[ 2024 May - August | 2024 January - April | 2023 September - December | 2023 May - August | 2023 January - April | 2022 September - December | 2022 May - August | 2022 January - April | 2021 September - December | 2021 May - August | 2021 January - April | 2020 September - December | 2020 May - August | 2020 January - April | 2019 September - December | 2019 May - August | 2019 January - April | 2018 September - December | 2018 May - August | 2018 January - April | 2017 September - December | 2017 May - August | 2017 January - April | 2016 September - December | 2016 May - August | 2016 January - April | 2015 September - December | 2015 May - August | 2015 January - April | 2014 September - December | 2014 May - August | 2014 January - April | 2013 September - December | 2013 May - August | 2013 January - April | 2012 September - December | 2012 May - August | 2012 January - April | 2011 September - December | 2011 May - August | 2011 January - April | 2010 September - December | 2010 May - August | 2010 January - April | 2009 September - December | 2009 May - August | 2009 January - April | 2008 September - December | 2008 May - August | 2008 January - April | 2007 September - December | 2007 May - August | 2007 January - April | 2006 September - December | 2006 May - August | 2006 January - April | 2005 September - December | 2005 May - August | 2005 January - April | 2004 September - December | 2004 May - August | 2004 January - April | 2003 September - December | 2003 May - August | 2003 January - April | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 ]
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.
Pope Pius XII stayed silent while Mussolini let Nazis round up Italian Jews in order to murder them.
Recently opened Vatican archives show he was persuaded by an advisor who argued that it would appear inconsistent for the Catholic Church to object to oppression of Jews, after having itself oppressed them for centuries.
The archives also show that later, after the war ended, the pope ordered followers to keep Jewish orphans away from their relatives so as to raise them as Catholics.
A company that makes airships presents them as a way to reduce the emissions of air travel.
However, that company's airships apparently won't reduce emissions the tiniest bit, since it plans to use them as a sort of aerial cruise ship.
I am puzzled by the claim that they will travel faster than trains. Fast trains today sometimes take passengers station to station averaging 175 miles per hour, while these airships seem to be tested only up to 50 knots.
The bullshitter has invited employers to collect the payroll tax for Social Security and Medicare for the rest of 2020 next year instead of this year. When they do so, it will increase workers' pay this year, and decrease it by the same amount next year, for no net benefit.
I wonder what will happen if a worker is fired at the end of the year. Will they get an actual one-time benefit? Or will they be forced to repay this advance anyway?
When the wrecker's officials violate the Hatch Act by campaigning while acting in their official capacity, the mainstream press doesn't mention that this is illegal.
Barr won't prosecute it, and I suspect that regional Justice Department officers won't dare. In effect, the wrecker has put himself and his supporters above the law.
*Relationships, advice, careers… so much of life is lost when you work from home.*
*Indigenous tribe in Ecuador appeals for help to deal with coronavirus.*
*Achuar people blame illegal logging for spread and are asking international community for aid.*
Covid-19 was not engineered by humans, but it will get easier and easier for humans to engineer something worse. How can we avert this?
Covid-19 is spreading fast in France, almost as fast as its peak in the spring.
Obviously the current measures are not enough to stop it. Why does the government delay taking adequate measures?
Victoria is setting a wise example.
The Republican Convention did an effective job of presenting empathy and concern for ordinary people. Even though it is total bullshit, it can win them votes.
The physical and moral challenges of rebuilding the destroyed ancient cities of Syria.
Lukashenko is expelling foreign journalists, and prosecuting some Belarussian journalists. That can only mean he is preparing for an atrocity.
Sometimes the Theater of Security Agency presents a tragedy, the frequently repeated "civil asset forfeiture".
When mail-in ballots make it through the USPS, the gauntlet is not finished. Many localities and states are not prepared to handle large quantities of postal ballots.
In addition, as Greg Palast has informed us, local officials have opportunities to discriminate in rejecting postal ballots, and they use them.
I decided to use early voting rather than postal voting.
The rich use charity (along with buying politicians) to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. This charity will not correct the huge injustices of our time — that requires government programs.
The article makes many criticisms against the US nonprofit sector, and some of them are mistaken. For instance, I think museums are an important contribution to society. But the article's main points are valid.
Near the end the article presents a grab-bag of criticisms, some of which are logically invalid. For instance, when ACLU offices discriminated against queer people, that was wrong, but that does not invalidate the ACLU's work. It should not reduce in the slightest our appreciation of the ACLU's campaign to make it illegal to discriminate against queer people, or for many other legal rights. We must reject the fallacy that failure to totally live its principles makes an organization (or a person) worthless.
*USPS is telling people their mail is being held 'at the request of the customer.' It isn’t true.*
NBA players went on strike, and quickly won agreement to use NBA stadiums as special safe voting facilities in elections starting this year. Also for efforts to promote voting and promote criminal justice reform.
The BREATHE Act would stop the Pentagon from filling US thug departments with military weapons and systems.
Biden would probably revert to Obama's foreign policy, more or less.
This might include more and worse business-supremacy treaties. One of the few good things that the bully has done was reject the TPP and eliminate the ISDS clause from NAFTA.
Thugs in Kenosha organized in advance to arrest Riot Kitchen activists who came equipped to prepare and hand out food.
I suspect that someone gave the thugs a false tip about these food-serving activists. However, that doesn't explain or excuse their breaking the window of the minivan.
*The Thin Blue Line Between Violent [wrecker] Militias and [the uniformed thugs].*
*House Democrats launch contempt proceedings against Mike Pompeo.*
He is likely to disregard the contempt vote just as he disregards subpoenas. Can the House manage to arrest him?
The local news media in Western Massachusetts presented the smear against Alex Morse as true, then said nothing about how it was a scheme.
*Protesters in Multiple States Are Facing Felony Charges, Including Terrorism.*
This article projects a tremendous danger of surveillance and manipulation in cameras to scrape and understand everything a person looks at.
Unfortunately, the author doesn't recognize that free software offers at least part of a way to avoid the danger.
Calling for Canada to offer addicts a legