a woman,
"her" would also have fit.
Siri Records Fights, Doctor's Appointments, And Sex (and contractors hear it).
The Israeli Who Had to Prove He's Guilty of Beating a Palestinian, and the
Palestinian Who Had to Prove He's Innocent of Raping a Jewish Girl.
The workers in Australian mines now have precarious jobs (and,
apparently, no unions to defend them). So they are afraid they will
be fired if they report how the mine cuts corners and endangers
people's lives and health.
The underlying cause of this is right-wing government that lets mines
get away with precarious employment. Give miners more power and their
union will attend to the safety.
Machine learning / automated classification is going to be loaded down
with patents, like other fields of computing.
(The article uses the misleading over-generalization, "IP". It
covers a bunch of disparate laws, which in itself is spreads confusion
by leading people to think those laws have something significant in
common.)
We need laws that directly exclude software and use of software from
the domain of patents.
Jewish activists protest the deportation thugs, saying "Never Again
Means Close the Camps!"
Jews have two different interpretations of "Never again!" One is
narrow: "Never again to us!" The other interpretation is broad:
"Never again to anybody!" I admire that side of Judaism (although it
won't convince me to believe in supernatural entities).
A strike planned in an Amazon warehouse is meant to draw
a contrast between the carefully cultivated image Amazon presents to
consumers and the reality for the company's workers.
By contrast, in the Free Software Movement we aim to draw a contrast
between that same image and the reality for those who make the
mistake of accepting the company's services.
Evidence suggests that excess CO2 in the ocean can reach a tipping
point after which the ocean would rapidly become much more acidic.
Legalizing recreational marijuana correlates with decreased use
by high school students.
Instagram is testing AI-implemented kind communication guidelines.
In the GNU Project we ask people to learn and consciously practice our
kind communication guidelines.
(satire) Defense Attorneys Vow To Present Irrefutable Evidence Proving Jeffrey
Epstein Billionaire.
The staff of a Chicago medical organization are suing because it identified
them with fingerprints for each shift.
I think it is bad that the employer has their fingerprints at all.
Is it possible to authenticate people with a biometric that is
normally hidden?
US schools are monitoring social media postings of everyone living
near by, using Artificial Stupidity to detect "threats". Nearly every
alarm is a false alarm.
One thing that the article doesn't mention is that the contracts for
using the school's computers and their nonfree software, and the
online dis-services that the school wants to let spy on students,
are fundamentally unjust.
Christchurch Mayor On Mass Shooter: 'I've no idea what his name is'.
I didn't pay attention to that name either.
Real-Time Facial Recognition Should Never Be Coupled with Body-Worn Cameras.
I agree, but that is not enough. We must also them from being used to make
and store videos without limits. My proposed automatic system to decide
when to save the recording could take care of this job.
The FBI frequently identifies people by running their photos
through many states' data bases of drivers license photos.
The deportation thugs do it too, which means that the states which
permit this expose their residents gratuitously to deportation.
Tsipras and Syriza lost the first battle to the global plutocracy.
Then, instead of fighting for every inch, they capitulated eagerly.
Then most Greeks did the foolish thing that a defeated people often
do: they decided to support a different set of right-wing
plutocratists instead. This was pitiful and stupid. Despair can
drive a people to do self-mutilation, just as it can drive an
individual to it, but don't help your enemies subjugate your people.
Global heating is causing havoc in Somalia, through repeated drought.
As the number of people who can't feed themselves any more increases,
it is clear that other countries will eventually let them die.
But in the mean time, climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion
can present their example of a foretaste of what is coming
if we don't decarbonize.
"[Trudeau's] promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy is
like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco
companies make generous donations to cancer research."
There is no room in the carbon budget for strip-mining
Alberta's tar sands.
Local disasters due to global heating are happening at a rate of
roughly once per week.
Mizutori's stance is misguided. We must give priority to long-term
reduction of the harm that global heating will do. We must do all we
can in that direction. Defending cities from floods and fires of the
2020s must take second place to reducing the floods and fires of the
2030s, 2040s, 2050s and beyond.
It is good to defend cities better in the short term, provided this is
not at the expense of measures to reduce the long-term threat.
Scholars implore San Francisco not to cover up the murals that depict
misdeeds of George Washington.
It is true that we can't tell the school's students (or anyone else)
how to feel. That doesn't mean we must cater to misguided demands
that are motivated by those feelings.
In US concentration camps for immigrants, the officers let thugs
vent
cruelty at the prisoners.
"The conditions in the border cells are shocking — but the
right[-wing] will use
public
outrage [as an excuse to] to build more jails."
For the bully, threatening massive deportation raids then not carrying
them out added up to a successful act of terror. He used cruelty to
send a message.
I did not post about this, because it is a mistake to talk about
whatever the conman says. Next time he tries to terrify people
with a threat, let's please not talk about it. The things
has actually does cause enough harm on their own; we need not
add to them by quoting his threats.
Wealthy white males in the US today are about as healthy (on the
average) as were the wealthy white males of 25 years ago, but all
other demographic groups in the US have got less healthy since then.
The study doesn't show the reason for this, but the increasing expense
of medical care in the US is surely part of the reason. The
increasing stress of living in the US under plutocracy may be
another.
The hospital that became famous for suing poor people for medical charges
they can't pay has dropped some of the lawsuits. It is going to reconsider
that policy.
Maybe after this public outrage the hospital will cease all such lawsuits.
Or maybe it won't. If it does stop, it might start again in a year or two
and hope nobody notices.
No word on whether it will rename itself as "Le Malheur".
Boris Johnson, an evil clown, may now become prime minister of the UK
by burying a real scandal under an assertion so unbelievable that the
press got distracted by how unbelievable it was.
The assertion was also apparently calculated to disguise one of his
past failures in search engines.
I didn't post any notes about the unbelievable statement, because it
was not important. Additional reasons to distrust someone's word are
hardly needed when that someone is a Tory.
US border thugs tried to cover up their secret discussion group
for posting their hatred of immigrants, but the Intercept saved it
and has posted about it.
The quotation, "Fuck the whole country of Honduras," is ironic
because that's exactly what the US has done.
US citizens:
call on Congress
to block Facebook's planned currency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire) … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed concerns
Thursday that outspoken progressives
could
do permanent damage to Democrats’ reputation as ineffectual
cowards.
'I Was Ready to Sign' Deportation Papers, Says US Citizen After Three
Weeks in
Horrific
Immigrant Detention Center.
The conditions included denial of medical care.
The deportation thugs released him after negative publicity,
but there is no reason to think that they will make the conditions for
the other prisoners any less nasty.
All insurance companies in Australia
now
refuse to insure any new coal projects. This may put an end to
most of them, but really large companies might self-insure.
Now what about oil and gas?
A natural gas company in California
set
up an unnatural astroturf disinformation campaign to keep the
methane leaking.
The term "balance" has a powerful irrational appeal. We've seen this
in the
copyright
field for ages, and now in energy as well.
About Boris Johnson, the British bullshitter that is
allied
with the US bullshitter.
If we don't curb global heating, many tropical regions will experience
deadly heat every year. Often this will follow
storms
that cut the electric supply to the air conditioning that would be
necessary to save people's lives.
Mueller's testimony did not deal a political blow to the bullshitter,
because he
gave
little if any new explanation.
I think the bullshitter deserves to be impeached and removed from
office, for treating the US political system with contempt, as well as
multiple crimes and acts of cruelty and dishonesty. But it is
impossible to do that, and without that possibility, whether to
impeach is simply a matter of political tactics.
How RT TV
designs
its disinformation to serve Russia's interest.
An opioids executive was convicted of
bribing
doctors to prescribe the opioid "subsys."
Extinction Rebellion:
"Fashion
Week Should Be a Declaration of Emergency."
It is bizarre to think that clothing makes a big contribution to
global heating, but it is true: "fast fashion", the practice of
wearing clothes just a little and discarding them, has turned clothing
into something to consume rather than a durable good.
Sanders and Warren advocate right to repair for farm equipment.
Barcelona will try to prevent expansion of its airport.
Bravo! The world cannot sustain the increase of air travel.
The UK is trying — again — to corrupt charities that help homeless
people by getting them to participate in a scheme to identify
foreigners and deport them.
In doublespeak, this scheme is called "support" for homeless people.
India is shipping water by train from Kerala to Chennai. But since
the lack of water is due to global heating, the shortfall will
increase over time.
If Delhi runs out of water next year, I doubt that shipping water from Kerala
will be a solution.
In the long term, IUDs can help prevent the need for water from
increasing, and solar-powered desalinators can compensate (a little)
for the decrease in supply. But farms need water, too. I fear India
is headed for massive starvation.
Debunking Microsoft's anti-Right-to-Repair FUD.
Bravo for the article, but one quotation falls into a widespread
confusion: that spread by the term "intellectual property".
In general, that statement is false. It could not steal your
copyrights, or your patents, or your trademarks, or your plant variety
monopolies, or your IC mask monopolies, or your publicity rights —
those are legal privileges, so they can't be "stolen". I think the
only things it could possibly steal that way are trade secrets.
Please don't ever
say "intellectual property" if what you mean is "trade secrets" or
if what you mean is "copyrights", or if what you mean is any
other specific thing, because that is a big generalization. It is
likely to convert a narrow true statement into a broad false one.
If you think that what you mean is all of them, then please study the
issue more carefully — a statement so general is usually false,
and probably most of them are not even relevant to the issue at hand.
If you want to quote a statement where someone else used the term
"intellectual property", please check whether the statement was false
due to this confusion. Any statement that used that term probably
was confused.
To make Amazon pay its fair share of taxes, and Apple, Google,
Facebook and others too, we need to see their tax returns. Let's change
tax law to publish the tax returns of corporations.
We could extend this to every company that files a separate tax
return, or to every company that isn't a sole proprietorship.
With that exception, it would respect personal privacy adequately,
Private use of face tracking is widespread and dangerous,
but the proposed regulations only aim at use by public agencies. Not enough!
Government surveillance cameras watching the street are a great disguise
for private surveillance cameras put up by nobody-knows-who.
Surveillance cameras — cameras transmitting video somewhere else —
should be illegal except when authorized by a court for a specific
place and period of time.
Pressuring Bahrain to cancel executions of people whose trials were
thoroughly unfair.
Battle Against Tobacco Epidemic Is Far from Won.
The European Investment Bank will stop funding fossil duel projects.
This could make a real difference if other investors follow this example.
An interview with Manual Zelaya, who was president of Honduras until
the coup that appears to have been approved by Hilary Clinton.
Contrasting codes of conduct and accusations
with trying to be kind to other people.
California now has a law requiring bots to identify themselves as such
when used for advertising or electioneering.
I think this is a good idea, but I wonder whether enforcing the law
will prove difficult.
Brazil is a big exporter of frozen chicken, and 1/5 of it is infested
with salmonella.
The EU should blacklist Brazil until its infestation rate gets down to
the achievable level? I doubt it will do so, but why not? Is it only
lack of moral commitment, or is there some legal obstacle?
I wonder if some business-supremacy treaties forbid this.
Can anyone suggest who to ask?
Plants exchange signals and respond to some stimuli. Don't leap
to the conclusion that this means they can feel or think.
An independent expert group sponsored by the European Union has
published a plan for promoting "trustworthy AI".
It does not seem to propose how to develop an AI to be trustworthy,
how to determine whether a given AI program is infact trustworthy, or
how any AI program can be trustworthy. As far as I know, these are
totally unsolved problems, but the report takes for granted some
solution is used.
The British navy captured an Iranian oil tanker said to be taking oil to Syria.
This was clearly an act of war, and justifies military action Iran's part.
The capture took place in disputed waters near Gibraltar, and Spain
has objected to it.
I can't see what relevance EU sanctions have. If the are sanctions,
they prohibit certain dealings between EU entities and Syria. I don't
see how an Iranian ship would come under EU sanctions, unless it is owned
by a European company.
Only a blockade would purport go that far, and a blockade, if there
were one, would be an act of war in itself. (Remember when Egypt
blockaded Elat? Israel responded to that, legitimately, by capturing
the Sinai.)
I don't think the EU has announced a blockade of Syria. Indeed, it is
unable to do such a thing; the whole field of war is outside the EU's
scope.
So there is some bullshit here. I hope someone sorts out the facts.
China is taking thousands of Uighur children away from their parents
and putting them into boarding schools designed to assimilate them.
This resembles what the US and Canada did to indigenous peoples
during much of the 20th century. Public opinion made the US and
Canada stop this, but in China public opinion is not allowed to exist.
Even fairly mild reproach of China for putting a million Uighurs in
brainwash camps has discomfited China. Firm pressure might
accomplish a great deal.
Perhaps Hong Kong should be the main target of the pressure, for now.
An explicitly plutocratist party is expected to win the elections in
Greece.
I think Syriza's surrender discredited the idea of resistance.
Perhaps Greeks have thrown in the towel, and are now telling
themselves that surrender will get them some trickle-down.
However, we've seen that that's bullshit. The plutocrats
will be nice to you until you have swallowed the hook, but then they
squeeze ever harder.
Getting a little more privileges in the labor camp, through assiduous
obedience, will never get you freedom.
ACLU: beware dis-services that say, "We'll pay for your personal data"
— that would only legitimize the basis of their power, not weaken it.
Shushana Zuboff's take on why "owning the data about you" would be
ineffective as protection from surveillance capitalism.
Canada required social media companies to keep information on who paid
for each ad political. Google responded by not running any political
ads.
The author seems to think that Google somehow defeated Canada. I say
it's just the opposite: Canada achieved a bigger success than it aimed
for!
This suggests it may be possible for one country to succeed in
defeating a system that spreads fake news, if it can identify the
crucial nexus at which to operate. Different networks function
differently.
Shell's Sleazy Censorship: arranging a joint event with climate
defenders, then cancelling the participation of the researcher who
was going to show how Shell is still working to hamper climate defense.
Less well-off areas have least to lose from restricting diesel fuel,
and most to gain from clean-air zones, study finds.
The University of New South Wales has told teachers not to talk
about the fact that the Australian aboriginals reached and colonized
Australia around 40,000 years ago. Science is to be suppressed so as to
respect their nonscientific traditional views.
I think that lying to children is likely to backfire on them. I resent
when parents demand I support their lies about Santa Claus, because I
think I'd be doing wrong.
Lying to adults about their group's origin could be even worse.
OPEC acknowledged that climate defense campaigns including the school
strike for climate threaten fossil fuel extraction industry's future profits.
Greta Thunberg called this "our biggest compliment yet".
OPEC calls criticism "unscientific", but that can only mean that the
likely fragments of the coming disaster have not been specifically
proved. It would be irrational to wait for such detailed proof
before protecting ourselves.
Striking students can influence officials even in right-wing parts of
the US. They can mobilize their parents, too.
A study covers 1300 lawsuits against governments and businesses
over damage caused by global heating.
Situations of high stress cause fetuses to miscarry. The effect
is stronger for male fetuses.
I wonder whether in Alabama anyone that imposes stress on a pregnant
woman who subsequently has a miscarriage could be prosecuted for
homicide.
US farmers are growing a lot of food but making little money.
At the same time, they are exhausting and losing the soil and
spreading toxins. Here are ideas for how to fix both.
Another cause of the failure of farms is being compelled to sell to a
few large middleman companies. Many farms have gone broke recently.
The pressure means farmers cannot invest in regenerative agriculture.
Sanders proposes how to restructure agriculture in the US
for the sake of farmers.
A UN human rights report says that Venezuela's suppression forces have
killed almost 7000 people since Jan 2018 for "resisting arrest". This
is the government's own figure, so it is clear they were all killed in
raids, but it is inconceivable that they all died in that way.
More information about torture discovered by the UN visit.
Brazil has thoroughly condemned corrupt judge Sergio Moro.
In the past, this sort of exposure would compel an official to resign.
Nowadays, corrupt officials have discovered that trying to tough it out
may succeed. What will it take to kick Moro out of office?
US Judge Shira Scheindlin pronounces on racist stop-and-frisk in
Israel based on her decisions about
racist
stop-and-frisk in New York City.
Israeli right-wing extremists, from Netanyahu on down, have decided to
deny the fact that
Palestine
is under Israeli military occupation.
When anyone points out this fact, they call it "anti-semitism". They
do so, while maintaining an alliance with
real
anti-semites in the US.
"Influencers"
try
to extort gratis food from restaurants, even ice cream trucks.
The best way to deal with them is to stay away from Instagram.
It's a branch of Facebook and participating in it is for zuckers.
House Democrats put an amendment into a military bill that would
strictly
forbid fighting with Iran, other than defending against attacks.
If your school provides you with an iBad, it's not merely imposing
user-subjugating software and online dis-services. It may also be
tracking
your movements in the school.
Tree planting
could
be a big part of preventing climate disaster.
However, I have to raise two questions:
One of Libya's governments imprisoned migrants next to a military base.
Haftar's army attacked the base and bombed the prison too. This
caused
over 100 casualties.
An Italian judge rebuked Salvini and
releasing
Captain Rackete from arrest. It is not clear whether any of the
charges have been dropped.
A hundred or so protesters
took over
the building of the Hong Kong legislature, after
bashing
down its door. Then they destroyed computers and other
facilities.
That legislature is elected through a biased system; it is not
democratic. It does not deserve much respect; I won't say that
damaging its property is inherently wrong, But this violent action,
and the subsequent vandalism, play into China's hands.
New York State has authorized the head of a congressional committee to
demand anyone's New York state tax returns. That congresscritter should now
demand the conman's tax returns.
This won't have immediate results — I suppose the conman will sue, hoping
to get the Supreme Court to overturn that law.
USDA Indefinitely Suspends Honey Bee Tracking Survey as [eleven]
States Get [special emergency] Approval to Use Bee-Killing Pesticide.
I wish this were satire.
Many "biodegradable" and even "compostable" plastics remain inert
and undamaged in home composting, or in the ocean.
The UK ambassador to the US has been sending his government an honest
appraisal of the conman.
If ministers continue fawning on the conman, it's not due to
ignorance.
Business-supremacy treaties are a big screw. If the UK pulls out of
one (the EU), another one (the WTO) will clobber it.
Right-wing policies make people homeless, and right-wing politicians
make an excuse not to care: they regard the homeless people as a
disgusting nuisance, to dehumanize them.
The Green New Deal can do more than avoid disaster. It can be an opportunity
to make the world better in other ways.
The UK makes it easy to set up a company with phony information about the
owners. It doesn't even bother to check whatever information it is given.
1/3 of gamers reportedly refuse to pay for anything in games
simply because of the risk of fraud.
However, there is a deeper reason to refuse to pay for anything in a
game: because that enables the game company to track you. And the
deepest reason is that the game is a proprietary program.
Playing against someone who buys better skill or better equipment is
equivalent to playing against someone who cheats.
Let's Be Honest about Britain's Obsession with "anti-Semitism".
We [Americans] Have the Money to Fix Our Food System.
The Chicago Medical Center is being sued for giving patient data to
Google, in a form that can be reidentified easily.
I think that clinics and schools should be required to keep their personal
data on their own computers, located in their own facilities, not in servers
run by companies that operate them in a cloudy way. A contract in which
the company says how it can use the data is not enough to trust that it
will remain private.
Norway focused its prison system on rehabilitation, and recidivism
declined from 60-70% to 20-25%.
Rehabilitation costs more per prisoner but results in having much
fewer prisons.
I suspect that lowering recidivism that much depends on having a
society that offers ex-cons a way to get by, other than through crime.
My impression is that in the US it is so hard to get a job with an
income you can live on, if you have a criminal record, that many
ex-cons that want to go straight are unable to make a go of it. If
the goal is to reduce the harm done by crime, this is self-defeating.
But then, the US also puts a terrible burden on poor people, and on
various disprivileged demographics, even if they don't have a criminal
record. It is a general pattern of dehumanization, rather than a
constructive attempt to address a problem.
For years I've recommended that the way to defeat extortion through
nude photos is by posting the nude photos. Now the idea is catching
on.
If defeating extortion nudes (and revenge porn, which differs by its
motive) were the only benefit, perhaps it would not be crucial.
However, it will also help decrease the general nudity taboo, and that
is very important.
Please don't refer to the people who carry out extortion via nudes as
&mdath;hackers—. There is no reason to think that they are hackers; in any
case, routine extortion is not hacking.
A Starbucks worker asked a few thugs (who were there as customers) to
move because someone felt threatened by them. Starbucks apologized.
If the representative of the thug association really can't imagine why
some customers felt threatened, he is mentally deficient, but I think
it more likely he is covering up that side of the truth. I know, from
reading the news and talking with acquaintances, why blacks may feel
endangered by the presence of thugs. Other people, with less grounds,
may feel endangered by the presence of blacks.
A store should not ask customers to leave, or to move, because
"someone feels threatened by you" — not blacks, and not thugs —
because people should not be judged based on how someone else feels
about them.
FAQ for evidence-based defense of letting children play freely.
Persistent Tory cuts to the National Health Service has pushed some
doctors to refuse overtime.
Under new pension rules, they will have to pay to work overtime.
Meanwhile, non-medical staff are going on strike against privatization.
I think it is the Tories' intention to destroy the NHS by cutting its funds
to the point it cannot possibly function. Then they will claim, as
right-wingers like to do, that government programs can't work right.
Korea's made-from-zero "smart city" replicates The Village, complete
with audio announcements that people can't shut off.
I mean The Village from the TV show, The Prisoner.
A survey of sales sites, checking for use of dark patterns, found them
in 1200 out of the 10000 sites tested.
I think these practices should be regulated, just like other practices
of retail stores.
I think that my decision not to buy anything on line
has saved me more practical annoyance than it has caused me.
That is in addition to protecting my freedom.
The Veterans Administration has its own thug department, and these
thugs occasionally turn on veterans seeking medical care — causing
grave injuries and even death.
Naturally these thugs lie to protect each other. The article recounts
that one of them tried to act like a police officer rather than a thug
and was attacked by the thugs.
The VA officials protect them, too.
Israel has forced Gaza into a pollution crisis which is now spreading to Israel.
Israel is systematically seizing and hiding public archives to
eliminate evidence of threatening Palestinians in 1948 to make them flee.
Here's more about the important vanished document about atrocities
against Palestinians.
There is now a campaign to prohibit government use of automated face
recognition in the US.
This would be an important step forward, but not enough to protect
human rights. We need to prohibit systematic use of automated face
recognition by business, also.
New options for disposal of corpses are less polluting than cremation
and ordinary burial.
Attenborough: climate defense measures "cannot be radical enough".
I think he meant "cannot be too radical".
Amnesty International denounced the Taliban's "chilling disregard for
human life."
The US makes some effort to avoid killing Afghan civilians, but it
does not consistently try hard.
And when it does kill civilians, it tends to try to cover that up.
Boris Johnson, whose contempt for truth matches that of his US buddy,
looks to be the next prime minister of the UK. By refusing to defend
Ambassador Darroch for commenting honestly and privately on that
buddy, he effectively forced Darroch to resign.
Darroch's resignation may have been necessary anyway. An ambassador
that is detested by the head of the receiving state cannot be very
effective. However, Johnson has demonstrated he wants to be prime
minister of a puppet government.
If there have to be school uniforms, at least the rules should not be gender-biased.
I never wore a school uniform. Public schools in New York in the
1950s did not have uniforms, nor did the private secondary schools I
went to. Some schools had them; but in the 70s, counterculture youth
rebelled against uniforms and more or less did away with them. I was
repulsed when I heard, a decade ago, that the practice was spreading
in the US.
France's medical system will stop covering homeopathic "treatment".
It is no more than a placebo, based only on irrational pseudoscience.
The EU has a goofy idea: promoting competition in the field of
surveillance capitalism by requiring big companies to make their
data bases available to other companies.
If done right, this could reduce the special political influence of
the biggest companies. But it will do privacy no good at all.
As India dries out, one of the bad consequences could be war between India and China.
Congress's ethics rules allow lots of conflict of interest.
A congresscritter can even trade stock in companies knowing that per
actions as congresscritter will drive the stock price up or down.
Congress is considering a law to censor the press to protect the CIA
— including its torturers.
(satire) ICE Sends Agents Home With Sacks Of Flour To Practice What It Like
Detaining Real Baby.
Some parks play a constant high-pitched sound intended to drive away
people under 25 years of age.
They should play classical music instead.
As extreme weather events become common, being hit by
two at once is no longer ridiculously unlikely.
Bill McKibben: The Climate Movement: What's Next?
Burning some of the methane produced by pigs in factory farms
is being offered as an excuse to make more factory farms.
Sanders has proudly published a list of billionaires who call him an
enemy.
If you don't earn their hatred, you're not worth voting for.
The US government lobbies internationally for increasing
pharma companies' power to use patents to overcharge.
It has been doing this for decades.
I must criticize, however, the basic confusion spread by use of
the term "intellectual property", which misrepresents the facts
about various disparate laws by leading people to think of
them as one single thing.
Patent law is different from copyright law on nearly every point.
Neither of them has any similarity to trade secrecy, and they have
hardly any relationship with trademark law. If you have a category of
"intellectual property" in your thinking, it will always mislead you.
Please join me in shunning that term. See
https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.
As for the World Trade Organization, it is a business-supremacy treaty,
designed to give business more power over society.
We must either change it so it ceases to have that effect,
or get rid of it entirely.
[The bullshitter] Praises Boris Johnson, Who Once Called Him "Unfit to
Hold the Office of President of the United States."
The bullshitter looks for submission, not for sincerity. He does not
care what Johnson said 4 years ago, as long as Johnson obeys today.
Likewise, praise from the bullshitter means, simply, "You're obeying
now; keep it up and I will keep praising you."
By the end of this century, if we don't curb global heating, humans
won't be able to work safely outside in the southern US for half the
year.
I wonder if people will still be able to do agriculture in tropical
regions.
The Poor People's Campaign endorses challenging the lobbying power
of the military-industrial-oligopoly complex.
The company behind a big planned coal mine in Australia
demanded to know the names of the scientists participating
in environmental evaluation.
This was, we must suppose, for the sake of trying to intimidate them
or gag them.
The bully has started training his followers in undisguised racism.
No matter how "modestly" an Indonesian woman dresses, she can still be
raped at home.
I can't begin to understand why men want to demand sex with someone who
isn't thrilled by it.
Francisco Santiago Jr. is one of the few victims of the Do-dirty's
murder campaigns who by luck survived his arrest and torture, and was
not shot.
His case shows that thugs pick people more or less arbitrarily, shoot them
while they are prisoners, then decide what to accuse them of. In the US.
thugs typically do this to black males, but but the Philippines thugs
are not bigots -- any Filipino can be the victim.
"Charitable" donations from the rich are not really donations: they
are attempts to buy public admiration. And often they get enough by
just announcing the donation — they see no need to actually give the
money.
Sudan's protesters and military have signed an agreement about
governing the country.
The bully has done a devastating blow to Planned Parenthood.
It will not be able to accept federal funding for any services unless
it complies with requirements that would be a surrender of its mission.
US students will be pressured to rent textbooks on subscription,
which require proprietary malware with DRM to read them.
(satire) Trump Claims He Tried To Warn Public About Epstein By
Praising Him As A Terrific Guy.
(satire) Amazon Workers Attempting Walkout Enter 7th Hour Wandering In
Ever-Expanding, Labyrinth Warehouse.
Ecuador has surrendered to the IMF, and the non-rich will suffer
greatly as a result.
Whole Foods Workers Say Conditions Deteriorated after Amazon Takeover.
For instance, they have been told to pressure customers to make deals
with Amazon. This would subject them to Amazon's many abusive
practices.
Biden's health plan is estimated to fall short of Medicare for All
by 125,000 avoidable deaths.
Sanders Accuses Biden of Parroting Pharma and Insurance Industry Script With
Attacks on Medicare for All.
We should give domestic workers the same rights that other employees have.
Israel requires students traveling on school-sponsored foreign trips
to pass a class in exaggerated political propaganda which insults
Palestinians. Even Arab students are required to learn how to give
these answers.
Israel is blocking foreign academics from working at (or visiting)
Palestinian universities.
By contrast, the Palestinian boycott asks people not to work at
Israeli universities, and does not try to stop any individual
from doing anything.
McDonalds exploits public school teachers to market junk food to their
students.
In Nepal, babies under 2 years old are eating junk food, and it leads to
malnutrition which stunts their growth.
A direct neural interface for controlling a computer could be a very
good thing, provided that you the user are the only one who controls
the interface.
In order for that to be reliably true, the software must be free.
I think testing this on animals is legitimate. It can't be developed
without testing, and testing on animals is better than testing on
humans.
The head of the border patrol was a member of the private Facebook
group for venting hatred at immigrants. Then she told us she found it
abhorrent.
One thing that the US does to some immigrants is demand passwords to
their Facebook accounts. This is supposedly done for our "safety".
Perhaps the people this should be done to are officials.
"Multilevel marketing" is not identical to a pyramid scheme, but in
practice it often works out that way. This article shows how they
lure people with promises of profits that few participants get. Many
lose a lot of money instead.
(satire) "It's Not So Bad," Mike Pence Reports On Conditions Of
Detainment Center While Hazmat Suit Disinfected.
Reevaluating Apple's reputation for good design: design for
nonrepairability is not good design.
Journalists obtained 1000 leaked audio recordings and showed some of
them to the people who were speaking.
150 of the recordings were made when the device was not supposed to be
recording.
If you're in a place with Google a listening device (or Apple, or
Amazon), disconnect it! Note that every portable phone is a potential
listening device.
Finally, wildlife defenders recognize the crucial need to limit the
human population, in order to leave some land wild.
Investment by plutocracy also plays a role in eliminating wilderness,
but the two work hand in hand (in deforestation in Brazil, for instance),
so reducing births will help.
Israeli right-wing extremists set upon anti-occupation activist
Jonathan Pollak on the street and beat him up, then stabbed him.
As for the charges made by the right-wing extremists, they are the friends
and allies of US right-wing extremists. I do not believe their accusations.
As Putin imprisons historians that study Stalin's terror, Stalin receives
public praise promoted by the state.
Jeffrey Epstein intimidated the whole US press into silence about his
rape career, starting in 2003.
New Zealand is buying the now-illegal semiautomatic rifles
that people already own.
Any thug in parts of the US can immediately get a large dossier
about most Americans from just a name or other identifier.
What bothers me is not that they can get it quickly, but that so much
information has been collected about millions of people who are
not suspects and about which no search has been authorized.
If we don't ban commercial use of face recognition to track people,
this commercial data base will be extended to include people's
movements as recorded by billions of surveillance cameras spread
across US cities and roads.
How to relieve the worries some parents have about vaccination.
A bigger and deeper question: how can we fix the systems that make it
so easy to stir up conspiracy theories about anything whatsoever,
especially if it relates to children, or adolescents being called
"children"?
People with damaged immune systems can die from measles even if
they were vaccinated against it. They depend on the rest of society
to get vaccinated.
There is now a whistleblower site for tech company staff to report
their employer's egregious attacks on human rights.
Unfortunately this will do nothing to push back on those kinds of
attacks on human rights that have become standard practice -- for
instance, proprietary malware
and internet dis-services that spy, manipulate, restrict, swindle
and addict people.
Disabled people in the UK are now crippled — by the stinginess of Tories.
Planting trees in a pasture can make it stay usable through 9 months
without rain, and produce other crops too.
Microsoft Office 365: Banned in [some] German Schools over Privacy Fears.
It is a bit silly that the legal objection is limited to sending data
to servers in the US. Snooping software should be eliminated, inside
and outside of schools, no matter who it spies on people for.
Thugs crashed their vehicle into that of a passerby,
then pulled him out and handcuffed him.
It is vitally important to punish thugs for everything they do wrong
in nonfatal attacks like this. We can't convert thugs into police
officers by punishing them only on the rare occasions when they murder
someone, not even if the punishment is severe. Most of them will
never murder someone, and never know another thug who murdered
someone, so they will not feel any pressure to change their ways. To
achieve that, we must punish the many small incidents.
(satire) Trump Honors Brave Heroes Who Slept With Wives Of Deployed Soldiers.
The UK held an inquiry into the killing of Anthony Grainger (shot dead
by a thug) and determined that systemic flaws in the thug department
were to blame.
Surely a woman shouldn’t be forced to wax testicles if that makes them
feel uncomfortable?
and "If you hire a managed service provider to do your network security
they could, instead,... steal your intellectual property."
In general the UK seems to do a better job of holding killer thugs accountable than the US usually does.
Resourceful grandchildren figured out how to max out their grandfather's credit card buying special players for a predatory fantasy soccer game. The random element of loot boxes strengthens their activeness,
but the fact that players must keep spending in order to win is enough reason to classify it as predatory. Any game of competitive spending makes each player pressure the other players to spend more.
The fact that the game is proprietary software is enough reason to refuse to run it, and not to get a copy of it for yourself or anyone else. The only good reason to have such a game is to study it for free software development.
The ACLU warns of a legislative campaign to legitimize selling people's medical records by giving the patient a cut of the revenue.
That money won't come anywhere near compensating for the advantage that companies will take of you given that knowledge about you.
Japan's music licensing gang is demanding royalties from music schools, calling music lessons "public performance".
Extinction Rebellion protesters glued themselves to doors in the US capitol building, blocking legislators from getting to the chamber to vote.
The person who decided perse "can't bring a child into this world" has understood the situation thoroughly. But I wonder what "I broke down my car" means. "I disassembled it"? That is the proper grammatical interpretation but seems implausible. If the article garbled the words a little, it could mean "I caused it to malfunction" or "I started crying at the wheel".
The US government is going to try again to ban secure communication for users.
They think they can get Americans so frightened of the terrorists (who do exist, but are not a big danger as dangers go) that we will surrender our privacy to a state which can be far more dangerous.
Amazon servers save transcripts of some Alexa conversations indefinitely.
It would be absurd to delete a reminder before reminding you, but a privacy-respecting reminder system would keep that reminder only on your own computers, so it would protect your privacy both before and after.
You probably want to save a record of your purchases, but a privacy-respecting system would keep that record private by keeping it only on your own computers. With a proper anonymous payment system, such as GNU Taler, no one but you would ever know who made the purchase.
How Electronic Monitoring Drives Defendants Into Debt (and then back into jail).
Pfizer's new experiment with regulatory capture: putting the former Saboteur of the FDA on its board.
Why Peace and Climate Justice Are the Same Project.
Cory Booker supports war with Iran.
Stiglitz: "Only a fool would trust Facebook with his or her financial well being. But maybe that’s the point: with so much personal data on some 2.4bn monthly active users, who knows better than Facebook just how many suckers are born every minute?"
The border thugs are supposed to transfer prisoners to immigration agencies within 72 hours, but the bully's orders have made this difficult to do — so prisoners accumulate in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
Australia has mismanaged a major regional river system to the point where fish regularly die in large numbers.
The cause, of course, is putting the short-term demands of profit over the long-term needs. This is what leads to dangerous mining, deforestation, and fertilizer runoff that harms the Great Barrier Reef.
Senator Warren proposes measures to steer the US away from risk of another financial crisis — notably to limit leveraged loans to businesses, as well as to help poor people reduce their debt.
An advance in how a snoopphone (if you carry one) can read sensors on or in your body.
It may be that this method would actually protect you from those sensors as long as you don't carry a snoopphone. What is not clear is how far away from other people's snoopphones you would need to stay.
A shopping mall that serves as a testbed for "smart" city technology doesn't collect personal data except through an app.
If a real "smart" city does that, it might be acceptable — unless it puts pressure on everyone to use the app so as to get convenience.
UK Hosts Press Freedom Summit While Fighting for Right to Spy on Media.
If the UK wins that case, the outcome will affect all of Europe.
Cubans trying to move to the US now get treated like people from other countries in Latin America.
This despite the fact that at home they face the effects of US sanctions.
(satire) … the average American must have [per] life destroyed by a natural [sic] disaster every six minutes in order to finally fear climate change.
Meanwhile, back in reality, New York City got two within two days.
Iowa, North Dakota and Maryland Lead the Way on Curbing the Revolving Door Between Government and Industry.
More about the danger of the bully's "expedited deportations" plan.
Border thugs could deport US citizens fast, rather than giving them time to establish their citizenship.
When men with sticks attacked people in Hong Kong's remote Yuen Long train station, the victims were not protesters, just passersby.
Why they attacked people there is not clear, unless China just wanted to make people in Hong Kong afraid.
The Tories are so determined to kick out European citizens that they have planned to keep the data on which they base the decisions secret.
In other words, they are planning to make lots of mistakes and don't want them to be corrected.
A Palestinian medic, Muhammad al-Judaili, was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper, and he eventually died from this.
Rubber-coated bullets are said to be "non-lethal", but we know and snipers know that they can kill if they hit someone's head. Snipers don't hit someone's head by accident.
Israeli soldiers demolished 16 Palestinian apartment buildings on the pretext that they were too close to the annexation wall.
There must be hundreds of apartments buildings that the wall was built close to. Now they may all be demolished.
The Guardian censored its regular cartoonist for satirizing the crusade to cleanse the Labour Party of what is accused of being anti-semitism.
As fungi adapt to living outside in temperatures close to human body temperature, some of them may become able to colonize the human body.
This may be the reason that a new fungal disease with no known treatment is spreading on several continents.
A woman in a car crash is more likely to be injured than a man in a similar crash. Could that be because crash test dummies have mainly been designed to simulate men?
LinkedIn has staged a surveillance coup against libraries through an education service set up specifically for libraries.
For instance, it demands that users make individual LinkedIn accounts so that it can profile them.
That page represents libraries' pushback; some have dropped the service and others surely will if LinkedIn does not retreat.
I have no other details about that service, but simply based on knowing the usual practices I expect it is a disservice in other ways.
Moe about Senator Warren's plans to stop abuse by "private equity" takeovers.
(satire) the solar system’s real estate agents have begun trying to attract home buyers to the neglected, run-down planet of Earth by renaming it "West Saturn."
Big climate defense rallies are planned world-wide for Sep 20-27.
Suggestions for what progressive trade policy should look like: putting human beings and nature first.
What it says about "intellectual property" tries to go in the right direction, but it is flawed by taking the bogus concept of "intellectual property" as a basis.
After the FTC's slap on Facebook's wrist, we can expect it to abuse personal data over and over.
However, even a bigger fine could at best have limited how Facebook abuses personal data. The real problem is that Facebook collects personal data.
So don't be a zucker — don't give Facebook any data. And use a browser such as IceCat that blocks Like buttons, so Facebook can't get data about you in any other way.
Puerto Rico's governor has finally agreed to resign, after many protests including 1/3 of the island's population, plus plans to impeach him.
The sad thing about Puerto Rico is that the US has saddled it with so much debt, and imposed so much privatization, that good politicians wouldn't have much chance to do a good job.
"I'm a scientist. Under [the saboteur] I lost my job for refusing to hide climate crisis facts."
Use of AI techniques whose functioning nobody understands puts society in a state of "intellectual debt". That is not necessarily bad, but it can easily lead to bad consequences when competition and conflict get into the matter.
By contrast, the fact that we did not understand how aspirin reduced headaches did offer anyone an opportunity to cause mysterious headaches that aspirin would make worse.
Megadroughts Are Likely Coming to the U.S. Southwest Within Decades, Scientists Say.
Long droughts wiped out the small cities that existed in parts of the southwest. The big cities that need a lot more water would have more trouble surviving. Unless perhaps solar-powered condensers can save the day.
Violent porn has made the idea of strangling a woman and calling it "sex" appear normal, so women go along with it. If that's not disgusting enough, men that murder their lovers or wives can now pretend that "it was just a sex game".
A school in Texas says that it will require all students in extracurricular activities to submit to random drug tests.
I hope many students will refuse.
Bolsonaro has succeeded at accelerated destruction of the Amazon forest.
Scientists warn that this may kill the trees that remain.
UK public schools require specific uniforms, which can be so expensive that poor families cut back on food. Or else find another school which isn't trying to keep poor people out.
This is one of the symptoms of the policy of making schools compete to avoid being forcibly privatized as "academies".
I consider the very idea of requiring a uniform outrageous.
The US Needs a Marshall Plan for Central America.
(Instead of the current martial plan that drives people to flee.)
(satire) … Phoenix law enforcement officials confirmed Tuesday local man Rod Cleighborn had been hired as a cop for posting a racist rant on social media.
It's a custom in the Netherlands to drop a group of children in the woods and challenge them to find their way back to civilization.
They succeed, and in the process learn self-confidence.
"Stijn is 11," she said. "The time window in which we can teach him is closing. He is going into adolescence, and then he will make decisions for himself."
Pelosi made a deal with the Republicans that will backfire against any progressive president in 2021.
Sanders will have to cut harmful spending, such as nuclear weapons development and secret foreign wars, if he can't get a debt increase or a tax increase through the Senate.
Increasing industrial agriculture is not the way to feed more poor people.
In the US, it doesn't seriously try.
Growing corn or soybeans to make fuel is especially foolish since it uses petroleum-based fertilizer. When that's subsidized, it is a handout for agribusiness. Biofuel is efficient only when it's made from byproducts of growing something else that's worth growing in its own right.
US citizens: call on the Senate to vote to support research into the sociology of gun violence.
Confirmation bias, group think and pressure to find the perpetrator quickly are major factors in convicting innocent people.
"Smart" diapers spy on the baby and maybe the rest of the family.
If the manufacturers wanted to, they could make this info available directly and solely to the parents.
Today's global heating, affecting the whole globe, has no parallel in historical temperature changes.
US citizens: call on the Bureau of Land Management not to allow oil drilling in Chaco Canyon.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the UK it is a crime to do something in public that people in the vicinity find "disgusting".
I too would find it disgusting, but so what?
The bully has a new plan to take food stamps away from some poor Americans.
The UK is so desperate to build new nuclear power plants that it will pay in advance from the treasury.
This is a decision of the same Tory government that has pretty much put an end to land-based wind power and cut subsidies for solar power.
There is a report that the reason is a disguised subsidy for the UK's planned new nuclear missile submarines.
Economists studied the effects of increasing the minimum wage in many low-wage US counties and found no sign that this causes loss of work.
The world's planned natural gas projects won't fit in the carbon budget.
Indeed, the world cannot afford any new fossil fuel infrastructure, because once new infrastructure is built there will be tremendous pressure to use it and roast Earth's ecosphere.
The idea of natural gas as a "bridge fuel" is an excuse, which appeared plausible only because we did not know the amount of methane leaks.
ACLU: Bogus “Aggression Detectors” Are Audio-Recording People In Public.
If we had proper laws, anyone trying to sell a system for aggression detection would be required to make it send nothing except reports about aggressions — not recordings of ordinary conversations.
The audio recordings on buses in San Francisco (and maybe elsewhere) should be illegal too.
Congress and the bully have passed a law to stop the IRS from seizing people's money without a trial on mere suspicion that they were evading the requirement to report depositing more than $10,000 by depositing smaller amounts.
Yes, it was as absurd as it looks.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the BOOST Act, which would give a sum of money to each poor person or family in the US.
If you sign, please spread the word!
San Francisco will cover up murals that were painted to show how some of the US founding fathers participated in owning slaves and in conquest of indigenous peoples.
People who can't bear to see a depiction of an injustice are useless for fighting it. Schools should lead people to face moral issues, not cower helplessly from them.
Author Richard Zimler reports that some of his talks in Britain have been cancelled because the hosts fear protests or violence because he is Jewish. They seem to fear they will meet with protests if they invite a Jew to speak.
I am not convinced that his friends are correct in blaming Palestinian activists for this. That claim is not based on direct evidence.
When Australia brings its refugees from Nauru or Manus because it can no longer deny they need medical treatment, it guards them like dangerous criminals.
They are not allowed to see their families.
Australia even exposes them to bedbugs, which it could easily avoid.
Why do thugs often gratuitously shoot and threaten blacks? It seems that some thugs literally think of blacks as subhuman.
Solar Foods makes a protein supplement from electricity, water and air.
Extinction Rebellion blocked a bridge in Paris to call attention to the implications of the hottest day ever recorded there.
'The Damage Has Been Done': Despite Court Ruling, Experts Say Trump Succeeded in Making Immigrant Communities Fearful of Census.
10% of the workers in Britain have been captured by the piecework sweatshop dis-services.
We must extend all the rights and benefits of employees to cover these forms of work.
Thousands of Americans — perhaps hundreds of thousands — have been killed because judges sealed evidence of deadly defects in products and kept the defects secret for years as more people died. The dangerous flaws of OxyContin, which spread opioid addiction, were concealed for 12 years.
Trade secrecy is always bad for the public. Occasionally it is deadly, but usually merely harmful. We should change the law so that no significant problem can be concealed in this way.
Businesses should not be allowed to enforce an NDA to conceal mistreatment of workers, customers, or the public.
Agreeing to nondisclosure of generally useful technical information, such as software, is betrayal of society as a whole. I refuse on principle to do this.
A woman in Alabama has been charged with manslaughter for getting shot while pregnant. The state treats the fetus as a person.
This is the natural conclusion of the twisted premises of those who treat fetuses as sacred.
But the problem may be broader than that. Suppose she had been shot while carrying a three-year-old child in her arms? Suppose someone else had shot at her and killed the child.
I don't think people should be prosecuted for the effects of being shot at.
The conman's appointees on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission want to inspect nuclear power plants less often.
The owners won't need to fix problems if they can avoid finding out about them. The only way we will know about them is if they lead to an accident.
A nuclear power plan accident typically results from a combination of factors, each one of which might have seemed not to be a big deal by itself. Just the sort of the things that the owners would suggest could be ignored.
An appeals court decided it had no authority over whether the conman could effectively eliminate federal workers right to operate a union.
I wonder how many of the judges involved were appointed recently by Republicans.
Twitter will give "prominent politicians" an exception from its rules against posting hatred.
I think this is a combination of circumstances in which there is simply no choice that Twitter can make which isn't bad.
Americans are ready to stop trying to dominate the world. Most Democratic politicians have yet to catch up.
China pressured the British state to arrest an exiled Chinese dissident preemptively for Xi's visit in 2015.
The bullshitter is making progress with North Korea — progress towards a deal that would accept its possession of nuclear weapons.
This is the only possible avenue towards any sort of deal, since Dictator Kim will not give up those nuclear weapons. Thus, in a way this is a wise policy. But the bullshitter can't acknowledge it, as it would highlight the absurdity of his policy towards Iran.
A two-part interview with British whistleblower Katharine Gun, who revealed how the UK was helping Dubya try to bully UN security council members into approving his attack on Iraq.
Experts Say 'Emotion Recognition' Lacks Scientific Foundation.
Banksters and plutocrats are happy to keep funding the bully's racism. The bully promotes and spreads racism, but is he really racist? He lies almost all the time, so why expect him to be sincere in this? Maybe he spreads racism as a cynical strategy. The strategy can be very effective.
However, since plutocratist Democrats support much of the wrongs that Republicans do, it is a mistake to conclude we would be better off if we had not elected progressive leaders such as Ocasio-Cortez.
To win in 2020, Democrats need to motivate massive turnout, and they are the ones who can do that.
Using levees to contain flooding rivers makes for bigger floods downstream. Cities need to leave space along the river for floods to spread out.
"Private" and "incognito" modes of browsers are no protection against being tracked by Google and Oracle (and to a lesser extent Facebook).
Tracking people's porn browsing could cause trouble for some people who pretend to be prudes, but there are much more damaging things they could track.
Plastic manufacturers are buying state laws to make sure nothing gets in the way of selling lots of plastic bags (and plastic everything else).
Fair Bluff, North Carolina, was half wiped out by rain from two recent hurricanes. If another hurricane hits there, it could finish the job.
Global heating tends to make storms drop more rain.
More concern about how online photo-editing dis-services make use of the photos people send them.
The deeper problem with these "apps", which send photos to a remote server to edit it, is that they send photos to a remote server to edit it. We call that "service as a software substitute" because the job ought to be done by a program you install on your own computer — a free program, in order to respect your freedom and autonomy — and never sent anywhere.
Hawaiians are protesting against plans to construct a new telescope with a very large mirror, which would advance our knowledge of the universe.
The idea that a place is "sacred" is an irrational sensitivity. It is good to cater to such sensitivities as long as that doesn't sacrifice something important -- such as the telescope.
The telescope should be built. However, removing obsolete structures and making those areas of land nice again does no harm, and doesn't involve sacrificing anything more than funds. Hawaii should make and carry out such a deal.
Democrat-Backed Centrist PAC Is Supporting a Republican Against a Vulnerable Swing-District Incumbent.
California is considering a law to make Uber treat drivers as employees.
This would eliminate one of the huge injustices of Uber. But it would not eliminate the injustices to the customers. I hope therefore that it would make Uber give up.
Thugs in Los Angeles are infiltrating anti-fascist protests, and using it to charge organizers for protesting.
Israel is spraying herbicides near the Gaza border, and it drifts almost 400 yards into Gaza and kills Palestinians' crops.
Prominent humanists decry the persecution of the nonreligious in various countries.
EPA Drops Surprise Inspections.
This will help companies that deny their polluting activities.
Babies Born Near Oil and Gas Wells Are Up to 70% More Likely to Have Congenital Heart Defects, New Study Shows.
(satire) In an effort to distance the President from a racist remark chanted about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) earlier this week, the Trump campaign store reportedly began offering a special disavowed discount Friday on all ‘Send Her Back’ merchandise.
Greta Thunberg explains what it means to have accomplished something,
People always tell me and the other millions of school strikers that we should be proud of ourselves for what we have accomplished. But the only thing that we need to look at is the emission curve. And I’m sorry, but it’s still rising. That curve is the only thing we should look at.
In the same way, I don't measure the advances of the free software movement simply by how much free software we now have and use, but also in terms of how much nonfree software remains in use — which we need to eliminate.
Many nonfree browser extensions snoop on the user's browsing and inform some company.
The article does not say that these extensions are nonfree, but that seems pretty certain from the information given.
The author of the article did not recognize that this was a part of the problem. So people are likely to draw misguided conclusions such as "Don't trust browser extensions", instead of the correct conclusion, "Don't trust nonfree programs anywhere."
Small doses of radiation promote the spread of a mutation that is one step on the road to cancer.
At least, that is true in the esophagus of mice. Nothing is known about how this might affect other mouse tissues, or any human tissues.
Humans have, in general, much better defenses against aging than other mammals, so I would not generalize from non-human animals to humans about any of these effects.
Thanks to contraceptive pills, women do not have to menstruate at all.
This reminds me of a story by James Tiptree (Alice Sheldon), "Even the Queen", about a woman whose daughter decided to join a movement for natural menstruation. She couldn't convince her daughter to abandon that foolish idea, but the experience of menstruating did the job pretty fast.
Should all crewed space missions be run by private business?
In some cases, there is no harm in that. But if we let them build settlements in space or on the Moon, those will be "company towns" in which no one can do anything except under the control of the company. Working there will be like working in an Amazon warehouse.
The government of Kazakhstan has injected itself as a man-in-the-middle for all HTTPS communication — in effect, spying on the browsing of everyone in the country.
We would expect such things from an overtly repressive state, but powerful "free" countries such as Australia, UK and US have done, or are trying to do, comparable things.
Labour will organize the unprivatization of local government activities.
UK and Iran are now in a tanker-seizure standoff.
It appears that Bolton told the UK, "Let's you and them fight."
People are becoming aware that there is a battle against digital tech companies for control of each person's attention,
What people do not yet recognize is that this as a consequence of the unjust power that companies (even small companies) derive from nonfree software and from online disservices. So their proposed solutions are not deep enough.
New US jobs are now concentrating in a few cities, with others left behind.
Of course, it is expensive to live in the few successful cities. So the overall effect of this is to screw the poor in yet another way.
Opinion: Don’t Regulate Facial Recognition. Ban It.
This article is noteworthy because it attacks face recognition by business, not just by government.
Cost of Global Push to Prevent Women Dying in Childbirth to Increase Sixfold.
This goal requires a combination of better medical care for when women do give birth, and contraception and abortion to help women avoid giving birth.
The Rich Are Committing Crimes Against Nature.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency refused to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which seems to cause brain damage in children.
Wheeler, the head of the Environmental Poisoning Agency (EPA), is more personally honest, and that has enabled him to arrange for a lot more future damage to our environment and our health.
(satire) Cop Vows To Get Revenge On Eric Garner For Trying To Frame Him For Murder.
As rising economic inequality gives the rich more power, they use it to push the inequality even harder.
With a big Republican victory in 2020, plutocratists could replace the US Constitution with something as plutocratist as they wish. And they are already designing it.
Pompeo is already trying to redefine human rights.
Their idea of human rights will say that if you're a plutocrat you have the right to grab anyone's genitals, and if perse complains, to get per fired.
This Republican's Case for Medicare for All.
Jewish Voice for Peace praised Rep. Ilhan Omar's resolution affirming the right to boycott.
(satire) Virginia Agrees To Remove Confederate Ghosts From State Capitol.
The fairly quick achievement of landing on the moon gave people an exaggerated idea of what we can expect to achieve with technology.
It turns out that technology can't necessarily cure the harm that massive use of technology is doing.
UK thugs want laws changed so they can get tough with Extinction Rebellion protesters.
This will avoid some annoying small disruptions, and guarantee enormous disruptions starting 20 or 30 years from now and continuing for centuries.
The UK has extended global heating by cutting insulation improvements from 65,000 per month to 10,000 per month.
The bully wants to send Iraqi Christian refugees back to Iraq, where they would face murder. Some might starve first because they don't know anyone there and don't speak Arabic.
Thousands Rally in Moscow over Opposition Exclusion in City Parliament Vote.
The machine said that the nominating signatures were fake.
Some local governments in the UK refuse to give homeless people's personal data to the deportation office.
Proposing a mega project to make snow on top of the west Antarctic ice sheet.
I think it would be better, and less practical work, to curb the CO2 emissions. What's more, that would also end ocean acidification and avoid heating the land. But if the plutocrats block that, it would be better to do this project than not do it.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban FBI and ICE from accessing drivers' license photos.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Population is reaching crunch point in the Congo. The Pygmies, who lived there before, demand to cut down the forest that lowland gorillas live in.
As the world's human population bloats, there won't be enough land for everyone. People will get desperate, and try to hang on a little longer by destroying forests, farming land that isn't suitable, catching the last few fish, and so on. But that won't do more than postpone the end.
The human population will eventually be limited — after everything else is gone. We need to limit the human population earlier, before that destruction occurs.
Masked non uniformed thugs attacked protesters in Hong Kong.
Protesters say that the uniformed thugs took a suspiciously long time to arrive, but the article does not indicate how long that was.
Thailand's military rulers have gone beyond charging democracy activists with crimes. Now it is sending non uniformed thugs to club them on the head.
Platforms can discourage searches for dangerous extremism by adopting methods that stop short of censoring the search results.
A Labour Party study proposed a list of ways to restructure the global economy to replace plutocracy.
It is a good start, but I think it can be improved in some areas. For example, it makes general statements about "intellectual property" which lump together various laws as a single confused mixture, and considers this only in regard to its effects on taxation of business.
Making big businesses pay more tax is very important, but some of these laws also harm people directly — while others do not. A wise policy on each of these laws can't be formulated at the vague, abstract level that the term "intellectual property" implies. And my tax proposal can deal with the problem with no need to pay any attention to any of these specific laws.
Sergio Moro privately talked about protecting Bolsonaro's son from a corruption investigation.
A political party operative was the middleman in leaking the confidential messages of the UK's ambassador to the US.
That's not journalism, that's sabotage.
Illinois Republicans Remove Offensive Facebook Post About "Jihad Squad."
This is interesting because it demonstrates how extremist hatred has no scruples about falsehoods, The four representatives they attack are progressives, not Islamists, but right-wing extremists don't care. (Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley are not even Muslims.)
It reminds me of when Bush I called Michael Dukakis a "card-carrying member of the ACLU". In effect, Bush equated defending the US Constitution with Communism. That just goes to show what Bush really thought about the Constitution he swore to uphold.
Arguing that psychedelic drugs should be decriminalized but not fully legalized.
I could support this option if there is a lawful way for adults to get these drugs, made in properly regulated factories, so that they don't need to but who-knows-what on the black market.
Iceland has put up a memorial to a glacier which has almost completely melted.
Guaidó's supporters have lost their enthusiasm but mostly still support him. Except for the conman, who finds different scapegoats more useful for the moment than Maduro.
I can estimate what Guaidó would do to Venezuela, with support from US plutocrats. They don't give a dam about anyone in Venezuela except those that will serve as their agents. The country would come out like Honduras or Colombia, and the trees of the Amazon region would be made into products for the Amazon warehouse.
Everyone: call on AT&T, T-Mobile, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Dell to stop supporting politicians that attack the rights of queer people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A credit card with zero credit limit is ideal for signing up for a "free trial period" and avoiding the dark patterns that are designed to stop customers from cancelling afterward.
Is it possible to use that service without running nonfree Javascript code? Would someone like to test it and tell me?
Three California Nazis Sentenced to Prison for Their Participation in the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" Rally.
Their crime was planning to have physical fights with antifascists.
The Google employees who led the campaign against certain egregious projects have been pushed out by retaliation.
While it was refreshing to see tech employees object to projects based on moral scruples, their scruples cover only unusual kinds of wrong, not the everyday wrong in the foundations of most computing nowadays.
US citizens: call on Democratic candidates to reject campaign contributions from big pharma and big insurance.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Amazon management to meet with the new union, DCH1 Amazonians United.
If you sign, please spread the word!
One reason why it has been unusual for women to do great creative work was that women could barely find 10 minutes at a stretch to think about something.
Citing CIA's Dark History, Librarians Protest Agency's Recruiting at Their Conference.
The state needs to invest in energy efficiency for poor people; they can't afford to do it themselves.
Blacks are allowed nowadays to shop in any retail store, but they often face nasty treatment from the staff, apparently due to their skin color.
The survival of the natural world upon which humanity depends hangs in the balance, according to the new chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
Individual people — whether great or merely grandiose — can change the course of history. Here is an example. And more.
Powerful impersonal forces are also at work in the UK's decision about leaving the EU. They constitute the pinball machine in which this loose cannonball bounces around. That does not imply the outcome is predictable.
The secularist opposition candidate for mayor of Istanbul has won again, with a much bigger margin this time.
College economics courses teach students that the economy has nothing to do with the ecosphere. Most of the students don't recognize the error in this.
This may not be coincidence. It may be the result of business influence on academia.
A four-day work week, in the wealthy (and high carbon footprint) countries, would cut greenhouse gas emissions a lot.
Google and Facebook are campaigning for the US to adopt the sort of weak "data protection" laws that won't hamper surveillance capitalism much.
The concept of "ambient privacy" refers to what I have campaigned for years to protect: not having data collected about you.
"Today, we know that that the techniques common to domestic abuse match those used by practically anyone who trades in captivity: kidnappers, hostage-takers, pimps, cult leaders."
In a wealthy neighborhood of Chicago, the life expectancy is 90. In a poor neighborhood, it is 60.
In other words, the plutocratic trickle-down that condemns people to poverty also condemns them to death.
The Chinese economic system serves Chinese people better than America's system serves Americans.
I disagree with one point: the article says not to blame US corporations for taking advantage of this system. Their political influence, their money, changed our system so that it serves them rather than us. They deserve to be blamed for that.
But even a corporation that done nothing beyond taking advantage of laws in ways that harm people still deserves our condemnation. "We are not violating laws" is not a defense for spreading suffering. The condemnation will provide the impetus to make them stop.
Hiring more non-white thugs does not protect blacks from being shot by thugs.
Maybe de-escalation training
Everyone: call on CNN to add a progressive questioner in the
Democratic debates.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the DNC to hold a debate on global heating.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Private Prison Information Act. If you sign, please spread the word!
Some male Republican politicians say they refuse to meet privately with female reporters.
Aside from promoting anti-sexuality, this can harm women's careers.
Shouldn't they impose the same requirement on male reporters, for the same reason? There is no telling what two men might get up to in private.
On the legality of calling a vegetable product by names that imply meat.
I think the term "veggie burger" is legitimate. There are many kinds of "burgers", so the term does not imply any specific ingredient. I think it's the same for "sausage" &mdash sausages also can have many kinds of ingredients.
However, it should be illegal to use the words "meat" or "beef" to name a product which isn't made (respectively) from meat, or from beef.
Even (currently) common animals are threatened by global heating because they can't adapt as fast as the changes are happening.
The changes will accelerate over the course of this century.
A general demonstration that anonymizing data is ineffective for protecting privacy.
Why Isn’t Publicly Funded Conservation on Private Land More Accountable?
The US embassy staff that reported a strange illness in Cuba have shown a special and unusual pattern of brain structure abnormalities.
The German government is just beginning to recognize that "the cloud" is too cloudy and shady to be trusted for personal data.
In dealing with Iran, Boris Johnson will have to choose between two conflicting pressures: the interests of his country, and demands of the bully.
The bully wants the UK to be in conflict with Iran; specifically, to hold Iran's tanker no matter how Iran retaliates. The UK's interest is to make a deal and free both tankers.
I expect that Johnson values the bully's backing more, so I predict he will not exchange the two ships.
As the city of Manaus grows, people are constantly burning off part of the Amazon rainforest in order to make space for houses.
An oil storage and transfer ship, moored off the coast of Yemen, has been sitting unused and unmaintained since 2015. It could leak much more than the Big Spill. It could also explode.
Australian thugs arrested French documentalists who were filming a protest against the planned new Adani coal mine.
If global heating disaster kills billions of people, this mine's contribution will amount to thousands. The principle of necessity would justify sabotaging the mine to prevent it from killing those thousands.
The UK's department of education did a survey to see what was causing stress and extended work hours for teachers. It discovered that its inspections were responsible.
Advantages and disadvantages of Canada's manner of regulating marijuana.
Sending US troops to Salafi Arabia will strengthen the recruiting of jihadist groups, including al Qa'ida and PISSI.
If there were a real need to send troops there, I would not encourage being dissuaded by something like this. But since there is no reason to send them, we should recognize that this is an additional reason not to send them.
Greta Thunberg answers questions from the public.
Hospitals in England have contracted out their parking lots to companies whose business model is to trick and trap drivers, using rules that are opaque or impossible in practice to follow. Even the staff get gouged.
Laws should require that any parking enforcement contracts require giving the institution power to (1) forgive anyone's charges and (2) limit the fees.
The bully plans to deport people from inside the US fast, without a hearing.
US citizens will occasionally be deported, too.
If the cheater can't officially abolish legal rights, he will arrange procedures that are likely to trample them, accidentally on purpose.
Mayor Wilmot Collins of Helena, Montana was told to "go back to Africa", but he stayed. Now he is running for senator from Montana, to replace a racist Republican.x
The scientific publishers are opposed even to data-mining the corpus of scientific literature.
I will be glad if Carl Malamud's hack succeeds, but let's not be distracted by it. The most important use of the scientific literature is exactly what he will take care not to make possible: to read it. Sci-Hub, by contrast, does achieve that. Thus, I admire Sci-Hub more.
Many US states protect thugs and other emergency responders by keeping emergency calls secret &mdash even when the caller has died. The relatives can't find out what happened.
The bully's plans will deny medical care to 8 million minors who are US citizens, whose parents are not citizens.
This will kill or permanently harm thousands of them.
The UK government censorship/surveillance program which is supposed to prevent terrorism represses students and studies in UK universities. You don't need to come anywhere near wishing to commit violence before the program threatens you or blocks an event.
Now, for where I disagree with the article. Sad to say, student anti-racism also aims in that direction. It is not backed by state power, so it does not threaten individuals, but if it prevents events from being held, that amounts to censorship.
The UK government, while imposing its law-backed censorship, is hardly in a position to sincerely defend freedom of speech on campus.
French thugs used pepper spray on Extinction Rebellion protesters who were sitting on a bridge in Paris.
The heat wave has made some French people understand what global heating disaster means. Protests will spread the awareness.
Tips For Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons.
Most of the imprisoned immigrants are adolescents rather than children. But they do include children, too. Let's remember that imprisoning teenagers who are not threatening anyone is roughly equally bad.
Making the dictionary of the Nazis' euphemisms that they used to make mass murder sound like a minor matter.
I see the same sort of euphemism in today's terminology such as "detain", "custody", and "security forces."
Inducing Consumer Paralysis: How Retailers Bury Customers in an Avalanche of Choice.
One additional source of complication is when you can't choose each option independently, only a combination. If there are 10 two-way choices to make, there are in principle 1024 combinations. If companies offer just 30 different combinations, you will be overwhelmed with options, of which probably none is what you really want.
With free software, you could make each choice the way you like, so it will be simple rather than overwhelming.
It would be good to change the system so that the children of the elite don't have a near-lock on becoming the future elite.
That alone cannot do enough. There is no way that most people can become elite. We need to make sure that non-elite people have a decent life.
Captain Rackete of the Sea-Watch 3 brought refugees rescued at sea into an Italian port, and faces the possibility of 10 years in prison for this.
She says her decision was necessary, and that bringing the refugees back to Libya (a country at war) was illegal too.
Lebanon is pressuring Syrian refugees to leave, using cruelty that we would expect from the bully.
Oregon's Republican senators threatened violence and mobilized violent supporters to protest, to kill the climate protection bill.
This illustrates Republicans' basic attitude towards the American people. They want to take power and hold it, by intimidation, violence, or any other means.
The internet is increasingly a low-trust society &mdash based on an assumption of pervasive fraud. This can lead to autocracy, in this case dominion by big companies that erase freedom.
This is an additional reason to stay away from the dis-services where these frauds abound.
If you think about the cost of not doing the Green New Deal, you see we can afford it. It is an investment in survival.
Right-wing Democrats joined Republicans to give the bully more money for repression at the border.
Rich Will Keep Getting Richer and 'Nothing Will Change,' Says Bernie Sanders, Unless US Leaders Have Guts to Take on Powerful Corporations.
This is why I support Sanders (and Warren): they want to do this. The other candidates shy away from it and focus on secondary issues alone.
These secondary issues may be very important too: some are matters of life and death for millions. But plutocracy is the one ring that rules all the rest.
And plutocracy will fight us as we try to fix the secondary issues, each of them one by one. We need to cripple plutocracy in order to be allowed to address other wrongs,
Optimizing "key performance indicators" destroys the relationship that made them appear to be worth optimizing, Optimizing apps (or web sites) for "engagement" (how much time users spend in them) tends to makes them, at very least, a persistent annoyance -- if not a tool for right-wing hatred and disinformation.
With a free/libre program, the users can exercise control and override these the decisions they don't like.
Author Ma Jian: "I felt the fear of abduction by China in Hong Kong. Appeasing Bejing has to stop."
Right-wing German extremists assembled a list of politicians and activists to kill, based on data obtained from thugs and the military.
In a victory for planet-roasting, protesters in the UK were convicted of violating an anti-protest injunction set up to protect a fracking company.
The protesters were attempting to save the lives of the people that fracking would kill a few decades from now. The judge will pressure them to say they were sorry for this. They should refuse to apologize for protecting the ecosphere. The only thing they should be sorry about is that they did not succeed.
The EU is starting to resist authoritarian national governments that try to set up one-party states.
I hope this is not too late.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is hunger striking in prison on Iran. Her husband is hunger striking in support of her outside the Iranian embassy in London.
Chinese human rights defender Wang Quanzhang has been in prison four years. Just recently he had "trial" which sentenced him to four more years in prison.
His wife was just allowed to see him for the first time since he was grabbed, and says he is falling apart as a result of brainwashing conditions.
The US does not generally imprison prominent human rights lawyers, but it persecutes journalists and their sources.
I don't know of any government that comes even close to respecting human rights.
LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations today are "rainbow-branded capitalism": instead of liberation, they demand for queers the same strictures that most straights suffer under.
In China, companies actually pay people (with household goods) for personal data to train AIs.
Is this any better than what happens now in the US? I don't think so. A little pay cannot compensate for the loss anonymity cause by the spying and control that the AIs will enable.
Human agriculture may be causing the excess of seaweed that is making Mexico's beaches unpleasant.
Fertilizer runoff does other damage. Mexico needs to curb it, rather than cleaning beaches twice a day.
"You can't enforce a ban on mobile phones in the classroom &mdash we should teach kids to hate them instead."
I am doing my part &mdash please join me.
US politics must consider the poor again. A fight between the middle class and the wealthy has pushed them down for decades.
Jamal Khashoggi warned Moroccan journalist Taoufik Bouachrine that he was a target too.
Bouachrine was subsequently jailed on political charges.
Ironically, the US global campaign against talking about abortion has led to a big increase in abortions in some African countries.
That results from an increase in the pregnancy rate. Sad to say, not all the unintended additional pregnancies will be terminated. Some will lead soon to an increase in unintended births, which will lead in a couple of decades to an increase in unintended deaths.
Japan is going to resume overt commercial whaling.
For decades, Japan has dishonestly called its whaling "scientific".
The city of Chennai is copying with running out of water, but how long can it go on? Drought is expected to spread to 20 more cities by next year.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency has become the Employment Punishing Agency, by unilaterally revoking the employees' union representation in all but name.
Singapore, Russia and France are trying to dictate what news is "fake".
The Supreme Court blocked the citizenship question in the 2020 census, but not finally. Republicans will have a chance to offer another excuse.
"Beijing will not rest until it controls Hong Kong. We must keep fighting."
A hacker in Berlin posted advertisements of nonexistent and subtly absurd construction projects, and got real offers to buy in.
Cervical cancer is caused by a virus. An effective vaccine makes eradication of that virus a plausible future goal.
If, that is, misogynist anti-vaxxers don't stop it.
Abdul Aziz Muhamat, who was dumped by Australia in Manus Island, plead for the UN Human Rights Council to give the effectively imprisoned refugees new homes.
The Supreme Court gave businesses the power to block FOIA requests for information about what they are doing in government contracts.
Since trade secrecy is generally harmful to society, we need to move in the opposite direction: to reduce the power of business to impose secrecy when that harms society or community in any way.
The report, "Deprivation and Despair: The Crisis of Medical Care at Guantánamo," finds systemic failures of medical care for the prisoners.
Senator Warren's plan to reform elections is aimed at securing elections from rigging and theft, and removing obstacles to voting,
At the general level described in the article, it looks good to me. On some issues, the details may be crucial.
The London thug department has been forced to pay compensation to anti-fascist protesters that it besieged for hours on the street, then arrested.
Sanders advocates blanket abolition of Americans' college debt because programs that serve only people with low incomes tend to get cut down to zero.
Plutocrats want those funds to go to them, not to be used to help non-rich. If the program doesn't include the middle class, the plutocrats can propagandize the middle class to support ending the program by shrinking it step by step to nothing.
Millions of Americans of the age at which Americans used to retire are weighted down with college debt &mdash their own, or their childrens's.
Facebook's proposed currency is marketed as "decentralization" but actually it is an attempt to supplant banks with a system under complete centralized private control.
The name "libra" refers to a unit of weight (a pound), but I expect it was chosen for its false association with "libre". It has nothing to do with freedom, though; it would create a system of unitary power rather than a system of freedom. The name is a fib.
How about calling it "Fib-Lib"?
The New York City thug department continues racist practices despite the court order to cease them. Its internal "investigations" of reported racism are bogus.
Dartmouth University developed a system to monitor workers in many different ways together. It can "assess worker performance" by tracking all sorts of behavior.
Some research should not be done, and this is one example.
Fingerprint and face scanning makes the occupation of Palestine less inconvenient, but more oppressive.
"Stop obsessing over your environmental 'sins.' Fight the oil and gas industry instead."
I agree, as regards personal consumption. However, working to construct fossil fuel facilities does a specially concentrated form of harm. I don't think that you can justify oil drilling in the name of "feeding your family", because global heating is already causing tens of thousands of American families to become destitute, and any wells you drill will make that worse in the future. The first way to fight the oil and gas industry is to stop working for it.
Op-Ed From the Future: "The way we regulated social media platforms didn’t end harassment, extremism or disinformation. It only gave them more power and made the problem worse."
The Long, Cruel History of the Anti-Abortion Crusade.
The writer is wrong on one point, when he asserts that "no one is pro-abortion". I am pro-abortion. I expect each additional human baby born today to result in more than one additional premature human death a few decades from now. For this and other powerful reasons, have an abortion, not baby.
However, trying to discourage excess births by cutting welfare benefits for large families is cruel and unjustified.
Children did not choose to be born, or in which families they were born, and growing up in poverty can stunt them physically and mentally for life.
"Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the impacts of global heating are likely to undermine not only basic rights to life, water, food, and housing for hundreds of millions of people, but also democracy and the rule of law."
Only Sanders and Buttigieg, of the well-known presidential candidates, dared to criticize Israel's treatment of Palestinians.
U.N. Food Chief Refuses To Deliver Food To Starving Yemen's Unless They Can Be Identified Using Facial Biometrics.
Bernie Sanders: We Must Stop Giving Terrorists Exactly What They Want (in the Middle East).
The FCC Is Siding With Landlords and Comcast Over Tenants Who Want Broadband Choices.
Al Gore: only big solutions can offset impact of systemic shifts and avert disaster.
The madness of people influenced by Instagram is causing trouble for the rest of us.
The simplest way to stop Instagram from annoying your life is to stop using it and stop paying attention to it6.
The (so-called) Self-Driving Car Is a Surveillance Tool.
I say "so-called" because remote-drive software has already been developed, Unless you own the car and the software that controls it is free/libre, you cannot ever be confident that it is driving itself rather than being driven under someone else's control.
"Aggression detector" systems for schools throw an alarm whenever someone's voice sounds "stressed".
Even if the system were entirely accurate, attempting to use it would make people more stressed. Only a tiny fraction of these events represent people who are about to attack someone. In the rest of the cases, bothering them will only make their lives more miserable and more stressed.
Suppose you are a teacher or school principal. How could use use these data without making the school worse? You can't. So don't use it.
US thugs will hunt desperately for an excuse to arrest someone. Chicago artist Tashif Turner had a permit to paint a mural, but he didn't have it with him, so they arrested him. But it gets worse.
Naturalized US citizens now face the terrifying threat of having their citizenship taken away without their even being informed..
The head of a department of Unesco has decided not to hold conferences in the UK any more. It is too hard for even sponsored participants to get a visa to attend.
The head of a department of Unesco has decided not to hold conferences in the UK any more. It is too hard for even sponsored participants to get a visa to attend.
Extension of patenting, together with general encouragement of greed, has made insulin so expensive in the US that American diabetics have to skimp on everything else &mdash and even then they may die from not being able to buy insulin.
It amounts to murder.
The refugee who tried to kill himself by fire in Manus Island will face charges leading to life imprisonment in a smaller prison.
Those who imprisoned him in Papua New Guinea and those who denied him medical treatment should be considered responsible for his "crime", which is not as grave as theirs.
It's a myth that environmental regulations stifle economic productivity. Harmful chemicals cost the US $340bn a year.
The benefits of using those chemicals are concentrated on businesses, while the damage is dispersed among lots of families, mostly not rich. Politically, under the plutocratist system, the former counts more than the latter.
"Every stage of the plastic life-cycle releases harmful carbon emissions into the atmosphere, contributing to global heating."
This is in addition to poisoning sea animals and land animals.
Some US thugs are being investigated and may be fired because of fomenting violence on Facebook.
Cops are supposed to be police officers, not thugs. Firing them for statements that contradict the mission of their profession is right and proper.
An Australian court ruled that companies are negligent in permitting "defamatory" comments to be posted on their Facebook pages.
Facebook does not give the companies any authority to moderate the comments, so the only way they can comply is by setting up a filter which rejects all comments. This is ridiculous.
Population is reaching crunch point in the Congo. The Pygmies, who lived there before, demand to cut down the forest that lowland gorillas live in.
As the world's human population bloats, there won't be enough land for everyone. People will get desperate, and try to hang on a little longer by destroying forests, farming land that isn't suitable, catching the last few fish, and so on. But that won't do more than postpone the end.
The human population will eventually be limited &mdash after everything else is gone. We need to limit the human population earlier, before that destruction occurs.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts to ban government use of face surveillance.
Since this bill would only apply to government use of face recognition, it addresses only part of the problem. But that's a good start.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The EU is considering a broad system of censorship to apply to all internet sites and services; even to ISPs.
It would that the European internet becomes like the Chinese internet.
"Cambridge Analytica may have become the byword for a scandal, but it's not entirely clear that anyone knows exactly what that scandal is."
To try to prevent election manipulation using systems that profile people is difficult. It requires outthinking the people who are looking for clever ways to use the databases to achieve their goals.
Preventing it by prohibiting data collection and profiling would be more reliable. If a database does not exist, there is no clever way to use it to undermine society.
The WTO ruled against some US states' support for local jobs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
One thing the conman has shown us is that the US can defeat business-supremacy treaties if it attacks them. The US could force the WTO to back down from this, especially if it does so in a fair way, demanding to permit this practice for all countries.
However, the emissions reduction programs would be good even without this particular aspect.
More mobile phone scamming: companies can put charges on a person's phone bill and falsely claim person approved the payments.
EFF: Don't Let Encrypted Messaging Become a Hollow Promise.
The article presumes that nonfree programs such as WhatsApp are legitimate. I hope you know better.
Oklahoma is suing Johnson & Johnson for aggressively promoting sales of fentanyl.
I think it is wrong to aggressively promote sales of any medical treatment. We must establish that corporations are not entitled to human rights, so that they can't claim they have a "human right" to publicize medicines. But the issue goes beyond advertising. We must require drug companies to include "serving patients" alongside "making money" as their responsibilities, and require participation of patient representatives in business decisions about medicines.
Tiffany Cabán, running for district attorney in Queens, New York, will not prosecute sex workers or their customers, and will not put poor people in jail for months awaiting trial by demanding bail money.
Here's What Neoliberal Democrats Who View Bernie Sanders as an 'Existential Threat' Have Yet to Realize.
The bully's threat to arrest thousands of immigrants was more of his usual terror theater.
US citizens: call on Congress to raise the estate tax. This is a way to tax the ultra-wealthy more.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Massachusetts to ban government use of face surveillance.
Australia's denialist voters have been bamboozled into thinking they are resisting an elite that is gratuitously forcing change on them.
They don't understand that they are helping the real elite, the planet-roaster plutocrats, arrange to murder their grandchildren. But the grandchildren know this.
The House of Representatives put amendments into a funding bill that would block new offshore oil drilling.
This is very important to do.
Reporter Seth Harp describes how US border guards threatened to keep him in the airport indefinitely until he let them search through his phone and laptop. They lied to him sometimes, and one threatened repeatedly to kill him and lie as an excuse.
I hope he is not using that phone and laptop any more. They could contain key loggers.
In my personal experience, the border guards that give me the most hassle are those of Canada. A Canadian border agent, which appeared human but was apparently a robot, demanded I say what I would do when I returned to the US, while threatening to send me to the US (but not the US city I was connecting for).
Once in the 90s a couple of US customs agents decided to harass me by searching my luggage, slowly. As I was not in a hurry and had only permitted goods to import, I responded by taking a friendly tone and complying with utmost diligence and care, which required me to go even more slowly than they did. Eventually they realized that their harassment tactic had backfired, so they finished the search quickly.
For the US to defeat Iran, it would need to conscript soldiers.
If you are a young man, or a teenager, it is time to start organizing draft resistance now!
Jewish Human Rights Scholar: Yes, America Has Built Concentration Camps. And it is not surprising that some of the prisoners in them have died as a result of the systematic mistreatment.
The term "concentration camp" was initially used as a euphemism for prisons into which colonial powers (Spain, the US, and Germany) and conquerors (including the UK) forced a civilian population which was sheltering and aiding rebels. Killing them was not the specific intention, but in many of these camps the general mistreatment and lack of medical care killed substantial numbers of the prisoners. This is what the US is doing now to unauthorized immigrants.
The Nazis built political prisons which were referred to as "concentration camps". Initially they did not murder prisoners outright but systematically worked prisoners to death. Later the Nazis began directly murdering large numbers of Jews (and others) in some of these camps. Thus, the term became associated with outright mass murder.
The writer of that article believes that massive imprisonment is the penultimate step on the road to genocide. This may be right, because the conditions that lead to setting up such camps generate hatred. The thugs running US concentration camps hate the unauthorized immigrants. It wouldn't take much to loose the demons in them.
Blue Cross / Blue Shield offers subscribers a list of psychiatrists who are "in the network", but only a few of them will actually accept a new patient covered by insurance. Many of the phone numbers don't even work any more.
Many other insurance plans are equally bad, and it affects other medical specialties, not just psychiatrists.
There is evidence that insurance companies keep the errors intentionally to discourage patients from getting care, and thus reduce what they have to pay for.
One of the Big Four accounting companies, KPMG, has been caught cheating. Specifically, its executives cheated on ethics exams.
To shut down that company would leave only three companies to choose from. We need to do the opposite: make KPMG split up — and the others, too. We need to make them so numerous that we can shut them when necessary.
None of the predicted "benefits" of ending the FCC's network neutrality regulations has actually occurred.
When businesses claim that deregulating them will lead to benefits, they are asking the public to give them something on credit, without even a commitment to pay it back. Businesses often cheat on their commitments, so how likely are they to keep a non-commitment?
The proper response to any such a proposal is, "And if that doesn't happen, then what?" Followed by, "Let's make the deregulation provisional, to be terminated automatically if any of the following problems occurs…"
Facebook treats the video moderators like shit. And that's in addition to the depression they feel from watching the videos.
The article gives no evidence that Utley's death was caused by his job, but the way the managers treated it is despicable even if they did not cause it.
Naturally, these workers are subcontracted, so that Facebook can deny responsibility for how they are treated. But Facebook is in fact responsible: it demands contractors offer a low price, which they achieve by treating the workers like shit. We need laws to hold companies like Facebook responsible for the treatment of indirect workers, and give them employee rights such as sick leave.
It should be a felony for employees of a company to ask a worker to sign a nondisclosure agreement covering any aspect of the working conditions, benefits, or pay.
Tories are gradually resolving the artificial problems they have created for people that moved to Britain decades ago with citizenship but can't prove it — by waiting for them to die. In a few years, there may be no problem left.
The reason they can't prove their citizenship is that Tories deleted the government data base which would have proved it. In recognition of its own fault, the British government ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Everyone: call on Deloitte to stop providing services to the deportation thugs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In support of Senator Warren's bill to cut off tax incentives for leveraged buyouts.
I disagree with part of the argument — namely, arguing from efficiency as the primary goal. There are other important goals, such as avoiding concentration of whatever industry.
These other goals strengthen the case for this law.
The House of Representatives voted for a $15 minimum wage.
However, some right-wing Democrats in the House want to pass a law to let the funding for community clinics decline over time.
The State of New York should dissolve the charter of the Trump Organization for its persistent history of crime.
To overcome the threat of global heating requires putting a stop to the practice of aggressive war.
Chicago thugs have been fired for helping to posthumously frame Laquan McDonald after another thug had killed him.
It is crucial to punish thugs for bearing false witness and not only (rarely) for killing.
In 2011, the Tories eliminated the UK's targets for reducing salt in foods. This is now estimated to have caused over 10,000 cases of heart attack, stroke, and cancer.
The hate-spewer should go home to his country, but where is that?
I think his country of origin is the one located, mythically, straight down from wherever you are.
Iran has seized an oil tanker.
Now I suppose it will suggest to the UK an exchange of captured ships.
I have not seen any explanation of why the EU's refusal to trade with Syria would have anything to do with Iran's trade with Syria.
Syria, Assad's empire, is an ally to be ashamed of, but not worse than the US's ally, Salafi Arabia.
IUCN Red List Reveals Wildlife Destruction from Treetop to Ocean Floor.
A dam in Brazil that collapsed had a flaw, which a company (the builder of the dam?) knew about and concealed.
Chinese expat writer Yang Hengjun has been made a political prisoner in China.
He is accused of "crimes" which are bullshit excuses for political persecution, comparable to the US charges against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. However, China nowadays applies its repression far more broadly; mere opinions are enough.
This is why I decided, a few years ago, not to go to China any more.
Drug Makers flooded Us with Billions of Opioid Pills as Epidemic Surged, Data Shows.
The most egregious aspects of Palantir's privatized state surveillance of just about everyone.
Boris Johnson, who stands to become the next prime minister of the UK, wrote privately that he was in favor of keeping the UK in the EU. A year later he supported the dishonest campaign to take it out.
The bully's grandfather was an organizer of the KKK and helped lead a protest to tell Irish and Italian immigrants to go home.
Hong Kong showed China is a threat to democracy. Now Europe must defend Taiwan.
The title of the article is misleading -- mere accusation would not require expulsion. There would have to be "irrefutable evidence."
I am in favor of this rule. I don't think that parties should tolerate bigotry against any group, and that includes Jews. The Republican Party should adopt the same rule.
What I disagree with is the party's decision to adopt a controversial criterion for judging anti-semitism, which was designed to shift the boundary that separates criticism of Israel from anti-semitism.
US citizens: call on Harvard to divest from fossil fuels.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Extinction denialism: right-wing politicians undercount actual extinctions in order to block policies to prevent future extinctions.
This reminds me of the way right-wing politicians cited Iraq Body Count to undercount the number of Iraqi war dead from Dubya's occupation of Iraq. Iraq Body Count did (does?) a valuable job by making a list of the identified, reported deaths, but using that to estimate the total will obviously give a low result.
I think Iraq Body Count ought to make a prominent statement to this effect. Maybe the IUCN Red List should do likewise.
In the case of extinction, we cannot detect the extinction of species whose existence we have not yet recognized. These could number in the millions.
Extinction Rebellion held a die-in in front of the New York Times, demanding the newspaper do justice to the danger.
The conman's "deal of the century" for Palestinians includes a lot of money to be paid to Palestinians in the future.
In other words, he's asking the Palestinians to give him something on credit.
You'd have to be nuts to give the trumpets anything on credit. Remember the building contractor that did work on a Trump building, and was still suing to get paid for it when the conman was inaugurated? He was not the only one.
Evgeny Morozov agrees that getting paid for data by Facebook will not compensate for the damage done by the power Facebook gets by having that data.
The idea that "you should own your data" is too weak a foundation to resist the systematic manufacture of consent. It puts each person in the position of negotiating a deal with various giants — exactly the way the giants want it.
Instead of negotiating individually with them, we need to join together and pass laws that stop them from snooping on us.
Iran is talking and acting tough, in response to damaging economic warfare. The bully and his men condemn this as inexplicable aggression.
Several years ago I reported on how Israel used the same propaganda ploy against Hamas in Gaza. In a cycle of attacks by both sides, Israel described Israeli bombing as "retaliation" and Hamas missiles as "aggression". At that time, it was noticeable that it was generally Israel that broke the truce. That does not seem to be the case in the past year, though.
Yuval Harari: Pervasive digital surveillance will offer numerous ways to determine who is homosexual — or even has an unconscious leaning that way — for the sake of persecution. Likewise for any other quirks that people could be mistreated for.
If you belong to some group that is targeted — blacks, Palestinians, animal rights campaigners, whatever it — the secret police of your country won't hesitate to use your quirk to force you into informing.
This is another reason we must stop systems from collecting data about people.
Make or sell TVs that reports on people? Go to prison! Put up a camera that identifies people? Go to prison!
Senator Warren proposes to eliminate private prisons completely in the US, including immigration prisons.
She also plans to ban gouging prisoners for products and services.
What I like best is that she endorses the idea that certain areas of activity should be off limits to profitmaking businesses. It is not yet the idea that government services should never be privatized.
Today powerful tyrants don't merely lie. They attack the idea that there is such a thing as truth.
What made life under the rule of Stalin and Mao so terrifying was that no lie was too much for them. The truth of your innocence meant nothing to them if they found it useful to proclaim you guilty. Today's cruel liars, including the conman, are no better.
Let's compare them with the plutocrats and planet roasters. They don't mind lying, and they lie constantly about their opponents. But they do not attack the very idea of truth.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of refugees are living in France near Calais and Dunkirk. Thugs regularly chase them around, steal and destroy their tents, break their water vessels, and poison their food with tear gas.
The bully's ambivalence about bombing Iran could result from a conflict between two inner impulses.
It could also be theater.
US citizens: call on Amazon to stop providing digital support for deportation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Boris Johnson is the UK's bullshitter — he takes lying beyond the usual level, and plays the hero by defeating the weak.
"With its links to BP, I can't stay in the Royal Shakespeare Company."
A Tory minister grabbed a Greenpeace protester by the neck to push her out of the hall.
Initiating pre-emptive violence on the off chance that someone else might do so is not justified, not for ministers any more than it is for thugs.
The minister has been dismissed as minister, but that is not enough. He should be prosecuted. The cheers he got from other Tories and plutocrats in the room make prosecution necessary.
Some see this as an example of the pattern of male violence towards females. That is a valid point, and it might be that he has a habit of violence towards women and that it played a role in his actions. Ultimately, though, I don't think it changes the conclusions in this particular case. It would not be any more legitimate to have done the same thing to a male.
Bernie Sanders: We must stop the US from going to war with Iran
Now that France threatens a 24 hour censorship deadline for deleting articles, some politicians are trying to include revealing how farms treat animals.
The tendency of governments to label animal rights activism as "terrorism" has been observed in the US, and the UK. It seems to be a natural progression. So whenever you think about a proposed "antiterrorism law", remember that animal rights activists may be included too.
I do not advocate animal rights below a low level. I do advocate freedom of speech for those that advocate more (or less) animal rights than I do.
The EFF has alerted the public to a particular of variety of malicious functionality of nonfree software: artificial restrictions on interoperability.
This is useful, but it would have been more insightful to mention that the underlying cause: proprietary (nonfree) software. Proprietary software tends to be malicious in various other ways.
The bullshitter doesn't want anyone in the federal government to correct his lies. Over 85% of the federal government positions that have to do with science are now empty.
The Detroit Police Commission excluded one commissioner from some of its meetings where it decided to impose face recognition on the public. He came to an open meeting and tried to condemn this, and the thugs arrested him.
Thus tyranny marches on, imposing the tools for more tyranny.
"Endless War Isn't Inevitable": House Votes to Stop [the bully] From Launching Unauthorized Attack on Iran.
What parents suggest for allowing children some free time to play.
Protesters in Hong Kong passively blockaded the thug department's headquarters for 15 hours, then left.
Charlie Rowley, suffers permanent neural damage from the novichok which killed his girlfriend. He says that the bottle he found was packaged in hard plastic and is surely not the same bottle of novichok that was used to poison the Skripals.
Explaining the decades of US aggression against Iran which are the historical background for today's US aggression against Iran.
If the US had not overthrown the elected government of Mossadegh, political Islamism probably would not be a significant factor in the world today. We would have no Islamic State, no al Qa'ida, no PISSI, no Boko Haram.
(satire) Bolton Argues War With Iran Only Way To Avenge Americans Killed In Upcoming War With Iran.
Facebook could predict diseases such as diabetes, anxiety, depression, and psychosis, based on what zuckers post there.
Their doctors could also do this, but that might be acceptable, so let's focus on what is not acceptable.
A refugee imprisoned by Australia on Manus Island has been denied medical treatment for a long time. He set himself on fire in his room.
His action seems to me as rational as any other option, under the circumstances. I suppose he hoped he would die, but so far he is still alive.
Maybe now they will give him medical treatment.
Leaks say the bully approved bombing of Iran, then cancelled it at the last moment.
We can't presume any of this is true. The bullshitter uses bombastic threats as a style of diplomacy. Maybe he told the troops to get ready to attack as a form of theater, intending to cancel it. Or perhaps that never happened and some flunkies were ordered to "leak" a false story.
Either way, this was better than launching a real attack.
New Zealand will put ballot boxes in supermarkets so people can vote more conveniently.
It is good to make voting more convenient, all else being equal, but that is not the most important issue at stake. Is it feasible to prevent election-rigging via ballot boxes in a "crowded shop"? Will it be feasible to have poll watchers from all parties at each supermarket?
Foreign aid donations to UN relief efforts have dropped by over 25% compared with the first half of 2018.
Global heating increases the need, and weakens and impoverishes donor governments. Plutocracy and its increased inequality contributes to the latter also.
Assigning a monetary "value" to collecting data about you would not substitute for privacy.
The monetary income of selling and renting that data is not a measure of the harm done to you by collecting it. It also completely ignores the consequences of making the data available to the state.
Swedes Are Getting Implants in Their Hands to Replace Cash, Credit Cards.
It is hard to protect the freedom of people who are desperate to throw their freedom away.
The Australian federal thugs interrogated a whistleblower in an attempt to build a case against journalists. Even worse, the minister of repression defends this.
He is the biggest threat to Australians in the short term. (In the long term, global heating is the biggest threat.)
Extinction Rebellion Protests Block Traffic in Five UK Cities.
Each city has a theme: rising sea levels, floods, wildfires, crop failures and extreme weather.
The bully has put right-wing religious extremists in charge of US policy towards Israel and Palestine.
Right-wing extremist Jews, right-wing extremist Nazis, right-wing extremist Christians, right-wing extremist Muslims — they all work together in the name of right-wing extremist cruelty.
Spying on Children Won’t Keep Them Safe.
The US government argued in the Supreme Court that it has the power to imprison anyone forever, including even US citizens, simply by asserting that perse is planning terrorism.
It is easy to make such an accusation against anyone, for those who don't mind lying. The US has labeled various sorts of protesters as "terrorists".
Seawalls to Protect US Against Rising Oceans Could Cost $416bn by 2040.
That spending would be as futile as trying to bail the water out of the ocean. By 2070 we would need to spend another 400 billion, or perhaps another 800 billion or 2 trillion, because (1) the cost of each cm of sea wall increases as it gets taller and (2) sea-level rise will accelerate with time.
We can't afford to cure this problem. The only remedy we can afford is to prevent it.
Vowing Not to 'Demonize' the Rich, Biden Tells Billionaires 'Nothing Would Fundamentally Change' If He [Were] Elected.
It looks like the cheater rewarded campaign support from William Koch by telling the IRS to dismiss an investigation into reported tax fraud at his businesses.
Deepfakes are already being used in political manipulation. The success of the bullshitter, and Republicans who pressure each other to believe even obvious lies, has made the US more vulnerable to them.
The hypothetical deepfake described at the end of the article goes only a little beyond what the bullshitter has already hinted at. It would not surprise me if he really said that, before the 2020 election. By lying repeatedly about his past statements, he has prepared a situation in which we would be unable to tell if such a video is true or fake.
I think this is precisely his intention.
The bully is basing his campaign on racism, and the saddest thing is that he might win.
In one town in Canada, Uber has advanced towards its goal of eliminating other transport options. The town has eliminated its own public transit, replacing it with being spied on by nonfree software.
Britain's law against discarding by-catch has been ineffective because British fishermen ignore it.
Many Android apps can track users' movements even when the user says not to allow them to.
This involves an apparently unintentional weakness in Android, exploited intentionally by malicious apps. But those apps can't do anything to "your" phone, if you recognize they are proprietary software and won't allow them in your machine.
Warning: parts of Android are proprietary programs too, and many phones sold with Android come with proprietary modifications, even preloaded proprietary apps that the customer may not be informed about. And that's not to mention the proprietary radio software in the modem processor, with its universal back door.
The bully's artificial restrictions, designed to wipe out Planned Parenthood and stop other clinics from telling women about abortion, has been approved by an appeals court and will go into effect.
I hope someone will report on what role judges recently appointed by Republicans played in this decision.
(satire) … Schumer stated to members of the press Thursday that "the American people deserve a president who can more credibly justify war with Iran."
Study Confirms GOP Medicaid Work Requirements Succeeded in Taking Away People's Healthcare, But Did Nothing to Boost Employment.
At a time when life is such a struggle for the poor, poor people all try to get work. The question is whether they can get enough work, and fit it into life alongside sleep and commuting.
Libya is not a safe place to send refugees back to, so the EU should not send anyone there.
(Right-wing) populism means never having to say you’re sorry, and never having to say you’re wrong. You just change the subject.
The experience of being tracked constantly by their parents is making some US teenagers resent digital surveillance.
What Love Island Can Tell Us About the Surveillance State.
Movies and TV that idolize the English upper class and its former dominant position serve now to propagandize Britons and Americans to bow down to the rich.
The US suicide rate has been rising for years, especially among rural men with less education and less income.
The full cause is not evident, but the widespread gun ownership in the US could be one factor. However, the industrial non-policy that allows devastating decline in many rural areas could also be responsible.
Palestinians who are Israeli citizens can run for parliament, but if elected they still face violence from thugs who cover it up with lies.
Also described in the article is how Israeli soldiers murdered a Palestinian driver by blocking paramedics from stopping his bleeding.
Israeli soldiers have done this before. Tarek Loubani reports that he saw this happen to a wounded medic at a Gaza protest: a sniper wounded him, then snipers kept shooting near him to stop other medics treating him. Eventually the wounded medic bled to death.
Israel plans to demolish an entire Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem, evicting 500 people.
The only path to reconciliation (in whatever form) between Israelis and Palestinians is to have an independent Palestinian state. It is not a mere "solution", it is a necessary first step to an end to military occupation.
US officials are hinting at a US missile attack at some facility in Iran.
In the US it proves almost impossible to convict killer cops. Here are suggestions for what we could try to do instead.
The bully ordered denial of asylum to people fleeing Central America that pass through Mexico and didn't ask for asylum there.
This would make sense if Mexico were a safe country for refugees, but if that were the case. they would probably ask for asylum in Mexico, where people mostly speak Spanish which most of them already speak.
This may be rejected by courts.
Yosemite national park paid a ransom to recover the right to use the traditional names for hotels and other activities, which had been seized by a trademark extortionist.
The article spreads confusion between trademark law and several other laws by using the overgeneralization "intellectual property" to refer to trademarks. Please don't ever use that term.
Academics should not be fired for stating controversial views about gender issues in the abstract.
We must distinguish having views on controversial questions from discrimination.
Many public schools in the US publicly humiliate children whose families have not paid for school lunch.
No family should have to pay for school meals, unless perhaps one so wealthy that the fee is nothing to it. The cost should be paid out of general tax revenue, funded by a progressive income tax, so that the poor don't have to pay anything.
However, I see a deeper and bigger issue here: how can we teach children from poor families not to feel ashamed of this? Children are not responsible for their families' fortunes, but even the adults should not feel ashamed of getting bad breaks.
Heathrow's Expansion Plans Make a Mockery of the Zero Emissions Strategy. We need to cut down on flights, not increase them.
PFAS appears to cause pancreatic cancer even at a very low concentration, about 1/700 of the current maximum level in drinking water.
Scientists Shocked by Arctic Permafrost Thawing 70 Years Sooner Than Predicted.
They found that the whole landscape was melting.
Newly elected Massachusetts District Attorney Rachael Rollins is trying to provide better justice by being less punitive in some cases.
We can't evaluate the effect of this by looking at specific cases. It can only be judged as an aggregate.
Burkina Faso will punish journalists that report on attacks by Islamist rebel groups.
Plans to export solar electricity from Australia through a power cable, or in the form of hydrogen.
The head of Hong Kong's puppet government has apologized for the extradition bill, and said she would not try to push it again before July 2020, but refuses to go promise not to bring it back after that.
One must suspect that she plans to try again later next year. Having chosen to serve China, she will not have a change of heart. She will remain the enemy of Hong Kong.
The death penalty in the US is "as predictable as a lightning strike." The system is so random, in some ways, that it makes no sense.
One thing that is not random is the racism. An extreme case: in Los Angeles, only non-whites get sentenced to death.
(I refuse to use the expression "of color". Color is not something one can be "of".)
In many of the states where Republicans are banning abortion, the voting public does not support them and did not vote for them. They hold power via gerrymandering, against the public will.
The US regime's policy towards Iran is divorced from reality in regard to strategy.
This is in addition to being divorced from reality in its goals.
Iran's regime does not respect human rights, but it's not as bad as Salafi Arabia. If the latter is good enough to be a US ally, so is Iran.
Warren's many good domestic policy plans have won her more support.
As I've read articles about Warren's plans, I have agreed with them, more or less. They show me that she is progressive and will fight the plutocrats.
Sanders is also a progressive and has fought the plutocrats for decades. If we elect him, there will be no lack of good plans. What we may not have is enough progressives in Congress to enact them. Sanders is dedicating his efforts to boosting their campaigns.
Moreover, Sanders rejects US wars, and the crimes of US allies, in a way that Warren has not.
I support Sanders. I would settle for Warren.
Changing underwear every day wastes water for so much washing. Until everyone had washing machines, people didn't do this.
Yanis Varoufakis' Analysis of the Latest Greek Election.
Brazil plans to put a right to data protection into its constitution.
This reflects good intentions, but adopts an ineffective avenue for solution. The constitution should guarantee a right to anonymity.
Actors should have equal opportunity, rather than a system of privileges based on dozens of different demographic identities.
The partial reactor meltdown at Simi Valley scattered a lot of radioactive material which joined toxic chemicals. These pollutants spread on water and wind, causing elevated rates of many kinds of cancer.
Some studies suggest that trigger warnings don't really help protect people with PTSD — indeed, they could hurt instead.
I don't regard this as proven yet.
'The Changes Are Really Accelerating': Alaska at Record Warm While Greenland Sees Major Ice Melt.
Here are many reasons why the US needs an industrial policy.
The New York Times says that the US is infiltrating malware into Russia's power grids.
This seems like dangerous brinkmanship to me. Power grids are civilian infrastructure, and should not be targets in war. If Russia is doing this to the US, one could argue that threats in return are justified. But then there should be negotiations for a cease fire in that terrain.
"Is showing compassion to migrants a crime?" Right-wing regimes, founded on cruelty, are trying to make it so.
The US prisons for border-crossers are insufficient to handle the overload caused by the bully's policies of imprisoning them. This will systematically put them in danger of losing life or limb.
The world cannot continue economic growth and avoid global heating disaster. There is no way to decouple growth from greenhouse emissions soon enough.
I guess we need to take from the rich in order to give poor people a better life.
The saboteur-in-chief has attacked medical research by banning use of human fetal tissue.
Sooner or later, you will develop a disease that today is fatal. Will it still be fatal when you get it? Understanding and curing some diseases depends on fetal tissue research. Forbidding that research could be your death.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency is moving to strip states of the authority to block pipelines and other fossil fuel facilities.
Each fossil fuel facility creates an investor that has a giant stake in continue to operate it, thus continue destroying the ecosphere. To survive, we will have to eliminate their legal right not to lose this investment.
As Study Shows Methane Emissions 'Vastly Underestimated,' Warnings That US Fracked Gas Export Bonanza Imperils Planetary Stability.
Carbon Emissions from Energy Industry Rise at Fastest Rate Since 2011.
"The process of corporate plunder in the global mining industry is severely aggravating social and economic inequalities across the planet."
Assad Demolishes Refugee Homes to Tighten Grip on Rebel Strongholds.
Former rebels don't dare return home — many of them will be tortured.
"Under this policy, the [US] Coast Guard stops boats in international waters, searches them and their crew for drugs, destroys boats, and detains crew members for prolonged periods of time in inhumane conditions, regardless of whether any drugs are found aboard."
The Japanese shipping company says its tanker was attacked by a missile, not a mine.
This does not conclusively say who attacked the ship. Perhaps some ally of the conman did it, to add to the military threats and economic warfare we know about. Or perhaps Iran did it in response to those military threats and economic warfare. Either way, the US is the aggressor overall.
Each step in increased regulation of the internet has reinforced the dominion of the existing giants.
Since 1989, the wealthiest 1% of Americans have gained 21 trillion dollars, while the poorest 50% have lost almost 1 trillion.
The poorest 50% amount to roughly 150 million people, which means that their loss averages roughly 6000 dollars each.
Facebook's new payment system will try to seize total surveillance and control of monetary transactions.
Using this would be even worse than using a credit card.
Deep fake videos will aid the bullshitters that aim to eliminate the idea that the truth matters, by burying the truth under heaps of contradictory lies.
700 large companies are under pressure to stop concealing their environmental footprint.
The pressure on platforms to censor certain points of view is spilling over inevitably into broader censorship.
US citizens: call on Congress to abolish the deportation thug department, ICE.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Rep. Neal to get the bullshitter's tax returns form New York State.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The State of Georgia is replacing its voting machines, but plans to go against security recommendations and buy touch-screen ballot-printers.
Arguing that a one-time expenditure of 5 billion dollars could make Africa self-sufficient in food.
To make that benefit last, assuming a stable climate, requires ending population growth in Africa. That would cost money, but there may be other obstacles — religious — that money alone might not easily address.
To make this solution lasting we need to curb global heating.
Australia's exaggerated cruelty to refugees is driving them to suicide. I expect that Australian politicians are celebrate every suicide attempt as proof of success.
The Catholic Church is pushing women in Nigeria to a malicious app as a substitute for real birth control.
There is a word for women who use this method: "mothers".
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Protect Right to Organize Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: demand that the head of the US border thugs resign for promoting bigotry (and hatred towards immigrants).
I oppose prudery, so I reject the idea that there is something necessarily wrong with "vulgar jokes." Those particular jokes may have been nasty for some other reason. By contrast, hostility towards immigrants is clearly unacceptable from anyone that works in government agencies that deal with immigrants.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Palantir to drop its contracts with the US deportation thug agency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to make certain cuts in the US military budget.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Many civilians who lived near or visited Chernobyl after the explosion died from illnesses that can plausibly be attributed to radioactive fallout. No one investigated, so there is no established count, and those in favor of nuclear power can still claim it never hurt anyone but the workers.
Some still try to argue that we need to build new nuclear power plants to avoid global heating disaster. This is bogus because it would be far cheaper to build renewable generation.
The staff of to Department of Agriculture research agencies believe that moving the agencies out of Washington is a way of sabotaging them.
Research has discovered that racist thuggishness on the part of cops originates in racist attitudes on the part of many cops.
US citizens: call on the Department of Housing and Urban Development not to restrict housing assistance.
Here's the text I sent:
I call on the Department of Housing and Urban Development not to tighten eligibility for housing assistance. When some of the people in a family are US citizens, it is entirely legitimate to support housing for family. There is no justification for putting those citizens out on the street or breaking up their families. A great country shows its greatness through compassion.
US citizens: call on the FBI to stop pretending there is such a thing as "black identity extremism".
This phantom threat distracts attention from the real threat of white identity extremism.
I focus my politics on issues, not on identity.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Salvini has imposed a fine of 50,000 euros on organizations that rescue drowning refugees and bring them to Italy.
Two legislators whose fathers had been murdered helped eliminate the death penalty in New Hampshire.
Pope Francis Declares 'Climate Emergency' And Urges Action to avoid “a brutal act of injustice toward the poor and future generations.”
Making loan decisions based on tracking people's online activity constitutes linking up the US "social credit" system.
The injustice of this goes far beyond indirect race or gender bias.
Glenn Greenwald exposed the corrupt intentions behind the prosecution of Lula. Now he is receiving death threats and a threat from the state to deport him.
Greenwald lives in Brazil and is married to an elected official.
The "young adult" book category is consuming itself with censorship demands. Many books have been withdrawn or cancelled in response to pressure campaigns accusing the authors of various sorts of "insensitivity" or "cultural appropriation".
The critics demand authors portray every minority in a "sensitive" way. Is there anyone in the world that can do this? Any given human being belongs only to a few groups. An author will have to play safe by assigning every character to the groups perse belongs to. But this would trigger condemnation for a lack of diversity.
It looks like young adult books will have to be written by committees that can provide sensitive treatment of many different intersections of minority groups. The publisher would apply for a sensitivity certification from the Sensitivity Authority, which might demand changes. Then it would direct readers to send their complaints to the SA if they think its evaluation standards ought to be changed.
I have decided to oppose all campaigns that demand publishers withdraw a book, or a contribution to a book — regardless of what reasons are cited. Demanding censorship of books is in itself destructive. Even if the name presented on the book as author were "Donald Trump", I would not demand the publisher withdraw it.
The conman's war on education.
Climate blindness: Canadian west coast indigenous tribes are opposing a tar sands pipeline, but cite only its local dangers while ignoring its global danger.
Meanwhile, not far away, Alaska has had record heat this spring and its permafrost is melting. To avoid disaster is getting harder and harder.
The melting permafrost also poses a short-term local threat, but we should not be distracted by that.
Hong Kong demonstrates how surveillance tech threatens democracy.
It CAN happen here; indeed, it is already happening, just not to this extent. We, in countries that allow some space for public opinion, must demand an end to the systems that track people.
New Report Exposes Pentagon's Massive Contributions to Climate Crisis.
Australian thugs, like US thugs, practice "running a plate for a date". However, an Australian thug actually got convicted for it.
Google contractors can listen to what people say to its home listening devices.
I am sure that thugs can, too.
Rich jerks in San Francisco say that homeless people are bad for the environment.
We can see they are jerks because they refer only to their own local environment, and they are stretching the term to include mere annoyances.
Excess humans are bad for the environment, and the bigger their homes, the worse they are. Let's stop making so many humans!
Charter schools are very profitable, partly due to scamming the taxpayer. They use these profits to lobby against efforts to curb charter schools.
I think we should eliminate charter schools entirely so that they won't have a lobby any more.
Big Agro attacks innovative ecological farming by equating it with prescientific traditional farming.
(satire) … voters across the country criticized the Democratic National Committee Tuesday for requiring candidates to articulate at least one policy position before they can participate in debates.
"If Israel annexes Palestinian land and closes the door on a sovereign Palestinian state, then the international community must demand that Israel extend citizenship to occupied Palestinians."
In Missouri, a black driver is almost twice as likely to be stopped by thugs as a white driver.
Corporations are on track to destroy forests the size of Spain from 2010 to 2020.
Sudan Military Admits Abuses Committed in Khartoum Attack.
Arctic wildfires in June emitted as much CO2 as Sweden does in a year.
That positive feedback could force disaster.
Anaheim thugs shot and killed Hannah Williams, who may really have pointed a toy gun at them. But it looks like they might have saved her life afterward if they had made that the priority.
The UN Human Rights Council will investigate Philippine president Do-dirty's death squads, which are accused of killing 27,000 people.
Measles has killed almost 2000 people in the DR Congo in the past 6 months, due to many who are unvaccinated.
"The extradition bill might be ‘dead’ but in Hong Kong, we cannot afford to back down."
The reluctance of China's chief agent to officially withdraw the bill has to inspire suspicion.
The Greenpeace protesters on an oil rig in the North Sea were arrested.
The thugs make an exaggerated fuss about the danger (to a few volunteers) of holding a protest at sea. This is an excuse to ignore the big threat to safety: the oil well that that rig is going to drill. They should arrest the would-be mass murderers at BP.
(satire) Pence Visits Conversion Therapist For Routine Gay-Preventative Checkup.
Juan Cole said that mines that damaged oil tankers could have been planted by Houthis.
I don't think that the bullshitter or his allies would hesitate to make a false flag attack. If someone published a leak as evidence of this, they would only call that "fake news" and prosecute the leaker.
However, Cole thinks it is possible the attack was done by Iran. Here's a writer who considers it a natural result to US economic warfare.
A Commodities Futures Trading Commission member warns that global heating can lead to a global financial crisis.
An AI booster claims that the GDPR is significantly limiting businesses' collection and use of personal data.
The effects described in the article are beneficial for privacy, and maybe Europe is falling behind China in setting up totalitarian surveillance. But that is not to make people safe.
The second amendment was designed to make sure slave states could put down slave revolts.
After Britain seized a tanker carrying Iranian oil, Iran tried to seize a British oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.
Makes sense to me. Sooner or later Iran will capture one. Maybe then they can swap captures.
Can We Talk in Confidence? The Death of Candour in the Age of Surveillance.
Most of the recommendations are good ones, and I agree with the main point that society as a whole needs to protect everyone's privacy, and not merely "protect" data bases.
However, the article does not recognize the issues of free software, and peer-to-peer vs centralization.
France has adopted a new tax on large foreign companies doing business there.
Bravo! Taxing the rich more enables the country to do more.
France disregarded threats from the US government to do this.
Voting Machine Makers Claim The Names Of The Entities That Own Them Are Trade Secrets.
Calling something a "trade secret" is just a way of saying "I don't want to tell you." Why do governments so often allow companies to conceal important information simply because they want to? Many countries have adopted laws and policies which give undue respect to the wishes of companies.
We should change that. Let's not allow companies that make or sell election systems to keep anything about them secret, except the password that they give to the purchaser. The software in them should be free.
However, making the software free/libre does not make a computer trustworthy for recording votes. We have to do that on paper!
Two years after the Grenfell tower fire, the UK has not even started to upgrade the fire safety standards of other buildings with the same problem.
Michigan dropped the charges against state officials connected with lead in Flint's water, in order to start the investigation again.
The US Office of Special Counsel called for firing Kellyanne Conway for violating the Hatch Act.
'Deja Vu' of Iraq War Lies as Mike Pompeo Blames Iran for Tanker Attack Without Single Shred of Evidence.
A bipartisan bill would clip the president's power to use "national emergencies" to bypass Congress.
Hong Kong thugs attacked protesters; the protesters then attacked the thugs. The head of the government, chosen by a process fundamentally controlled by China, now reproaches them for that.
I can't say that the protesters did wrong, but it would have been more effective to maintain nonviolent discipline.
When plutocratists call something "socialism", it means "not good for plutocrats".
President Truman: "Socialism is what they called public power, … social security … bank deposit insurance … free and independent labor organizations, anything that helps all the people."
The Koch brothers and other rich plutocrats are putting millions into defending the Democrats that serve them in the 2020 election.
The House of Representatives found Barr and Ross in contempt of Congress and will ask courts to make them turn over materials.
Radar could make it possible to monitor a driver's health without identifying per.
Using radar probably doesn't automatically assure the driver is not identified. It's possible that the radar system could measure the driver's height, for instance. We need free software to guarantee that the radar is not misused. After all, you can't trust a car company to be honest about what its software does, or even to obey laws.
The UK has a proposal for net-zero-emissions by 2050. Due to weaknesses and escape routes, it won't get the job done.
Someone attacked Japan-bound tankers in the Persian Gulf just as Japan was holding negotiations with Iran.
The UAE says Iran did it, but it would make no sense for Iran to do that — it would be self-defeating. So I suspect Iran's enemies (US allies) of doing the attack.
"I was blocked from advising on UK drug policy — because I criticised UK drug policy."
Nicaragua has freed many, but not all, of the people imprisoned for protests in 2018.
Putin made journalist Ivan Golunov a national hero by framing him and torturing him.
The article also explains how complete the repression of protest is in Russia. Planet roasters in the US are trying to head in that direction now.
Amazingly, the state has backed down and dropped the bogus charges. They must have caused too much international embarrassment.
The high-level political support Golunov has received leads me to suspect that the frame-up was organized by local officials without Putin's approval.
The UK parliament is afraid that Boris Johnson, if he becomes prime minister, would prorogue (dismiss) parliament and not call it back into session until after the UK drifts out of the EU. Therefore, some members of parliament plan to pass a law they hope will block that.
Should we call the supporters of Johnson "pro-rogue"?
Salvini's right-wing extremist party is being investigated, accused of making a deal to get Russian fund.
I have a sad hunch he won't lose any support for this.
Communism was once an international movement. Then, Communists professed good, idealistic goals, while some carried out repression that they hid from the rest. Communists considered it entirely proper for the Soviet Union to aid Communist parties all around the world.
Now fascists have made an international movement, with repression as the overt goal. I have a hunch Salvini's followers will say, "It's great that you got funds from Putin so we subject Italy to repression."
A lying thug in Florida has been charged for framing many people.
A hundred criminal cases were dropped because he was involved in them. Eight convictions have been overturned, but I think it is unlikely that he succeeded in framing people only eight times.
A Polish gang trafficked 400 Poles to the UK to enslave them.
The victims were forced to do work — but not, it appears, sex work.
Corbyn rejected the goal of "social mobility" as a substitute for giving everyone a decent life.
It is important to give everyone a chance to put per talents to good use, but the people who are not especially talented deserve a good life too.
Syriza is telling Greeks it will cut taxes to stimulate economic growth. Syriza was started as a "leftist" party, but this sounds awfully right-wing to me.
With the euro rules forbidding deficit spending, tax cuts will force cuts in spending, and that will hit the poor hardest.
To rebuild Greece "from the beginning", as Tsipras said, could be possible only with debt relief.
Macron is cutting funds for France's medical system so much that doctors are going on strike.
Britain has forgotten the supposed advantages of leaving the EU; its supporters now demand that for its own sake at any cost.
The EU is the world's most powerful business-supremacy treaty. There is a motive for wanting to escape from it — think of the automated copyright censorship and pissing on Greece — but not if it means surrendering to even nastier business-supremacy treaties with countries such as the US and China.
US citizens: call on Congress to shut the revolving door between the US military and military contractor companies.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US to legalize marijuana.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The London subways plan to track passengers' movements by their phone WiFi.
Supposedly this will be "anonymous", but I am sure they can put a name to most passengers.
I have taken pains to make sure my laptop's WiFi interface is always off except when I explicitly switch it on. Every time I reboot, every time I suspend and unsuspend, it switches off.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has independently investigated CIA torture. Its report details where prisoners were seized, where they were tortured, and what the CIA did with them afterward.
The Guardian has adopted the term "global heating".
Other major media are considering making the same change.
The US system of medical "insurance" could at any moment dump on you a bill for thousands of dollars, or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and make you wish you had been left untreated.
Plutocrats are offering public employees discounts from stores if only they quit their unions.
The countries that have criminalized paying for sex still repress sex workers, even if sex work is ostensibly legal. Helping sex workers be safe and free is not the goal.
"Talking about 'decriminalisation' lends the Nordic model campaign a veneer of progressiveness that a more honest 'stamp out prostitution' is lacking."
Tokyo cracked down on public protests by eliminating nearly all public places where people could do anything but walk.
International humanitarian aid organizations are pervasively given to coercing local people into sex. This targets both the local workers and the people asking for aid.
Facebook Launching App That Pays Users for Data on App Usage.
When we see the effects of this, I forecast we will learn that it is no less dangerous than all the other personal data collection.
Delayed departure: France will add a tax on airline tickets for the sake of environmental protection, but it is too small to have much effect.
Many Americans believe that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.
I watched Apollo 17 take off — its launch into space was no hoax. To spend billions to do that much for real, then do the rest only as a mere hoax, makes no sense. If you can get that far, you will go all the way.
If you haven't got your bearings to identify the absurd conspiracies, a heuristic you can use is to ignore anyone who endorses the moon landings hoax claim.
As for bigger jobs, such as curing cancer, we are doing that. A considerable fraction of the people who get cancer live many years, even decades, after treatment. In a few decades, if civilization survives, we will do even better.
The truly difficult jobs, such as cleaning up the inner cities, and ending global heating, are hard because we face human enemies — plutocrats — that profit from keeping these problems going, They might even tell you these problems are hoaxes.
Salafi Arabia doesn't think that jailing 30 journalists and murdering one should earn it a low ranking for press freedom.
The tame deer of Nara in Japan are dying of hunger after their stomachs fill up with plastic bags discarded by tourists.
I suppose the bags smell somewhat like the food they contained.
Once, in Nara, I got a baked sweet potato for my own enjoyment. As I went strolling while eating it, I felt a thump on my back. A deer was butting me, demanding my food. I did not hand it over; beggars should not try to demand or intimidate.
Workers at Delta Airlines report harassment and threats against those that support unionization.
Pakistan has made it hard for Afghans to get a visa, which 100,000 of them seek annually to get medical treatment or even a diagnosis.
I suppose the motive for this is to block travel by Taliban and other rebels. But ISTR that there was a large region of Pakistan near the frontier in which the government had little power, and that the islamists didn't need passports to cross the frontier. Has that situation changed?
In the long run, there is nothing wrong in principle with designing good genes for children.
In the short term, there are reasons to prohibit it: the great danger that the artificial genes will backfire is one. The danger of malware in genes may arise, too.
State monitoring of prescriptions has little effect in limiting abuse of prescription opioids, but it is a big intrusion on patients' privacy.
Abuse of prescription opioids is only a small part of the problem of opioid addiction anyway.
Scott Daniel Warren was tried for giving water, food and a night's sleep to border crossers. The jury was unable to reach a verdict.
Given the cruelty of the US government towards border crossers, I expect it will try him again and again until it gets a verdict.
The US Department of Agriculture wants to allow beef processing plants to inspect their own products.
Allowing Boeing to do that resulted in the death of hundreds of people.
Allowing this for meat could kill a lot more people, with less public attention. Rather than dying hundreds at a time in a few spectacular incidents, they will die one by one and the cause won't be immediately obvious.
When a robot's right hand doesn't know what its left hand is doing, it will insist there is no reason why it should know. It may even claim that the two hands are two separate robots.
The details are lacking, but I suspect that part of the cause of this problem was that the parking system knew who was parking there. In other words, this was a harmful side-effect of massive surveillance, in addition to the fundamental injustice of surveillance.
55 African countries have signed a business-supremacy treaty. Whether this is good for non-rich Africans in general is something I doubt. It will give businesses more power in those countries.
Australia's planet roaster government keeps violating its laws in order to approve a new coal mine, and keeps getting caught.
Five ridiculous reasons why [UK thugs] label campaigners as "domestic extremists".
The conman will institute a new "human rights" panel so as to set a new, narrower definition of what rights humans have, and give more power to religions instead.
The UK strives to find excuses to deny citizenship to children that are normally entitled to citizenship.
Pacific gray whales are dying from hunger.
Some crucial food species must have crashed. If this is a random fluctuation, it might recover next year or the year after. If it is due to global heating, it could get worse and worse, and perhaps wipe out those whales.
The UK's ISP association condemns DNS-over-HTTPS, saying it would help people in Britain get around censorship.
The way to defend censorship is to call it "online safety", which subtly leads people to think of noncensorship as a personal threat.
Iran shows where the UK is headed.
Maine has passed a law forbidding ISPs from distributing customer data without the customer's consent.
While the ISPs say this means the sky is falling, I consider it inadequate. First, because it doesn't apply when the FBI sends a "national security letter" to get a copy of all the data. Second, because the ISPs have ways to get almost every customer to consent, in formal terms. The engineering of consent is very effective.
What we need is a law forbidding ISPs from keeping data about what customers do.
The minister in charge of education in India actively supports astrology.
A teenager in Salafi Arabia is being tried secretly for participating in a protest when he was 13 years old. He could be executed.
His brother reportedly engaged in violence at the same protest.
The US has also executed people under such circumstances — which is wrong, of course. But even with a lesser penalty, it isn't just to punish A for a crime B committed, if A was only planning a much lesser crime.
Botanists have identified 571 plant species that have been made extinct since 1750, but there are probably thousands more.
This does not count the species that are headed to extinction because they cannot reproduce — for instance, the Torreya trees of Florida.
Rep. Amash says that the Republican Party is now so rigid there is no room for any disagreement or independence.
Technology and the labor market combine to make many people too busy to think much.
The heat wave in Europe interfered with nuclear power plants because they couldn't get the river water they require for cooling.
The bully's tariff threat to Mexico was theater. Mexico had agreed to most of the concessions already.
Mexico has been serving as a US border control agent for years.
"Abrupt thawing" can make the melting permafrost release large amounts of methane in a short time. The release of the methane won't be spread safely over centuries — it could be concentrated in decades.
Arctic Is Thawing So Fast Scientists Are Losing Their Measuring Tools. Several meters of soil can come loose in a few days.
Abrupt thawing can cause landslides and transform terrain beyond recognition.
Biden said that banksters are "positive" (influences in the US), and said that Republicans would become better if the bully were out of the way.
Republicans in Congress were not quite as bad, overall, a decade or two ago. But that has changed. The bully has pressured Republicans to join him in open contempt for any aspects of our democracy that stand in their way. The new Republican Party is the plutocratist party, and only a crushing defeat can make it change.
Record heat, combined with drought, is forcing people to flee from parts of India.
Why the Raids on Australian Media Present a Clear Threat to Democracy.
Los Angeles provided housing for 20,000 homeless people, but 30,000 more arrived on the streets.
In the long run, we need (1) fewer births, (2) more housing construction, and (3) more sharing of apartments and houses.
Surveillance capitalism's success may be based on fooling advertisers about how effective it is.
In 1988, Biden ran for president, and falsely claimed he had participated in civil rights marches.
Bernie Sanders really did march.
The few big US cable and wireless ISPs are pushing to regulate the few big US network services, mainly so as to cut in on the profits from surveillance capitalism.
A pox on both their houses — we need to forbid massive surveillance by anyone.
Sudanese Troops Raped Protesters at Sit-In, Doctors Report.
Some Hong Kong businesses believe that China's extradition bill will be bad for business, and asked their staff to join protests against the second reading of the bill.
This has a chance of convincing China to back down, and I think it is worth a try. However, given China's increasing business success, I think China's rulers regard Hong Kong as dispensable. I think they want to wipe Hong Kong off the map and call it "China".
Having a few billionaires that donate to fighting global heating does not make up for the harm done by the planet-roaster billionaires — and by the system that produces billionaires.
Across Europe, right-wing repressive candidates are using conservative religion as a base for their campaigns.
If you live in the US or visit it regularly, call on airlines in the US to stop using face recognition to identify passengers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on Virginia to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to give refugees respect rather than concentration camps.
If you sign, please spread the word!
New York City wants to use "congestion pricing" as an excuse for total tracking of the movements of cars.
The US government rejects and deports immigrants based on "evidence" in a secret database that supposedly indicates people's gang affiliations.
Supposed gang affiliations have been based on unverified speculations in other circumstances. There is no reason to expect them to be better founded when used for deportation. And secrecy positively invites lies.
Facebook stands ready to promote right-wing extremism in 2020 just as it did before. "The more extreme the message, the farther it will travel."
The article proposes a law to require political ads to target the whole constituency that is voting. It sounds like a good idea. However, Facebook is nasty in many other ways, so show your friends that Facebook is not where you can be found.
The melting of the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica is heading for a tipping point, after which it will slide into the ocean and raise sea level by around half a meter (20 inches) over the next 150 years.
What's worse than paying $1200 per month to rent a slot in a bunk bed? Working 45 hours a week for that slot, in lieu of pay — which comes out to roughly $6 per hour.
For life's other expenses, you need another job on top of that.
The minimum wage in California is over $10 an hour, so I think the "volunteer" sales agents are being cheated.
Some propose to boycott Amazon for dodging taxes and paying low wages.
I don't disagree, but a mere boycott is inadequate. It fails to recognize that >Amazon does wrong to its customers directly.
To think of buying from Amazon as a "sin" means closing your eyes to how it mistreats you. I think of it as being spied on. If I bought from Amazon, if I let Alexa listen to me, I would feel ripped off — not merely guilt. I protect my rights; I don't give Amazon a chance to mistreat me.
The strength of union activism in "conservative" states shows that progressive Democrats that stand for workers can win those states.
The conman made a deal with the House of Representatives, under which it is providing some of the underlying evidence for Mueller's report.
Why don't Salafi Arabia, UAE and Egypt criticize China for putting perhaps a million Uighurs in brainwashing camps?
They generally work closely with the US. I suspect they have discussed this issue with the conman. He does not care about imprisoning Muslims, or killing them, and neither do those other countries.
Old poor people in Japan are pushed into living in a giant housing project where there are no elevators, no stores to buy anything, and no medical clinic. That tells them, in effect, "Please die soon."
In he future, when many of the old people will have spent their lives habituating themselves to isolation except over the internet, they may find this isolation normal, but it will be even deeper.
The Labour Party needs to expel real antisemitism and launch a political debate about Israel and Palestine.
Greenpeace Activists Board BP Oil Rig As It Is Towed out to Sea.
There is no room in the carbon budget for new fossil fuel mines. Every one that is made is a step too far, towards disaster.
"Teaching children about LGBT issues is not brainwashing — it equips them for life."
I also like the quote, "No parent has a right to restrict [per] children from learning about other perspectives on the world."
The conman's aide, Mnuchin, made it clear that the motive for sanctions against Huawei is partly economic pressure (as distinguished from protecting national security).
How foolish of them to treat this important issue as a mere bargaining chip.
Using a Chinese company's proprietary software threatens national security in any other country, just as using a US company's proprietary software threatens national security in any other country.
Australia pretends that its puppet government in Nauru is stopping it from bringing its refugee prisoners to Australia for medical care that is impossible on Nauru.
Nauru could delay even the consideration of the "request" for months or years, until the patient is dead.
Assad's air force is persistently attacking civilians in Idlib, with Russia's help.
Global Population of Eight Billion And Growing: We Can't Go On Like This.
Spying on Children Won’t Keep Them Safe.
Republicans in North Carolina demonstrate their "by hook or by crook" spirit by threatening over and over to vote on overriding the governor's veto of an abortion restriction. To defeat it, every Democrat needs to be present, over and over.
Doctors believe that Russian thugs beat reporter Ivan Golunov badly enough to break his ribs, but they can't tell for certain, because the thugs won't allow him to have an x-ray.
There is an attempt to accuse Martin Luther King Jr. of being a bystander at a rape, based an on unattributed note written on part of his FBI file. Historians say that such a note is not real evidence.
Aside from that, he is also accused of peccadilloes such as having sex outside of marriage. As if that mattered.
Individuals and their actions can make a big difference in the course of history. I consider Martin Luther King a great man.
40 prosecutors refuse to enforce new laws banning abortion.
It is more accurate to talk about a multi-drug-abuse crisis than about an opioid crisis.
Many parts of Africa are wracked by intractable war.
It is easy to call for world powers to "do something", but what should they do? Some of these wars may be fueled by actions of foreign powers — for instance, corruption that sucks Africa's money out into tax havens — and we can see at least in principle how to stop that. But it is hard to see how to put an end to the violent Islamist extremist groups.
Hundreds of thousands protested in Hong Kong against the extradition law being imposed by the legislature, which has was elected under a system designed to give China control.
The protesters in Sudan have launched a general strike.
Sudan's military rulers are arresting people to try to end it.
US citizens: call on the Department of Health and Human Services not to allow discrimination on basis of gender identity or sexuality.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Isn't it perverse to think that "who you are" is defined by which people you are related to?
If I were to find out that the mother and father that raised me were not my biological parents (unlikely in my case), it would not change who I am. It would not even change what I am. It might affect what I think about some of the parents, but it would be irrelevant to what I think about me.
Some of the "intelligence" about Iran that the conman cites comes from the propaganda campaign of the US-supported terrorist group Mojahedin-e-Khalq, which attributes it to a fictional person — in effect, a US sock-puppet.
This group was formerly designated by the US as a terrorist group, but a campaign backed apparently by powerful influence and funds got that designation changed a few years ago.
It is an injustice to designate groups as "terrorist" without a trial, but there was a factual basis to consider it a US-sponsored terrorist group.
Biden, as a senator in 2002, pushed actively to invade Iraq; he blocked careful examination of Dubya's false claims.
Analyzing a right-wing disinformation smear against Senator Warren.
Compare this with the disinformation smears against Julian Assange.
An historian of modern concentration camps (first used in the Boer War to imprison the Afrikaner women and children) says that US prisons for refugee minors are an example. "I expect to see contagious diseases, malnutrition in some cases, and mental health crises."
Ideas for restructuring the US Supreme Court to be less partisan.
The Arctic Ocean is becoming hot, acidic, and short of oxygen.
The thug who shot and killed Justine Damond has been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Since it is so rare for thugs to be punished for crimes, I think we should celebrate each time this occurs. At the same time, I hope that such convictions will not be limited to cases where the thug is a Muslim and the victim is white.
China has blocked access to many journalistic sites from the US, Canada and UK.
The Australian election was affected by right-wing propaganda about a nonexistent plan for a "death tax".
This was a double dose of bullshit: the idea that there is something bad about an inheritance tax, and the idea that Labor was in favor of one.
Every country needs an inheritance tax to limit the accumulation of great wealth across generations. The US needs a bigger inheritance tax, and needs to eliminate the ways that rich people can avoid it.
A plague of forest-destroying monsters are rapidly converting the Amazon forest into a minimalist ecosystem of pasture, cattle, and soybeans.
I think the first decade of food shortage, a few decades from now, will look like this all around the world, as agribusiness pushes to compensate for loss of yield by pushing even marginal land into production.
Australia has a policy of making immigrant families leave if they have a baby that turns out to have an expensive disease.
The bully is still hunting for an excuse to add a citizenship question to the US census.
"In the real world, the fact that the executive branch plans to offer 'a new rationale' [for the citizenship census question] is proof it has been lying. In the legal world, however, this maneuver might yet succeed."
Given the evidence of its real purpose, any other supposed purpose must be another lie.
Don't stretch the term "gaslighting" too far — it will lose its useful meaning.
Anchorage, Alaska, hit 90F. This follows a whole month of June which was 5F hotter than the past average.
June 2019 was globally the hottest month ever measured.
Reportedly one wildfire in Spain started because a field of manure spontaneously combusted. With another few degrees of global heating this will happen frequently.
Alaska's Republican governor wants to cut 40% of the University of Alaska budget, and especially the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy.
The planet roasters know if they can starve climate research for 20 years, we will miss the chance to use it to avoid disaster.
Other ship captains faced, or now face, prosecution in Italy for rescuing people drowning in the Mediterranean sea.
The Plot to Keep Jeremy Corbyn Out of Power.
I still support Corbyn. I condemn antisemitism, and I am satisfied that he does, too.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts legislators to support the moratorium on government face surveillance.
This does not go far enough, not nearly, but it is a good first step.
US citizens: call on Phoenix to fire and charge the thug that threatened to kill Iesha Harper.
I think it is morally irrelevant that Harper was female, that she was pregnant, and that she and black. Doing the same thing to me would have been equally wrong — no more, no less. It's wrong for agents of the public to threaten people that way — any people — or to threaten any kind of violence against people who are not violent.
The thugs might have treated a white man with more respect, but that's a different question.
Glenn Greenwald published evidence that former judge Sérgio Moro corruptly targeted Lula. Now Moro in his new position as minister has ordered a criminal investigation of Greenwald.
I would be surprised if Greenwald had really committed a serious crime. So I expect this is meant as intimidation or revenge.
House Democrats have sued to demand copies of the conman's tax returns.
I fear that the Republican-chosen Supreme Court will defend the other Republicans.
With Poorest Bearing the Brunt, Report Warns Searing Temperatures of Global Heating Could Cost World Economy $2.4 Trillion by 2030.
Historians and other scholars rebuked the US Holocaust Museum for rejecting the idea that Nazi atrocities carry any lesson about circumstances that aren't precisely similar.
Eliminating patents on medicines would do a lot to make medicines cheaper in the US, but even the most progressive candidates are not talking about it.
I have not seen how Baker proposes to do something similar to copyleft in the domain of patents. When I've looked at this, I found no way to do it. Basically, copyright law and patent law are so different that it is a mistake to try to generalize from one to the other. However, if he has a good idea, I hope I get to see it.
There isn't time left for a meek approach to defending the Earth's climate.
I am in favor of the measures described, including establishing legal requirements to preserve natural ecosystems and the conditions they depend on. However, to say that they have legal rights is conceptually incoherent. Only a being capable of wanting and deciding can have rights, because exercising rights is a matter of wanting and deciding.
US citizens: call on Congress to exclude private prisons from the REIT tax break.
If you sign, please spread the word!
It looks like the FBI has caught another fantasy terrorist.
The article does not say, but it sounds like he bought arms illegally that were offered to him under the auspices of the FBI. I can't be certain, but I suspect he would never have been a real threat without FBI help.
In some such cases, state informants have spent months persuading the accused person to undertake the fantasy act of terrorism. Those people would not even have wanted to commit terrorism if not for the activities of state agents.
These activities give the impression of protecting the public, but they don't really do that.
WSJ Says CIA Chief Wouldn't Do Anything 'Inappropriate' — Despite Record of Torture and Coverup.
"Inappropriate" is used precisely because it is totally vague. It is often used to exaggerate and treat a mere disagreement of judgment as a grave wrong. Here it is being used to portray a grave wrong as a mere disagreement of judgment.
Whitewashing War Crimes Has Become the American Way.
Citing Fears of Americans Getting 'Screwed,' Progressive Democrats Call Out Pelosi for Crafting Pharma-Friendly Drug Pricing Bill in Secret.
Economic sanctions are devastating weapons, which the US is using against many countries.
Journalist and Educator Among Those Caught Up in YouTube's Latest Attempt to Purge Online Hate Speech.
A centralized publishing platform provokes demands for centralized censorship. A centralized private publishing platform can censor however it wishes — while people organize to demand that certain works be censored, or not be censored.
I think that centralized publishing platforms are the root of the problem.
Walmart's CEO asked Congress to raise the US minimum wage.
I agree, but this doesn't excuse Walmart for not giving its employees a wage now.
The bully wants to give Salafi Arabia some US bomb technology so it can make its own bombs for devastating Yemen.
Homeopaths are misleading the public about measles vaccine by pretending that it does some sort of damage and that they can fix it.
This "remedy" is less absurd than the usual homeopathic "remedies", which contain approximately none of the supposed active ingredient. At least it contains vitamin C, which can cure scurvy (but nothing else). However, it is particularly dangerous.
The euro banks have forced Greece into leasing a large part of the Aegean Sea for oil extraction. In the short term this is likely to kill lots of whales.
In the long term it will contribute to global disaster. The euro banks and the banksters that run them must be treated as the enemies of civilization.
The DA dropped the charges against Marshae Jones, who was accused (in effect) of being shot while pregnant.
However, the fundamentally wrong idea that a fetus is a person has been used against hundreds of women, and could be used against thousands more.
Any woman who is pregnant and located in one of those repressive states is taking a risk. Best to leave that state and not return until you're no longer pregnant.
Obama boasted of his success in marketing Boeing planes while allowing the FAA to let Boeing regulate itself.
Keep in mind also that expanding aviation exacerbates global heating.
Salivini is attacking judicial independence in Italy.
This is a standard part of the fascist attack on human rights: to eliminate anything that can limit their power over individuals.
The US major media are waking up to how the prosecution of Julian Assange threatens them too.
Fracking in the US is the path to global disaster.
America Is Missing Its Chance to Fix Our Election System Before We Vote in 2020.
There are obstacles to making a recount really occur, and Republicans have taken advantage.
This article doesn't cover the other great flaws of US elections: gerrymandering and voter suppression.
The Democratic National Committee refused to hold a presidential debate about climate defense. Furthermore, if any of the candidates set up a debate outside the DNC, the DNC will punish them.
If enough of the candidates get together to organize a climate debate outside the DNC, they can make it gag on this decision. "Debates" including only Biden and a few unpopular candidates would make the DNC ridiculous.
(satire) Media Urged Not To Release Names Of Any More Presidential Candidates In Effort To Prevent Copycats.
Biden has reluctantly dropped his opposition to government funding of abortions.
It is useful to pressure officials to change their views, but when candidates change their views under pressure, that is no reason to vote for them.
Many experiments show that wealthy people tend to me inconsiderate, even jerks.
Tenants in New York State are pushing to extend rent control to the entire state.
US citizens: call on Massachusetts to ban face surveillance.
To sign this without running nonfree Javascript code, use lynx.
The UK government and other major donors of humanitarian aid funds exaggerate how effective the aid is.
They go so far as to harass people who want to report on problems or failures.
Mining the sea bottom with today's technology could wipe out bottom-dwelling sea life and mobilize sediments into pollution that could travel thousands of miles.
The damage could take centuries to fade away.
Bolsonaro has alienated a substantial fraction of his right-wing supporters. Alas, they are stuck with him for several more years.
A newly elected Green MEP is black, and when he went to the Parliament for the first time, someone told him to leave.
The Environmental Pollution Agency plans to stop using animals to test whether chemicals can damage humans.
Despite the advances made in testing via simulation, it would be foolish to take for granted that the reality matches the simulation.
Chase bank is imposing binding arbitration on use of its credit cards.
If you have one of those cards, you may as well send the letter to opt out. But it would be even better to switch to some other bank, one which does not do this, and tell both Chase and the other bank your reason for doing so.
Whichever credit card you use, every time you use it it will inform the bank and the store. Don't be tracked, pay cash!
Google has modified Chrome so that ad-blockers are impossible.
Public pressure has killed an attempt turn clickthrough terms of service into legally binding obligations in the US.
Google outsources the work of training Google Assistant to contractors that hire workers and pressure them to work unpaid overtime.
I don't think Google would cheat its own employees, but the level of indirection makes cheating almost automatic.
Republicans want to make interfering with an oil pipeline (actual or under construction) a federal crime with a 20-year penalty.
We should go in the other direction, and legalize damaging pipelines as long as this does not result in spilling any significant amount of toxic chemicals.
Apple can track iMonsters even when they are suspended.
This distributed bluetooth network is said to be "secure", but it is obviously not secure from Apple or from governments that can command Apple's obedience (such as the US and China).
US citizens: call on US media outlets not to promote war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US to shut down the concentration camps where the government imprisons thousands of migrant minors (children and teenagers), subject to brutal conditions.
If you sign, please spread the word!
A supermarket in the UK is encouraging customers to buy many products without throwaway packaging. One can get a reusable box from the store, with a refundable deposit.
The Republicans that control West Virginia are working on a bill to authorize firing teachers that strike.
This is retaliation for the effective strikes that teachers held last year.
Thailand appears to be murdering dissidents in exile.
A concert near you may be a little piece of China: a new system would let them use face recognition systems to identify anyone who tries to enter. The developers of the system explicitly state that the purpose of this is to exclude people based on what they have said. If a concert required me to identify myself, I'd refuse outright.
If it is only concerts, it would not be a disaster. We can live without going to large concerts. But the developers want to use it to keep people out of train stations (and trains). That would be little different from what China does now.
The UK government has pre-planned spontaneous responses of grief and sympathy to foreseeable kinds of terrorist attacks.
To channel the public response away from hatred and demonization of some segment of society seems like a good thing to me, provided it is done in an honest way. The article suggests that these campaigns pretend to be something other than what they are, but I am not sure that they do so.
Freedom of the press can no longer be taken for granted in Europe. Right wing governments are clamping down on the media.
Macron in France is trying to start this: some sort of secret police have interrogated reporters about their sources for information about crimes of the state.
Finland Pledges to Become Carbon Neutral by 2035.
That could be doing their share of solving this problem, or almost.
Punishing people who try to commit suicide can make them more depressed. Meanwhile, it encourages others to treat them with contempt.
The Koch brothers fund right-wing biased "research" inside universities.
The Oakland thug department has cut gun violence in half by taking a less thuggish approach — the first move is to try to help people get out of the violence.
Even some tech workers in San Francisco agree that they have ruined what was special and good about that city.
Most of the big, prominent companies mentioned in the article either distribute malware or offer spying, manipulatory dis-services, or both. I reject all that malware, and I mostly don't use their dis-services.
The internet has elevated the importance of charismatic leaders over political movements and their programs. These leaders become the targets of intense adoration by their supporters (or, should we say, "fans"?).
I admire some progressive hyperleaders, and I even have confidence in them to make better strategic decisions than I could. But no way will I ever adore them in the pitiful fashion described in the article.
I don't want to have an imaginary, one-sided "personal" relationship with the president of the US. I want per to do the right thing for the country and the world.
I urge you to support the free software movement. I hope you see the need to do what advances freedom in the long term, rather than what is convenient for you in the short term. But please don't be my "fan" in an adulatory sense. Don't lower yourself to the level of a mere "fan" of anyone. It's freedom that deserves such loyalty.
US citizens: call on the Department of Education not to sell government student loans to Wall Street.
Haiti has a worse crisis than Venezuela, and it has continued for much longer. The US press and the OAS protect "President" Moise, because he was imposed by Washington through a rigged election.
Capitalism wasn't designed by an "invisible hand". It was built by legal decisions made on a political basis, with the rich insisting on privilege. The result is a system that makes the rich richer.
Heatwave Cooks Mussels in Their Shells on California Shore.
reCAPTCHA version 3 supposedly figures out "are you human?", and Google won't say how, but experiment shows that the main question it uses is "are you logged in on a Google account?"
Anti-trust rules could help deal with this, if they prohibit Google from inviting lots of web sites from making use of a Google account their criterion for letting people log in. Competitors to Google can't possibly test that.
It also penalizes users that browse via Tor. Since I won't trust these companies to know where I am, I won't turn off Tor to use a web site. I simply won't use it.
The sadist has made rules that bring about imprisoning minors that cross the border, so they are being kept in primitive, unbearable, disease-inducing conditions. The sadist is using them as political pawns.
The border thugs say they have the necessary supplies to alleviate some of the imprisoned minors' suffering, so apparently the suffering that occurs is what they intend.
We have a president and officials that intentionally practice sadism, carrying out laws that presume at least a modicum of human decency.
"By framing deepfakes as a tech problem we allow Silicon Valley to evade responsibility for its symbiotic relationship with fake news."
The International Labour Organization has produced a treaty to establish global standards for stopping workplace violence and harassment.
The "International Life Sciences Institute" is meant to be mistaken for a research organization. Its real work is infiltrating regulatory bodies to exert influence on behalf of business.
"We must mobilise for the climate emergency like we do in war time. Where is the climate minister?"
India's long history of lynching Dalits.
Global heating is making Alaska's ice highways dangerously thin, sometimes fatally so.
Tennessee Republicans are creatively trying another form of voter suppression: fining organized voter registration campaigns for any mistake.
Ai Weiwei calls on other countries to help the world remember the Chinese state's massacre of student protesters, 30 years ago. It was the foundation of the repression of China today.
An art/hack project teaches people about government surveillance of their Stalin's Dream devices.
It wouldn't affect me!
You Can't Save the Climate By Going Vegan. Corporate Polluters Must be Held Accountable.
Changes in our personal consumption habits are needed — especially the habit of making more humans and increasing the population. But we won't achieve those changes soon enough by leaving it up to people to go against social and economic pressures. We need to change those social and economic pressures.
(satire) Neglected Google Home Sits By Window Barking At Passersby.
It was probably doing face recognition on them, too.
Food products tested by the FDA held substantial levels of PFAS chemicals.
Sudan's military rulers have massacred protesters, apparently with the support of US-backed axis of evil (Egypt, Salafi Arabia and the UAE).
Global heating is already a grave public health problem.
Japanese women are pressuring to prohibit employers from requiring use of high-heeled shoes.
Since I learned about the pain, and the difficulty of walking, that high heels impose, seeing them leads me directly to think about how uncomfortable the women wearing them must be — and it reminds me of old Chinese foot-binding.
Helsinki has eliminated homelessness by giving every homeless person an apartment, and welfare benefits with which to pay the rent for it.
San Francisco would not be able to do this. The first step is to make enough apartments available, and that requires pushing aside the zoning laws that get in the way, as well as money for the construction.
The Australian Labor Party voted to enact Australia's world-wide threats to those that provide reliable encryption, while saying that it went too far. The party said it would fix the problem if it won the next election.
Then the Labor Party lost. The end result is that it helped create the threat and cannot do anything to fix it.
More information about that menacing law.
GOP Blocking of Net Neutrality Vote Rewarded as 47 Democrats Ask for Compromise.
Everyone: call for reexamining the criminal convictions won by prejudiced prosecutor Linda Fairstein.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of Harshness and Suffering to stop violating the human rights of immigrant children (and immigrant teenagers).
If you sign, please spread the word!
The EU buried a study about the climate impact of its farm policy.
There were protests all across China 30 years ago, not just at Tien An Men square in Beijing. Students were killed all across China, too.
Republican-controlled states are passing abortion bans that most people in those states oppose. They are able to do this because their gerrymandering has overridden democracy in those states.
Berliners are protesting to stop a new highway, not only because of the buildings that would be torn down, but also because of pollution.
Global heating hit Scotland's economy last year, as the heat wave interrupted whiskey production.
Making climate mayhem concrete for Scotland.
Robots are being developed to plant and pick crops, and to remove weeds.
To avoid the use of herbicide will be a great step forward. Eliminating human jobs could wipe out millions of people if society does not create other sustenance for them.
Meanwhile, I fear these robots are full of nonfree software and they they subjugate farmers just as John Deere tractors do. It is surely possible to develop farm robots that do not impose this injustice. That will happen, if farmers organize to reject nonfree software.
Tory budget cuts have caused 130,000 avoidable deaths in the UK since 2012.
Senator Warren proposed a law to allow federal indictment of the president.
Packing refugees into prisons: they were so crowded that some had to stand on toilets to get some air.
"Americans should be very concerned about Bernie Sanders' record of opposing mass murder."
Warning: almost every statement in the article is meant ironically.
US citizens: call on the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the Pebble mine.
If you sign, please spread the word!
(satire) Historians Reveal Aqueducts Were Only Small Portion Of Ancient Rome’s Intricate Water Park System.
Ecuador has released Ola Bini from jail, but it seems that he still faces charges and can't leave Ecuador.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture visited Assange and says he is suffering the effects of "prolonged exposure to psychological torture" as well as physical illness.
Helicopter parenting is forced on US children even before they learn to walk. It supposes children can't learn basic motor and sensory skills except through explicit teaching.
As for old-fashioned free play, that is not allowed any more.
Senator Warren points out that mass shootings are the tip of the iceberg of shootings in general.
Google commits to the usual ineffective principles of "data privacy" for its "Smart City" project in Toronto.
They are ineffective because (1) it is easy to manufacture consent with carrots and sticks, and (2) the database will be abused even if Google doesn't directly sell it. In particular, it will be available to the state.
Here's the site for fighting against this plan.
The Republican-appointed judges in the US Supreme Court gave state governments free rein for partisan gerrymandering.
They do not always vote as a bloc, but they did so when it was necessary to support election rigging by the Republicans that put them there.
"People are dying crossing borders. It shouldn’t take shocking photos to change that."
Congress should put money into Head Start rather than into concentration camps for immigrant minors.
Medical doctors in the UK have joined the school strike movement.
The US Hospitals Suing the Poor Over Bills They Can't Afford.
Monsanto doesn't stop with smearing individual journalists and other organizations that don't say what Monsanto wants them to say. It also pays organizations that pretend to be neutral, to condemn them.
Monsanto went so far as to send a phony reporter to converse with the real reporters covering a trial. Her job was to suggest points of view that favored Monsanto.
Similar tactics have been used in other fields (tobacco, oil) to prevent the public from recognizing the danger of various products. The punishment for the participation of a corporation in such a campaign should be to seize the corporation's assets and dissolve it.
When the US government criticizes Assange, it carefully controls the "context" — excluding all mention of the US atrocities that Wikileaks revealed.
To punish those atrocities, and prevent more like them, was a powerful justification for what Assange and Wikileaks did, powerful enough to justify minor illegalities. However, if Assange is tried under the espionage act, the court will exclude this justification a priori.
American voters are fed up with the "free trade" policies. Democrats must reject the candidates that support it.
You can see the United States' priorities in how it allocates its money. This is also reflected in how the amplifiers of public attention focus.
The PRO act would block or punish some of the ways companies try to punish US workers for forming a union, and make it harder for companies to refuse to negotiate.
The US border thugs are capable of making reasonable compromises with people they don't yearn to cause suffering to.
US citizens: call on Congress to enact a small financial transactions tax.
This would discourage high-frequency trading that causes market instability. It would also bring in a lot of money from the big casino.
If you sign, please spread the word!
When Texas thugs' prisoners die, the thugs use a legal loophole to cover up what happened. (People want to know whether the thugs killed them.) The thug unions just used their influence to block a bill to close that loophole.
A study of real car crashes finds no significant relationship between THC blood level and responsibility for crashes.
This is partly because the test can't reliably distinguish between current usage and usage weeks before.
Joseph Stiglitz: only one political camp in the US proposes to end the injustice of neoliberalism (plutocracy), and that is the progressive camp.
Stiglitz calls it "progressive capitalism". Sanders calls it "socialism". I consider it a mixture of socialism and capitalism.
Indigenous people in Ecuador won a court case to block oil drilling in their lands.
"You can't teach schoolchildren 'resilience' when they're micromanaged every day."
Turkey is accusing fiction writers of crimes if their fiction presents instances of sexual violence.
I wonder whether they will charge the authors of murder mysteries of advocating murder.
New Hampshire has abolished the death penalty.
Israel stole prefabricated classrooms that the European Union donated to Palestinians, and now plans to sell them at auction.
Student loans trapped some Americans in ballooning, unpayable debts which barred them from other life activities, so they have gone into permanent exile in countries where debt collectors can't reach them.
Craig Murray reports on some occasions where the UK has bent over backwards to twist its laws so as to imprison Julian Assange.
At present, he is being denied contact with his Swedish lawyer.
The House of Representatives should launch an impeachment inquiry and call on Mueller to testify, so as to fill in gaps in his report.
Documents prove that Republican plans to add a citizenship question to the US census were meant to bias elections.
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow patenting human genes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress not to allow a war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the PROTECT Immigration Act, which would end agreements for local thug departments to cooperate with the US deportation thugs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The UN Secretary General calls on people to systematically confront the dissemination of bigotry.
I try to do so here; please do this in your life.
I know that some people reading this site have fallen into believing right-wing conspiracy theories. Please make an effort to break free of them.
Shell has set up a fund for a multi-year "transition to a low-carbon world" with funds equal to 1% of the company's annual income. Various environmental groups are dazzled by this paltry sum.
Shell's lobbying alone does enough damage to cancel any benefit that fund can offer.
Decades of attempts to "engage with" fossil fuel companies proved to have been a planet roaster distraction campaign.
Forget about working with Shell, going one step forward and 100 steps back, and focus on building the movement that will stop those companies from drilling.
China is funding East Timor to help destroy civilization.
You'd never guess that from the article, which says not one word about global heating or the disaster this project will make more likely. It focuses exclusively on short-term economic side issues.
East Timor and Australia had a long-running dispute about which one would be allowed to extract the fossil fuel deposits in the Timor Sea. I said that the right answer was "Neither one".
I suggest you write a letter to the Guardian (guardian.letters@theguardian.com) to insist that it cease disregarding global heating in articles about the local politics of oil extraction.
Tiffany Cabán won the election for DA of Queens, defeating the establishment candidate.
Her efforts to jail fewer poor people may face a lot of opposition from her own employees as well as from thugs. I hope she overcomes it.
This Friday's climate strike in New York City will target Faux News. Faux News explicitly denies the danger of global heating, while most US news outlets deny it by hardly talking about it.
A commission with 14 former national presidents say that the classification of illegal drugs are irrational and need to be redone based on medicine and science.
This has been obvious for a long time, but that commission's backing may help change it.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
"Caught in the middle of a drug trafficking route, [Pacific] island countries are in danger of falling under the control of drug cartels."
Some countries there have already fallen under the grip of malign government, including Fiji and Nauru.
Congress approved funds for emergency food aid for Puerto Rico, but the bully is blocking the use of the funds.
Emulating the CIA, New Rule Would Let [the] EPA Disregard FOIA Requests With Near Impunity.
I emended the title because the EPA does not legitimately belong to the bully for him to do whatever he wishes with. Even if he had really won the election, that would still be the case.
Everyone: call on major hotel chains not to let their space be used as deportation jails.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Even when US mainstream media try to understand the situation from Iran's point of view, moral bias that supports US officials' push for war seeps in. Supposedly, Iran's actions can compel the US to retaliate; strangely, US actions can't compel Iran to retaliate.
The US (specifically, the bully and his officials) is entirely morally responsible for the current situation of hostility between the US and Iran. If it leads to war, the US will be entirely morally responsible for the war. It behooves patriotic Americans to stop our country from doing a great wrong; that means campaigning not to start a war, campaigning to cease and desist from war if it does start, and rejecting the reasoning that pretends to excuse said war.
One example of a high tech security that doesn't track people: it only detects concealed weapons.
A weapon is not entitled to human rights, so I think this is ok.
US citizens: call on Congress to cancel US student debt.
Perhaps the best approach is to allow a light form of personal bankruptcy to cancel student debt. That will avoid paying billions to the lenders.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Israel gave an order that snipers can shoot some Gazans labeled as protest leaders at any time.
Shooting protesters is murder unless they are a threat to the soldiers. That order demonstrates contempt for that principle.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to call for investigating the accusations of rape and attempted rape made by women against the bully.
I saw a petition for this, but it uses the term "sexual assault" in such an essential way that I won't sign or promote it.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Refugees dumped by Australia in Manus Island and Nauru are starting to injure and kill themselves, now that the Australian election took away their last shred of hope of refuge.
Natural gas is not a better replacement for coal.
Asylum Seekers Are Being “Disappeared” in Private Louisiana Jails.
Senators proposed a bill to require border thugs to have probable cause before they can search travelers' phones. (And, I hope, their other computers.)
A homeless man in the UK was sentenced to 20 weeks in jail for sitting on sidewalks. The court gave the justification that people might think he was begging. How else are homeless people supposed to pay for food?
The court also fined him, which I suppose means he will have to beg later to pay the fine.
The inhabitants of Reserve, Louisiana, are marching to demand fixing or closing the chemical plants whose toxic pollution causes them cancer.
The UK is creating a large sweep of new marine "protected areas". The question is whether they will be "protected" enough to be of real help to wildlife.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz proposed to prohibit former members of Congress from working as lobbyists to Congress.
I am totally in favor of this. However, I worry that it might be unconstitutional to limit a person's choice of employment for a long period of time, other than as a punishment.
(satire) Louisiana lawmakers passed a resolution this week that requires aborted fetuses to be given a full jazz funeral procession through the French Quarter.
Wealthy towns in Connecticut use zoning laws to exclude housing for poor people, forcing them into effective segregation.
Sanders and other legislators have introduced bills to help employees get part ownership of businesses.
Missouri plans to force the only abortion clinic in the state to close by examining the doctors on suspicion of something or other.
Matt Taibbi: the US mass media now manufacture consent … about hating each other.
Each time Chicago sets up a new organization to hold violent uniformed thugs responsible, it gets captured by them and helps to protect them. Can the latest instance be set on the right path?
A 16-year-old female in Maryland made a sex video of herself and sent it to some friends. When the school repression officer found out about this, he shoved her into the school-to-prison pipeline. Now she is being prosecuted to "protect her".
I think it is ill-advised to give out nude photos, let alone sex videos. But that's no reason for this repression.
Tenants in an apartment building in New York City are trying to block the landlord from imposing a face recognition door lock on them.
We need laws to prohibit this — not only for the privacy of the tenants, but also for their guests, and everyone that comes to visit them.
The RFID keys they use are also unacceptable tracking devices. I would not live in a place where I need to use those to get in.
Scientists have explained the cause of a small amount of global heating in the early 20th century, which was previously unexplained.
Denialists used to seize on this small unexplained point and exaggerate its significance as an excuse to reject all of climate physics.
Republican Oregon state senators have left the state to prevent a quorum to pass greenhouse gas emissions trading.
In 2003, Democratic Texas state senators used a similar method to block a Republican gerrymandering bill.
I don't this method is inherently wrong. The question is, to what end is it being used? Democrats in Texas used it to block a system of unfair elections. Republicans are using it to achieve the destruction of civilization and a mass extinction.
Notwithstanding the hygiene hypothesis for allergies, it is still important to wash before cooking and eating.
The world's major economies have tripled the subsidies for overseas coal plants since 2014.
Schoolkids' Phones Are Targets for Fake News.
How Facebook and Google got exceptions from the rules requiring disclosure of who paid for political advertisements.
Medicalising Everyday Life Doesn't Help Anyone's Mental Health.
Ma Jien remembers the 1989 protest, by students and people of Beijing, which was crushed by mass murder.
New Zealand 'Wellbeing' Budget Promises Billions to Care for Most Vulnerable.
The Femm "fertility" app is secretly a tool for propaganda by natalist Christians. It spreads distrust for contraception. It snoops on users, too, as you must expect from nonfree programs.
Endless Procedural Abuses Show Julian Assange Case Was Never About Law. Any one of these events would smell fishy.
The sexual misconduct alleged in Sweden against Julian Assange is not rape, as the term is defined in the US. Sweden's laws about conduct in sex are more strict.
I have to interpret the use of the word "rape" to describe them as a demonization campaign, meant to convince the public to tolerate the denial of his rights as a publisher. Given this precedent, the US government will be able to deny the rights of other publishers without making other allegations against them.
Activism against unjust or destructive business can make large companies back down by threatening them with large costs.
The UN Secretary General joined Pope Francis in calling for an end to investment in fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, the US government authorized an export terminal for "freedom gas".
Are they talking about laughing gas, or nerve gas?
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Restoring Overtime Pay Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritters and ask them to block war with Iran.
If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to fund research about gun violence.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The Rakhine ethnic minority in Burma now has an underground rebel group. Both it and the Burmese army are committing atrocities.
Burma has never really been unified. Various ethnic groups have had their own effectively independent regions for decades.
Northern Ireland journalists are suing to overturn a search warrant under which thugs seized their source materials, which include secret documents showing thugs colluded with murderers.
Storms and floods in some regions of the US have prevented planting of grain. A substantial part of the usual harvest may be lost.
Such problems will become bigger and more frequent as global heating proceeds.
The practice of using apps to avoid contact with people may be related to the increasing loneliness that people generally feel, and their increasing ignorance of how other kinds of people think and feel.
"I had an abortion. It's none of your business why."
It's useful for some women to explain the circumstances that made abortion the right choice for them. That will help other people understand why prohibiting abortion does so much harm, to pregnant women and other people in their lives. But I agree with the article that these reasons shouldn't be presented as apologies or as pleading for permission — and we should not expect women in general to state reasons for their abortions.
If [the bullshitter] Really Only Wants 'No Iranian Nukes,' Then He Should Just Rejoin the Nuclear Deal.
In other words, what he says about this issue is bullshit like nearly everything else he says.
The San Francisco thug chief and the San Francisco thug union are in a dispute about which thugs are to blame for the illegal raid on a journalist, which was intended to identify who leaked some internal thug department reports.
"Mentrification": judging whether something is valid, worthy or important based on whether males (in particular) do or like it.
Four of the UK's autonomous territories are among the world's top ten sites for tax dodging.
The thousands of proposed SpaceX communications are likely to cause lots of light pollution.
Worse, they could contribute to the gradually increasing buildup of space junk which threatens to make space travel impossible. The movie Gravity presented an unrealistically speeded-up version of this real, slowly-advancing danger.
In 2003, right-winger Bill Kristol said the Bush forces would find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and said he would deserve criticism if that prediction were wrong. It turned out to be wrong.
Recently Sanders asked him to apologize, and Kristol refused to take responsibility for his error.
The Taliban are targeting schools, even with suicide bombs. Half the school-age children in Afghanistan are not in school.
This and many other reasons would justify fighting the Taliban, if it were feasible to defeat them. But it isn't.
The horrible saga of Abdelhaleem Ashqar: us deportation thugs tried to deport him by surprise to Israel, where he would be tortured, without allowing him to say goodbye to his family — so he could not file an appeal against what they were doing.
I am not sure whether Ashqar aided Hamas in a way that would justify a criminal conviction. But even if he did, that can't justify what US thugs have done to him. When officials set out to deny people a chance to exercise their legal rights, they become enemies of legal rights, which makes them enemies of the state and enemies of the people.
An article accuses the bullshitter of planning to cause another fiscal crisis to explode just after his successor takes office.
I can't judge the validity of this prediction, or the claim that Dubya had a similar plan and it backfired.
The UK's system of identifying internet users and tracking their browsing has been delayed indefinitely.
This is good news, but we cannot count on this delay to be forever.
ACLU: Video analysis software threatens to turn every surveillance camera into an eye of repression.
Surveillance Camera Day was set up to make people aware of how much camera systems can now track them.
The US system for checking the safety of food ingredients is defective by design.
The US must not glorify the wars that it should never have fought, such as the Vietnam War.
Italy is allowing its old buildings and archaeological sites to decay.
The ACLU urges Congress not to give more money to the US deportation thug department. It uses its money to torture people with prolonged solitary confinement.
American food is often contaminated by pesticide, but that is just one of the way that replacing nature with an artificial system is causing ecological and medical problems.
The right-wing nationalist parties of Europe pretend to fight the rich elite, but actually support them.
Green parties gained many more seats in the European Parliament.
People are spending more time indoors than ever before, and it could be related to several health problems that are increasingly common.
Everyone: call on Japan to stop funding coal.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the National Sheriffs' Association to stop supporting the bully's deportation campaigns.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Chinese demand for fish maw is wiping out the Nile perch in Lake Victoria.
Ironically, this might benefit the native fish, but to get the real benefit requires getting rid of water hyacinth plants.
The bully said he has accepted Japanese Prime Minister Abe's offer to mediate between the US and Iran.
It could be that he is following with Iran his usual bluster-and-slaps approach to negotiation, combined with unpredictable changes between amity and hostility. I think this is wrong-footed for leaders who were accustomed to the traditional diplomatic dance of understated signals. But that won't continue; other countries' leaders are not stupid, and they are catching on.
The Green New Deal, if done right, can create stronger and more supportive local communities as well as curb global disaster.
Assad's air force and ground troops persistently attacked a British video journalism team.
The Government’s Indictment of Julian Assange Poses a Clear and Present Danger to Journalism, the Freedom of the Press, and Freedom of Speech.
What about Assange himself?
Assange has done some great things, some exceedingly foolish things, and perhaps also some nasty things that no one should do. (The sexual acts alleged in Sweden would not count as rape in the US, but would be wrong anywhere in the world.)
Based on this, what should be our judgment of Assange?
The great things, from publishing Collateral Murder to exposing the bias of the Democratic National Committee against Sanders, were of tremendous benefit to the world. The effects of the others things were local and small by comparison. Despite some possible actions that deserve rebuke, Assange still qualifies as a hero.
Beware the "gifts" offered by billionaires. They can be bait.
India regularly tortures people in Kashmir, sometimes to the point of maiming or killing them. India refuses to cooperate with UN investigations, too.
Dozens of retired diplomats and generals warn the war-dreamer not to start a war with Iran.
Antisemitism in Germany has risen to the point where Jews are warned not to wear yarmulkas.
Religious hatred is polarizing India and making it violent.
Why Are So Many People Dying in US Prisons And Jails?
Threats and attacks against people associated with abortion are an integral part of the right-wing antiabortion movement. As the movement grows, threats and violence grow.
Christian fanatics are talking about a civil war in which they fight to take power and crush abortion.
US citizens: call on Senator Klobuchar to oppose the Line 3 oil pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Do No Harm Act, which would reject citing religion as an excuse for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Hong Kong's activists defend universal principles rather than fighting for one group and against another.
However, there are rumors they might plan violence in their next protest.
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. Perhaps the activists only recognize that the thugs may respond with violence to their next nonviolent protest.
Given that the puppet government is planning to send them to Chinese prisons, I could not blame morally them for fighting back with violence. But that would be foolish and self-defeating. Violent protests play into the hands of the authoritarians.
Reestablishing forests is easier said than done, where the economic system pressures people or businesses to cut down trees.
Spending money to help people around the world cope with the effects of global heating is futile as the heating continues to increase. Spending to help people locally counteract damage that contributes to heating is going in the right direction.
I wonder if the solar ovens used in parts of Africa can function in Madagascar.
US citizens: call on Congress to make big cuts in military spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Why students should not look away from uncomfortable art, and why we should not hide it.
To cover up paintings of Exploitation of Labor and Hoarding of Wealth is to protect those practices from criticism. To hide from paintings showing the suffering of slavery is to avoid understanding that suffering.
Women who want to have a baby and not go through pregnancy can now hire surrogates to do that for them.
As long as this process is expensive, thus limited to a few people, it is not a big burden for the world. The dangerous population growth is at present almost entirely due to non-surrogate pregnancies. But if surrogacy started making a significant contribution to population growth rates, I would suggest prohibiting it.
We need to defend, globally, the right to survive at home rather than migrating.
An important part of this is to decrease birth rates.
One effect of climate strike protests is to win public support and approval of climate defense protests.
When the US imprisoned people of Japanese descent, many of them US citizens, they did not all go along quietly. Many of them resisted the draft.
This paradoxically demonstrated how much they were part of American culture rather than Japanese.
Rojava's former expat volunteers call on the UK not to criminalize helping defend the Kurds.
There is a broader principle at stake, too: the state should not have the power to arbitrarily criminalize going to any particular place, no matter what the reason. If there is a justification for making it a crime to go to a place, the decision should be adjudicated, not simply announced.
Prison thugs in Oklahoma repeatedly refused to let Joshua England see a doctor. Not long after his last attempt to get examined, he died from appendicitis.
Forcing prisoners to sign a false statement is typical behavior for thugs, and for other authoritarians such as the conman.
The US Army asked people to report on how the army had affected their lives. Here's what some of them said.
Announcing a global climate strike on September 20.
The US needs to fully fund protection of endangered species or some will soon be extinct.
(satire) Saying the incident was so long ago that he had difficulty recalling the girl’s face, ICE agent Ed Thornton couldn’t believe he was being reprimanded Friday for a child who died months ago.
Organizers estimate that 1.8 million people participated in the recent climate strike.
Here are reports from the UK.
A court ruled that the bully can't declare a "national emergency" to take funds from other activities to build a border wall.
Human rights defenders are suing to overturn the state laws that impose draconian punishments on nonviolent pipeline protests.
Progressives call on presidential candidates to pledge substantial cuts in the US military budget.
Sanders supports this already, naturally.
UK thugs say the disruption caused by Extinction Rebellion protesters is intolerable and call for laws to stamp out those protests.
If they don't like these minor disruptions, I wonder how they will react to the far greater disruption that climate mayhem causes. They had better call now for laws to stamp out fossil fuels, to avoid that disruption.
Prisons in the UK have many prisoners who are not really criminals. "It is a different type of person in prison now. You can go because you are homeless, because you are a squatter, for not paying your TV license or sending your kids to school."
Women Outperform Men After Japan Medical School Stops Rigging Exam Scores.
If the fraction of women applying rises to 50%, this will raise the question of whether to let in some less-qualified men for the sake of diversity.
Three tax havens under the control of the British crown have agreed to make companies register their owners, but not until 4 years from now.
I have to wonder if they hope to cancel the promise before it comes time to carry it out.
Everyone: call on Ireland and the US to end US use of Irish airports for military purposes, and to remove US troops from Ireland.
Economic disadvantage in the UK denies the non-wealthy on average over 3 years of healthy life.
A somewhat more equal society would enable everyone to stay alive and healthy as long as the wealthy generally do now.
Chennai's reservoirs are empty; many businesses and schools have been forced to close.
Global heating is surely increasing the likelihood of such events.
Uighur writer Nurmuhammad Tohti died recently, a couple of months after release from Chinese prison. It appears the prison denied him needed medical care, then released him when he was at death's door. This amounts to murder.
I have to point out that the US does similar things.
The UN has released recordings of the Salafi Arabian officials with Jamal Khashoggi before and while they killed him.
Should America Pay Reparations for Slavery?
The reason I support reparations is that, as described in Inequality by Design by Fischer et al, denying equal rights to a racial or ethnic group tends to set in motion a system that oppresses their descendants for generation after generation. The descendants of American slaves, and the descendants of Americans that were victims of Jim Crow laws, are still at a disadvantage due to past governmental denial of equal rights. They are entitled to reparations.
Precisely how to make reparations is not obvious. It would be good to so this in a way that would surmount the continuing effects of systemic racism. I am not sure how best to do that.
What Hughes says about "making people into victims" is meaningless wordplay, treated as if it meant something. I love wordplay, but do not confuse it with substance.
The district attorney of St Louis has made a list of visibly racist thugs, and refuses to prosecute charges based on their say-so.
This is valid. Prosecutors' duty is not convicting whoever they can; it is doing justice. Charges submitted by racist thugs are very likely to be false, so it is correct to disregard them. There is no need to wait for each of them to be caught individually in a firing offence before discounting their accusations.
I think that display of racist attitude ought to be a firing offense, for thugs — especially if the goal is to convert it into a police department whose cops are police officers — but making that so may be difficult.
US citizens: call on your district attorney not to prosecute abortion.
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A girl imprisoned with her family in Australia was not allowed to receive her birthday cake for her second birthday.
Much worse, she has been kept indoors for 15 months, and developed a deficiency (of vitamin D?), which has damaged her jaw. Now she needs surgery.
"Fast fashion", clothing meant to be thrown away after hardly any use, produces greenhouse emissions and plastic pollution. Let's put an end to it.
A discussion about how to aim for a post-scarcity society.
I don't think it will be easy for technological advances to make an abundance of everything people commonly want. For instance, making meat abundant in a safe way will be difficult. However, since the alternative seems to be global disaster, we will have to live with less of it.
Hong Kong protesters trying to stop the puppet state from identifying them, but it is hard to block every system.
This demonstrates that we must demand all widely used systems be designed not to track people.
Maine has adopted a network privacy law. Plutocratists in Congress will surely try to stop states from having such laws.
This law stops ISPs from selling their records of individuals' internet contacts, but that is far from adequate. They should not be allowed to track anyone's internet contacts, except under a specific court order.
The law also applies to platforms such as Facebook, which sounds good, but I expect Facebook will negate the law by requiring its useds to explicitly opt-in for this as a condition of starting an account.
The saboteur-in-chief ordered the abolition of many scientific advisory bodies.
It's not clear which ones will be abolished, since the order is self-contradictory, but surely some will be abolished and that will lead to many bad decisions.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the various accusations of lying, misconduct and crimes against Kavanaugh.
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Extreme global inequality related to looming global climate disaster.
(satire) Boeing CEO Admits Company Made Mistake By Including Automatic Self-Destruct Function On All 737 Max Planes.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the FIRE Act, which will require campaigns report foreign attempts to interfere in elections to the FBI and FEC.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Reality TV programs could encourage children to use alcohol and tobacco.
Hong Kong Protests Show First Dent in Armour of Xi Jinping.
The people of Hong Kong really don't want to become Xi-ple.
German thugs want the power to use all "smart" listening devices as bugs.
When they say "smart", understand "spy".
Evicting indigenous people from a new nature reserve in the Congo.
I believe that the Baka understand to preserve nature in their lands, but I have to raise the issue of population growth. How many Baka people are there now, and how many were there 50 years ago?
The Coming Show Trial of Julian Assange. The judge has shown more than mere bias — she is willing to utter total bullshit to get the intended result.
Wall Street banksters support Biden, Buttigieg, and Harris for president. That shows us they will surrender to the rich.
Environment Reporters Facing Harassment And Murder, Study Finds.
US citizens: call on Democratic candidates not to take money from the Koch brothers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
EFF: Rep. Thompson's election security bill would be a big improvement, but it would be even better if it required ballot audits.
The EU's GDPR regulations on using personal data have failed to curb Facebook and Google.
Google has made websites that show Google ads collect "consent" for Google to get their personal information. This demonstrates how "consent" as criterion is too weak to thwart surveillance.
James Risen: The "crime" Assange is now accused of is the very definition of a reporter's job.
The powerful elite in the US hates Julian Assange because he showed us government crimes, for instance by publishing the collateral murder video.
The link for the video used in that page requires nonfree software, but this URL should work without any.
US citizens: call on the Department of Health and Human Services to uphold the ACA's anti-discrimination protections.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the DNC to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Rep. Cuellar, a Democrat, to return the campaign funds that came from Koch money.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The conman's corruption continues: he borrowed millions at a low interest rate from a small Florida bank, and later its president was appointed to the Atlanta Federal Reserve board.
Naturally, all involved deny that this was a payoff.
Uber and Lyft have substantially increased pollution and congestion in San Francisco, and cut the ridership of buses and trains as well as the amount people walk.
Presidential Candidates Must Support Dramatic Pentagon Spending Cuts, Funding of Human Needs Instead, Coalition Says.
Bolsonaro's approval rating is under 30% — many right-wing Brasilians call him incompetent and authoritarian.
This gives some hope that Brasil will move up rather than down in the next election.
Firefighters blame flame retardants for causing cancer in many firefighters. States are trying to pass laws to ban the dangerous flame retardants, but chemical companies are lobbying hard to block the laws.
Some academics support the strike of support staff in the University of London.
The Muslims of Kashmir spent decades demanding independence from India, sometimes protesting and sometimes fighting, but they got nowhere. Now many are turning towards an Islamist campaign to demand to impose Islamic law on each other.
Salafi Arabia awarded Loujain al-Hathloul the Mohammed bin Salman human rights prize — the honor of being tortured with special cruelty — for advocating more rights for women.
That's Islamism at work.
Theresa May has been compelled by the Tories to resign as prime minister. This will make way for another Tory, probably even worse.
The UN General Assembly rejected the UK's claim to control of the Chagos Islands. Only five governments, all ruled by arrogant right-wing bullies, voted to support the UK's dominion over them.
Social Security is no longer sufficient for the expenses of many retired Americans. That includes many who were compelled to retire by failing health.
Most of the high officials in the Federal Trade Commission have conflicts of interest through working for the industries they regulate — either before or after their stint at the FTC.
Organized parents blocked Tory plans to forcibly privatize two local public schools.
What is needed now is a way for parents to convert privatized schools back into accountable public schools. This is needed in the US also.
US citizens: call on the State Department to stop demanding visa applicants give all their email addresses and social media accounts.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose certain proposed military spending.
If you sign, please spread the word!
An investigation concludes that China is harvesting organs from prisoners. Perhaps mainly from Falun Gong practitioners.
Tory politicians in the 1950s and 60s wanted to ; exclude blacks from the Caribbean from moving to Britain, while permitting whites. Eventually they designed a system to have a discriminatory effect without acknowledging its racist purpose.
Economists estimate that US sanctions on Venezuela have killed tens of thousands of people there.
An ID-reading system used by many bars records the name and address of everyone that enters. This should be illegal.
Making the system even nastier, a bar can blacklist anyone, who will then be denied entry to all of these bars, perhaps for decades. But that would never affect me — because the mere fact that the bar wants to run my ID through a system that will record who I am will convince me to refuse.
We should organize to regulate all such systems, both how they blacklist people and how they record information about customers who are not accused of anything. But until that happens, we must stand up for our rights.
The Pentagon is funding research on direct brain-computer interfaces that would connect to individual neurons.
If this technology is developed, imagine what Facebook could do with it. For instance, it could make people so addicted that they can't even imagine disconnecting. To fake news, it could add fake sight and fake hearing. It could go beyond manipulating elections and directly control how voters mark the ballot. Did you think the vote you just cast was for Sanders?
Chomsky warns that right-wing election manipulation through Facebook and that company's other disservices is continuing around the world.
Progressives' criticism pressured Rep. Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to cancel her plan to participate personally in fund-raising for anti-abortion Democrat Lipinski.
However, the DLCC still maintains its boycott which threatens the ability of Lipinski's opponent to hire campaign support.
Hundreds of people in Europe have faced charges for offering humanitarian aid to unauthorized migrants or immigrants. Right-wing extremist politicians dehumanise them and consider them unworthy of compassion.
This $3.2 Billion Industry (AI video analysis) Could Turn Millions of Surveillance Cameras Into an Army of Robot Security Guards.
This reinforces my previous conclusion that we should forbid the installation of surveillance cameras — cameras that send a video feed somewhere else — and allow only security cameras that keep the recording locally, erase it after a reasonable time (two weeks, a month) and require physical access to look at it.
Global heating will cut food production in Africa through floods and droughts.
Africa needs to reduce its birth rate.
US citizens: call for paying reparations for slavery.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Just and Reasonable Communications Act, so that prison phone companies cannot gouge prisoners and their families.
If you sign, please spread the word!
How can the US effectively support freedom for Chinese people? "Rhetoric about being 'tough' on China doesn’t always seem to equate with actually standing with the people of China."
The fabricated charges against Golunov were dropped, but there are many others in Russia that have been framed on putined-up charges for political reasons.
"In decades to come we must rethink our agriculture, our love of consumption and our short-termist priorities."
Oddly enough, that's the same problem I find in fighting against nonfree software and internet dis-services. Some people understand that in the long term they kill democracy and human rights. The challenge is inspiring them to put that long-term need over short-term pressure.
"When you take a commercial genetic test, you opt your whole family into warrantless state genetic surveillance."
Government agents should have to get a warrant before they can match DNA samples against your relatives' uploaded DNA in order to find you. And the warrants should be allowed only for serious crimes.
This may not be enough. Democracy depends on whistleblowers, and identifying people through their relatives' DNA means that whistleblowers need to avoid leaving a DNA sample.
I conclude that, for the sake of holding back tyranny, it is your duty not to upload your own DNA.
Tweaking NAFTA and other business-supremacy treaties is nibbling around the edges. The US needs to adopt an industrial policy and shun treaties that would conflict with one.
The author falls into a widespread confusion by using the term "intellectual property" it spreads confusion. That term does not fit the reality of the legal system, because it tries to generalize about a bunch of unrelated laws which have nothing important in common.
A few of those laws raise important moral and social issues. But each law raises different issues! If you treat them as a single topic and look for a single way to treat them, you are already headed for a bad decision.
Please joining me in rejecting the misguided overgeneralization of "intellectual property" and treating each of those laws as a separate issue.
Klobuchar has endorsed the Green New Deal in the abstract, but continues to support policies of increased fossil fuel extraction and use.
(satire) Leila and Tom Gerhart admitted Monday that they would not have continued their loveless marriage if they had known their son Harris, 21, would turn out the way he did.
ACLU: Harvard was wrong to dismiss a house dean for working as a defense lawyer for a widely hated accused criminal.
I basically agree, with one proviso: perhaps the students in a house should be entitled to reject the house dean at will. If we accept that, then it wasn't wrong for the students in that house to reject this dean.
But if we accept that, it should be an explicit policy, so it does not look like the dean has been found guilty of anything other than displeasing the students.
The conman has a scheme to reduce Social Security benefits over time, by changing the calculation of the poverty line so it will be lower in the future.
Several Georgia district attorneys said they will not prosecute under the recently-passed abortion ban.
Massachusetts Judge Shelley Joseph has been indicted for allowing an immigrant in her courtroom to evade Bush regime thugs who wanted to deport per.
Mainstream US journalism about Iran is so one-sided that it would tip over if it weren't constantly propped up by omissions and lies.
Two congresspeople accuse the World Health Organization of having been corrupted by Purdue Pharma lobbying.
American children now have nightmares about lockdown drills in school.
At most hundreds of children get shot in school in a year, but this is traumatizing tens of millions of children.
I fear it will also distort their politics when they grow up, making them more susceptible to politicians that invite them to surrender their freedom for "security" against the nightmares that no level of "security" could possibly prevent.
The Democrat presidential candidates, other than Sanders and Warren, are eagerly asking rich people to buy policies that will suit them.
The article gives specifics about Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, and Klobuchar, but they are not the only ones who do this. The effects of this can be seen in the not-very-progressive positions those candidates take.
That, in turn, is the reason I will never vote for them.
A whistleblower reports that the US deportation thugs put prisoners in solitary confinement for their sexual orientation, or for their gender identity, even for needing a cane to walk.
"Solitary confinement was being used as the first resort, not the last resort" — since 2014. I suppose the thugs have become even more cruel since the bully began encouraging cruelty towards refugees.
Plutocratist Democrats in Congress are working against network neutrality by amplifying the voice of ISP lobbyists.
1700 people in Gaza, protesters wounded at long distance by Israeli snipers, face amputation of their arms or legs because the siege of Gaza makes it impossible to operate to save their limbs.
Proposing to base US foreign policy on the principle, "Do no harm".
I have to disagree with one minor point. North Korea has made a big fuss about testing a new missile, but it seems to be fairly short range and not meant for nuclear weapons. I see that as a gesture rather than a significant action. Dictator Kim and would-be Dictator Trump seem to have a similar approach to diplomacy.
The US has charged Assange with the crime of inciting others to reveal government crimes.
This is a direct attack on freedom of the press.
Amnesty International visited Raqqa and reports that 80% of the city is ruined — buildings reduced to rubble. It identified 1000 of the estimated 1600 civilians killed by air attacks. The US, UK and France continue to deny the visible facts.
I doubt there was any option for defeating PISSI that would have perfectly avoided harming their human shields. So I would not demand perfection. But there is no excuse for cover-ups.
EU Ignoring Climate Crisis with Livestock Farm Subsidies.
Netanyahu said he will name a new colony in conquered territory after the conman.
It seems he has decided to bet that the right wing will hold its grip over the US, because he is telling most American Jews that he supports US Nazis.
Democrat congresscritters have made a deal with the cheater to enable companies to offer their workers unreliable annuities for their retirement funds.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to restrict use of corporations whose owners are anonymous, to stop tax-dodging and other crimes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the members of the DNC to insist on a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Mayor de Blasio to fire the thugs that killed Eric Garner and Delrawn Small.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Oil company Mobil "donated" to universities and civic groups to buy influence against regulation to protect society from toxic pollution.
This included supporting experts who would downplay the effects of toxic pollution.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass debt relief for Puerto Rico.
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Rescue ship captain Pia Klemp will have to spend years fighting criminal charges in Italy for rescuing drowning refugees. If she loses, she would be sent to prison for 20 years.
IRS lawyers say that Mnuchin has no legal grounds for refusing to give Congress the conman's tax returns.
Haftar's supporters captured a water system control room and shut off the water supply for Tripoli.
Nazis have got into the government of Estonia, and they are already trying to intimidate journalists with threats.
"If the Indian prime minister [Modi] is returned to office, his sectarian politics will make bigotry the defining ideal of the republic."
Children that don't play physical games outdoors lose a lot in motor skills and social skills.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Ban Conflicted Trading Act, to limit corruption opportunities for Congresscritters.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to end separation of immigrant families.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Thousands of people are fascinated by fictitious characters that exist specifically to manipulate them to buy particular products.
The fictitious characters in movies are also used to manipulate audiences to buy particular products. Companies pay for their products to be shown in the movies — this is called "product placement".
At least movies are not made solely to show products. They typically try to present something else of interest. Perhaps the fictitious "influencers" represent an evolution in the direction of pure and simple manipulation — in how to lead people to crave the anxiety of being commercially manipulated.
The Council of Europe rebuked Orbán's repressive regime for violating human rights.
Orbán makes elections just unfair enough that there is no practical possibility of removing him from power — much like US Republicans.
The European Union is quite capable of trampling freedom for the sake of rich companies but is almost powerless against member country governments that disrespect human rights or democracy.
Megacorporations AT&T, Walmart, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Coca-Cola, and Aetna funded the campaigns of state legislators that recently voted to ban abortion.
Greenpeace activists have shut down BP's headquarters in London, calling for the company to stop looking for new fossil fuel deposits and drilling new wells.
This policy must be applied world-wide.
Another piece of Google's surveillance capitalism: when stores mail receipts to a gmail.com account, Google figures out and records who bought what.
I think that the store itself should not get this information, which is why I always pay cash and never give my name.
Poor countries remain poor because multinational companies export their wealth.
I think we need to exclude predatory "investments" from the requirement to fully compensate owners when some activity is nationalized. The motive for respecting that requirement is to avoid discouraging future investment — but there are some kinds of "investment" that we need to discourage: those that are predatory. Investment in privatization is one example; that is predatory in general.
Turkey continually tries to extradite people from the UK for political crimes, and the UK government keeps approving these demands.
The requests ultimately fail in the UK courts, but the UK government should not help foreign repression get that far.
Reducing toxic air pollution will increase deadly heat waves, unless we curb greenhouse gas emissions too.
Sanders refused to be intimidated when a New York Times reporter tried to shame him for opposing Reagan's campaign to overthrow the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s.
Many readers may not know what Sanders was opposing, so I will summarize it.
The US Congress prohibited Reagan from spending money on overthrowing the government of Nicaragua, so he sold arms as ransom to Iran-supported kidnapers who had taken hostages in Lebanon. Then he used the proceeds to fund mercenaries to run a campaign of violence and sabotage in Niaragua.
The Times reporter contended that if the US commits a grave crime and the victims respond by hating the US, Americans are morally obligated to consider that as excusing or justifying the crime. Nonsense! Our duty as patriotic Americans is to make our country do what is right. That is what Sanders tried to do.
As for the people who criticize him for not remaining perfectly calm in the face of that dishonest attack, they should stop demanding a superhuman.
The US media take a one-sided stance in order to call Guaidó the leader of a "democracy movement" in Venezuela.
Set against these valid points, I have to point out a couple of things that tarnish Maduro's own democratic credentials.
He arranged to strip the national legislature of its powers once the opposition won control of it. He did this by creating another body and giving it power to override the legislature at will. One could argue that Venezuela's constitution is no longer being observed.
Maduro has also had opposition candidates barred arbitrarily from running, and arrested some of them.
This doesn't make Guaidó worthy of support, but it shows that Maduro isn't either.
Murals in George Washington High School in San Francisco depict Washington's participation in war with indigenous Americans and in holding slaves. Some students demand these murals be taken down because they feel oppressed by them.
Those murals were intended to depict wrongs, to show the aspects of Washington's life we nowadays disapprove of. Showing them helps teach people to judge the moral issues depicted. Covering them up would encourage people to forget those acts, and that would weaken society's resolve not to repeat them.
The conman's official White House lawyers appear to be helping him subvert the US legal system, in counter to their responsibility as lawyers.
Crackers stole the data base of the people crossing the US border, straight from the US border thugs.
Several authoritarian European countries are following Orban's example and taking effective control of the major media.
Singapore's law "against fake news" also requires web sites to identify their visitors, and communication services to break encryption.
Questcor raised the price of an old drug from $40 to almost $40,000, and is accused of bribing doctors to prescribe it at that price. Mallinckrodt, which bought Questcor, now brings in a billion dollars a year from that drug.
Mallinckrodt expects to pay $15 million — 5 days' sales — to get off the hook for that accusation.
It is too easy for the individuals involved to avoid prosecution and punishment. But the root of this problem is that there is too much concentration, and insufficient competition, in making generic drugs for the US.
I suspect this has to do with the offshoring of most of that production.
Mining metal nodules from the ocean floor can cause ecological damage, and it can take a long time to recover. Scientists don't yet know enough to determine how to do it safely, but companies are rushing to start.
Turkey and Cyprus are disputing which country will have the right to help destroy civilization by drilling for oil in the sea near both countries.
The only answer that is acceptable for civilization's future is, "Nobody!"
The UK will imprison people that go to help the Syrian Kurds.
This prohibition applies also to the rebels in Idlib. They are Islamists, but not a threat to anyone now.
Exxon's scientists, in 1982, predicted the Earth's current CO2 level with fair accuracy, and anticipated some (but not all) of the disastrous effects that are already starting. The author compares the executives of ExxonMobil to fictional characters that destroyed planets.
The US Constitution prohibits ex-post-facto laws, correctly so. There is no way to retroactively criminalize what those executives did.
However, it may be possible for a wealth tax to impose a higher tax rate on wealth derived from fossil fuels.
French journalists face prosecution for publishing secret information about sales of arms to Salafi Arabia for its attack on Yemen.
Macron is as much the enemy of democracy in France as Obama and the conman have been in the US.
Bizarre laws stop teenagers in the US from getting themselves vaccinated for measles or anything else.
Thugs in Rio de Janeiro are choosing to kill people rather than arrest them. Snipers shoot and kill residents who seem to have been chosen arbitrarily.
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée notes that the world has not held Salafi Arabia responsible for murdering him.
To a large extent that is the conman's fault.
The bankruptcy of a coal company, Cloud Peak Energy, revealed that it was funding global heating denialist organizations and plutocratist lobbying campaigns.
The company also falsely claimed it did not do this.
Big companies are buying state laws to classify certain kinds of workers as independent contractors rather than employees.
I think it is a confusion to associate this issue with racism, because those are two separate issues, and the easiest way to understand them is separately. Laws to squash the poor are unjust no matter what demographic groups they belong to.
Chinese totalitarianism includes rewriting history, even that of thousands of years ago, as well as of the last few decades.
One point I disagree with: I don't think the Xia dynasty was mythical. When I studied Chinese history in 1970, I was told that the Shang dynasty was mythical; my teachers did not know about the discovery at Anyang of the last Shang capital, and writings that documented the reigns of late Shang kings.
Earlier Shang capitals have not been identified, but surely they existed. I expect the Xia dynasty existed too, even though we have no archaeological material yet that we can connect with it. Trying to find some is a rational and useful project.
But is it any use to look for them under President Xi's history-distorting rule? If people report finding traces of the Xia dynasty, should we believe them?
The forecast for global heating disaster is at least 2 billion climate refugees by the end of this century.
I think it will be more, because scientists keep discovering more positive-feedback loops that will make things worse than was previously predicted. The refugees may well end up dead.
The disaster that happens in this century will be just the start. After 2100, things will keep getting worse for thousands of years.
Supporting a baby will get harder and harder as global heating and resource exhaustion bite. We must emphasize the importance of reducing human reproduction.
If you want to take risks with your own life, or about how you will live, you are entitled to. But don't make a baby if it will have to share such risks with you. More children growing up stunted by precarity do not give the world hope — they pull it down.
If you are not in a situation where you can be reasonably confident you can support a baby, you should not make one. Use birth control, and if it does not work, have an abortion.
Hungary's right-wing repressive government posts lies on Facebook, then complains when it deletes any of them.
"When the far right crack rape jokes, it's part of a systemic bid to demean."
When they say, "I wouldn't bother to rape you", they are confessing that they would rape someone else. You can denounce them as would-be rapists.
Many demographic categories report having sex less now than in the past. It might be due to the general stress and anxiety of life in the advanced countries.
I suspect it is also due to the lack of any generally accepted way for men to express romantic or sexual interest in women. By "generally accepted", I mean that he can count on a woman who declines his interest not to revile him for expressing it that way.
One Republican congresscritter says that the conman qualifies for impeachment.
If other Republicans were loyal to their country, and to democracy, they would reach similar conclusions.
The FBI tends to label similar acts as "terrorism" if committed by Muslims and as "hate crimes" when committed by white supremacists.
US institutions don't try to assure children the support they need to grow up into capable adults.
Bigots attacked actors on their way to a performance of a play about a queer couple, and the theater canceled the performance.
Canceling the performance gave the attackers a victory. If I had been one of those actors, I would have said, "The show must go on!"
Notice to FAA’s Boeing-Biased Officials: Recuse Yourselves or Resign.
US citizens: call on Congress to amend the National Emergencies Act — to limit the emergency powers of the presidency.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Actual measurement shows the US ammonia fertilizer plants are leaking 100 times as much methane as the owners claimed.
This is 3 times what the EPA estimates for all US manufacturing. The real total could be many times that.
This is contributing heavily to global heating. It shows we must reject "natural gas".
A million protesters marched in Hong Kong to oppose China's extradition bill.
China has been proceeding for several years to eliminate human rights in Hong Kong, step by step.
The members of Hong Kong's legislature are mostly appointed rather than elected by the public. In addition, people that defend human rights have been barred from running for the elected seats. I don't think mere marching will deter them from carrying out their evil mission. A general strike might have a chance.
A whistleblower has given The Intercept internal emails from Brazil's "operation car wash", whose official goal was to prosecute corruption, proving that its participants corruptly set out to attack the Workers Party.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop local thugs from working for the deportation thugs.
If you sign, please spread the word!
With obedient and unprincipled Barr in charge of the Justice Department, the gangster can use it as his personal repression agency.
Creating an equivalence between investigating crime and committing crime is part of the standard Republican strategy. It enables Republicans to deny that there is any standard of right and wrong, other than obedience to them.
The scoundrel plans to pardon US soldiers convicted of war crimes, and others that could be tried for war crimes.
I think such pardons would violate of the Geneva conventions that define war crimes. Countries at war with the US could cite this as an excuse to commit war crimes against Americans.
When the UK's general in Iraq said he saw no particular Iranian threats in Iraq and Syria, the UK government hastened to contradict him, claiming it did see some.
I understand this as catering to the bully. For shame!
Women are inviting men to talk about how abortions have affected their lives.
The hatred that fuels banning abortion does not stop there. It spills over to affect women whose fetuses die, even women whose babies die after birth. It treats women as property of men.
It also kills women, especially poor women.
The US is already killing women in other countries by shifting aid funds from real medical clinics to theocratic organizations that oppose abortion and birth control.
Romance novelists are talking about rehabilitating abortion. Their books generally regard it as unthinkable, which has the effect of promoting a sort of natalist ideology.
Gregory Jaczko was head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2011 when the Fukushima meltdowns occurred. His agency called for safety modifications in US nuclear reactors, but the owners and manufacturers blocked them with lobbying. Now he calls for replacing nuclear reactors with the much cheaper, and safe, renewable generation.
Should we accept stretching the terms "sexual abuse" and "molestation" to include looking without touching?
I do not accept it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject Ken Cuccinelli as Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He hates immigrants and would convert them into dis-services.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass H.R. 6, to give a path to citizenship for some of the immigrants that were brought to the US many years ago as minors.
Here's more information.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Amnesty International is suing the company that sells attack software which appears to have been used to crack some of Amnesty International's phones.
A village in Wales of 850 people will be abandoned to the sea, its residents left with nowhere to go. It will be the first of many.
This will bring home to Britons the harm that global heating is going to cause.
Contrasting the US and European cold shoulder to refugee children today with the attitude towards starving children from central Europe in the 1920s.
The US warns that civilian aircraft flying over the Persian Gulf might be shot down by mistake.
There is a real danger that the US Navy will do this. It is one of the secondary dangers resulting from the bully's push for war.
It's typical of right-wingers that they accuse their opponents of committing (or planning to commit) the sorts of wrongs that right-wingers actually have done.
(satire) … Alabama woman Alison Kyles, 29, reportedly hurried towards home Thursday after spotting a pickup truck full of Alabama lawmakers slowly following her.
Supreme Court decisions in recent years have narrowed the kinds of corruption that can be prosecuted.
The same lobbyist companies work for Salafi Arabia and for the big US arms manufacturers that provide bombs to drop on Yemen.
A profile of Greta Thunberg.
The new underground railroad will help women who need to go to other states for an abortion.
Journalists in Northern Cyprus won a partial victory. They were being prosecuted for "insulting" Erdoğan, with a cartoon.
The judge ruled that their cartoon was not an insult. The victory was only partial, because the law criminalizing insulting Erdoğan remains in force, although the scope of what is prohibited is not as wide as what Erdoğan wanted.
US thugs invaded Venezuela's embassy in Washington and arrested some of the group house-sitting there for Venezuela's government. One of them, Professor Adrienne Pine, explains the background for her participation in the house-sit.
The US Green Party explains the legal situation.
US major media are credulously repeating the war messages of the bully's officials, without a hint of trying to do real journalism. Here's advice on how they could start to do that.
A bill under consideration in the Senate would block the US from attacking Iran. At least, if the military obeys the law.
Michael Jackson as a test case for how to relate an artist's life to per work.
I was never particularly a fan of Michael Jackson, so I have no emotional baggage about what to think about him. But the author's approach seems wise.
Parents are threatened with punishment for leaving children in a car regardless of the weather, even for a few minutes, but deportation thugs left children in a van for more than a day in Texas in July.
Russian thugs planted bags of drugs on an investigative journalist.
4 million Venezuelans have fled to other countries.
Google is donating ads to a phony abortion advice organization. It opposes all real birth control, too.
The true nature of the Hindu-extremist movement in India showed when candidates praised the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1946. He belonged to an organization with the same general spirit.
State laws banning abortion, and the likelihood that the Supreme Court will cease to block them, have roused US supporters of abortion rights to political activity as never before.
Given democracy, the strength of local supporters of abortion rights could be the best defense of abortion rights, more reliable than a Supreme Court decision. But Republicans no longer respect democracy, and once in power in a state, they seek to rig its future elections.
Patriarchal murder goes unpunished in Pakistan as murderers have control.
The killers do not even hide. I think that under the circumstances Pakistani women would be justified in organizing a campaign to shoot them.
A New York City thug lieutenant texted "not a big deal" after being told of how thugs had killed Eric Garner.
In the UK, thugs can fine people merely for cursing at them in response to mistreatment.
AT&T Promised 7,000 New Jobs to Get Tax Break — It Cut 23,000 Jobs Instead.
When a business says it will give something useful afterward in exchange for a permanent change of policy, don't believe it. Insist on a binding written commitment with a penalty clause that it can't wriggle out of or defy.
How the US should change labor law to enable unions and union workers to resist intimidation and harassment by employers.
The Massachusetts State Thug Department destroyed records that were essential to an investigation into its practices.
Some US high schools are censoring valedictorians that want to talk about global heating.
Valedictorians, do it anyway! If you get dragged off the stage, publish video and your message will reach even more people.
US citizens: call on the Senate to reject plans to let pensions cheat old people out of their pension money.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Tobacco company Philip Morris was exposed as paying "influencers" to promote tobacco to young people.
Militant Muslims are imposing repression of queer people in Indonesia, and they don't hesitate to express their intolerance with violence.
Fervent religion often expresses itself as repression.
(satire) … employees sent by Deutsche Bank began removing possessions from the White House after Donald Trump defaulted on his loans …
The Tories are sabotaging the UK's unwritten constitution.
African Union Suspends Sudan over Violence against Protesters.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban members of Congress from trading in stocks.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on state governments to ban styrofoam containers. They remain in the environment forever.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Why a US attack on Iran would lead to an even worse outcome than the attack on Iraq.
A resident of Taiji plans to testify in a court case to ban the annual dolphin hunt.
The UK privatized the handling of probation for convicts, with very bad results.
As a general rule, privatizing government services is bad. It leads to unaccountability, low pay for the workers, and cheating the public.
When the service that is privatized depends on understanding the specific needs of individuals, it is even worse.
Salafi Arabia and its servant, the US, seem to be fabricating excuses to stop the peace process in Yemen. The UN says that the Houthis are carrying out the cease fire and withdrawal agreement, but they claim no.
Would you believe anything Salafi Arabia says about the war in
Yemen?
Would you believe anything the US says about the war in Yemen?
Banning abortion in the US is a means for keeping poor women down.
Northern Ireland still suffers under an abortion law nastier than the one Alabama just passed.
Everyone: call on American Airlines to give its customer service workers stools, so they don't have to stand for the whole shift.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US to stop jailing refugee minors.
The article says "children" but I expect that most of them are teenagers. Either way, jailing them is wrong.
Reports Reveal "Egregious" Conditions in US Migrant [prison] Facilities.
US citizens: call on the OMB not to reduce the definition of poverty, which would cut benefits for millions over the years.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
Scientists cleaned rubbish from the shores of the small, remote Cocos Islands and found 400 million pieces of plastic — and a million shoes.
Most of the plastic was from consumer products.
Only around 4% of the rubbish was visible on the surface. The rest was buried up to 10cm under the beach.
"Tories should bear the shame that child poverty in Britain is the new normal."
"Don't talk about 'food poverty' — it's just poverty."
If your income is not enough for the essentials of life, you may be able to choose which essential you lack. Some do without food to buy medicine or pay the rent — or to buy food for their children. Some do without medicine so they can eat. Some have to live on the street and beg for money to buy food.
US concentration of wealth: in the 1970s, the wealthiest 10% owned 35% of all US wealth. Now the wealthiest 10% own 75% of it. This translates into political power (plutocracy). Taxing wealth will work against the concentration.
Bolton is going all-out to launch a war with Iran, and has a plan to send 120,000 US troops for an attack on Iran.
Iran has threatened to ditch the non-nuclear deal entirely in 60 days unless European countries break free of US-imposed sanctions blocking their trade with Iran.
British students in UK universities take out large loans, but unless they make large incomes, they never have to repay the whole loan. Those who get low incomes don't have to repay any of it.
The US system appears superficially similar, but in fact it is much worse because students are saddled with these loans for life regardless of their incomes.
Amazon's predatory behavior towards sellers of goods adds up to an unusual use of monopolistic power.
Protesters blocked buses of guests coming to the christening of a new US warship, to call for cuts in US military spending and military greenhouse gas emissions.
The ship in question is not a battleship; it is a missile-firing destroyer.
(satire) … Trump sought to reassure struggling American farmers Tuesday by stating that he has never seen one of them and cannot be sure they actually exist.
UK construction companies have agreed to pay damages to workers that they blacklisted (with the help of thugs that spied on them). The motive for blacklisting those workers is that they supported forming a union.
Biden says Republicans will return to non-fanatical plutocratism so that he and they can serve the rich elite together.
I think the Republicans of 20 years ago would have done this, but most of today's Republicans are too imbued with right-wing extremist hatred to give it up.
It's Time for [the US] to Have an Unapologetic Atheist in the Oval Office.
Don't forget how a US government fueled anti-vaxxing in Pakistan, when the CIA mounted a fake vaccination campaign.
This gave fuel to the anti-vaxxing campaign but does not justify it. It is natural for Pakistanis to feel suspicion of vaccination campaigns after having been lied to once, but that doesn't mean most vaccination campaigns are lies. If they are rational, they will recognize that honest vaccination campaigns are a good thing — then take organized steps to assure the bona fides of each campaign.
Finding Osama bin Laden was of no particular importance for stopping Islamist terrorism. It was not a real victory, only a symbolic one. Large underground movements do not depend crucially on one leader. It is possible that the news of the CIA's fake vaccination campaign boosted al-Qa'ida more than the killing of bin Laden hampered it.
Having found bin Laden, the US should have put him on trial rather than killing him summarily.
Youtube finds it is not easy to distinguish Nazi propaganda from history of Nazism.
I think that centralized platforms make society vulnerable.
"UK public more worried about climate crisis than economy, crime and immigration."
That is wise on their part. Global heating disaster will make the issues of today's economy, today's crime (even including tax dodging) and immigration look tiny.
Biden opposes government funding for abortions.
When vice president, he worked hard to undermine insurance coverage for contraception.
He is almost a Republican.
If you are taking a flight in the US that uses face recognition for boarding, explicitly opt out. That is a way to show your opposition to face recognition systems.
Doctors plan to protest the American Medical Association, which supports private medical insurance companies by opposing Medicare for All.
Using a mobile phone while in a store makes people much more susceptible to impulse buying. On average they spend 40% more.
Ocasio-Cortez: No prisoner should be in solitary confinement, not even Manafort.
A pressure campaign convinced BBC Books to drop a story by from an anthology because the author has criticized the idea of transexuality.
I don't agree with his claims, or his opinions — for instance, if you want to become a woman, why shouldn't you try to become a glamorous one? — but pressuring publishers to silence an author's work over unrelated statements and opinion is a dangerous practice. When right-wing extremists or Christian theocrats get organized, which unrelated opinions will they cite to demand authors be dropped?
How to fight the Alabama abortion bill that bans abortions nearly as much as in Nicaragua.
After the Houthis withdrew from Hodeidah and handed it (as agreed) to Yemen's coast guard, fighting started again. I get the impression it was the US-supported side which started it.
I too wonder who Yemen's coast guard are, and who backs them.
Global heating effects are forcing many towns in the US midwest to consider whether flooding has made their existence untenable.
"Not only would a wealth tax raise revenue and help bring the economy back into balance, but it would also protect our democracy by reducing the influence of the super-rich on our political system."
US citizens: call on the FBI to show how much funds it puts into preventing white supremacist terrorism, vs. how much it puts into preventing the fictitious "black identity extremism."
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on all presidential candidates to pledge no first use of nuclear weapons.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Germany's right-wing nonsense party is putting a lot of energy into denying global heating. It is connected with other denialists and bullshitters including the Heatland Institute.
UN Urges Worldwide Withdrawal of Support for Myanmar Military.
Australia's election gives Australians a chance to insist on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Don't be ashamed of wanting a better world — and what we have already achieved shows it can be done.
Peru is destroying part of the region around Machu Picchu to help more tourists overrun it.
Single-use plastic is a significant contributor to global heating, as well as polluting rivers and oceans and endangering the wildlife there.
No Iran Threat in Syria or Iraq, Top British Officer Says, Contradicting US.
Bayer/Monsanto lost another cancer lawsuit, this time with punitive damages of 2 billion dollars for covering up the danger of glyphosate. The company continues to try to cover it up, citing the bogus science that it constructed.
The real corruption of science by big business (tobacco, pesticides, oil) causes indirect dangers as well as its direct harm: it inclines people to suspect any and all science of being corrupt.
Science is a system for finding and correcting errors. It includes lots of wrong results, and subsequent research corrects them sooner or later. Take for example the fraudulent research that reported that a vaccine caused autism: because the issue was important, large studies were funded and they conclusively showed this wasn't true.
To keep science repeating a bogus conclusion takes a continuing campaign employing corruption in many ways that support each other, and that costs a lot of money.
Faux News and Faux Opinion spread the same disinformation together.
Recent research on cloud modeling suggests that global heating will go 5 to 6 degrees C, rather than 4 to 5 degrees, if we don't reduce emissions. Each additional degree will lead to far bigger practical effects.
Modeling like this is the only activity that ought to be called "cloud computing." In the internet, there is no cloud, only computers belonging to various entities. But in the sky there are still clouds, for the time being.
The So-Called "Middle Ground" and the Tyranny of Capitalism.
The Australian government corrupted the pollution review of the new Adani coal mine. The responsible agencies were ordered from above to ignore their concerns.
Pollution of local water supplies is a serious problem, but if one even needs to discuss the issue it is because the planet roasters are in charge. No new coal mines should be permitted anywhere.
Doctors and teachers in Honduras are protesting against US-imposed privatization. The US-imposed "president" is deploying troops to shoot them.
A new system has been set up to help patients check for fake medicines.
I hope it is possible to use this system without running a nonfree app on a nonfree phone operating system — otherwise it gives people the choice, "Your freedom or your life."
This sort of system can catch the bogus medicines that come from unapproved factories. It won't catch the bogus medicines made by approved factories that are cheating.
When the US FDA checked, it found that cheating was rife. Nowadays it doesn't see the cheating because it has chosen not to look.
Mexico has caved to the bully's tariff threat and is repressing refugees from Central America that want to go through to the US.
Mexicans have also grown tired of welcoming and helping them.
Greenpeace activists dangled from the Sydney Harbor Bridge and displayed banners calling for Australia to declare a climate emergency.
I am amazed that anyone can claim, with a straight face, that there is something not to "condone" about this harmless method of protesting. Hooray for Greenpeace!
Do-dirty's supporters won the legislative elections in the Philippines.
I've spoken with a couple of Filipinas about him, over the past couple of years, and was shocked to find that they supported him. They seem to believe that anyone his death squads kill must be guilty.
Indian women who accused powerful men of rape are now on trial for criminal defamation.
Making defamation a crime is a recipe for tyranny, because people are generally prosecuted for defaming the powerful.
The International Maritime Organization has set a very weak target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, and has been negotiating about it for a decade with no progress.
Extinction Rebellion protesters are at work outside its headquarters.
Everyone: call on Volkswagen to stop its union busting in Tennessee.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Speculating about the effect of future AI weapons: if they are introduced at all, competition will drive them into totally autonomous systems that are always active and try to trick the adversary's AI into a "normal accident".
France to Ban the Destruction of Unsold Consumer Products.
This could be a great step forward, if companies don't circumvent it sending products to other countries to be destroyed there.
Romania is using the GDPR to punish journalists.
A landlord in Brooklyn has set up face recognition that tracks all the residents.
The Women Defying Menace and Mistrust to Rid Pakistan of Polio.
"Gender mainstreaming" in Vienna means that each city department makes sure to serve the needs of women as well as those of men.
Many of the policies chosen to serve women better should also help handicapped people and old people, as well as people that don't own cars.
When the left tries to compete with right-wing bigot parties by making immigration an issue, it loses, and maybe even ends up helping them.
The left must focus on its central cause, opposing plutocracy.
Kamala Harris is proud of the California law that jails parents whose children misses school, but claims it is not her responsibility that parents have been jailed as a result.
Australia is repressing journalists and a publisher over publication of leaked information about Australia's government activities.
This comes after searching the records of a journalist who reported on plans to extend Australia's spying on Australians.
I have a feeling that this reflects the example of US repression of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.
Freedom of speech in Europe is subject to narrow limits, and an EU court is considering ordering Facebook to impose these limits world-wide.
A multinational communications platform is inherently dangerous because many governments will try to censor it.
Sex workers in Washington, DC, rallied to support a bill to legalize sex work there.
The UK is the world leader in facilitating the global tax-dodging of corporations.
(satire) Last-Ditch Climate Change Report Provides Locations Of Weapons, Current Whereabouts Of Oil Executives.
Biden has given in to pressure and agreed to a climate defense plan.
I don't feel confident he would carry out this plan if elected. The amount of pressure it took to get him to agree demonstrates that Biden's first loyalty is to the plutocrats and planet-roasters.
Allowing citizens to issue traffic tickets could lead to problems.
Chelsea Manning warns that the bully is attacking journalists and journalism.
In some cultures, adults gently teach children and teenagers not to get angry, without ever getting angry at them.
(satire) … Craftsman announced Monday that its newest line of hammers would indeed be backwards-compatible with previous generations of nails.
Dundee University is accused of cheating blind foreign students by giving them inadequate equipment, then failing them and getting them deported, while keeping their money.
I criticize one point of Agbakuribe's conduct: having children when he was not yet in a position to support them. He should have been smart enough to put off reproducing until he had his PhD and a job. Meanwhile, four children is too many; nobody should have four children.
But that is a separate issue, and it has nothing to do with how we judge the university's conduct.
Whatever governments, businesses, and thug departments may say about limiting the use of license-plate reader data, don't believe it is true.
Thugs systematically practice racial profiling to stop black drivers more often — during the day, when they can see the driver's skin color.
At night, the bias disappears, which demonstrates that it is bias, implemented by looking at drivers' skin color.
The US is developing, in effect, a national DNA database, which works by searching for commercial DNA data bases for people who are relatives of the person sought.
New speed cameras work by recording the license number of each car that passes two different cameras, and calculating the average speed between them.
I think it is wrong in principle to have robots enforce laws against humans. But unless the system forgets about each license number that doesn't get fined, it is doing something even worse: massive surveillance.
Having the camera check for details of the driver's behavior is nastier still. Eating or drinking while driving is safe enough, except for special situations.
I fear it can also recognize faces.
People report demonstrating empirically that their phone apps are listening to their conversations.
The only truly trustworthy way to stop this is to make sure that only free software can get data from the microphone.
Barr's summary of Mueller's report is misleading on several important points.
Don't say Trump is exonerated. It's too soon for that.
The bully's Just-Us department is supporting a lawsuit to eliminate Obama's medical care plan. I suppose they have reason to believe the Supreme Court would vote for this.
Yet another problem for US projects to "rebuild Afghanistan": the Afghan thugs and soldiers used force, imprisonment and threats to squeeze money out of workers and companies.
This is aside from the projects that were pure corruption or totally useless.
Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson face 2000 lawsuits alleging deceptive marketing of OxyContin. Purdue just settled one to avoid an embarrassing trial.
Thai Election Process 'Deeply Flawed', Say Independent Observers.
Let's not grant this the legitimacy of a "return to democracy".
The EPA's plan for handling an oil spill, last updated in 1994, says to apply dispersants. This proved harmful in 2010, but the EPA has been dragging its feet since 2015 on revising the plan.
The women who ran Women Church World, a Vatican magazine for women, all quit after condemning a plan to put some men in charge of them. They had published about sexual abuse of nuns by priests.
Florida Republicans want to make school districts fund charter schools which have no accountability to them.
Accusing Do-dirty of stealing the Philippine election and killing dissidents.
I should point out, in fairness, that there are real armed Islamist rebel groups in Mindanao, and the army had to fight very hard, a few years ago, to retake the city they had captured. That is no excuse for stealing the election or killing nonviolent dissidents, but it means that there is a legitimate need for a strong army.
I fear that Do-dirty is making the US and China compete for the Philippines' support.
Stiglitz: we can't afford not to fight and defeat global heating.
China has silenced an exiled dissident by threatening his family.
US citizens: call on New York Governor Cuomo to ban all new fossil fuel infrastructure in New York State,
Using face recognition to identify airline passengers is dangerous in various ways. Regulations about how long to store the photos address only part of the problem — and I suspect they will have loopholes to allow some agency to keep any or every photo for as long as it wishes just by saying there was some nonspecific reason.
The US deportation thug department has a scheme to deputize local thugs in sanctuary cities, to give them an excuse to disregard the city's policy of refusing to hold immigrants for the deportation thugs.
Maybe sanctuary cities can protect themselves by making it a firing offense to accept such deputization.
Most of the generic drugs sold in the US are imported. Surprise inspections of the factories in India found that 4/5 of them were cheating and concealing practices that could be dangerous.
So what did the FDA learn from this? It decided to warn Indian factories about all inspections. That was under Obama, who didn't generally appoint the sort of agency director who would crusade against the power of business.
When the TSA (Theater of Security Authority) says that people will need TSA-approved ID cards in order to fly, this is simply false.
I've verified this page with an expert.
AT&T aims to set up an integrated advertising and surveillance system even more controlling than Facebook and Google.
If the UK makes a new trade deal with the US, the bully will demand an extreme business-supremacy treaty that would allow US companies to privatize the National Health Service.
These treaties are generally unjust, and plutocratist rulers want to make them even more unjust.
Injured Gilets Jaunes Protest in Paris against Police Violence.
I agree with their demand, but the gilets jaunes must also join to reject violence from people who join them.
With so many species threatened, we might want to evaluate each species's contribution to biodiversity. If a species is the last of its genus, that would add more importance to its loss; if it is the last in its family, that would add even more.
There are other ways to evaluate the significance of a species. But if we stop provoking a mass extinction, we might not need to choose which species to save.
US citizens: call on state governors to reject new infrastructure for natural gas.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to have Mueller testify.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FERC to block the Jordan Cove gas terminal and its pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Assad's planes bombed a school and a hospital in Idlib.
Facebook Charged with Housing Discrimination in Targeted Ads.
US right-wing Christians gave 50 million dollars to promote right-wing repression in Europe.
Mosquitoes that spread diseases are moving to new habitats further from the equator. The diseases may join them.
George Monbiot: The destruction of the Earth is a crime. It should be prosecuted.
US citizens: call on the bully to make peace with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Massachusetts citizens: call on your Massachusetts legislators to support same-day registration.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to ban arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
If you sign, please spread the word!
UN Accuses Blackstone Group of Contributing to Global Housing Crisis.
The main owner of Blackstone is Schwarzman, who just bought the favor of MIT by donating a lot of the money he has gouged from tenants.
As Iraq tortures and kills Sunni prisoners, a Sunni guerrilla including ex-PISSI fighters is already starting.
This is basically a fight between Iraqis. Can we get out of it in such a way that we won't be the enemy of either side any more?
"The EU needs to become a realm of shared prosperity, peace, and solidarity for all Europeans."
I agree, but "democracy, freedom and anonymity" must be added to that list to make it sufficient.
A Hamas rocket destroyed an Israeli civilian house. How many civilian houses will the Israeli retaliation destroy?
Netanyahu doesn't really care, and he hopes to gain votes by showing he does not care.
What America Can Learn from the World's Happiest Countries.
A court ruling permits PACs to use candidates' names — even falsely and misleadingly.
The stated reason for adding nitrites to ham is to prevent botulism, but ham companies studied this and discovered that nitrites in ham don't actually protect.
The black bloc of the gilets jaunes burned news kiosks. Now people are donating to help the individual businesspeople that operate the burned kiosks.
It is a sad fact that nearly all crowdfunding sites require running nonfree software in order to donate. No matter how much I support a cause, I would not donate that way.
Countries that make everyone's well-being a goal, and strive to aid the non-rich, make people happier than the US does.
Here is the list:
Egyptian singer Sherine Abdel-Wahab complained that Egypt has no freedom of speech. The military tyrants demonstrated the truth of this accusation by charging her with "insulting Egypt".
It is hardly necessary to insult a country that insults itself so effectively. The point is, don't go there.
The man that inspired Bernie Sanders was Eugene Debs.
Violent Far-Right Extremists Are Rarely Prosecuted as Terrorists. Most politicians don't even want to call them "terrorists".
This reflects a bias in the structure of the legal system and government agencies.
Face recognition is a real danger to the usual targets of repression.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee’s Office Is Working With Volkswagen to Crush a Union Drive.
Rebecca Solnit: 'Every protest shifts the world's balance'.
The US cancelled its Iran disinformation program after it criticized everyone that disagreed with the push for war.
Uber has set up a social credit system: passengers that get bad ratings from drivers will be blacklisted (refused disservice).
One must suspect that customers' racial and ethnic appearance influences the ratings, so one effect will be discrimination. However, the chinification will do wrong to every customer, including those who are blacklisted, and those who only face the possibility of being blacklisted.
This reinforces my conclusion that transportation services should not be allowed to identify their customers.
The mainstream media and mainstream politicians promote far-right radicalisation.
Brunei will execute homosexuals. This is part of implementing Islamic law, which is often vicious and cruel.
One of the bully's ministers rebuked China for imprisoning perhaps a million Uighurs.
Meanwhile, his boss is striving mightily to beat China's total.
An investment of 500 billion dollars in making US buildings more energy-efficient would be very profitable, as well as reducing greenhouse emissions.
(satire) A shocked Vladimir Putin reportedly came to the realization Tuesday that he didn’t conspire with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign after all. "What the hell? I worked so hard on this…"
A committee added three amendments to HR 1, which weakened it.
Explaining the term "toxic masculinity".
US citizens: call on Pelosi not to accept a NAFTA replacement that imposes high drug prices.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FTC to shut down Ever's face recognition.
If the fact they trained it using photos obtained by users who didn't consent is a lever for doing that, that is good. However, the real moral issue of that company is not how it got faces to train the neural network, but using that network to identify people.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The
increasing
conservative extremism of Justice Thomas.
Two Palestinians drove their car into some Israeli soldiers. Other
soldiers
waited
over 4 minutes before shooting them dead, then tried to cover up
the fact they had waited.
It is pretty clear that the shooting was not defense of soldiers but
rather murder of prisoners.
AIPAC
pretends
that it is being silenced when people disagree with its views.
Israel has recently arrested
24
Palestinian journalists and media workers.
UK local governments are discovering that outsourcing is
ripping
them off, and bringing various services into public activity.
This raises the question of how to kill off the remaining long-term
outsourcing contracts that hold the state hostage. I recommend
defining the concept of parasitic outsourcing -- outsourcing that
should never have been allowed -- and giving the state the power to
cancel such contracts with a year's notice even if the contract said
it was to run for longer.
This would give Chicago a way to cancel Rahm Emanuel's contract for
parking
revenue farming.
The US Geological Survey
will
cut off its climate modeling at 2040. This way, climate disaster
will not appear in the results. It also creates an excuse to build
facilities that will be flooded starting in 2050.
It's a great way to distract people from the coming disaster —
for a while. But by then it will be too late.
Chinese "fishing boats"
fired
lasers at pilots of Australian planes flying from a carrier in
international waters.
This sort of poking at each other seems to be typical of interactions
between unfriendly navies when they are not at war. Usually they poke
back. The question is, how do you poke at a "fishing boat" that fires
a laser that could blind a pilot, but was set at a lower setting so
that it didn't cause actual damage?
Buddhist monk Wirathu has called for hatred towards Muslims for years.
Now that he
targeted
Aung San Suu Kyi as well, he is wanted for arrest.
He must be a very bad Buddhist. In the same way, the supporters of
the bully are very bad Christians.
(satire) … China's Ministry of Public Security
asked
the entire nation to pose Tuesday while millions of government
security cameras took photographs.
The
Truth Is
Out About Israel's Lethal Actions in Gaza. Will the World Listen?
Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Lift Up Family Farmers Includes
Barring
Big Ag Mega-Mergers Like Monsanto-Bayer.
Her plan goes beyond blocking future mergers; she aims to reverse the
Monsanto-Bayer merger.
I've proposed a tax system that could
pressure
many large companies to split up.
Decrying 'War Being Waged Against Working People,'
Sanders Joins
Striking Union Members at UCLA.
Rep. Nunes's lawsuit against Twitter, demanding to know the names of
people that criticize him there, will be thrown out, because of court
decisions that strongly protect freedom of speech. However,
right-wing repressive
judges put
this protection in danger.
(satire) … Coachella organizers on Thursday reportedly unveiled
premium VIP areas where fans will be able
to see
and hear the bands.
Gillum's Drive Aims
to Register
One Million New Florida Voters to Help Serve Trump 'Eviction
Notice' in 2020.
PISSI has crumbled as an organized force, but the factors that enabled
it to take off are still there
and threaten
to provoke a new uprising.
Big Oil publicly pretends to support climate defense action, but
quietly
pays millions for lobbying and targeted ads to promote more fossil
fuel use and block real climate defense action.
33 California journalistic organizations
have agreed
to work together to expose the criminality of thugs.
Some presidential candidates for 2020 have said they
will not
attend the annual AIPAC event.
This is the strongest pushback that Israel has got in the US, in regard
to the occupation of Palestine, in many decades.
Biden aims to be another Obama —
another servant
of big business.
Sanders for President!
Dirty modern war typically includes attacking civilian infrastructure such
as water supplies. So people have to drink dirty water, and this kills many.
A
study found that it kills a lot more under-15s than the shooting
does.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is trying to use its
market power
to hamper
progressive campaigns aiming to replace plutocratist Democrats.
We can push back on this by supporting progressive Democrats in
primaries. And don't give to the DNCC; that only helps maintain
Plutocracy Lite.
The Supreme Court considered only administrative issues
in rejecting
a death penalty appeal from black man whose sentence was decided
by a jury with a biased member.
I can't understand why the racism of a juror is an issue regarding the
sentence. Isn't it grounds to question the conviction itself?
Meanwhile, it is unconscionable to penalize anyone in any way for
delays caused by the government.
US citizens: call Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim at
202-514-2401 to oppose the proposed merger of Sprint and T-Mobile.
Free Press recommends saying this
Killing of elephants has declined by 2/3 since 2011, but the rate of
killing is
still
high enough to wipe them out if it continues.
The Homeless 8-Year-Old Chess Champion and Other
Horrific
"Uplifting" Stories.
A good outcome for some of the homeless and poor is an entertaining
distraction from changing the unjust system that dumps millions into
poverty in the middle of riches.
The EU has
adopted
a ban on many single-use plastics.
Italy's Minister Salivini must be salivating after
making
the EU stop operating ships to rescue drowning refugees.
Israeli soldiers
shot
and killed Palestinian paramedic Sajid Muzher as he was treating a
protester that soldiers had shot.
He was wearing an orange medic vest and other clothing to indicate his
role as a medic. The soldier who shot him was either incompetent or
murderous.
Beto O’Rourke’s
Free
Ride on Charter Schools Won’t Last for Long.
The experience of Labour with antisemitism demonstrates a general
principle:
defending
people from bigotry should be separated completely from support or
criticism for their political views.
One activity that is still immune from current personal surveillance
devices is sleep. A new Pokemon game will
lure
people to yield up their sleep to surveillance.
Some US states have made abortion almost impossible by attaching
pointless hurdles
designed
only to make it impossible.
Each of these regulations demonstrates the dishonesty of the
antiabortionists.
Latin American Rape Survivors Who Were Denied Abortions
Turn
to UN (human rights committee).
Some kinds of racism awareness training, meant to help whites
empathize more with the handicap racism places on blacks,
backfire
in practice — their effect is simply to reduce empathy for
whites that suffer misfortune despite their "privilege".
US citizens: call for
prohibiting
insurance companies from looking at people's credit ratings when
setting prices for automobile insurance.
My reason for supporting this is not based on supposing this will
generally reduce the cost of car insurance. I don't know whether this
law would have that effect. I support the bill because it reduces the
use of intrusive surveillance.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Rockland County in New York has made an emergency order barring
unvaccinated minors from indoor public places, such as
schools,
shopping centers, restaurants, and churches. It does not apply
outdoors.
I think that's a
good
place to draw the line.
San Diego Has Been Turned Into a
Massive
Chinese-Style Public Surveillance Network.
The system is designed to track anyone the city wants to track.
ACLU: watch out for a scam that pretends to increase privacy for
medical data but seems
designed
to backfire.
It appears that body cameras
reduce
thugs' use of force in the places where they don't have the option of
turning the cameras off
I’m calling to ask you to block the T-Mobile/Sprint merger. Our
antitrust laws should protect us from mergers like this that would
raise prices and crush competition.
but it can't hurt to use your own words.
Officials of the deportation thugs often illegally sign their bosses' names to arrest warrants.
Canadians: help the campaign against Google's snoop city project in Toronto.
Of course, Google calls it a "smart city", but "smart" means "snoop".
US citizens: call on the Senate to allow expiration of the PAT RIOT Act's massive phone metadata collection.
Against massive surveillance, every small victory contributes to winning further victories.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress and states to allow convicts to vote.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to support the EACH Woman Act, which would insist that medical insurance cover abortion.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Cyclone Idai created a large lake, 78 miles by 16 miles, in what used to be land. Rescuing the people trapped on what are now islands is going slowly.
Cleaning plastic out of sea water can make a significant difference in harbors and bays, but cleaning the whole ocean that way is far out of reach.
Joe Biden Is Hillary Clinton 2.0 — Democrats Would Be Mad to Nominate Him.
Privacy Advocates Call on U.S. Congress to Release Information Crucial for Surveillance Reform Debate.
Employees report that Wells Fargo Bank is still following practices that harm its customers.
I saw a petition demanding that Virginia pressure Amazon to stop providing support for the US deportation thugs. Why Virginia? Because Virginia agreed to give Amazon a handout of 3/4 billion dollars.
I could not sign it, because I think it legitimizes the handout itself. The handout would still be unacceptable even if Amazon terminated all its services to nasty government activities.
Governor Northam's kidding around with racism may have ended 30 years ago, but his support for plutocracy evidently has not stopped. I hope Virginia replaces him in the next election with someone more progressive.
Eyeglass sales in the US have become nearly a monopoly. The unsurprising result is high prices ten times what they ought to be.
My progressive sales tax proposal can be adapted to increase the tax rate for a given market depending on what fraction of that market a company has.
Every transportation system that tracks people's movements is a massive surveillance system, since a company can follow who goes where. At any moment, the state can convert it into state surveillance.
In Los Angeles, that moment is now. The city plans to require hire-scooters to transmit their GPS locations all the time when in use.
We need to develop anonymizing systems to pay for renting these devices — systems that collect the rental fee but don't record anything about who goes where. Even recording the start and end points of each trip would track some users, since it will often be possible to guess with high probability who used the scooter based on the endpoints.
The shiny new Swiss online voting system has a devastating security hole: those running the election could replace the entire collection of votes.
Online voting normally offers another security flaw: if the voter's computer has been cracked, that will quite likely make it possible to falsify per vote.
Then there is the general danger of all remote voting, whether digital or not: your boss or your spouse can control how you vote. Until society no longer makes people vulnerable to such pressure, we should limit remote voting to people who present a specific valid justification.
An American visitor in Iran was sentenced to prison for insulting one of Iran's rulers.
Regardless of the details, this is an injustice. France and other "free" countries do similar injustices.
Of Course College Admissions Rigged for the Rich. The Whole Economic System Is.
The rural, agricultural US needs a New Deal, especially a Green New Deal.
How global heating is indirectly responsible for the death of North Atlantic right whales.
The Secret Money Behind the Push to Ban Abortion.
An interview with Lenore Skenazy about the causes of obsessive overprotectiveness and its effects.
Relating zero-rating, in which ISPs allow gratis access only to certain platforms, and the election of Brazil's murderous Bolsonaro.
Bezos hid while the stockholders of Amazon voted on a resolution to act to curb global heating.
I expect that many of the stockholders voting considered themselves bound by a commitment to put the profits of some other group above everything else in the world, and as a result they felt obligated to keep hurrying towards disaster. We need to legal abolish the idea that a corporation must place its profits over all else, which was established only in the 1980s.
US citizens: phone your representative to ask per to support the Democracy For All amendment.
This would explicitly give Congress the power to regulate political campaign fund-raising and spending for elections.
This is a narrow plan to override the Corporations United decision. Another proposed amendment would reject the idea that corporations are in general entitled to all human rights. I support either or both.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Much of what people take for "wilderness" was made intentionally by humans in the past. What does this imply for our choices today?
The author of that article seems to reject any objective meaning for "preserving nature". If we can't aim to keep nature "untouched", he argues, we may as well reshape it however we like. His subjective judgment is that the sparse trees favored by the aboriginals was more "beautiful" than today's farms and woods. Surely some Australians think farms and woods are more beautiful.
"Untouched" is not the only sensible objective interpretation of "preserving nature". We can interpret it as preserving species from extinction. That gives an objective criterion.
Thailand's First Election in Eight Years Not Free Or Fair, Say Democracy Activists.
The system is designed to keep the military in power, and then the military banned all the parties that truly opposed doing so.
A Wisconsin court ruled that the Republicans' lame-duck power grab violated Wisconsin's constitution, which includes text specifically to prevent that kind of trick.
New Zealand has gone beyond banning the sale of military-style semiautomatic rifles and large-magazine pistols. Their possession will be banned as well, after a transition period, except for those with a special license.
These measures should be enough to slow down the shooting by future terrorists, and reduce the damage done by each bullet that hits someone.
I worried that the planned web interface mentioned in the article might require the current owners of these guns to run nonfree software to register them.
Fortunately, New Zealand has avoided that problem: people will be allowed to do this by phone call instead.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the DISCLOSE Act to provide some transparency of funding for campaign advertising.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on congress to co-sponsor the Women's Health Protection Act, which would establish abortion rights.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Democrats to cut military funding.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to support Puerto Rico's recovery from hurricane damage, with more funds.
If you sign, please spread the word!
I Quit My Job to Protest My Company’s Work on Building Killer Robots.
The article uses the word "hacking" to refer to breaking security. That's unkind and unfair to us hackers. But it presents good arguments against killer robots.
However, if we want to avoid the development of killer robots, we need more than for some people, or many people, to refuse to develop them.
China excuses its violations of human rights by pointing at US violations.
Right-wing extremists have adopted a disguised way of stating their hatred and calls for violence, for deniability.
Over a million of us joined the climate strike rally on March 15.
It won't be enough to overcome resistance. If you weren't there, please join in next time and help make it 2 million.
Thugs in Washington DC arrested an activist for projecting light on a government building.
It appears the thugs claim that shining light is illegal only if it carries a message — a mere spotlight, making only a patch of light on the building, would according to them not be a crime.
The latest fashion in "victim's rights" laws in US states endangers the rights of the accused.
How unhealthful eating practices have changed food itself as well as the way we consume it. China presents an indicative example of the transition to junk food.
Grading non-Republican senators for resisting right-wing judicial appointments.
Slowing these appointments down is useful even when it is impossible to block them, since at slow speed the Republicans may not be able to fill all the slots by the end of 2020.
Increasing the size of the Supreme Court may be necessary to overcome the power of five Republican-appointed justices that generally support plutocracy and oppose women's rights.
Enough gains in Congress would also bring the possibility of impeaching Kavanaugh for his attempted rape, and other personal actions (as distinguished from his ideology) that render him unfit for any political office.
US nuclear reactor operators want to reduce inspections and conceal small problems.
Even if these small problems cause no harm to the public, the rate at which they happen is an indication of the state of maintenance and quality of the reactor.
The bully plans to deny or cancel visas to prevent officials of the International Criminal Court from investigating accusations of US war crimes in Afghanistan.
6-year-old Ariel, imprisoned by the US government for 10 months, was reunited with his dear deported father.
The bullshitter is going to fabricate another bogus "emergency" and use it as an excuse to bypass Senate approval of arms sales to Salafi Arabia and the UAE.
I suggest that the law permitting emergency international arms sales should exclude sales that were proposed more than a month previously as well as sales that would take more than a month to physically implement.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Equality Act.
Everyone: Call on AT&T, Walmart, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Aetna and Eli Lilly to stop donating to the campaigns of anti-abortion candidates.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on the governor of Minnesota to block construction of the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline.
If you sign, please spread the word!
International cooperation between unions can resist international power plays of capital.
Sanders proposed in 1976 to penalize companies for closing factories, and to convert big businesses into worker-controlled businesses.
Sounds good to me.
(satire) Beto O’Rourke announced Thursday that he was starting a Barack Obama cover campaign. “I’ve always loved Barack’s early stuff from back in ’08, even ’04, …
US Accused of Blocking Ambitious Global Action against Plastic Pollution.
The US is ruled by environmental saboteurs; naturally they would sabotage this.
Michael Jackson Fan Groups [in France] to Sue Accusers for 'Sullying His Memory'.
If this lawsuits succeeds, anyone who states an accusation of any kind against anyone famous enough to have a fan club will face even more pressure and retaliation.
Increased impunity for everyone rich and famous is hardly an improvement. Therefore, we need to quash all such lawsuits, one way or another.
The fact that this one is about Michael Jackson is a mere detail. If it were about someone else, the issue would be the same.
Preet Bharara, who was US attorney for New York City and vicinity until the conman kicked him out for being honest, says he worries that his life is in danger while people like the conman are in power.
US citizens: call on Democrats in Congress to cut the military budget.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the US government to allow Abdikadir Mohamed to stay with his family, pursuant to the visa he had already obtained, so he can get treatment for the illnesses he developed due to mistreatment in immigration prison.
It seems he was imprisoned because thugs questioned him without an interpreter and caused a miscommunication that could be fatal to him.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Calling on the AFL-CIO to recognize that avoiding global heating disaster is more important than a few more union jobs today.
The Green New Deal would create a lot of jobs as a byproduct of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
US border thugs continue separating minors from their parents, but the government lies about it, claiming that those minors arrived alone.
Researchers Find Critical Backdoor in Swiss Online Voting System.
It's not unusual for those in charge of the election to dismiss the idea that they themselves might rig it, but that very danger is the worst one.
Any online voting system has fundamental flaws.
The Testicular Bill of Rights presents the natural conclusion of the antiabortion bill that Georgia passed.
33 wealthy parents have been charged with using fraud to get their offspring admitted to prestigious colleges.
One of the beneficiaries demonstrated her lack of interest in the college education she had access to thanks to this fraud, by saying she was only there for the parties and games.
What else would you expect from the sort of person who has chosen the parasitic career of influencer? That is, a person whose whole life is an advertising campaign.
I suppose she could be equally happy at a school that doesn't offer as much in the way of education. Many of those gladly admit anyone for 30,000 dollars a year, no fraud required.
This fraud is unfair, but compared with other systemic unfairnesses to the non-wealthy, this one is rather small in importance. For most non-wealthy Americans have more pressing worries than whether Harvard or UCLA would consider their applications fairly, such as "Will we be evicted this month" and "Food for me, or medicine for my mother?"
Many cities' thug departments are using license plate readers to track all cars, and sending records to the US deportation thugs to catch immigrants.
They cooperate indirectly via a private company which holds all the data. That evades legal accountability. Local thug departments do this even in places such as California where it is specifically illegal.
The solution I've proposed would make the system refuse to do this.
The governor of California ordered a moratorium on executions. There is hope he could go further.
The US has no reason to involve itself in the civil war in Somalia.
The thugs' union of Queensland is pushing to repeal the system that was set up to prosecute crooked thugs.
Manafort faces New York State felony charges. His master can't pardon him for those.
Senator Harris signed on to the very bad deal Obama's men arranged with the banks over their fraudulent foreclosures. She touts that as a big victory.
A Tory wants to use leaving the EU as an excuse to impose national ID cards on Britain.
Workers have blocked a ship from onloading war material for Salafi Arabia, first in France, then in Italy.
Will face recognition be "everywhere"?
I think we can stop it if we fight — but we must not pull our punches. We must demand a ban on camera recognition carried out on people or their vehicles in places where the public is admitted, regardless of who or what entity carries it out, with only narrow and specific exceptions.
The UK government is now subjecting visitors to prisons to face recognition and fingerprinting.
I'd decline to visit under those circumstances.
Fracking threatens to increase US oil extraction tremendously, and thus increase world oil extraction.
To avoid disaster we will need to shut off that increase. Perhaps with a very heavy emissions tax.
Senator Biden is the plutocrats' last, best hope for a 2020 race in which no major party candidate will deserve our votes. He has fought persistently for banks against debtors, for racial inequality, for military spending, and for war.
Republican state legislators are trying to attack science education. Ignorance is their best ally.
Teenagers that become habituated to porn often develop erectile dysfunction. This was almost unheard of, among teenagers.
Criticism of porn often carries a whiff of Christian prudery. I reject that attitude wherever I see it. However, if porn leads people to unhappy results, we should make it easier to watch less porn.
The taboo still placed on actual sex, especially for adolescents, may leave many of them with porn as the only choice. Impediments in getting birth control, and lack of acceptance of condoms, can cause rational anxiety about sex, and that too would drive some to porn.
The Frobbed-DNA Administration will allow import of genetically modified salmon.
It is unlikely that this salmon would cause any problems for human eaters, other than those with a bad reaction to natural salmon. Their danger is to wild salmon in oceans and rivers.
Amazon's warehouses have a high rate of 911 calls, as they stress the staff so much that they often tend to get sick.
Brazil has arrested former thugs for murdering legislator Marielle Franco.
What Actually Happens When a Country Bans Abortion: Romania under Ceausescu created a dystopian horror of overcrowded, filthy orphanages, and thousands died from back-alley abortions.
Famous cryptographers have been denied entry into the US for conferences.
The EFF's comments on New Zealand's call for a global effort to suppress internet publications that encourage violent extremism and terrorism.
The outsourced cleaners and food servers working in UK ministries have gone on strike, demanding to be paid on time, and to be paid the official living wage.
As usual, outsourcing work harms the workers.
The conman's acts of deregulation systematically work for businesses against most Americans.
The Israeli Supreme Court only rarely impedes government excuses to destroy Palestinians' houses. For those rare occasions, the ruling right-wing demonizes it and calls for eliminating its power.
US officials report that the Iranian "threat" that they imagined in recent days has vanished as mysteriously as it appeared.
CBP (the US border thugs) Admits to Targeting Journalists, Activists, After Civil Society Groups, Including Defending Rights & Dissent, Demanded Answers.
American teenagers are taking better precautions against sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy. The pregnancy rate among teenagers continues steadily falling.
Argentina and Algeria have eradicated malaria.
It can be done in other countries too, if we put up the required funds.
Will we have the courage to take the funds away from the plutocrats?
Humans are wiping out all the larger animals. This will turn ecosystems upside down, resulting in more extinctions.
Republicans Aren't Just Climate Deniers. They Deny the Extinction Crisis, Too.
Some chemicals in the PFAS class cause medical problems even in small quantities. Many different products expose people to various chemicals in the class. It is not clear what level of exposure is safe.
Some Chinese factories are (or were recently) emitting chlorofluorocarbon gas, in disregard of the treaty to close the ozone hole.
China may be cracking down on them.
Rampant overfishing is driving almost all the world's fish stocks to a level below viability. The highly concentrated fishing industry refuses to be regulated effectively until it is brought to a halt by its own success.
Hinduist extremist Modi won the election in India.
I fear he will ramp up the repression of Muslims, Christians, and Buddhists, as well as Dalits and perhaps Sikhs.
US citizens: call on Biden to sign the no-fossil-fuel-money pledge.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Salafi Arabia is putting women's driving rights activists on trial, with reporters and diplomats excluded from the courtroom. This may be a way to prevent verification of their charges of torture. If they have cracked and confess, no one will be able to say that they seem to have been brainwashed.
Science writer Ginny Smith accuses Netflix of promoting "alternative" treatments based on discredited, or imaginary, evidence.
Combatants for Peace is a joint Arab-Jewish organization that campaigns nonviolently for reconciliation between the two peoples. The word "combatants" refers to the fact that its founders were former fighters on both sides.
The US just blocked one of its Arab activists from visiting the US for a speaking tour.
The border thugs gave no explanation for the decision, but he says that the questions they asked him were about the organization.
Israel has arrested a Palestinian who opposes the occupation with political theater.
He has been held for two weeks, with no charges yet. I suppose they are aiming for a false confession of something or other.
(satire) Butterfly Fears Damaging Our Timeline with an Ill-Judged Wing Flap.
Guaidó has suggested he will invite US military intervention in Venezuela. The US is removing its diplomats, suggesting an intention to attack.
BirthStrikers — an organization of people who refuse to have children until we avoid global heating disaster.
The article's discussion of how laws and individual decisions can affect the future population is flawed. It may be true that a global one-child policy would not make the population smaller by 2100, but simply reducing the increase is a step away from disaster.
I agree that individual decisions are not enough to avoid disaster, but the conclusion from that is a reason to push for more.
I think that convincing many people not to have children is a goal we should work for. The fact that so many people report being unable to resist natalist pressure on their own shows how much room there is to make progress.
There are many other reasons not to have children.
A UN investigation compiled in 2013 a list of companies involved in production in Israel's colonies in Palestine's West Bank. The UN has kept the list secret, under pressure from the US.
Walden Bello, cofounder of Focus on the Global South, summarizes how the WTO arranges "the corporate capture of international trade" based on an ideology disconnected from economic facts.
He does not mention the harmful political effects of business-supremacy treaties.
A subcommittee of the Knesset voted to ban an Arab-Jewish leftist party from running for election, based on its political position.
Mainstream (right-wing extremist) politicians are calling it "terrorist".
One candidate was banned for advocating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Facebook blocked Senator Warren's ads that called for breaking up Facebook.
It reminds me of when Amazon remotely deleted copies of 1984: so ironic that it is hard to believe they wouldn't know better.
The US is using international flights as an opportunity to impose more face recognition.
3500 American women per month ask for gifts of abortion medicines from overseas.
These gifts cannot be sent by from the US because the US requires a prescription for these medicines. That decision was originally made from caution, but even though the evidence since became clear that these medicines are safe, antiabortionists have lobbied against the removal of that requirement.
"A leading United Nations poverty expert has compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses and warned that unless austerity is ended, the UK’s poorest people face lives that are 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'."
Internal Emails Reveal How the Chemical Lobby Fights Regulation. Even for chemicals that are clearly toxic, these companies will try to delay regulation as long as possible.
"Capitalism used to promise a better future. Can it still do that?"
Capitalism generally provides a better future to those who have political power. Historically, that included most workers only when and where governments helped the workers demand that. In the US before the New Deal, bosses often crushed unions with violence using thugs such as the Pinkertons.
Bill Moyers's speech to a conference on climate journalism: "Soon, some of you will be traveling to the ends of the earth to report on this Great Disruption" — the effects of climate mayhem.
Explained: the Toxic Threat in Everyday Products, from Toys to Plastic.
The UK will ban more single-use plastic items.
I am in favor of this, but what we really need is a general system to make sure non-durable plastic items are practical to recycle.
UN Rapporteurs Urge India Again to Release Ailing Activist-Academic G.N. Saibaba.
China and the US are starting a world-wide competition for which will control digital technology and networks.
What is the role of human beings in this competition? We are supposed to be prey — the little bits of "land" that they will compete to dominate, monitor, and control.
Therefore, the battle that matters for us is between the tech companies of the two superpowers, and people.
We, the people, need to defeat both of those competing "sides" that aim to control us.
The US deportation thugs put their immigration prisoners into solitary confinement (which drives people mad) as the default method for dealing with anyone who is inconvenient. Including those who are mad. Including those who are mad as a result of solitary confinement. Including those who tried to kill themselves to get out of solitary confinement
I suspect the staff do this because they hate immigrants and are eager to hurt them. Here's a report about a thug that vented such hatred many times, and came close to murdering one border-crosser.
It does not follow that all the border thugs are as bad as he is. But they didn't treat his salivating, murderous hatred as a problem, which implies that this hatred is more or less accepted among them.
Texas has made it a crime to protest a pipeline and "impair operations".
The word "impair" is easy to stretch. I can imagine that anything which the pipeline company finds inconvenient could be called "impairing" by means of an exaggeration.
WHO guidelines for prescribing oxycontin show unmistakable influence of Purdue Pharma.
US citizens: call for an infrastructure plan paid for by the rich and corporations.
US citizens: phone the offices of Pelosi and Schumer to urge them to do all they can to prevent war with Iran.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
Overcontrolling US parents can now buy tracking devices to attach to their offspring, which are impossible to remove. These adolescents are then treated as prisoners.
Some landlords invade tenants' privacy by converting the apartment into a spy home.
They call it "smart". For "smart", read "spy". The cure I suggest is to disconnect all the landlord's devices from sensors and everything they control, and install your own non-snoop devices to control things. Maybe you can install deadbolt locks with keys — then leave the "smart" lock unlocked all the time.
The bully plans to keep all the prisoners in Guantanamo until they die. Some of them are starting to need wheel chairs.
"It's for your own good that we prohibit sleeping in a car -- we think you'd be better off in a hotel room. But if you can't afford one, you can sleep at the bottom of the lake."
US citizens: call on Pelosi and Schumer to prevent war with Iran.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: Call on the FTC to bar the merger of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Celgene.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: support repeal of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the FAA not to let Boeing certify its own planes.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Thugs in Sacramento surrounded and besieged a group of protesters, then ordered them to disperse (which the thugs stopped them from doing), then arrested the protesters and journalists covering them.
To force people to do A, and blame them for not doing B instead, displays contempt for the very idea of justice. However, if the thugs had permitted them to disperse, that doesn't excuse doing so to sabotage a protest against the thugs' killing.
Some major UK train stations are eliminating pay toilets, making the toilets gratis.
Everybody needs to be able to use a toilet. Pay toilets make this aspect of life nasty occasionally, and disrespectful the rest of the time. A good society does not allow them.
The UN says Israel's violence in Gaza extends into the range of war crimes. Will the world make Israel face its responsibility for that?
When Bouteflika said he would not run again for president, was that a swindle?
An analysis of the arrest in Indonesia of Robertus Robet of Amnesty for singing a protest parody from 20 years ago.
Centrism is not a philosophy, it is a pusillanimous attitude towards life's great challenges.
Ocasio-Cortez is right on target in describing cynicism as a way of disguising defeatism as wisdom. "Don't ask me to help — I know better than to believe any of us might survive this."
Researchers say dirty air is killing 800,000 people a year in Europe, and urge the phasing out of fossil fuel burning.
World-wide, air pollution kills almost 9 million people per year.
Even though North Korea is not disarming, the reduction of hostility is a real step forward.
US thugs and Mexican thugs joined together to investigate and repress immigrants' rights activists, including journalists and lawyers.
Comparing PISSI with nonwarlike cults — they have a lot in common.
Netanyahu played the racist card, saying that Arab citizens are second-class citizens.
Bouteflika, the authoritarian president of Algeria, said he will not run for another term.
Britons are using the European Parliament election as a proxy to express their opinion about whether the UK should leave the EU.
What a foolish way to vote! That is the one major political decision affecting the UK over which the people elected to the European Parliament will have absolutely no say.
If the UK does remain in the EU, those elected as MEPs will participate in many important decisions. Don't Britons care how their representatives will approach the issues they can really affect?
If I were a citizen of the EU, I expect I would vote Green or Pirate for the European Parliament.
An interview with Daniel Ellsberg about his career as a whistleblower, starting from the crucial night when he heard President Johnson lie on TV about the fabricated "Gulf of Tonkin incident". Ellsberg knew, from his job, that Johnson the incident was fictitious.
" With the benefit of hindsight, I now see the Cold War as, in part, a marketing campaign for the continual, massive subsidies to the aerospace industry."People sometimes ask me how I separate truth from lies. An important part is that I believe people like Ellsberg, and disbelieve whoever contradicts or disparages them. Likewise, I believe Edward Snowden and disbelieve whoever contradicts or disparages him.
In these areas, the pressure to lie is very strong. Ellsberg and Snowden have demonstrated they can resist it, while most people can't.
US citizens: call on your state officials to adopt automatic voter registration.
Note that this will not in and of itself put an end to gerrymandering and Republican voter suppression. But it will work against them.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for firing the two thugs that beat up Delucca Rolle and put him in the hospital, and then lied trying to put him in prison.
They ought to be prosecuted, not merely fired.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US, or if you visit the US: Tell JetBlue to stop using facial recognition to identify passengers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
New York State has passed a law barring cities from punishing people that often call 911.
They don't do this frivolously; they do it because they are threatened.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass S.1039 / H.R. 2354, the Prevention of Unconstitutional War with Iran Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
About the nature of a republic and its constitution — including the unwritten constitution as well as the written one, loyalty to the common good, and avoidance of excesses of wealth.
An unlicensed prison — oops, "shelter" — holds 1600 teenagers that entered the US without their families. They are forbidden to talk to the press, they are punished if they touch each other in any way, and they are used as bait to catch and deport their relatives.
Republicans in the Senate are considering rules changes so that they can fill all vacancies in federal judgeships before the end of 2020.
For years they rejected all Obama's judicial nominees, without even considering their qualifications, so they would get a chance to appoint right-wing extremists now.
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to hold a climate debate.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Federal Trade Commission to block the merger of Bristol-Myers Squibb with Celgene.
The name of the first of those companies shows that too many mergers have already been permitted.
US citizens: call on Salafi Arabia to drop charges against heroes of freedom of the press.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on District Attorney Elton Mathis to re-open Sandra Bland's case.
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Several US states have passed laws to prohibit abortion and punish doctors that perform abortions.
Supposedly there are a few exceptions, such as in case of rape or medical necessity, but they are not clear; doctors that tried to rely on them might be prosecuted anyway.
Women might be imprisoned for using abortion medicines.
Could UK local governments protect homeless people from people that hate them?
In principle they could, but it isn't likely to happen as long as governments would rather persecute them.
Recycling isn't a solution for the disposal of plastic. We need to produce much less waste.
Turkey warned that people who participate in rallies in Germany in support of Kurds could be imprisoned if they visit Turkey.
Don't take the risk: don't go to Turkey.
Imagine if your medical provider could collect data from absolutely everything you did and everywhere you went. Then it could force you to do the healthy thing, all the time.
Yazidi women, former slaves of PISSI, have started a female-only commune in Kurdish Syria.
Australia passed a law that it can bring its prisoners on Nauru to Australian territory for medical care. However, to make sure this almost never happens, Nauru has prohibited all telemedicine for those prisoners.
I can't believe that Nauru would pass any laws to impede Australia from removing its prisoners from Nauru except at Australia's command. But Australia's government can claim that it did not order this, and no one can literally prove that claim is false.
This dishonest cruelty is typical of Australia's perpetual punishment for those who had the temerity to try to flee there.
The Chinese government seems to be convinced that China's diminishing population is a bad thing.
The only putative reason cited in this article is that taking care of old people will be a lot of work. Yes, it will, but younger adults could take care of more old people if they are taking care of fewer children. Anyway, In 30 years, robots will do a lot of that work. In addition, a larger fraction of people over 60 will be able to work. The natalists do not respond to these points.
I suspect that an additional unstated reason is that a bigger population could make China more powerful internationally. That is not a moral justification to increase any country's population.
Some claim that the one-child policy had no significant effect after 1981. Others claim that continuing it reduced the birth rate even more. Those claims cannot both be true.
Now that Chinese are becoming somewhat prosperous — which they deserve, as everyone does — China is starting to drive worldwide production of some goods, much as the US and Europe do. That is part of why we are exhausting our planet. We need to reduce the Earth's human population to achieve sustainability.
So we need to reject the idea that the population must not fall.
Shoshana Zuboff gets the point that the question of "who owns data about you" is a distraction — such "ownership of data" is inadequate to restrain surveillance capitalism.
She also gets the point that "consent" is merely a formality for the people who don't have the moral strength to say no. (You and I do not need to be so weak!)
She does not seem to be aware that a nonfree program is almost surely a surveillance device.
The UK revoked Tauqir Sharif's citizenship for going to Syria and setting up a noted humanitarian aid organization.
As usual, the government refuses to show him justification, let alone give him a trial so he can confront them in court. That adds up to two separate injustices: exiling a citizen, and punishment without trial.
His daughter, born a UK citizen too, has been effectively denied citizenship too because he is not permitted to apply for a passport for her.
The point where Senator Warren's plan to "break up" surveillance platforms falls short is when she proposes a "level playing field" for the competition to surveil us.
To say "may the best corporation win" in surveilling us is to get distracted from the real issue. What we need is to stop anyone from playing that game.
Mélenchon, the leader of what remains of France's left, calls for replacing the EU treaties that impose neoliberalism.
I support this.
US citizens: call on the US government to drop its latest subpoena against Chelsea Manning.
If she holds out for the maximum 18 months, she will be hit with half a million dollars in fines. I don't suppose she has the money to pay that, or that she would agree to work to get the money to pay that.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Bank of America and SunTrust to stop financing private prisons.
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How factory farms and corporations swallowed the America's family farms.
They have done more than take over farms; they have reshaped the economy to leave hardly any space for smaller farms.
New Orleans Prosecutors Routinely Violate Defendants’ Right to Counsel to Keep Them in Jail.
The European Union is following the US's path towards low wages for millions of workers who can't quite pay for the expenses of life.
The EU swallowed the neoliberal business-controlled globalization agenda, and since then it serves the plutocrats more than the people. For instance, businesses are lobbying to weaken rules against water pollution.
They must believe they have a chance to prevail now on an issue where previously they lost.
Europeans have not found a path for making the EU democratic, and instead most now expect it to crumble.
1/4 of the West Antarctic ice sheet has started thinning, because the ice is flowing into the ocean faster than before. This means that sea level rise will proceed faster than was previously expected.
A film about a homosexual dancer has been chosen by bigots in Indonesia as a target for demonization. The director is getting death threats.
Indonesia has a tradition of gender flexibility, but now it is becoming repressive, due to severe forms of Islam spread with funds from Salafi Arabia.
Tulsi Gabbard said would pardon Snowden and Assange if elected president.
That is one point in her favor, but it is not enough to win my support.
Trucks meant to carry food aid to Venezuela were set on fire by an anti-Maduro protester's Molotov cocktail. The US news media reported that they were intentionally burned by Maduro's forces.
China continues slowly suffocating Tibet and Tibetan culture.
This does not mention the annexation of large portions of Tibet.
Perhaps the cruelest single thing that China has done to Tibet was disappearing the newly-designated Panchen Lama along with his whole family. They might be dead; they might be sentenced in effect to life in a special prison.
How about avoiding oppressive countries for your vacation?
I have a list of countries that oppress people so eagerly that you should stay away even if you are not an activist in criticizing that country. However, the set of countries that persecute critics is larger than that.
How Bouteflika clings to power in Algeria despite being almost totally an invalid.
I feel obliged to point out that having half the population under 30 indicates unsustainable population growth. Whatever happens politically this year, that growth rate will cause problems for the next decade, and different problems later this century. We need to learn to stop seeing fast population growth as a mere background fact, to stop reacting solely with concern for young people's interests in a way that ignores the need to make fewer of them from now on.
The oil-puppet wants to eliminate 70% of the funding for research into renewable energy methods.
San Francisco voted to ban the thug department from using face recognition.
In order for that to be fully effective, the city has to have a rule against providing camera videos to any organization that might do face recognition on them. In particular, to other thug agencies that are not covered by San Francisco's rule.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Uber's workers are not employees. They will have to depend on electing progressives to achieve that. In the mean time, the more we reject Uber, the more the drivers will be able to get better wages driving taxis and respecting our anonymity and privacy.
People in North Kivu say they distrust the medical workers trying to quash the Ebola outbreak of personal corruption.
Gaza will soon face hunger as US cuts in food aid hit home.
Reportedly the US government has dropped a specific surveillance program that got info on all long-distance phone calls in the US.
Does this mean the US government no longer tracks all those phone calls? It could be so -- but it could also be the case that some other surveillance agency gets more-or-less the same data, described differently, from a different place in a different way. Or perhaps surveillance agencies now have a list of 50 million Americans, including all known or suspected journalists, and track all their calls rather than all of everybody's calls.
Given these agencies' history of hoodwinking the FISA court, we could hardly trust their good will.
Defining "populism" as organizing to fight a minority accused of having taken power, a study found that populists often motivate marginalized and exploited people to get involved in politics.
Some populists attack political freedoms, but this is not unique to them. In the UK, the Tories and New Labour were hardly populists, but they have attacked political freedoms. In France, Macron has done it.
Leftist populists often do achieve something against the problem: they reduce economic inequality.
Right-wing populists will not oppose the real powerful minority, the plutocrats, so they need to falsely accuse and scapegoat other minorities. This makes them dishonest and unjust. Despite that, they may achieve some changes for the better -- but it would have been possible to do the same thing without the dishonesty and unjustice.
Senior Amnesty Figure Arrested in Indonesia for Singing Famous Protest Song.
The protest song is a parody of the Indonesian army's official song, written and widely sung in the 90s to oppose Suharto's military dictatorship. That gave way to a democracy of sorts. Prohibiting this song is almost an endorsement of military rule. I've been told that the military has been slowly taking more power at the expense of civil society.
This illustrates the danger of criminalizing "hate speech". That practice often starts out well-meant, intended to put an end to intimidation and bigotry. But it is such a handy tool for repression that it always tempts the powerful to use it for that.
A Florida thug has been convicted for killing a man who was sitting by his disabled truck, waiting for assistance.
The driver had a gun, and was waiting right next to the truck to make sure his drum kit was not stolen. But it was the thug who started the violence — without identifying himself as a thug.
The US State Department gave Finnish investigative journalist Jessikka Aro an award for revealing corruption in Russia, and enduring threats to do so. Then it canceled the award on discovering she had published criticism of the bully.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Not Invisible Act to help get justice for indigenous women who have been enslaved or killed.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support legalizing marijuana.
If you send a message, please spread the word!
The House of Representatives has passed HR 1, which includes public funding for campaigns.
The Green Party criticized this bill, saying that the requirements for parties other than the principal ones to get any public funding are hard to meet. I think the bill should be amended about that.
A court overturned one brick in the UK's wall of political censorship, specifically in the system that intimidates students who show any interest in issues such as Islamism.
I condemn Islamism and all forms of theocratic rule because those systems violate human rights. The UK's violation of human rights is not less bad merely because it isn't theocratic.
Big Pharma, Insurers, Hospitals Team Up to Kill Medicare for All.
Scientists have found microscopic particles of nuclear fuel scattered around the land in Fukushima.
Whether these pose a significant hazard to human health is a separate question. I don't know enough to deduce the answer. It would depend, among other things, on how numerous these particles are, and how often they get into human bodies. Perhaps also on precisely how they do so.
Whatever level of danger they pose, it will continue for a long time. Uranium 235's half life is 700 million years. Unless we find a way to sweep them up, people living on Earth will occasionally ingest or inhale them.
Japanese macaques living in the Fukushima region exhibit blood abnormalities. The amount of abnormality in each monkey correlates with its level of radioactive cesium.
In addition, fetuses conceived after the nuclear accident have smaller brains than normal.
The US Census Bureau is looking to get data about each person's citizenship status from other government agencies.
If the Department of Heartlessness and Suffering already has a person's address, that the Census Bureau gets a copy would not make the person more vulnerable. On the other hand, if perse has moved, perse would be scared to give that new address to the census, thus scared to respond.
Regardless of details, the bully will spread fear of the census among immigrants both authorized and not, to achieve their goal of undercounting immigrants and biasing the census.
Billionaires and their tools are organizing to fight against whatever measures newly elected Democratic governors propose.
New EPA administrator Wheeler has put a global heating denialist on the EPA's Science Absurdity Board (SAB).
Elon Musk may lose his security clearance because he used marijuana.
In effect, the US government is proving how stupid and bullheaded it can be.
UK local governments plan to use a program with a 20% error rate to make accusations of fraud against welfare recipients.
Why not roll dice? With dice, they could easily arrange a 50% error rate.
Chicago is paying reparations to criminal suspects that thugs tortured into confessions, and teaching about the issue in public schools.
Pakistan is making a serious effort to shut down charities that support rebellion in Kashmir.
US citizens: call on the Fish and Wildlife service to protect prairie dogs effectively.
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US citizens: support the CARE Act.
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Massachusetts citizens: call on the state to pass the ROE act. This would eliminate abortion restrictions, most of which have been overturned due to Supreme Court decisions that are now in danger of being reversed.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to end its blacklist against campaign services that work for primary challengers.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: oppose military intervention in Venezuela.
To sign without running nonfree Javascript code, use the Salsalabs workaround.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Caitlin Johnstone: Debunking All The Assange Smears.
Salivini ordered rescue ships to pay a large fine for rescuing migrants from the sea: over $6,000 per person saved.
A cardinal reconnected the electric power for a building occupied by poor squatters, and said he would pay their electric bill. Salivini did not like this. He wants to make the poor and helpless suffer.
US citizens: support the FAMILY Act which would give American workers paid family leave.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Senator Warren's plan to break up large internet platforms into parts would address substantial parts of the problem of surveillance capitalism.
The part that it does not handle is the practice of collecting lots of personal data about lots of people. Companies can find ways to use that data together even if it is stored in different places. And the US government, under the PAT RIOT Act, can collect all the data and put it together even if the companies don't.
Ideas for resisting the loss of trust that deepfake videos may cause.
Venezuela has been hit by a nationwide electrical failure due to a problem in a large hydroelectric dam.
Opponents of Maduro say it is his fault, but give no proof. Maduro says it is sabotage, but gives no proof.
I suspect both are partly at fault: that it was caused by US sanctions combined with Maduro's bad management.
US right-wingers are using fake news to push for intervention in Venezuela.
Note, though, that Venezuela's constitution does, however, authorize the head of the national assembly to declare perself interim president and hold elections. That aspect of what Guaidó has done is not the outrage they present it as.
Sanders sought support from farming states by proposing to stop corporations from taking over family farms.
Merely enforcing the existing antitrust laws will not be enough.
Alabama has allowed a lawsuit against a woman in the name of the six-week-old embryo she aborted.
Norway's state investment fund will divest from some fossil fuel activities.
It is insufficient, but momentous nonetheless.
Teaching boys sports can be a way to teach them to respect women's rights and dignity.
It's unions that win rights for women. That calls for more than just equal pay for women. It means that no one is trapped in a specific job.
It is hard for women to maintain women's rights if they are economically dependent on men.
As Russians paid tribute to the murderous tyrant, Stalin, thugs arrested two protesters who cried out denunciation of his crimes.
Russians have plenty of reason to hate Stalin. According to the figures cited in Wikipedia, Stalin killed almost 3 million people in the Soviet Union by execution, imprisonment or internal exile, plus 5 to 10 million by avoidable famine. The 1941 German invasion killed around 10 million civilians, and Stalin is responsible for some of those deaths through his elimination of 30,000 Red Army generals and high officers in 1937. The resulting lack of competent leadership allowed German forces to advance much farther.
You don't need to be a Communist to despise Stalin for the personal treachery of killing all the other Communist leaders that he started out among. The Communist Party was repressive already under Lenin, but Stalin distilled the essence cruelty, much as the bullshitter is doing with the Republican Party today.
(satire) Scientists Genetically Engineer Lab Rat Predisposed To Think Anything Wrong With It Might Be Cancer.
ACLU: "The government cannot use the pretext of the border to target activists critical of its policies, lawyers providing legal representation, or journalists simply doing their jobs." But that's what the bully tells border thugs to do.
Two Boston public transit thugs have been charged with beating up a helpless homeless man.
Beatings by thugs are a lot more frequent than killings by thugs. If we want to change their culture to stop being thuggish, punishing the beatings is what we need to do.
The central problem of US politics is not "polarization" within the public; rather, that a small but wealthy plutocratic minority imposes its will against a substantial majority, of 60% to 90%, of the public.
US citizens: call on the Justice Department to publicly hold thug departments accountable for the deaths of people they are holding prisoner.
(I reject there emotionless term "custody" for being held prisoner.)
US citizens: call on Congress to fully fund the rebuilding and healing of Puerto Rico.
Picking up trash at home while black: Boulder thugs found a black college student sitting in front of his house, armed with a trash picker and a bucket, and called for backup to harass and menace him.
This incident did not go as far as some: they did not shoot him or arrest him. But he must have feared that they would. It was a clear example of racism, since they had no non-racist grounds to bother him at all.
Boulder deserves a thug chief who will recognize that racist thugs are a far bigger danger to the peace of the city than picking up trash around your home.
These smaller incidents are far more frequent than killings. That makes them a good opportunity to teach thugs to be less thuggish. Frequent small punishments for small wrongs have much more teaching effect than big punishments for the occasional big wrongs.
The ACLU reports that students are over 3 times more likely to be arrested in school if a uniformed thug is stationed in the school.
This is not a controlled study; we cannot be sure that the assignment of a thug to the school is responsible for all of that disparity. We can be sure, though, that having a thug handy means more arrests, more students pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline.
It is also clear that having a thug to punish students even for little outbursts or indiscipline is no substitute for having nurses, social workers and psychologists to help them.
The US needs to pass a law against using nuclear weapons except in retaliation for nuclear weapons.
This could indirectly discourage other countries from first use of nuclear weapons against the US.
The bully has ordered that the US will no longer say how many civilians it kills with drone bombings.
That will facilitate concealing the truth.
The UK, by contrast, has claims that the over 4,000 casualties of its air attacks against PISSI included just one civilian.
More precisely, it says that it has identified just one civilian. Any other civilian casualties are unidentified, so we are invited to pretend they did not exist.
Evgeny Morozov: "Breaking up the tech giants, having them pay a fair share of taxes, making better use of their data are all necessary but, alas, insufficient conditions for effective social — not just individual or institutional — transformation."
Morozov calls for "Rebel Tech" which would overturn the current dominion of technology, which locks the current plutocratic system in place. Free Software is the original Rebel Tech, and any effective solution has to start there.
The European Union is developing robot drone border guards.
They are meant for borders, but once those robots exist, it will be hard to prevent them from being used in every city.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Uber and Lyft pay their share of social security and medicare.
Australia proposes to build a large new coal power plant. This would be a global disaster.
One endangered bird, one of whose crucial nesting areas is near the proposed site of the power plant, may protect the whole world from this power plant.
Italy is making thousands of refugees homeless by destroying their shanty towns.
A lot more Central Americans are crossing the US border unofficially to ask for asylum, now that official border crossings arbitrarily refuse to let them apply.
There are some kinds of respect we should give to everyone, but refraining from insulting them is not one of those.
Sad to say, many European countries are not much better — for instance, France.
Republican saboteurs are working to block, and undo, protection of endangered species.
Here are some species that are in particular danger now.
The logic seems to be that if you can wipe out a species it will never get in your way again.
For some teenagers in the US, Nazi clowning is a silly fad. They don't know anything about what Nazis really did. This ignorance makes them vulnerable to learning antisemitism and racism.
"Going contactless is gloriously convenient — for all the wrong people."
Finally, someone outside our community gets the point! The conclusion, "Let's use cash more," is not as firm as my response, "Don't be tracked — pay cash!", but it is the first step in that direction. To keep our freedom, we must choose freedom over convenience.
Nearly everyone in the UK still carries cash to use it for certain purposes, but the systems for people to get cash are rapidly being eliminated in many places.
"Incredible Moment": Impoverished Mali to Give [Gratis] Healthcare To Under-Fives.
The movement for women's rights in China is spreading despite the state's repression.
The US deportation thugs specifically surveilled activists that opposed the bully, hoping to deport them.
The US held a nuclear war game in 1983, but its use of encrypted messages and readying actual nuclear forces led the USSR's leadership to think it was a real attack.
The war game included firing a single nuclear missile at Kiev, as a "signal". The outcome of the game was a general nuclear war that, we now know, would have caused a nuclear winter and destroyed civilization.
The multinational mining company Glencore funded since 2017 an international anti-environmentalist campaign to protect coal mining. It included trying to get dirt on organizations such as Greenpeace and 350.org to try to weaken them, as well as false accusations.
They seem to work with a group of planet-roaster Australian politicians who set up the "Mon-ash forum". Is Mon ash as toxic as coal ash?
There is no room in a democracy for companies powerful enough to do things like this.
Democratic Rep. Bustos, head of Democratic Party fundraising for congressional candidates is attacking Medicare for All on the usual false grounds of its cost.
Her position, in effect: "We can't afford 32 trillion — we must insist on paying the 50 trillion that the current system will cost."
Most other Democrats in the House of Representatives are still taking the plutocratist side. We need to try to replace them in 2020 with progressives.
Plutocracy in the US is crushing essentially all rural communities.
"Financial uncertainty, disappearance of their social systems, lack of access to basic services, isolation, and emigration."
The right-wing politicians that have done this distract the people of those communities by demonizing scapegoats, and via religion. Meanwhile, as they drive more people out of those places, ever tinier fractions of the US get to elect a senator.
In the 1980s, when Democrats were not yet plutocratists, it was the Republicans elected by rural America that helped banksters take away most family farms.
The UK government is hardly trying to repair its errors of kicking out people with valid right to live and work in Britain, even though its own deletion of records was at fault.
Such a pattern of behavior does not happen by accident. It results from a basic attitude of prejudice. I conjecture that setting up the official policy, officially named the "hostile environment", taught the relevant departments an attitude of hostility towards anyone whose situation was in the slightest way irregular.
It seems that everyone involved with welfare benefits was taught the same kind of attitude towards people who received benefits. It's not just that the system's rules demanded that people who couldn't walk go up stairs for required meetings or face fines. It's that the people employed as chips and cogs in the system were taught to see them as would-be cheaters and treat them like enemies.
The only truly pragmatic approach to avoiding climate disaster is one that has a chance to do the job.
Ocasio-Cortez may be right that Pelosi could not achieve more by pushing the Green New Deal now. But she should not denigrate it.
Thugs violently attacked protesters in Sacramento, and journalists covering them. The protest was against the thugs' rush to kill Stephon Clark.
If America Can Find $716bn for the Military, It Can Fund the Green New Deal.
Adders in the UK no longer need to hibernate — it no longer gets so cold. But when there is a cold snap, this can kill them.
I thought the adder population was decreasing because deforestation was eliminating the log tables they need in order to multiply. ;-}.
We should be open to the idea that a person's gender identity is significant for certain purposes, while per genetic and developmental background could be significant for certain purposes. One area where this may be useful is dividing sports competitors into classes.
Dividing sporting competitions into classes is a way of compensating for systematic differences in bodily strength or size. In many sports competitors are classed based on sex, but not always only that: boxing has classes based on weight, because otherwise the heavier boxers would have an inherent advantage.
Perhaps we could handicap each sport based on certain pertinent body measurements -- for instance, for running, leg length and/or lung capacity. This could potentially do a better job than sex-based classes, or gender-based classes, or prior-sex-based classes, and do it without reference to sex or gender.
There would be no reason to fuss if you took drugs that gave you longer legs, or bigger muscles, if your handicap took account of the effect.
Global heating has cut off Isle Royale National Park from the Michigan mainland, blocking local wolves from interpreding with mainland wolves and resulting in an excess of moose.
The so-called "balance of nature" is often very fragile. It often readjusts to a change with a plethora of other changes, sometimes bigger than the first change.
Bernie Sanders talked about his personal history. He knows all about the poverty, and the plutocratic system that magnifies it.
US citizens: support the bill to pay low-wage contractors the pay that they lost during the federal government shutdown.
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US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Scientific Integrity Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to reject the bully's "emergency" request for more money to make refugees suffer.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Copenhagen's planned new "floating silicon valley" will, alas, not really float. It will be made of low-lying islands.
If it really floated, it might last out the coming century.
Plutocratist governments in the UK have sold 10% of the territory of Britain out of public hands, mostly to businesses.
When looting the state, privatizers are not limited to property than can be carried away. They loot what's nailed down, too.
The Theranos medical device fraud was founded on a US patent issued for an application that consisted of "aspirational science fiction".
This was not an aberration. The US patent office takes the assertions in the application for granted. It gets paid per patent application, so it keeps its customers (patent applicants) happy by not scrutinizing them much.
We would be better off without any patent system.
Plutocratists in the European Parliament tried to rush the vote on the automatic copyright filters directive, so as to hold it before the March 23 public protest against it.
They were thwarted.
An Indian record company got a copyright law blog removed from Google's search engine by filing a false DMCA takedown notice.
In theory, there is a punishment for intentionally false takedown notices. This provides little protection, perhaps because it is very hard to prove that any particular false takedown notice was intentional.
I have not read that copyright law blog, but I can tell from its name that it promotes confusion between copyright law and other unrelated laws by lumping them together under the bogus concept of "IP".
The article does a disservice to moral thought by referring to copyright infringement as "pirated material". Piracy means attacking ships; it is very bad. Sharing is good. Let's not refer to the two by the same word.
Most Democrats in Congress have cosponsored a bill to eliminate the forced arbitration requirements that companies impose on customers and employees.
An interview with Tiina Jauhiainen, who helped organize Princess Latifa's escape from Dubai and was with her when they were captured, at sea near India.
Were their captors real Indian coast guard troops? Did Modi cooperate with this?
Fracking in Pennsylvania correlates with an increase in kidney and urinary tract infections that caused hospitalization.
The infections can't be causing the fracking, so the fracking must be causing the infections.
To protect planetary health, we must eliminate fracking. There is no room for it in our carbon budget. Damage to the health of many individual humans' health is an additional reason.
Racism in the UK comes mainly from the lower middle class, not from the poor people who supposedly have been harmed by immigrants.
The poor people have indeed been harmed, by Tories.
Big European banks are in a scandal for moving lots of money belonging to Russian oligarchs into secret tax havens.
The Tapanuli orangutan, identified last year as a distinct species, would probably go extinct if a new dam is built. A court just approved the project in a narrow-minded decision which ignored this issue.
The IRS has adopted a rule which would deny tax-exemption to organizations that campaign to legalize drugs, or to reduce the onerous conditions on state-legalized marijuana sales.
These decisions should not discriminate based on what cause an organization campaigns for.
Iran will cancel some secondary aspects of the non-nuclear deal, because Europe has failed to protect it from the damage of US sanctions.
However, it will not cancel the core of the deal.
Some Uber drivers have to sleep in their cars to work in San Francisco. They can't afford to live near that city, on Guber's measly pay.
Russia and Turkey are bombarding Idlib, and have destroyed 12 medical clinics.
The US is almost the global champion in the fraction of people that deny the fact of global heating caused by humans.
The party of Nelson Mandela has become known as the party of corruption.
All South Africa's presidents since Mandela came from that party, and each of them (perhaps aside from Ramaphosa) was a disaster.
It is standard practice in Argentina to deny abortion to girls who have been raped, by delaying for months until an ordinary abortion is no longer possible.
To avoid global heating disaster we need to reduce the amount of stuff people buy. With today's wasteful, ad-driven system, there is plenty of room to do this without causing any actual hardship.
Countries must not banish citizens for becoming inconvenient, and human rights such as the right to a fair trial must not be limited to citizens.
The US is looking at ending its intervention in Afghanistan. Will it learn anything about whether to intervene elsewhere in the future?
I was in favor of the intervention in Afghanistan, at first. I thought victory would be easy and would bring Afghans peace, under a less oppressive rule than the Taliban's.
Things in Afghanistan went bad after the US invaded Iraq (for no valid reason at all). Perhaps Afghanistan would have turned out better if the US had focused on Afghanistan and not started an unnecessary and unjust war elsewhere. I thought so, but there is no way to be sure.
Whatever the US does now, it will not attain all the goals in Afghanistan we would wish for in our dreams. Or perhaps any of them. We should not criticize a plan to end the war merely for that.
I recommend Novel Without a Name, by Duong Thu Huong. It portrays a North Vietnamese officer who fights grimly for victory despite great suffering, the loss of his connection to life, and the aristocratic arrogance of Communist officials. At the end, as he participates in the capture of Saigon, he has lost everything. The book is informed by her experience serving as a singer and nurse for North Vietnamese troops fighting in South Vietnam. Vietnam does not publish her books nowadays.
The US exit from Vietnam was indeed abandonment without honor. However, honor alone is not enough justification for subjecting a country to unending bloody war. All in all, it was good that Nixon ended that war, even the way he did, even considering how corrupt and repressive the Vietnamese government is.
Afghans will, I think, be better off if we don't force continued war on them.
If other Afghans hate the Taliban's rule enough to keep fighting of their own initiative, I think we should support them. But it has to be their decision, not our imposition.
(satire) FAIR issued a statement Monday condemning the American press for only referring to … jihadist Hoda Muthana as "bride of [PISSI] soldier." [FAIR said that] "Ms. Muthana is an accomplished [PISSI] member in her own right, having joined one of the top terrorist organizations in the world at the age of only 20," …
I use the name "PISSI" to avoid defaming the Egyptian goddess or the English river by using their name to refer to a group of violent fanatics. And to reject the group's claim that its newly constructed ideology truly represents Islam.
Armenia is looking at letting Huawei convert Yerevan into a "smart city". For "smart", read "snoop".
Amnesty International accuses Maduro's forces of murdering protesters they had arrested and beaten up, and faking signs of a "gunfight".
Expanding and increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit could lift most poor Americans out of poverty.
'Only the Beginning': Oakland Teachers Return to Classroom After Week-Long Strike, But Vow to Build on Victory.
A satirical suggestion to the fencer: invite China to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. China has plenty of experience with building walls.
The proposal fails to mention another argument in favor — that China has plenty of experience with surveillance and repression.
The article is amusing as mockery, but not as a serious suggestion. Contracting to China would not protect the ecosystems and border-dwellers that the wall would destroy. The surveillance systems would be turned against US security afterward.
What we need is not a cheaper and well-built wall. We should not have a wall there.
Sanders says he expects the DNC to run the nomination process evenhandedly in 2020, but the corporate right-wing media will attack him with various would-be self-fulfilling prophesies of defeat.
When the plutocratist media say we can't win, I recognize that as a sign that the plutocrats really wish we would give up. Which means it is time to fight!
Meanwhile, please join me in appreciating the important gift that Wikileaks gave to democracy in the US by reporting the bias of the DNC in 2016. That is what led to the reform about superdelegates.
Plutocratist Democrat Governor Cuomo of New York is trying to prohibit minor parties from running the same candidate as a major party — a practice that has been traditional there for a long time.
The Green Party campaigns for other states to allow "fusion voting".
A study shows the importance for children of being read to by their parents, even as old as age 10.
If plutocracy didn't compel parents to work two jobs, they would find it easier to do this. And it would reduce the family stress that can hurt a child in many ways.
A large study found no relation between the MMR vaccine and autism.
Alas, I think that the anti-vaxxers will pay little heed to scientific results that disagree with the views of their cult. The corrupt, fraudulent study from the 1990s is the study they believe, and a thousand studies correcting the falsehood will just bounce off of it.
Some Democrats in Congress have pledged to wind down US involvement in the unending local wars around the world.
California Keeps a Secret List Of Criminal Cops. The attorney general claims that it is illegal for reporters to keep a copy if they have one.
That is UK-style repression, and fighting the repression is even more important than kicking out the criminals.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez interviewed about her political strategies.
It is interesting that she supports Pelosi, saying that Pelosi could not feasibly do better given the existing forces in Congress than what she is doing. Whatever Ocasio-Cortez says is worth thinking about.
US citizens: call on corporate "charities" to stop supporting hate groups.
US citizens: tell the FBI to stop its investigation of fictitious "Black Identity Extremist" and release the documents about that investigation.
Humanity Must Save Insects To Save Ourselves, Leading Scientist Warns.
In 2017, Burma jailed two journalists for reporting about government involvement in crimes against the Rohingya. Now they have been released.
It's good they were released, but we must still condemn the government of Burma for its repression of journalism.
Burma is not alone in this. The US government did something similar when it jailed Chelsea Manning. And now it is trying to attack journalism even more deeply by prosecuting Julian Assange. That is as if Burma were trying to jail the executives of Reuters.
US citizens: Tell Facebook to fire its Koch-funded "fact checkers".
US citizens: call on the Department of Harassment and Subjugation to stop spying on those protesting against its immigration policies.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the Equality Act.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to block US war with Venezuela.
To sign without running any nonfree software, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: Tell the FDIC to stop the mega-bank merger of SunTrust and BB&T.
If you sign, please spread the word!
In the US: call on the governors of New York and Pennsylvania to protect trans people in those states' national guard.
If you sign, please spread the word!
The US and Salafi Arabia allied with the forces of corruption to kill a proposed European blacklist for countries that disguise money from taxation.
This might be one good reason for the UK to leave the EU: to be able to set up such a blacklist on its own.
The Vatican will examine the records of Pope Pius XII to judge his dealings with Hitler, and particularly with Hitler's murder of 6 million Jews and a million other civilians.
If the conman loses the election and tries to hold power by force or lies, how will we defend the Constitution?
Facebook requested, even occasionally demanded, mobile phone numbers from its useds in the name of "security", then treated them as personal identifiers for lookups and advertising.
Since two-factor authentication requires a Stalin's Dream device, I am excluded from all digital services which demand two-factor authentication. MIT administrative services do this, so I cannot talk with them on line.
In September MIT demanded that I take an online course about sexual harassment; although I don't teach classes or even meet undergraduates, they treated me like a professor on the "be overcautious at every opportunity" principle. But I was unable to do so until MIT arranged to let me log in on an MIT kiosk terminal and bypassed the two-factor requirement for me.
After only 1C of heating, devastating heatwaves are sweeping the oceans in many parts of the world. These kill off species such as coral and kelp that many other species need in order to continue. Humanity's supply of seafood, already reduced due to overfishing and heat of the water, will tumble.
Europe's Forests Threatened by Biodiversity Collapse, Warn Campaigners.
The EU has adopted well-meaning policies meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by encouraging burning ethanol from corn and burning wood.
These practices are harmful, but the EU has been unable to amend them.
Award-winning Egyptian journalist Mahmoud Abu Zeid has been a political prisoner for over 5 years. He was given a typical Egyptian trial for political prisoners. Starting now, he is being allowed to leave jail during the daytime.
I cancelled a planned speaking trip to Egypt just after the coup. I urge people not to visit Egypt until the country becomes less repressive.
Albert Woodfox writes about 40 years in solitary confinement in Angola State Prison.
License-plate readers have been proliferating across the US, making it nearly impossible to drive around cities (and even some small towns) without your movements' being recorded.
They are now used by companies to hound poor people, as well as by cities to fine poor people.
It could also come in handy against heroic whistleblowers.
I am sure things are much worse today than what was describes in that article from 2016.
This tracking is a building block for a Chinese-style "social credit" system. If we want to avoid that bad end, it is not sufficient to regulate how the data collected are used. We need to make most of those cameras disappear. Regulating use of the data might achieve that end, if the regulation entirely precludes the usage that was funding the cameras. Otherwise, it's inadequate.
29 parents that US immigration prisons deported away from their offspring have been able to apply for asylum.
Interviews with young US climate activists.
Some US conservatives are now calling the death penalty "big government screwing up."
It is true that government activities meant to do good sometimes backfire and hurt people.
With businesses, by contrast, no backfire is required. They hurt people because they can get away with it. Our most effective tool to stop this is the government.
Citizens of Denver: vote yes on initiative 300 that will legalize sleeping while homeless.
A UK Green MP points out how legislators, even while recognizing the coming climate disaster, cling to attractive policies that would keep emissions high. To avoid disaster we must go beyond what is "politically possible", so we need a "climate emergency".
Many coal-fired electric plants pollute groundwater with toxins from coal ash.
This is in addition to the carbon dioxide and radioactive fallout they emit into the air.
The reason Mohamedou Slahi asked for a passport is so he can travel for medical treatment for the lingering effects of the torture that the US imposed on him.
Some say that the US armed forces harbor thousands of white supremacist terrorists planning assassinations, or mass murder.
I think some right-wingers hoped for this result all along. Perhaps including the conman. They do not want to permit democracy to take power away from them.
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence gives former soldiers an opportunity to talk about cruel and criminal acts that they witnessed or committed in the occupation of Palestine. The Israeli government is making every effort short of direct violence to shut it down, because it falsifies the official myth. Israelis, Americans, Europeans, are not supposed to have any concrete idea of what the occupation is like.
An interview with Martin Guerri, a CIA analyst who predicted that internet organizing would destabilize power structures by denying elites their spheres of control over information.
I think Guerri underestimates the influence of demagogues. It is true that the bullshitter appealed to a few preexisting hates and desires of right-wing Americans in order to come within voter-suppression distance of victory. But those people were not totally unscrupulous at the outset. Many of them would not have openly countenanced and protected baldface lying and casual violence — not then. The bullshitter transformed them from indignant citizens into a mafia-like hate gang.
Meanwhile, the scientific elites that we need to trust — including climate scientists and vaccine developers — are getting dragged down, too.
New Orleans has reduced homelessness by 90% by working assiduously to give homeless people homes.
It costs money, but not as much as you would expect, because it saves money on dealing with medical problems and harassment by thugs. The main obstacle to lasting success is that the failure to build affordable housing in the US generates more homelessness.
The EFF explains how US antitrust law is ineffective for internet platforms because it is blind to the harmful consequences of concentration there.
This critique is not deep enough — it accepts the idea that massive surveillance is a mere "cost", rather than a threat to human rights and democracy.
More generally, the basic approach of US antitrust law is ineffective in general. I've proposed a system to replace it.
The Ring (now Amazon) doorbell camera is designed so that the manufacturer (now Amazon) can watch all the time. Now it turns out that anyone else can also watch, and fake videos too.
The third party vulnerability is presumably unintentional and I suppose Amazon will fix it. I do not expect Amazon to change the design that allows Amazon to watch.
Amazon bullied Seattle into retracting a tax increase by threatening to abandon expansion plans there. Seattle caved in, but Amazon has cancelled the plans anyway.
Amazon is not merely an snooping abusive monopolist. It is a cheating snooping abusive monopolist. You shouldn't trust Amazon to keep a deal unless you get your benefit in advance.
This joins a host of other reasons for refusing to buy from Amazon.
I urge Seattle to reinstate that tax. In the long term, we need to teach these companies that we are the boss.
The University of California system has refused to resubscribe to Elsevier journals.
The cause of this decision was something shallow — disagreement about price. The UC system lacks the courage to reject paywalled scholarly journals in order to put an end to them. Nonetheless, this could pull a big brick out of the paywall system, as I've called for since 2001, and moving to free/libre scientific publishing.
The Dakota Access pipeline company lost its SLAPP lawsuit in federal court, so now it is suing in a North Dakota court.
North Dakota has given plenty of indication of being in the oil industry's pocket.
Pelosi Says Barr Committed a Crime by Lying [to Congress] about Mueller Report.
It looks like the House of Representatives Congress getting ready to declare Barr in contempt of Congress, and try to lock him up.
I wonder whether the conman will send some other armed force to prevent that. That would amount to an attempted coup.
Cruise Ship Quarantined Off St Lucia Coast over Measles Case.
The ship's owner is disreputable, but it does not seem to be responsible for the measles outbreak.
Gaslighting is typically associated with domestic relationships, but it is part of the bullshitter's technique too.
British journalists who published based on leaked documents about how killer thugs were protected were charged with stealing the documents, then given bail on conditions of secrecy. This amounts to repression of the press.
Record high temperatures in February would not have happened if not for the global heating that provided the base for them.
Only a fraction of the UK public recognizes it is a harbinger of disaster, plus a few members of Parliament.
Tax options for US states to reduce inequality and fund important activities.
If you don't have a lover, how can you prove you are really homosexual? How can you prove that to a country that is seeking any excuse to deport you?
A Missouri abortion-sabotage law has been upheld in the first court; one Planned Parenthood center has been blocked from performing abortions. This leaves one operating abortion clinic in the state of Missouri.
An interview with a Lebanese member of Hezbollah.
56% of students polled in the UK reported that they had experienced "unwanted sexual behaviour". That is a very broad class. At the upper limit it includes rape and violence, which are grave.
However, there is no obvious lower limit to what that could include. Winking too often? Staring for a few minutes from a distance? A request for a date from someone you don't want to go out with? The high fraction could mean only that the line is drawn too low.
If we want to deal with the severe problems, mixing up violence with minor annoyance and everything in between is not a useful approach.
Morozov: "The left needs to get radical on big tech — moderate solutions won't cut it."
I've been proposing a radical and adequate solution for years now.
James Hart Stern, a black American, infiltrated a US Nazi organization and convinced them to hand over control of it. He now intends to move it away from radicalism.
A few decades ago, that might have made a tremendous difference. My understanding is that things have changed: in the extreme right wing today, specific organizations are of diminished importance because they often make new ones. His success will still be an improvement, just not a tremendous one.
Proving that the organization planned violence at Charlottesville have the useful effect of disproving some lies.
Revealed: Facebook's Global Lobbying Against Data Privacy Laws.
Trafficked Chinese women were treated as slaves in Florida brothels. They have been rescued, but they don't feel rescued: they are afraid of being deported.
Could we encourage customers to report when prostitutes might be enslaved by not punishing them?
Pakistan's peace gesture did not end the fighting between Pakistan and India.
The occasionally racist Alabama editor who recently advocated the KKK and lynchings followed up by simply asking his black employee to take complete charge of the newspaper.
It seems that she forgave him for these racist outbursts because they resulted from brain injuries. I suppose he was aghast on seeing his own words in a period of lucidity, so he sought immediately to make sure it would never happen again.
It is sad when this happens to people, but he did what the situation required.
Undertaxation of the rich and powerful promotes economic inequality, naturally. Turns out it promotes other kinds of inequality, too.
Arundhati Roy comments on Kashmir: local people's support for those fighting for independence from India is a more important fact than Pakistan's outside aid to them.
Pakistan has at times supported terrorism in India, but attacking a column of soldiers is not terrorism, it is simply war. To note this does not mean taking a side in the war; it only rejects inflation of the word "terrorism" to include all fighting.
The Climate Strike's open letter.
Netanyahu to Be Indicted on Bribery, Fraud, Press Tampering: Israeli AG.
Uri Avnery reported on these accusations for years.
Over 100 [Bangladeshi] Workers Claim to Have Been Sacked After Protesting About Low Wages at Factory That Makes "Girl Power" T-Shirts.
Stephen Unger's list of political priorities.
I agree with them more or less, though not exactly the order of them.
Iran's foreign minister's resignation was not accepted; perhaps it was a ploy to get visible confirmation that he still has backing from the top for trying to continue the nonnuclear deal.
The succession of world orders, since the 1300s, has arrived at a world order set up by the US after World War II. It has good and bad aspects. Now it is tottering, and a Chinese world order could replace it.
I question some of the points — for instance, Wikipedia's list of empires seems to include any state that called its ruler "emperor", even Oman, Korea, and Vietnam. Most of them are not what we would call "empires". The 1600s were full of wars, just like the 1700s, including the 30 years' war which devastated central Europe worse than anything since the Black Death.
But the overall argument may be valid nonetheless.
Michael Cohen's testimony provides some evidence for five felonies on the part of the conman.
The person most likely to crack the security on a car is its mechanic.
The most likely entity to use the car systems against the owner or driver is the manufacturer or an insurance company.
A dam project in Guinea would swamp the wildlife refuge with the largest population of western Chimpanzees — 1500 of them. This would be a substantial reduction in the population of that subspecies — perhaps as much as 9% — and large populations preserve more genetic diversity much more.
The fact that a Chinese company has been hired to build the dam seems like an incidental detail to me. The government and its funding sources made the decision to build there; they alone could cancel it.
However, the choice of that Chinese company means that China is likely to pressure not to cancel the project.
The French Academy has made a big mistake, allowing job-title words to have masculine and feminine forms. This introduces a problem of gender-neutrality into a grammatical area where there wasn't one.
Although each of these names for jobs and professions has a gender, it is merely grammatical, and does not make an assertion about the gender (if any) if the person referred to. For instance, "un professeur" can refer to a male, a female, someone who is neither or both, or someone unknown — just like the English expression "a professor".
The use of "une professeuse" for female professors imposes a gender-based choice. Which form do you use when you don't know someone's gender? How can you refer to a professor of non-binary gender?
The word "personne" in French has feminine gender, regardless of who it refers to. I, a man, am therefore "une personne" in French. You are "une personne", too. That says nothing about my gender, or yours. It is just like "a person" or "un professeur".
I hope the academy does not recommend the use of "un person" for males.
The gender-neutrality problems of English are fortunately much smaller.
Chemical Weapons Inspectors Confirm Gas Cylinders Were Fired at a Housing Block in the Deadly Assault [in Douma] in April 2018.
The dealmaker proved inept at diplomacy with Dictator Kim.
Prosecution of Assad for his crimes against humanity is still possible.
Congressional Republicans are now the soldiers of the conman's mafia.
When one of them attacked Cohen for lying, his retort was clever. I suggest an alternate one that I like better: "So you should nominate me for president."
Global War on Drugs Could Harm Efforts to Abolish Death Sentences.
[Republican congresscritter] Gave Pro-War Speech on Yemen — by Reading Saudi Lobbyist's Talking Points Verbatim.
US citizens: call on Congress to permit the IRS to run its own online service for filing your tax returns.
My view of this issue is fundamentally different from that of the petition. When it says "free", it means "gratis". I don't care whether I pay a small fee for using some computing system to report my tax information. What matters to me is whether I have to run any nonfree software, and whether I have to show any personal data to a company.
This is not the typical kind of anonymity issue, because my tax return data must, of course, go to the IRS. That's the point of it. But there is no reason any company should get to see it.
However, if the petition convinces Congress, and if the IRS runs its own server for filing tax returns, the task of making it freedom-respecting will become much smaller.
US citizens: Tell the New York Commission of Judicial Conduct to remove Judge McClusky from his judgeship, for giving such a light sentence for rape.
US citizens: call on Congress to vote on Medicare for All bill.
Citizens of Massachusetts: call on Massachusetts to collect demographic statistics about drivers stopped by thugs on the street.
This will document the racial bias of that activity.
US citizens: call on Rep. Lowey to cut the funds for ICE (the deportation thugs) and CBP (the border thugs).
Everyone: call on AMC Theatres to offer overtime pay, holiday pay, and paid sick leave to all its employees.
In addition to global heating, humans are changing many aspects of Earth's chemistry and systems. Many of the changes are dangerous.
Coping with the new Obscene epoch requires figuring out how to navigate them all together.
A court ordered the UK to drop the law that imposes great penalties against landlords unless they enforce immigration law very strictly.
Lichen are destroying the famous stone statues of Easter Island.
New York Governor Cuomo is going all out to plead for Amazon to come take New York's money.
The thugs of Vallejo, California, made a practice of approaching black men who were asleep in cars, with their guns drawn. It was only a matter of time before something would startle them in the act, and they would shoot immediately, effectively murdering their chosen victim. The murdered man was musician Willie McCoy.
US citizens: Urge Senators to co-sponsor the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for allowing prisoners to vote.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Everyone: Tell the Houston Independent School District to end discriminatory dress codes.
Some aspects of this dress code discriminates against Muslims and Jews, but all aspects are unjustified bullying.
I don't, however, understand what they refer to when they say "shaming". Why would pushing people around provoke shame? What I'd expect is indignation.
If you sign, please spread the word!
Activists pressured Senator Feinstein into dropping an inadequate substitute for the Green New Deal.
The effort to annul Hoda Muthana's US citizenship was started by Obama and continued by the bully. Regardless of who does it, or from which party, it is dangerous and wrong to try to make US citizenship (or citizenship in any country) precarious.
Mauritania denied Mohamedou Ould Slahi a passport arbitrarily at the request of the US. The US does not want people who travel who are guilty of being victims of US torture.
Making luxurious toilet paper for the US is unsustainable: it involves cutting down 48000 square miles of Canadian forest every year.
Canada really should put a stop to this, but Canadian politicians are pressed down by the hand of the US government, which amplifies and leverages the thumb of business.
At a rally of the Christian right-wing group Patriot Prayer, some of them got into a fight with counterprotesters. Portland (Oregon) thugs arrested some counterprotesters, but let members of the Christian right-wing group Patriot Prayer go.
If the thugs had gone easy on both sides, after breaking up the fight, that would have been fair and might have been wise, assuming there was no serious damage. But there is no excuse for preferring right-wingers for whom intimidation is a political stance.
The supporters of the conman won't be shocked by proof he is a conman. That is what they support him for — though they have engineered their minds to refuse to recognize it.
The age of the image is not the conman's creation. Its earlier form is described in The Image, by Daniel Boorstin: media pseudo-events which have nothing interesting except the extent of their publicity, celebrities that are famous for being famous. These now continue in a more blatantly foolish form in the person of Instagram influencers, commercial social networks that people want to be used by because so many others are, and Republicans, maneuvered step by step into supporting any lie as long as it serves their cult leader.
US labor unions are skeptical of the Green New Deal. They fear it will lead to fewer union jobs.
The plan already includes measures to stimulate employment, so they are being overcautious. However, the crucial point is that they are judging against a fictitious alternative, continuation of the current situation. That will be impossible for more than a decade, as the increasing effects of global heating will harm all aspects of life, including the jobs of their members.
Global heating is now coming on fast, will affect everyone, and will be worse than what we thought. It could be much worse than the Great Depression. The unpredicted effects may dwarf the ones we now anticipate.
Ocasio-Cortez: "Climate delayers aren’t much better than climate deniers."
Under an ultimatum from nature, delaying action is effectively denial.
We Can't Afford to Keep Our Failing Healthcare System. But We Absolutely Can Afford Medicare for All.
Dalit immigrants to the US face caste prejudice here. It does not get left behind in India.
Most Indian immigrants are from upper castes, and treat Dalits with contempt.
Brandeis University is adopting a rule against caste discrimination even though that is not included in antidiscrimination laws.
The WOMAD UK music and dance festival says that the UK's "hostile environment" is making it difficult to bring performers from other countries. They don't want to bother with a visa application to be sent to functionaries who have been told to seek any possible excuse to say no.
(satire) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly panicked Thursday as he walked through the abandoned streets of Pyongyang…
Guaidó tried to launch a coup in Venezuela, but it got no substantial military support so it led only to protests by his supporters.
The US supports the coup attempt.
Guaidó and his supporters want to be the local overseers of foreign companies. Maduro wants to graft off the government. Neither one offers Venezuela a good future.
Facebook asked its new useds to give it their email passwords, and 1.5 million did so.
It then used the password to read each zucker's list of email contacts without telling per.
Scribd was compelled to delete the Mueller report, by a false DMCA takedown notice.
As for Scribd itself, that is a site you shouldn't use, because viewing anything there requires running Javascript code which is non-free, and thus not to be trusted. That is a tangent to the point of this article, but we should not legitimize Scribd or its practices.
Ecuador has shown no grounds to arrest or prosecute free software developer Ola Bini. Apparently the state wanted a good scapegoat and found him.
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![this? 1 August 2019 (Johnson and Trump risk disaster for planet) Johnson And Trump's Close Ties Risk Disaster for Planet, Says Corbyn. 1 August 2019 (California requires all candidates to release tax returns) California has passed a law requiring all presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to get on the ballot. There is surely something in his tax returns that might have cost him votes in 2016. But would it have that effect on today's Republicans, who have become inured to lies, hatred and racism? It might seem like small potatoes compared with the vicious things that Republicans are already inured to. I can imagine that the conman might abandon California (since he has little chance of winning there) to defy this law. But if a swing state does this, he might have to yield. 1 August 2019 (Gilroy murderer advocated white supremacists) The Gilroy murderer advocated white supremacists, which suggests that his shooting was an act of white supremacist terrorism. 1 August 2019 (Father forgot his children in a car) A father forgot his children in a car all day, and they died. Does it make sense to prosecute him? Does it make sense to make a law against leaving children in a car for a few minutes? 1 August 2019 (DEA has been stalling for years over research) The Drug Enforcement Agency has been stalling for three years over an application for a permit to grow marijuana for research. 1 August 2019 (Hong Kong protesters trying to identify thugs) Hong Kong protesters are trying to identify thugs by their faces, now that the thugs have stopped wearing identification badges. The thugs generally have an advantage in this kind of conflict. 1 August 2019 (NSA says it deleted a database) When the NSA says it deleted a database, it sometimes finds another copy later. 1 August 2019 (New head of Bureau of Land Management) The new head of the Bureau of Land Management wants to privatize all public land by selling it to rich people. I suspect the rich buyers will get it at a very low price. 1 August 2019 (Tech executives apologies) Tech executives are making a show of apologizing for the damage their companies have done … without having to fix it or even halt it. 31 July 2019 (The Democratic debate) The Democratic debate was "Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren v the 'No We Can't' Democrats." 31 July 2019 (Stop arguing with Bogus Johnson) Stop arguing with Bogus Johnson — it only feeds the troll. What is needed is action, not disputation. 31 July 2019 (José Ramos-Horta calls on Australia to drop charges of whistleblower) José Ramos-Horta, former president of East Timor, calls on Australia to drop charges against the whistleblower that revealed how Australia was spying on the negotiations between those two countries. I agree completely. I also agree that it was wrong of Australia to steal oil located in what was to become East Timor's waters. But the biggest wrong was that Australia allowed that oil to be burned, contributing to global heating. If East Timor had extracted this oil and allowed it to be burned, that would have been almost as bad. For a just outcome, just to humanity and nature, we need to leave that oil in the ground. 31 July 2019 ($70 million fine for preventing making of generic drugs) Pharma companies will be fined 70 million dollars for conspiring to prevent the making of generic drugs. 31 July 2019 (Criminal charges for throwing a ball) A student from a town near Detroit faces criminal charges for throwing a ball that injured another student, in a game similar to dodge ball. I was unable to play volleyball because I was afraid to be hit by the ball. If you are afraid of being hit by a ball — whether for emotional reasons like me, or valid medical reasons like the student that was injured, you really should decline to play. 31 July 2019 (Border separations since last year) US border thugs have separated over 900 minors from their parents since a year ago. Almost 200 of them are children under 5 years old. There are valid reasons why a compassionate state might do this in some cases, but when a state and its officials have explicitly declared hatred for migrants, we must expect it to distort those reasons into excuses to do harm. 31 July 2019 (Remaining Vaquita Porpoisess) The number of remaining vaquita porpoises is between 6 and 19. The species might survive if Mexico cracks down on use of gillnets. It is too late to be sure of that — if there are just 6, and none is a female capable of reproducing, it's too late — but we should try. 31 July 2019 (India is almost done abolishing biased divorce law) India has almost finished abolishing the one-sided law for divorces among Muslims. Men alone had the right to declare a divorce unilaterally. People should have equal rights in divorce, but I hope this doesn't result in making divorce too difficult for everyone. 31 July 2019 (Nigeria's 'economic boom') Nigeria shows how extreme inequality of income can spread poverty in an "economic boom". 31 July 2019 (European websites responsible for like tracking) The European Court of Justice ruled that a web site with a Like button is responsible for the tracking it does. This ruling won't make a big difference if the site can make the issue go away by adding one more clause to its terms of service. But it might make a small difference, if sites can no longer show a Like button to a visitor who has not yet explicitly accepted the terms of service. 31 July 2019 (Kamala Harris's Medicare for All) Kamala Harris claims to support Medicare for All, but her version is ersatz. 31 July 2019 (Earth overshoot day) This year, Earth Overshoot Day is calculated to occur on August 1. After just 7 months, humans have used what the Earth can regenerate in a whole year. 31 July 2019 (Population of wild boar is exploading) The population of wild boar is exploding in Europe, and many have moved into cities where they injure humans. Fortunately, they taste great. If you are in Europe, try some. 31 July 2019 (Venture capitalists see Buttigieg as an investment) In Pete Buttigieg, Venture Capitalists See a Campaign to Invest in. That shows he's on the plutocrats' side, not ours. 31 July 2019 (Arguments aginst the death penalty) Reminder of some arguments against the death penalty. 31 July 2019 (Tanzania has arrested a famous investigative journalist) Tanzania has arrested a famous investigative journalist, Erick Kabendera. One must suppose he investigated something the government didn't want the public to know about. 31 July 2019 (Killings of 500 Activists Since Peace Accords) Mass Protests in Colombia and Abroad Decry Killings of 500 Activists Since Peace Accords. 31 July 2019 (Israel never gives Palestinians the compensation) Under Geneva conventions, every occupying power has an obligation to compensate any damages it does members of the occupied population, whether to their bodies or their property. Israel has changed its laws so that it almost never gives Palestinians the compensation they are owed. 31 July 2019 (Hindu extremist party) A local leader of India's ruling Hindu extremist party called for gang-raping Muslim women. She was expelled from the party, but men who said similar things have generally been tolerated. 31 July 2019 (Chinese border guards) When foreigners enter Xinjiang (China) from Kyrgyzstan, Chinese border guards have taken their phones away to put malware on them. The malware searches files in the phones for various things that China considers hateful. It might do other things as well. I have to point out that people suspect the US of doing similar things to people entering the US, and in other circumstances as well. 31 July 2019 (Enforcement of food and drug safety) Enforcement of food and drug safety regulations has fallen by 33% under the corruptor. 31 July 2019 (Mistreating the prisoners) Ocasio-Cortez pushed past border thugs so she could speak to imprisoned immigrants. This enabled her to find out how they were mistreating the prisoners. The thugs had gone to extreme lengths to block visiting congresscritters from observing or finding out the prison conditions, and the visitors felt menaced by them. Sounds like a visit to North Korea. 31 July 2019 (US insurance company) A major US insurance company has announced it will stop insuring coal companies (or investing in them). 31 July 2019 (Influence over the department's decisions) Saboteur of the Interior Bernhardt gave his former client influence over the department's decisions. The department has adopted new secrecy rules, too. 31 July 2019 (Systems for supporting musicians) When you buy a record, or pay for music streaming (even via ads), the money usually goes to some company, not to the musicians. I've proposed systems for supporting musicians without depending on record companies, and in a way that encourages sharing. 30 July 2019 (Al Franken) Al Franken now regrets resigning from the Senate. Some senators that pushed him to resign now regret that too. The first (main) article does not state clearly whether Franken touched Tweeden in the process of making the photo, but it seems he did not. If that is correct, it was not a sexual act at all. It was self-mocking humor. The photograph depicted a fictional sexual act without her fictional consent, but making the photo wasn't a sexual act. If it is true that he persistently pressured her to kiss him, on stage and off, if he stuck his tongue into her mouth despite her objections, that could well be sexual harassment. He should have accepted no for an answer the first time she said it. However, calling a kiss "sexual assault" is an exaggeration, an attempt to equate it to much graver acts, that are crimes. The term "sexual assault" encourages that injustice, and I believe it has been popularized specifically with that intention. That is why I reject that term. Meanwhile, Franken says he did not do those things, and the other actors he previously did the same USO skit with said it was not harassment, just acting. Tweeden's store is clearly false in many details. Should we assume Tweeden was honest? With so many demonstrated falsehoods in her accusations, and given that she planned them with other right-wing activists, and that all of them follow a leader who lies as a tactic every day, I have to suspect that she decided to falsify accusations through exaggeration so as to kick a strong Democrat out of the Senate. I have no proof of that suspicion. It is possible that she made the accusations honestly. Also, in a hypothetical world, someone might really have done them. Supposing for the moment that those accusations were true, should Franken have resigned over them? I don't think so. They are misjudgments, not crimes. Franken deserved the chance to learn from the criticism that surprised him. Zero tolerance is a very bad way to judge people. However, the most important point is to reject the position that if B feels hurt by what A said or did, then automatically A is wrong. People judged Franken that way, and he judged himself that way. But that way degrades the concept of "wrong" into a mere expression of subjective disapproval. What can legitimately be asserted subjectively can legitimately be ignored subjectively too. To judge A that way is to set B up as a tyrant. If B's feelings were hurt, that's unfortunate -- but is that A's fault? If so, was it culpable, or just a mistake? That is what we have to judge, and if we want others to think our judgments worth following, they must be based on objective facts and objective standards, including objective standards for what words and gestures objectively mean. Traister is wrestling with a solvable problem. She says, "When you change rules, you end up penalizing people who were caught behaving according to the old rules." Maybe people do, but that is a sign of carelessness. It isn't really hard to change the rules and then judge old actions by the old rules. We just have to remember to do so. 30 July 2019 (Danger of surveillance) One big danger of surveillance is that people come to believe that breaking a rule is impossible, and then it becomes unthinkable. 30 July 2019 (Unfollow the bullshitter) If you use Twitter, unfollow the bullshitter. Posting your outrage does not hurt him — it's what he wants. 30 July 2019 (Your Family Is None of Their Business) Your Family Is None of Their Business. You, too, are none of their business, but that point is more radical. 30 July 2019 (Tories make it easy to mistreat workers) The Tories have made it easy to get away with mistreating workers in the UK. They have cut the funding to employment tribunals to the point where it takes 8 months for a case to be heard. 30 July 2019 (Privatization of government services) The UK privatized applications for student visa renewals. Naturally the company gouges the students, using a dark pattern in which there are supposed to be gratis appointments but in practice they are not available. This particular work has a peak season in September. In a government office, the staff would focus on this during the peak season, then most would shift to other tasks for the rest or the year. A private business may not have an opportunity to do that. Its staff is less stable than civil servants, and its other contracts come and go. This adds to the other reasons that government services should never be privatized. Occasionally some government service can simply be eliminated. 30 July 2019 (Being green) Can You Afford To Be Green When You're Not Rich? I Kept a Diary to Find Out. The article shows that many forms of conservation are made far more difficult by the fact that society's current pushes people in the other direction. The most important choice, to reduce your contribution to the ecological footprint of humanity, is not mentioned in the article. It is to choose not to have a child. The writer apparently does not recognize that that was a choice. 30 July 2019 (Plastic waste from fishing) Isolated, uninhabited Henderson Island receives tons of plastic deposited by the Pacific Ocean. Scientists visited for two weeks and collected 6 tons to study it. 60% comes from fishing. This accords with reports that most plastic waste in the ocean is from fishing. That should be much easier to eliminate than waste from a billion consumers. If the fishing was done near Henderson, it was illegal. But this trash could have floated for thousands of miles. 30 July 2019 (How Stonewall reversed justifying police surveillance) How Stonewall Reversed a Long History of Justifying Police Surveillance (and entrapment and jailing) of gays. 30 July 2019 (Deforestation of Amazon driven by meat) Revealed: Rampant Deforestation of Amazon Driven by Global Greed for Meat. The new business-supremacy treaty between the EU and Mercosur trade blocks could speed up the deforestation. 30 July 2019 (Mangrove trees methane) After mangrove trees die, they emit lots more methane. 30 July 2019 (God orders swallowing of cyanide) (satire) God ordered His followers to swallow cyanide capsules Monday in preparation for their voyage to Alpha Centauri. 30 July 2019 (ICANN eliminated limit on fees for org domain) ICANN has eliminated the limit on fees for having a .org domain name. It disregarded almost complete opposition to the move in the public comments it received. The .org domain overseer would make the same amount of money by collecting $10k for each of 1000 domains as it would by collecting $10 for each of a million domains. And the former would be a lot less hassle. I fear that is what we will see. 30 July 2019 (The refugees that fled form Hitler) Americans, remember the refugees that tried to flee from Hitler. All countries turned them away, and they were killed by Nazis. 30 July 2019 (Rafael Acosta tortured) Venezuelan navy captain Rafael Acosta was arrested on June 21 and accused of plotting a coup. Since then he has died, showing signs of torture. Maduro calls for investigation of the accused torture rather than trying to deny it. 30 July 2019 (Wife of Dubai's emir fled) The wife of Dubai's emir has fled and wants a divorce. The emir thinks of her as property and wants the UK to forcibly send her back to him. He got his daughter back by sending commandos to grab her. 30 July 2019 (Eli Lilly puts profits over lives) An employee of Eli Lilly, a Pharma company, reports on when the goal of maximizing profit replaced that of saving lives. 30 July 2019 (3 Billionaires) Bernie Sanders Is Right: 3 Billionaires Really Do Have More Wealth Than Half of America. 30 July 2019 (Ethiopia is trying plant 4 billion trees) Ethiopia is trying plant 4 billion trees this year. Each citizen is supposed to plant 40 at least trees. If they are planting the right kinds of trees, in places where forests can grow, these trees might do good, if they don't die. Due to global heating, trees may not survive the next 20 years in places where they used to grow. However, it is better to try than not try. 30 July 2019 (Poisoning from lead pellets) We should ban use of lead shot for hunting. The lead pellets remain lying around, birds eat them, and die of lead poisoning. Eating the poisoned birds, including the birds shot with lead, poisons people. 30 July 2019 (Geneva convention to protect wildlife and nature) Scientists suggest making a Geneva convention to give wildlife and nature reserves protected status in conflicts. What about museums with unique objects, and libraries of rare books? I think they should have similar protected status. Even accidental destruction of these special places should be considered a crime — the crime of negligence. 30 July 2019 (Encryption Backdoors) Barr Says Police Need Encryption Backdoors, Doesn’t Mention [Cracking] Tools They Use All the Time. 30 July 2019 (Children started early on being tracked) China is getting children started early on being tracked all the time. 30 July 2019 (Communications Decency Act) Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects web site operators from liability for what their users post, is being attacked in Congress. This puts all sorts of Internet commenting in danger. 30 July 2019 (Indian teenager accused a politician of rape) An Indian teenager accused a politician of raping her. A truck collided with the car she was in, killing two of her relatives and injuring her and her lawyer. There is suspicion that thugs beat her father to death. 30 July 2019 (Forcing women into sex work) The UK is forcing women into sex work to get a place to live. 30 July 2019 (Thugs beating up prisoners) Thugs in Harrisburg have a predilection of beating up prisoners and causing them serious injuries, then not taking care of them. 30 July 2019 (Measles attacks the immune cells) Measles attacks the immune cells that guard the memory of resisting past infections. It takes 4 or 5 years for those immune cells to regrow and provide immunity again to those past infections. Thus, if you get measles, you become vulnerable again, for several years, to infections you were previously immune to. And they can kill you. 30 July 2019 (China sentences 'cyber-dissident') China's First ‘Cyber-Dissident’ Jailed for 12 Years. 30 July 2019 (Disastrous deregulation) If the UK needs to make a new trade agreement with the US, the US will impose disastrous permanent deregulation. The bullshitter's billionaire backers want this, and Bogus Johnson will surely rush to obey. But it would not have been much better under Obama, or any previous US president since the 1970s. 30 July 2019 (Global heating) Global heating is making whole families flee Guatemala. The seasons have changed, there is less rain, and crops fail. 30 July 2019 (Urgent: Ask candidates about net neutrality) US citizens: call on CNN to ask the candidates about net neutrality. If you sign, please spread the word! 30 July 2019 (Urgent: Stop giving Nazis a platform) US citizens: call on CNN, and its head, Zucker, to stop giving Nazis a platform. If you sign, please spread the word! 30 July 2019 (Urgent: Fossil fuel divestment) Everyone: call on the European Investment Bank, and the governments that own it, to adopt the fossil fuel divestment proposal and fully implement it. If you sign, please spread the word! 30 July 2019 (Chief aide of UK's new prime minister) Bogus Johnson, the new prime minister of the UK, has appointed as his chief aide a man that has been censured by Parliament for refusing to testify about fake news activities. 30 July 2019 (Unionization) A study reports: Countries with higher levels of unionization have lower per-capita carbon footprints. 29 July 2019 (Supreme Court allowed Pentagon funds to go towards wall) The Supreme Court allowed the cheater to use $2.5bn in Pentagon funds to build a border wall. 29 July 2019 (British honours named after empire) British "honours" (non-military medals) named after the no-longer-extant British Empire cause a moral quandary to some recipients, whose ethnic background includes a group that was colonized by said empire. 29 July 2019 (Mueller's testimony basis for impeachment) Rep. Shiff, head of the House Judiciary Committee, said that Mueller's testimony provided the basis to consider impeaching the conman. It seems to me that we had plenty of basis already. 29 July 2019 (Moscow protesters not daunted) Moscow thugs have arrested 1300 pro-democracy protesters, but the protesters are not daunted. All they demand is that the candidates they nominated be allowed to run. 29 July 2019 (Miners attack village) Gold miners in the Brazilian Amazon have attacked and captured an indigenous village and killed the tribe's leader. 29 July 2019 (Ban on glass skyscrapers) Experts Call for Ban on Glass Skyscrapers to Save Energy. They need extra cooling to make up for the greenhouse effect of the glass. 29 July 2019 (Hong Kong thugs) Hong Kong thugs indiscriminately attacked subway passengers who were simply trying to ride the train. Some of the passengers had previously been in a protest. 29 July 2019 (UK rape victims) UK women have become more willing to report rape, but only 2% of the cases are actually pursued. This discourages the victims, who say "forget about it." 29 July 2019 (Analysis of Hong Kong's Politics) An analysis of the Hong Kong political situation. Let's look at the argument that Hong Kongers should surrender their rights to assuage the hurt feelings of a billion Chinese. Are their feelings really hurt? That could be a fiction fabricated by Chinese state. But let's suppose that 30 million really do have hurt feelings. It could be so. If so, why are their feelings hurt? Why do they even pay attention to Hong Kong? It's because they are more or less Xi-ple; the state media tells them to feel hurt, and they do not doubt what they are told. Any number of people who demand your surrender because they herded to do so amount to no reason for you to do that. 29 July 2019 (Extreme weather has damaged Australasia's marine life) Extreme Weather Has Damaged Nearly Half Australia's Marine Ecosystems Since 2011. Some were damaged irreversibly. The crucial points are that (1) this is surely not limited to Australia and (2) it will get a lot worse unless we stop it soon. 29 July 2019 (MSNBC altered Sanders data) MSNBC alters arithmetic to make Sanders look bad. 29 July 2019 (Right wing PAC turns out to be less effective) A big right-wing PAC turned out to be much less effective than it might have been, because the organizers directed much of the money to themselves. 29 July 2019 (DOJ approved T—mobile and Sprint) The Department of Justice approved the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. The political power of large companies is such a threat to democracy that we should make sure they do not merge with or acquire other companies. 29 July 2019 (EU requires online payments with phone) In the EU, online credit card payments will require two-factor identification using a mobile phone. Many people are up in arms about the inconvenience of this, but that is only the superficial level. A mobile phone tracks you, and buying on the internet tracks you. The wise thing to do is to go to a physical store and pay cash. 29 July 2019 (Guatemala called safe) The US made Guatemala agree that the US should call it "safe" so that refugees that cross Guatemala (from Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua) have to apply for asylum in Guatemala. That policy is ridiculous and unjust because it is based on a falsehood. 29 July 2019 (Pressure to curb global heating) Australia's ruling planet-roasters are facing pressure from Papua New Guinea to help curb global heating. Bullshit won't be enough to quell this. 29 July 2019 (Reducing severe storms in Europe) Planting a lot of forests in Europe could reduce severe storms there. 29 July 2019 (Israeli snipers) In a human advance, Israeli snipers are now being told to shoot (unarmed) Gaza protesters in the lower leg. This reinforces the point that when they shoot someone in the head, it is no accident. 29 July 2019 (Talking points on US major media) US major media continually print interviews with supporters of the bullshitter showing that they have not changed their stance. This promotes their talking points, but it isn't news any more. 29 July 2019 (Urgent: Call on Harvard to divest fossil fuels) US citizens: call on Harvard to divest from fossil fuels. If you call, please spread the word! 29 July 2019 (Urgent: Pass domestic workers bill of rights) US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. If you call, please spread the word! The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 29 July 2019 (Urgent: Stop pushing death penalty) US citizens: call on Los Angeles DA Lacey to stop pushing for the death penalty. If you call, please spread the word! 29 July 2019 (Urgent: Pass MORE Act) US citizens: call on Congress to pass the MORE Act to legalize marijuana in a thorough way. If you call, please spread the word! The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. 29 July 2019 (Urgent: Allow shorts) Everyone: call on Walmart to let staff wear shorts. If you call, please spread the word! 29 July 2019 (Urgent: US citizens: call on Alabama Governor Ivey to give clemency to Rocky Myers.) US citizens: Call on Alabama Governor Ivey to give clemency to Rocky Myers. The reason he could not present these arguments in an appeal is the law past under President Clinton to sharply limit appeals against death sentences. If you call, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Replacing human workers) Why are companies rushing to replace human workers with robots based on machine learning? Because that is a way to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer as a byproduct. Additional robots are greatly reducing the number of jobs in manufacturing, and are likely to continue doing so. The fact that one particular factory in the UK has more staff now than in 2007 is neither here nor there. Evidently a bigger fraction of the country's manufacturing has been concentrated there. The increase in productivity is a benefit to whoever owns the factory, and the small fraction of people employed there. But it is not good for society overall unless those benefits are shared with society overall. It is a mistake to see the issue in nationalistic terms as a competition with other countries. It does no good to country C to have robot factories there rather than in D, E and F, if the benefits go in each case only to the few owners. What matters to country C is making sure the people there who don't own plenty of stock in robot factories can nonetheless enjoy the products of these factories, and everything else one needs for a good life. 28 July 2019 (Antifascist counterprotesters) Portland thugs harassed and attacked antifascist counterprotesters, based on accusations that may be phony. However, it seems they really did attack the right-wing journalist, Andy Ngo. We should not do that. 28 July 2019 (Prisoners' phone calls) A sheriff's office and a special gouge-'em prison phone company conspired (in effect) to record prisoners' privileged phone calls with lawyers. 28 July 2019 (Obrador's policies) The substantive policies of Mexican President López Obrador put business and the US first. If this is a "win for Mexico's left", then Clinton was a progressive. 28 July 2019 (Privatized probation officers) Privatized UK probation officers say bigger caseloads and unrealistic targets prevent them from following their professional standards. This is the standard result of privatizing a government service. We should renationalize all privatized government services. 28 July 2019 (Mao 2.0) China is now ruled by a networked totalitarianism, "Mao 2.0". When the article says what "we" believed, the author should speak for himself. I never believed that capitalism would by nature bring democracy. Democracy is how the non-rich organize the state to protect them from the power of the rich. Back when capitalists needed lots of factory workers, that gave the workers one advantage in their fight for democracy. But it did not guarantee victory. And now that advantage is gone. 28 July 2019 (Husband's guns) Courtney Irby took her husband's guns to the thug department because he had been trying to kill her. The thugs charged her with burglary and jailed her. 28 July 2019 (Transmountain tar sands pipeline) Trudeau gave Canada's approval to the Transmountain tar sands pipeline. This makes a mockery of the climate emergency declaration Trudeau made this week. 28 July 2019 (The new NAFTA) The new NAFTA improves many specific points, but its fundamental effect is still to give businesses more power and democracy less power, and thus to transfer income from workers to business owners. 28 July 2019 (NYC mesh network) A mesh network is providing true internet service to large parts of New York City. I used to think that community mesh networks could not be more than toys, but it's a great surprise to see this is not so. 28 July 2019 (Bills to improve security of US elections) Senate Republicans blocked bills to improve the security of US elections. 28 July 2019 (Cruel "tough on crime" approach) Progressive US district attorneys are making inroads into the cruel "tough on crime" approach to street crime. Toughness for toughness' sake causes a lot of collateral damage and can backfire by increasing crime. The case where toughness is exactly what we need is for business crime, whether against workers or against customers. For instance, stealing workers' pay and foreclosing on millions of Americans' homes using fraudulent papers. The perpetrators do this for profit, and if it ceases to be profitable, they will stop doing it. 28 July 2019 (Plutocracy) If we have recourse to a billionaire to defeat the impositions of other billionaires, the result will be to ensconce plutocracy more deeply. A society where a small number of the powerful compete for power could turn into an empire. 28 July 2019 (Deregulation of business) Mulvaney is pushing deregulation of business in many areas of the US government. By contrast, the bully wants more regulation of activities that help poor people, refugees, and women. 28 July 2019 (Urgent: End federal attacks on abortion rights) US citizens: call on presidential candidates to commit to ending federal attacks on abortion rights. If you sign, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Urgent: Shut down Google's location tracker) Everyone: call on Google to shut down its location tracker Sensorvault. Sensorvault stores the locations tracked in great detail by Android apps, which do this even when location tracking is "turned off". This is what you have to expect from nonfree software. If you sign, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Urgent: Reject disinformation tactics) US citizens: call on Democratic and Republican parties to denounce and reject disinformation tactics. If you sign, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Urgent: Investigate illegalities in use of soldiers) US citizens: call on the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate illegalities in use of soldiers to patrol the border. If you sign, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Urgent: Pass the ROE Act) Citizens of Massachusetts: call on your Mass legislator to pass the ROE Act. If you sign, please spread the word! 28 July 2019 (Unusual sexuality) Hatred of unusual sexuality still causes gratuitous suffering around the world. 28 July 2019 (Pentagon's bloated funding deal) Even some "progressive" Congresscritters voted the Pentagon's bloated funding deal. 28 July 2019 (Jewish religious leaders) Jewish religious leaders reminded Congress that rejection and cruelty to refugees can hurt anyone. 28 July 2019 (Russian hacking the 2020 election) (satire) … Russian operative Pavel Artemyev reportedly expressed disappointment Friday that gerrymandering has taken all the fun out of hacking the 2020 election. 28 July 2019 (Comparing foreign policy) Comparing Warren with Sanders on foreign policy. I disagree with the author on some points. Russia and China do threaten the security of Americans, though not as much as the bullshitter does. I think the US should keep troops in Rojava (the Kurdish part of Syria) for as long as Rojava wants them. If we care about democracy in the Middle East, we should defend it when it is threatened. 28 July 2019 (Thugs' video surveillance) Detroit is playing games to expand the thugs' video surveillance and obfuscate its relationship with face recognition. 28 July 2019 (Remaining refugees on Manus) The remaining refugees imprisoned on Manus Island have been invited to move to New Zealand, but Australia's right wing hate regime won't let them. It is good that the bully did not stop the US from accepting many refugees from Manus. As for the ones that have moved to Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, I wonder what their lives are like there. Australia is still ashamed of its actions there. An opposition Australian senator went to Manus Island and asked to visit the prison. Not only was he denied permission, Papua New Guinea immediately deported him. It is clear that Papua New Guinea's government is acting as a puppet for the Australian minister in charge, Dutton. By the way, Dutton is the same minister that could have you imprisoned if you disobey secret orders to sabotage your clients or your free software. Don't go to Australia. 28 July 2019 (UK extends abortion and same sex marriage in Northern Ireland) The UK parliament voted to authorize abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. These were blocked because the parliament of Northern Ireland ceased to function some years ago. 28 July 2019 (Advice about militarism) Important advice about militarism that President Roosevelt received in 1940, but the US is forgetting. 28 July 2019 (Woman's soul in purgatory) (satire) A woman's soul complains of gender bias in purgatory. There is surely gender bias in CIA torture, too. 28 July 2019 (Biden championed Dubya's war with Iraq) Biden didn't just vote for Dubya's war with Iraq. He championed it. 28 July 2019 (Israelis' houses on Palestinians') Israel has decided to legitimize Israelis' houses on Palestinians' land, if the Israelis dealt "in good faith" with the Israeli government. Israelis are not required to show "good faith" to Palestinians themselves. Contrast this with how Israel grabs for excuses to make Palestinians demolish their own homes. 28 July 2019 (Evidence supports Iran's claim) The weight of the evidence supports Iran's claim that the US spy drone that Iran shot down was over Iran's waters. Making war plans and running war games do not strike me as matters of special concern. Those kinds of preparations are, in most cases, not followed by an actual war. Thus, if the bully does attack Iran, I won't consider that planning to be the cause. The US has cancelled and violated the nonnuclear accord with Iran but still criticizes Iran for not obeying it. 28 July 2019 (Alexa recordings) Amazon keeps Alexa recordings and transcripts indefinitely. 28 July 2019 (Arctic wildfires) "Unprecedented": More Than 100 Arctic Wildfires Burn in Worst Ever Season. In some places the peat is burning and could burn for months. The relation between this and global heating is direct in both directions. The Arctic has heated much more than anywhere else on Earth, and that temperature makes for fire. And the fire spews CO2 which will increase global heating. 28 July 2019 (Mobile phone personality) A person's pattern of using a mobile phone allows deducing a lot about per personality. Phone companies around the world could use this to help profile people. 28 July 2019 (The right trees in the right place) In order for planting trees to be environmentally beneficial, they need to be the right trees, in a suitable place. I conjecture that a good rule would be to plant trees in places that used to be forests a few centuries ago, and plant the trees that used to live there. 28 July 2019 (EPA plans to allow polluters to appeal) The EPA plans to allow polluters to appeal rulings but not allow pollution victims to do so. Plutocratists have directed that agency to do the opposite of its job. That is why I now call it the Environmental Poisoning Agency. 28 July 2019 (Moscow police arrest 200 protesters) Moscow Police Arrest up to 200 Ahead of Election Protest. Putin openly visits contempt on democracy as an act of intimidation, like what the bully does in the US. 28 July 2019 (Woman forced to wax testicles) In the Guardian we read, Surely a woman shouldn’t be forced to wax testicles if that makes them feel uncomfortable? Who or what does "them" refer to? The testicles? The woman? Notwithstanding my delectation in occasional wildly funny ambiguities such as that one, I continue to advocate systematically avoiding them by using singular gender-neutral pronouns when referring to just one person. In this particular case, since the person is specified as a woman, "her" would also have fit. 28 July 2019 (Siri records) Siri Records Fights, Doctor's Appointments, And Sex (and contractors hear it). 28 July 2019 (Israeli who had to prove his guilt) The Israeli Who Had to Prove He's Guilty of Beating a Palestinian, and the Palestinian Who Had to Prove He's Innocent of Raping a Jewish Girl. 28 July 2019 (Australian mines cut corners) The workers in Australian mines now have precarious jobs (and, apparently, no unions to defend them). So they are afraid they will be fired if they report how the mine cuts corners and endangers people's lives and health. The underlying cause of this is right-wing government that lets mines get away with precarious employment. Give miners more power and their union will attend to the safety. 28 July 2019 (Machine learning patents) Machine learning / automated classification is going to be loaded down with patents, like other fields of computing. (The article uses the misleading over-generalization, "IP". It covers a bunch of disparate laws, which in itself is spreads confusion by leading people to think those laws have something significant in common.) We need laws that directly exclude software and use of software from the domain of patents. 28 July 2019 (Jewish activists protest deportation thugs) Jewish activists protest the deportation thugs, saying "Never Again Means Close the Camps!" Jews have two different interpretations of "Never again!" One is narrow: "Never again to us!" The other interpretation is broad: "Never again to anybody!" I admire that side of Judaism (although it won't convince me to believe in supernatural entities). 28 July 2019 (Amazon strike) A strike planned in an Amazon warehouse is meant to draw a contrast between the carefully cultivated image Amazon presents to consumers and the reality for the company's workers. By contrast, in the Free Software Movement we aim to draw a contrast between that same image and the reality for those who make the mistake of accepting the company's services. 28 July 2019 (Ocean tipping point) Evidence suggests that excess CO2 in the ocean can reach a tipping point after which the ocean would rapidly become much more acidic. 28 July 2019 (Legalizing recreation marijuana) Legalizing recreational marijuana correlates with decreased use by high school students. 28 July 2019 (Instagram AI) Instagram is testing AI-implemented kind communication guidelines. In the GNU Project we ask people to learn and consciously practice our kind communication guidelines. 28 July 2019 (Defense attorneys vow) (satire) Defense Attorneys Vow To Present Irrefutable Evidence Proving Jeffrey Epstein Billionaire. 28 July 2019 (Employee's fingerprints) The staff of a Chicago medical organization are suing because it identified them with fingerprints for each shift. I think it is bad that the employer has their fingerprints at all. Is it possible to authenticate people with a biometric that is normally hidden? 28 July 2019 (US schools monitoring social media) US schools are monitoring social media postings of everyone living near by, using Artificial Stupidity to detect "threats". Nearly every alarm is a false alarm. One thing that the article doesn't mention is that the contracts for using the school's computers and their nonfree software, and the online dis-services that the school wants to let spy on students, are fundamentally unjust. 28 July 2019 (Christchurch Mayor) Christchurch Mayor On Mass Shooter: 'I've no idea what his name is'. I didn't pay attention to that name either. 28 July 2019 (Face recognition and body cameras) Real-Time Facial Recognition Should Never Be Coupled with Body-Worn Cameras. I agree, but that is not enough. We must also them from being used to make and store videos without limits. My proposed automatic system to decide when to save the recording could take care of this job. 28 July 2019 (Mining drivers licenses) The FBI frequently identifies people by running their photos through many states' data bases of drivers license photos. The deportation thugs do it too, which means that the states which permit this expose their residents gratuitously to deportation. 28 July 2019 (Tsipras and Syriza) Tsipras and Syriza lost the first battle to the global plutocracy. Then, instead of fighting for every inch, they capitulated eagerly. Then most Greeks did the foolish thing that a defeated people often do: they decided to support a different set of right-wing plutocratists instead. This was pitiful and stupid. Despair can drive a people to do self-mutilation, just as it can drive an individual to it, but don't help your enemies subjugate your people. 28 July 2019 (Global heating in Somalia) Global heating is causing havoc in Somalia, through repeated drought. As the number of people who can't feed themselves any more increases, it is clear that other countries will eventually let them die. But in the mean time, climate strikers and Extinction Rebellion can present their example of a foretaste of what is coming if we don't decarbonize. 28 July 2019 (Redirecting pipeline profits) "[Trudeau's] promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research." There is no room in the carbon budget for strip-mining Alberta's tar sands. 28 July 2019 (Disasters caused by global heating) Local disasters due to global heating are happening at a rate of roughly once per week. Mizutori's stance is misguided. We must give priority to long-term reduction of the harm that global heating will do. We must do all we can in that direction. Defending cities from floods and fires of the 2020s must take second place to reducing the floods and fires of the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s and beyond. It is good to defend cities better in the short term, provided this is not at the expense of measures to reduce the long-term threat. 28 July 2019 (Refusal to cover up murals) Scholars implore San Francisco not to cover up the murals that depict misdeeds of George Washington. It is true that we can't tell the school's students (or anyone else) how to feel. That doesn't mean we must cater to misguided demands that are motivated by those feelings. 28 July 2019 (US concentration camp cruelty) In US concentration camps for immigrants, the officers let thugs vent cruelty at the prisoners. "The conditions in the border cells are shocking — but the right[-wing] will use public outrage [as an excuse to] to build more jails." 27 July 2019 (Bully's act of terror) For the bully, threatening massive deportation raids then not carrying them out added up to a successful act of terror. He used cruelty to send a message. I did not post about this, because it is a mistake to talk about whatever the conman says. Next time he tries to terrify people with a threat, let's please not talk about it. The things has actually does cause enough harm on their own; we need not add to them by quoting his threats. 27 July 2019 (25 year wealth gap) Wealthy white males in the US today are about as healthy (on the average) as were the wealthy white males of 25 years ago, but all other demographic groups in the US have got less healthy since then. The study doesn't show the reason for this, but the increasing expense of medical care in the US is surely part of the reason. The increasing stress of living in the US under plutocracy may be another. The hospital that became famous for suing poor people for medical charges they can't pay has dropped some of the lawsuits. It is going to reconsider that policy. Maybe after this public outrage the hospital will cease all such lawsuits. Or maybe it won't. If it does stop, it might start again in a year or two and hope nobody notices. No word on whether it will rename itself as "Le Malheur". 27 July 2019 (Boris Johnson, evil clown) Boris Johnson, an evil clown, may now become prime minister of the UK by burying a real scandal under an assertion so unbelievable that the press got distracted by how unbelievable it was. The assertion was also apparently calculated to disguise one of his past failures in search engines. I didn't post any notes about the unbelievable statement, because it was not important. Additional reasons to distrust someone's word are hardly needed when that someone is a Tory. 27 July 2019 (Border thugs discussion group) US border thugs tried to cover up their secret discussion group for posting their hatred of immigrants, but the Intercept saved it and has posted about it. The quotation, "Fuck the whole country of Honduras," is ironic because that's exactly what the US has done. 27 July 2019 (Urgent: Block Facebook's planned currency) US citizens: call on Congress to block Facebook's planned currency. If you sign, please spread the word! 27 July 2019 (Outspoken progressives) (satire) … House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed concerns Thursday that outspoken progressives could do permanent damage to Democrats’ reputation as ineffectual cowards. 27 July 2019 (Deportation thugs) 'I Was Ready to Sign' Deportation Papers, Says US Citizen After Three Weeks in Horrific Immigrant Detention Center. The conditions included denial of medical care. The deportation thugs released him after negative publicity, but there is no reason to think that they will make the conditions for the other prisoners any less nasty. 27 July 2019 (Australia's new coal projects) All insurance companies in Australia now refuse to insure any new coal projects. This may put an end to most of them, but really large companies might self-insure. Now what about oil and gas? 27 July 2019 (Natural gas disinformation campaign) A natural gas company in California set up an unnatural astroturf disinformation campaign to keep the methane leaking. The term "balance" has a powerful irrational appeal. We've seen this in the copyright field for ages, and now in energy as well. 27 July 2019 (The British bullshitter) About Boris Johnson, the British bullshitter that is allied with the US bullshitter. 27 July 2019 (Deadly heat in tropical regions) If we don't curb global heating, many tropical regions will experience deadly heat every year. Often this will follow storms that cut the electric supply to the air conditioning that would be necessary to save people's lives. 27 July 2019 (Mueller's testimony) Mueller's testimony did not deal a political blow to the bullshitter, because he gave little if any new explanation. I think the bullshitter deserves to be impeached and removed from office, for treating the US political system with contempt, as well as multiple crimes and acts of cruelty and dishonesty. But it is impossible to do that, and without that possibility, whether to impeach is simply a matter of political tactics. 27 July 2019 (RT TV disinformation) How RT TV designs its disinformation to serve Russia's interest. 27 July 2019 (Opioids executive convicted of bribery) An opioids executive was convicted of bribing doctors to prescribe the opioid "subsys." 27 July 2019 (Extinction rebellion) Extinction Rebellion: "Fashion Week Should Be a Declaration of Emergency." It is bizarre to think that clothing makes a big contribution to global heating, but it is true: "fast fashion", the practice of wearing clothes just a little and discarding them, has turned clothing into something to consume rather than a durable good. 27 July 2019 (Right to repair for farm equipment) Sanders and Warren advocate right to repair for farm equipment. 27 July 2019 (Barcelona will try to prevent airport expansion) Barcelona will try to prevent expansion of its airport. Bravo! The world cannot sustain the increase of air travel. 27 July 2019 (The UK is trying to corrupt charities) The UK is trying — again — to corrupt charities that help homeless people by getting them to participate in a scheme to identify foreigners and deport them. In doublespeak, this scheme is called "support" for homeless people. 27 July 2019 (India is shipping water by train) India is shipping water by train from Kerala to Chennai. But since the lack of water is due to global heating, the shortfall will increase over time. If Delhi runs out of water next year, I doubt that shipping water from Kerala will be a solution. In the long term, IUDs can help prevent the need for water from increasing, and solar-powered desalinators can compensate (a little) for the decrease in supply. But farms need water, too. I fear India is headed for massive starvation. 27 July 2019 (Microsoft's anti-Right-to-Repair) Debunking Microsoft's anti-Right-to-Repair FUD. Bravo for the article, but one quotation falls into a widespread confusion: that spread by the term "intellectual property". and "If you hire a managed service provider to do your network security they could, instead,... steal your intellectual property." In general, that statement is false. It could not steal your copyrights, or your patents, or your trademarks, or your plant variety monopolies, or your IC mask monopolies, or your publicity rights — those are legal privileges, so they can't be "stolen". I think the only things it could possibly steal that way are trade secrets. Please don't ever say "intellectual property" if what you mean is "trade secrets" or if what you mean is "copyrights", or if what you mean is any other specific thing, because that is a big generalization. It is likely to convert a narrow true statement into a broad false one. If you think that what you mean is all of them, then please study the issue more carefully — a statement so general is usually false, and probably most of them are not even relevant to the issue at hand. If you want to quote a statement where someone else used the term "intellectual property", please check whether the statement was false due to this confusion. Any statement that used that term probably was confused. 27 July 2019 (Law to publish the tax returns of corporations) To make Amazon pay its fair share of taxes, and Apple, Google, Facebook and others too, we need to see their tax returns. Let's change tax law to publish the tax returns of corporations. We could extend this to every company that files a separate tax return, or to every company that isn't a sole proprietorship. With that exception, it would respect personal privacy adequately, 27 July 2019 (Face tracking) Private use of face tracking is widespread and dangerous, but the proposed regulations only aim at use by public agencies. Not enough! Government surveillance cameras watching the street are a great disguise for private surveillance cameras put up by nobody-knows-who. Surveillance cameras — cameras transmitting video somewhere else — should be illegal except when authorized by a court for a specific place and period of time. 27 July 2019 (Unfair trials) Pressuring Bahrain to cancel executions of people whose trials were thoroughly unfair. 27 July 2019 (Tobacco Epidemic) Battle Against Tobacco Epidemic Is Far from Won. 27 July 2019 (European Investment Bank) The European Investment Bank will stop funding fossil duel projects. This could make a real difference if other investors follow this example. 27 July 2019 (An interview with Manual Zelaya) An interview with Manual Zelaya, who was president of Honduras until the coup that appears to have been approved by Hilary Clinton. 27 July 2019 (Contrasting codes of conduct) Contrasting codes of conduct and accusations with trying to be kind to other people. 27 July 2019 (California require bots to identify themselves) California now has a law requiring bots to identify themselves as such when used for advertising or electioneering. I think this is a good idea, but I wonder whether enforcing the law will prove difficult. 27 July 2019 (Brazil frozen chicken infested with salmonella) Brazil is a big exporter of frozen chicken, and 1/5 of it is infested with salmonella. The EU should blacklist Brazil until its infestation rate gets down to the achievable level? I doubt it will do so, but why not? Is it only lack of moral commitment, or is there some legal obstacle? I wonder if some business-supremacy treaties forbid this. Can anyone suggest who to ask? 27 July 2019 (Plants exchange signals) Plants exchange signals and respond to some stimuli. Don't leap to the conclusion that this means they can feel or think. 27 July 2019 (Trustworthy AI) An independent expert group sponsored by the European Union has published a plan for promoting "trustworthy AI". It does not seem to propose how to develop an AI to be trustworthy, how to determine whether a given AI program is infact trustworthy, or how any AI program can be trustworthy. As far as I know, these are totally unsolved problems, but the report takes for granted some solution is used. 27 July 2019 (Captured an Iranian oil tanker) The British navy captured an Iranian oil tanker said to be taking oil to Syria. This was clearly an act of war, and justifies military action Iran's part. The capture took place in disputed waters near Gibraltar, and Spain has objected to it. I can't see what relevance EU sanctions have. If the are sanctions, they prohibit certain dealings between EU entities and Syria. I don't see how an Iranian ship would come under EU sanctions, unless it is owned by a European company. Only a blockade would purport go that far, and a blockade, if there were one, would be an act of war in itself. (Remember when Egypt blockaded Elat? Israel responded to that, legitimately, by capturing the Sinai.) I don't think the EU has announced a blockade of Syria. Indeed, it is unable to do such a thing; the whole field of war is outside the EU's scope. So there is some bullshit here. I hope someone sorts out the facts. 27 July 2019 (China taking thousands children) China is taking thousands of Uighur children away from their parents and putting them into boarding schools designed to assimilate them. This resembles what the US and Canada did to indigenous peoples during much of the 20th century. Public opinion made the US and Canada stop this, but in China public opinion is not allowed to exist. Even fairly mild reproach of China for putting a million Uighurs in brainwash camps has discomfited China. Firm pressure might accomplish a great deal. Perhaps Hong Kong should be the main target of the pressure, for now. 27 July 2019 (Plutocratist party) An explicitly plutocratist party is expected to win the elections in Greece. I think Syriza's surrender discredited the idea of resistance. Perhaps Greeks have thrown in the towel, and are now telling themselves that surrender will get them some trickle-down. However, we've seen that that's bullshit. The plutocrats will be nice to you until you have swallowed the hook, but then they squeeze ever harder. Getting a little more privileges in the labor camp, through assiduous obedience, will never get you freedom. 27 July 2019 (We'll pay for your personal data) ACLU: beware dis-services that say, "We'll pay for your personal data" — that would only legitimize the basis of their power, not weaken it. Shushana Zuboff's take on why "owning the data about you" would be ineffective as protection from surveillance capitalism. 27 July 2019 (Keep information on who paid for each political ad) Canada required social media companies to keep information on who paid for each ad political. Google responded by not running any political ads. The author seems to think that Google somehow defeated Canada. I say it's just the opposite: Canada achieved a bigger success than it aimed for! This suggests it may be possible for one country to succeed in defeating a system that spreads fake news, if it can identify the crucial nexus at which to operate. Different networks function differently. 27 July 2019 (Shell's Sleazy Censorship) Shell's Sleazy Censorship: arranging a joint event with climate defenders, then cancelling the participation of the researcher who was going to show how Shell is still working to hamper climate defense. 27 July 2019 (Restricting diesel fuel) Less well-off areas have least to lose from restricting diesel fuel, and most to gain from clean-air zones, study finds. 27 July 2019 (Australian aboriginals) The University of New South Wales has told teachers not to talk about the fact that the Australian aboriginals reached and colonized Australia around 40,000 years ago. Science is to be suppressed so as to respect their nonscientific traditional views. I think that lying to children is likely to backfire on them. I resent when parents demand I support their lies about Santa Claus, because I think I'd be doing wrong. Lying to adults about their group's origin could be even worse. 27 July 2019 (OPEC climate defense campaigns) OPEC acknowledged that climate defense campaigns including the school strike for climate threaten fossil fuel extraction industry's future profits. Greta Thunberg called this "our biggest compliment yet". OPEC calls criticism "unscientific", but that can only mean that the likely fragments of the coming disaster have not been specifically proved. It would be irrational to wait for such detailed proof before protecting ourselves. Striking students can influence officials even in right-wing parts of the US. They can mobilize their parents, too. 27 July 2019 (Damage caused by global heating) A study covers 1300 lawsuits against governments and businesses over damage caused by global heating. 27 July 2019 (High stress cause fetuses to miscarry) Situations of high stress cause fetuses to miscarry. The effect is stronger for male fetuses. I wonder whether in Alabama anyone that imposes stress on a pregnant woman who subsequently has a miscarriage could be prosecuted for homicide. 27 July 2019 (US farmers) US farmers are growing a lot of food but making little money. At the same time, they are exhausting and losing the soil and spreading toxins. Here are ideas for how to fix both. Another cause of the failure of farms is being compelled to sell to a few large middleman companies. Many farms have gone broke recently. The pressure means farmers cannot invest in regenerative agriculture. Sanders proposes how to restructure agriculture in the US for the sake of farmers. 27 July 2019 (Venezuela's suppression forces) A UN human rights report says that Venezuela's suppression forces have killed almost 7000 people since Jan 2018 for "resisting arrest". This is the government's own figure, so it is clear they were all killed in raids, but it is inconceivable that they all died in that way. More information about torture discovered by the UN visit. 27 July 2019 (Corrupt judge Sergio Moro) Brazil has thoroughly condemned corrupt judge Sergio Moro. In the past, this sort of exposure would compel an official to resign. Nowadays, corrupt officials have discovered that trying to tough it out may succeed. What will it take to kick Moro out of office? 26 July 2019 (Racist stop-and-frisk) US Judge Shira Scheindlin pronounces on racist stop-and-frisk in Israel based on her decisions about racist stop-and-frisk in New York City. 26 July 2019 (Military occupation of Palestine) Israeli right-wing extremists, from Netanyahu on down, have decided to deny the fact that Palestine is under Israeli military occupation. When anyone points out this fact, they call it "anti-semitism". They do so, while maintaining an alliance with real anti-semites in the US. 26 July 2019 ("Influencers") "Influencers" try to extort gratis food from restaurants, even ice cream trucks. The best way to deal with them is to stay away from Instagram. It's a branch of Facebook and participating in it is for zuckers. 26 July 2019 (Military bill forbids fighting with Iran) House Democrats put an amendment into a military bill that would strictly forbid fighting with Iran, other than defending against attacks. 26 July 2019 (iBad tracking in schools) If your school provides you with an iBad, it's not merely imposing user-subjugating software and online dis-services. It may also be tracking your movements in the school. 26 July 2019 (Tree planting) Tree planting could be a big part of preventing climate disaster. However, I have to raise two questions: Will the trees we plant live to grow large? Global heating could kill them. Migrating parasites and infections could kill them. Humans desperate for firewood could kill them. Will we be able to plant trees faster than deforesters cut them down? 26 July 2019 (Migrants imprisoned next to military base) One of Libya's governments imprisoned migrants next to a military base. Haftar's army attacked the base and bombed the prison too. This caused over 100 casualties. 26 July 2019 (Release of Captain Rackete from arrest) An Italian judge rebuked Salvini and releasing Captain Rackete from arrest. It is not clear whether any of the charges have been dropped. 26 July 2019 (Hong Kong legislature) A hundred or so protesters took over the building of the Hong Kong legislature, after bashing down its door. Then they destroyed computers and other facilities. That legislature is elected through a biased system; it is not democratic. It does not deserve much respect; I won't say that damaging its property is inherently wrong, But this violent action, and the subsequent vandalism, play into China's hands. 26 July 2019 (Demand anyone's New York state tax returns) New York State has authorized the head of a congressional committee to demand anyone's New York state tax returns. That congresscritter should now demand the conman's tax returns. This won't have immediate results — I suppose the conman will sue, hoping to get the Supreme Court to overturn that law. 26 July 2019 (Bee-Killing Pesticide) USDA Indefinitely Suspends Honey Bee Tracking Survey as [eleven] States Get [special emergency] Approval to Use Bee-Killing Pesticide. I wish this were satire. 26 July 2019 (Many compostable plastics remain inert) Many "biodegradable" and even "compostable" plastics remain inert and undamaged in home composting, or in the ocean. 26 July 2019 (UK ambassador to the US) The UK ambassador to the US has been sending his government an honest appraisal of the conman. If ministers continue fawning on the conman, it's not due to ignorance. 26 July 2019 (Business-supremacy treaties) Business-supremacy treaties are a big screw. If the UK pulls out of one (the EU), another one (the WTO) will clobber it. 26 July 2019 (Right-wing policies) Right-wing policies make people homeless, and right-wing politicians make an excuse not to care: they regard the homeless people as a disgusting nuisance, to dehumanize them. 26 July 2019 (The Green New Deal) The Green New Deal can do more than avoid disaster. It can be an opportunity to make the world better in other ways. 26 July 2019 (Company with phony information) The UK makes it easy to set up a company with phony information about the owners. It doesn't even bother to check whatever information it is given. 26 July 2019 (Risk of fraud in games) 1/3 of gamers reportedly refuse to pay for anything in games simply because of the risk of fraud. However, there is a deeper reason to refuse to pay for anything in a game: because that enables the game company to track you. And the deepest reason is that the game is a proprietary program. Playing against someone who buys better skill or better equipment is equivalent to playing against someone who cheats. 26 July 2019 (Britain's Obsession with "anti-Semitism") Let's Be Honest about Britain's Obsession with "anti-Semitism". 26 July 2019 (Fix Food System) We [Americans] Have the Money to Fix Our Food System. 26 July 2019 (Sued for giving patient data to Google) The Chicago Medical Center is being sued for giving patient data to Google, in a form that can be reidentified easily. I think that clinics and schools should be required to keep their personal data on their own computers, located in their own facilities, not in servers run by companies that operate them in a cloudy way. A contract in which the company says how it can use the data is not enough to trust that it will remain private. 26 July 2019 (Norway prison system) Norway focused its prison system on rehabilitation, and recidivism declined from 60-70% to 20-25%. Rehabilitation costs more per prisoner but results in having much fewer prisons. I suspect that lowering recidivism that much depends on having a society that offers ex-cons a way to get by, other than through crime. My impression is that in the US it is so hard to get a job with an income you can live on, if you have a criminal record, that many ex-cons that want to go straight are unable to make a go of it. If the goal is to reduce the harm done by crime, this is self-defeating. But then, the US also puts a terrible burden on poor people, and on various disprivileged demographics, even if they don't have a criminal record. It is a general pattern of dehumanization, rather than a constructive attempt to address a problem. 26 July 2019 (Posting the nude photos) For years I've recommended that the way to defeat extortion through nude photos is by posting the nude photos. Now the idea is catching on. If defeating extortion nudes (and revenge porn, which differs by its motive) were the only benefit, perhaps it would not be crucial. However, it will also help decrease the general nudity taboo, and that is very important. Please don't refer to the people who carry out extortion via nudes as &mdath;hackers—. There is no reason to think that they are hackers; in any case, routine extortion is not hacking. 26 July 2019 (Starbucks worker) A Starbucks worker asked a few thugs (who were there as customers) to move because someone felt threatened by them. Starbucks apologized. If the representative of the thug association really can't imagine why some customers felt threatened, he is mentally deficient, but I think it more likely he is covering up that side of the truth. I know, from reading the news and talking with acquaintances, why blacks may feel endangered by the presence of thugs. Other people, with less grounds, may feel endangered by the presence of blacks. A store should not ask customers to leave, or to move, because "someone feels threatened by you" — not blacks, and not thugs — because people should not be judged based on how someone else feels about them. 26 July 2019 (Letting children play freely) FAQ for evidence-based defense of letting children play freely. 26 July 2019 (National Health Service) Persistent Tory cuts to the National Health Service has pushed some doctors to refuse overtime. Under new pension rules, they will have to pay to work overtime. Meanwhile, non-medical staff are going on strike against privatization. I think it is the Tories' intention to destroy the NHS by cutting its funds to the point it cannot possibly function. Then they will claim, as right-wingers like to do, that government programs can't work right. 26 July 2019 (Korea's smart city) Korea's made-from-zero "smart city" replicates The Village, complete with audio announcements that people can't shut off. I mean The Village from the TV show, The Prisoner. 26 July 2019 (A survey of sales sites) A survey of sales sites, checking for use of dark patterns, found them in 1200 out of the 10000 sites tested. I think these practices should be regulated, just like other practices of retail stores. I think that my decision not to buy anything on line has saved me more practical annoyance than it has caused me. That is in addition to protecting my freedom. 26 July 2019 (The Veterans Administration) The Veterans Administration has its own thug department, and these thugs occasionally turn on veterans seeking medical care — causing grave injuries and even death. Naturally these thugs lie to protect each other. The article recounts that one of them tried to act like a police officer rather than a thug and was attacked by the thugs. The VA officials protect them, too. 26 July 2019 (Gaza pollution crisis) Israel has forced Gaza into a pollution crisis which is now spreading to Israel. 26 July 2019 (Israel seizing public archives) Israel is systematically seizing and hiding public archives to eliminate evidence of threatening Palestinians in 1948 to make them flee. Here's more about the important vanished document about atrocities against Palestinians. 26 July 2019 (Automated face recognition) There is now a campaign to prohibit government use of automated face recognition in the US. This would be an important step forward, but not enough to protect human rights. We need to prohibit systematic use of automated face recognition by business, also. 26 July 2019 (New options for disposal of corpses) New options for disposal of corpses are less polluting than cremation and ordinary burial. 26 July 2019 (Climate defense measures) Attenborough: climate defense measures "cannot be radical enough". I think he meant "cannot be too radical". 26 July 2019 (Amnesty International) Amnesty International denounced the Taliban's "chilling disregard for human life." The US makes some effort to avoid killing Afghan civilians, but it does not consistently try hard. And when it does kill civilians, it tends to try to cover that up. 26 July 2019 (UK prime minister) Boris Johnson, whose contempt for truth matches that of his US buddy, looks to be the next prime minister of the UK. By refusing to defend Ambassador Darroch for commenting honestly and privately on that buddy, he effectively forced Darroch to resign. Darroch's resignation may have been necessary anyway. An ambassador that is detested by the head of the receiving state cannot be very effective. However, Johnson has demonstrated he wants to be prime minister of a puppet government. 26 July 2019 (School uniforms) If there have to be school uniforms, at least the rules should not be gender-biased. I never wore a school uniform. Public schools in New York in the 1950s did not have uniforms, nor did the private secondary schools I went to. Some schools had them; but in the 70s, counterculture youth rebelled against uniforms and more or less did away with them. I was repulsed when I heard, a decade ago, that the practice was spreading in the US. 26 July 2019 (Stop covering homeopathic treatment) France's medical system will stop covering homeopathic "treatment". It is no more than a placebo, based only on irrational pseudoscience. 26 July 2019 (Promoting competition in the field) The EU has a goofy idea: promoting competition in the field of surveillance capitalism by requiring big companies to make their data bases available to other companies. If done right, this could reduce the special political influence of the biggest companies. But it will do privacy no good at all. 26 July 2019 (War between India and China) As India dries out, one of the bad consequences could be war between India and China. 26 July 2019 (Conflict of interest) Congress's ethics rules allow lots of conflict of interest. A congresscritter can even trade stock in companies knowing that per actions as congresscritter will drive the stock price up or down. 26 July 2019 (Law to censor the press) Congress is considering a law to censor the press to protect the CIA — including its torturers. 26 July 2019 (Detaining Real Baby) (satire) ICE Sends Agents Home With Sacks Of Flour To Practice What It Like Detaining Real Baby. 26 July 2019 (High-pitched sound) Some parks play a constant high-pitched sound intended to drive away people under 25 years of age. They should play classical music instead. 26 July 2019 (Extreme weather events) As extreme weather events become common, being hit by two at once is no longer ridiculously unlikely. 26 July 2019 (The Climate Movement) Bill McKibben: The Climate Movement: What's Next? 26 July 2019 (Pigs factory farms) Burning some of the methane produced by pigs in factory farms is being offered as an excuse to make more factory farms. 26 July 2019 (List of billionaires) Sanders has proudly published a list of billionaires who call him an enemy. If you don't earn their hatred, you're not worth voting for. 26 July 2019 (US government lobbies) The US government lobbies internationally for increasing pharma companies' power to use patents to overcharge. It has been doing this for decades. I must criticize, however, the basic confusion spread by use of the term "intellectual property", which misrepresents the facts about various disparate laws by leading people to think of them as one single thing. Patent law is different from copyright law on nearly every point. Neither of them has any similarity to trade secrecy, and they have hardly any relationship with trademark law. If you have a category of "intellectual property" in your thinking, it will always mislead you. Please join me in shunning that term. See https://gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html. As for the World Trade Organization, it is a business-supremacy treaty, designed to give business more power over society. We must either change it so it ceases to have that effect, or get rid of it entirely. 26 July 2019 (Bullshitter praises Boris Johnson) [The bullshitter] Praises Boris Johnson, Who Once Called Him "Unfit to Hold the Office of President of the United States." The bullshitter looks for submission, not for sincerity. He does not care what Johnson said 4 years ago, as long as Johnson obeys today. Likewise, praise from the bullshitter means, simply, "You're obeying now; keep it up and I will keep praising you." 26 July 2019 (Global Heating) By the end of this century, if we don't curb global heating, humans won't be able to work safely outside in the southern US for half the year. I wonder if people will still be able to do agriculture in tropical regions. 26 July 2019 (Poor People's Campaign) The Poor People's Campaign endorses challenging the lobbying power of the military-industrial-oligopoly complex. 26 July 2019 (Company behind coal mine) The company behind a big planned coal mine in Australia demanded to know the names of the scientists participating in environmental evaluation. This was, we must suppose, for the sake of trying to intimidate them or gag them. 26 July 2019 (Bully training followers in racism) The bully has started training his followers in undisguised racism. 26 July 2019 (Indonesian domestic violence) No matter how "modestly" an Indonesian woman dresses, she can still be raped at home. I can't begin to understand why men want to demand sex with someone who isn't thrilled by it. 26 July 2019 (Do ditty's murder Campaign) Francisco Santiago Jr. is one of the few victims of the Do-dirty's murder campaigns who by luck survived his arrest and torture, and was not shot. His case shows that thugs pick people more or less arbitrarily, shoot them while they are prisoners, then decide what to accuse them of. In the US. thugs typically do this to black males, but but the Philippines thugs are not bigots -- any Filipino can be the victim. 26 July 2019 (Donations from the rich) "Charitable" donations from the rich are not really donations: they are attempts to buy public admiration. And often they get enough by just announcing the donation — they see no need to actually give the money. 26 July 2019 (Sudan protesters and military signed agreement) Sudan's protesters and military have signed an agreement about governing the country. 26 July 2019 (The Bully's devastating blow to Planned Parenthood) The bully has done a devastating blow to Planned Parenthood. It will not be able to accept federal funding for any services unless it complies with requirements that would be a surrender of its mission. 26 July 2019 (Textbook DRM) US students will be pressured to rent textbooks on subscription, which require proprietary malware with DRM to read them. 26 July 2019 (Trump warns public) (satire) Trump Claims He Tried To Warn Public About Epstein By Praising Him As A Terrific Guy. 26 July 2019 (Amazon workers) (satire) Amazon Workers Attempting Walkout Enter 7th Hour Wandering In Ever-Expanding, Labyrinth Warehouse. 26 July 2019 (Ecuador surrendered to IMF) Ecuador has surrendered to the IMF, and the non-rich will suffer greatly as a result. 26 July 2019 (Whole Foods workers) Whole Foods Workers Say Conditions Deteriorated after Amazon Takeover. For instance, they have been told to pressure customers to make deals with Amazon. This would subject them to Amazon's many abusive practices. 26 July 2019 (Biden's health plan) Biden's health plan is estimated to fall short of Medicare for All by 125,000 avoidable deaths. Sanders Accuses Biden of Parroting Pharma and Insurance Industry Script With Attacks on Medicare for All. 26 July 2019 (Domestic workers should have same rights as employees) We should give domestic workers the same rights that other employees have. 26 July 2019 (Israel school propaganda) Israel requires students traveling on school-sponsored foreign trips to pass a class in exaggerated political propaganda which insults Palestinians. Even Arab students are required to learn how to give these answers. 26 July 2019 (Israel locking foreign academics) Israel is blocking foreign academics from working at (or visiting) Palestinian universities. By contrast, the Palestinian boycott asks people not to work at Israeli universities, and does not try to stop any individual from doing anything. 26 July 2019 (McDonalds exploits schools) McDonalds exploits public school teachers to market junk food to their students. 26 July 2019 (Nepal babies malnutrition) In Nepal, babies under 2 years old are eating junk food, and it leads to malnutrition which stunts their growth. 26 July 2019 (Direct neural interface) A direct neural interface for controlling a computer could be a very good thing, provided that you the user are the only one who controls the interface. In order for that to be reliably true, the software must be free. I think testing this on animals is legitimate. It can't be developed without testing, and testing on animals is better than testing on humans. 26 July 2019 (Head of border patrol finds Facebook group abhorrent) The head of the border patrol was a member of the private Facebook group for venting hatred at immigrants. Then she told us she found it abhorrent. One thing that the US does to some immigrants is demand passwords to their Facebook accounts. This is supposedly done for our "safety". Perhaps the people this should be done to are officials. 26 July 2019 (Multilevel marketing) "Multilevel marketing" is not identical to a pyramid scheme, but in practice it often works out that way. This article shows how they lure people with promises of profits that few participants get. Many lose a lot of money instead. 26 July 2019 (Detainment center conditions) (satire) "It's Not So Bad," Mike Pence Reports On Conditions Of Detainment Center While Hazmat Suit Disinfected. 26 July 2019 (Apple nonrepairability) Reevaluating Apple's reputation for good design: design for nonrepairability is not good design. 26 July 2019 (Recording devices) Journalists obtained 1000 leaked audio recordings and showed some of them to the people who were speaking. 150 of the recordings were made when the device was not supposed to be recording. If you're in a place with Google a listening device (or Apple, or Amazon), disconnect it! Note that every portable phone is a potential listening device. 26 July 2019 (Wildlife defenders recognize need to limit human population) Finally, wildlife defenders recognize the crucial need to limit the human population, in order to leave some land wild. Investment by plutocracy also plays a role in eliminating wilderness, but the two work hand in hand (in deforestation in Brazil, for instance), so reducing births will help. 26 July 2019 (Israeli right wingers attack Jonathan Pollak) Israeli right-wing extremists set upon anti-occupation activist Jonathan Pollak on the street and beat him up, then stabbed him. As for the charges made by the right-wing extremists, they are the friends and allies of US right-wing extremists. I do not believe their accusations. 26 July 2019 (Stalin praise) As Putin imprisons historians that study Stalin's terror, Stalin receives public praise promoted by the state. 26 July 2019 (Jeffrey Epstein rape career) Jeffrey Epstein intimidated the whole US press into silence about his rape career, starting in 2003. 26 July 2019 (New Zealand gun buybacks) New Zealand is buying the now-illegal semiautomatic rifles that people already own. 26 July 2019 (Thug dossier) Any thug in parts of the US can immediately get a large dossier about most Americans from just a name or other identifier. What bothers me is not that they can get it quickly, but that so much information has been collected about millions of people who are not suspects and about which no search has been authorized. If we don't ban commercial use of face recognition to track people, this commercial data base will be extended to include people's movements as recorded by billions of surveillance cameras spread across US cities and roads. 26 July 2019 (Relieve worries about vaccination) How to relieve the worries some parents have about vaccination. A bigger and deeper question: how can we fix the systems that make it so easy to stir up conspiracy theories about anything whatsoever, especially if it relates to children, or adolescents being called "children"? People with damaged immune systems can die from measles even if they were vaccinated against it. They depend on the rest of society to get vaccinated. 26 July 2019 (Whistleblower site for tech companies) There is now a whistleblower site for tech company staff to report their employer's egregious attacks on human rights. Unfortunately this will do nothing to push back on those kinds of attacks on human rights that have become standard practice -- for instance, proprietary malware and internet dis-services that spy, manipulate, restrict, swindle and addict people. 26 July 2019 (Disabled people in the UK are now crippled) Disabled people in the UK are now crippled — by the stinginess of Tories. 26 July 2019 (Advantages of trees in pastures) Planting trees in a pasture can make it stay usable through 9 months without rain, and produce other crops too. 26 July 2019 (German school privacy) Microsoft Office 365: Banned in [some] German Schools over Privacy Fears. It is a bit silly that the legal objection is limited to sending data to servers in the US. Snooping software should be eliminated, inside and outside of schools, no matter who it spies on people for. 26 July 2019 (Thugs crash into passerby) Thugs crashed their vehicle into that of a passerby, then pulled him out and handcuffed him. It is vitally important to punish thugs for everything they do wrong in nonfatal attacks like this. We can't convert thugs into police officers by punishing them only on the rare occasions when they murder someone, not even if the punishment is severe. Most of them will never murder someone, and never know another thug who murdered someone, so they will not feel any pressure to change their ways. To achieve that, we must punish the many small incidents. 26 July 2019 (Trump honors brave heroes) (satire) Trump Honors Brave Heroes Who Slept With Wives Of Deployed Soldiers. 26 July 2019 (Systemic thug department flaws) The UK held an inquiry into the killing of Anthony Grainger (shot dead by a thug) and determined that systemic flaws in the thug department were to blame.](https://www.stallman.org/images/anuran-bevan.jpg){kind=link}
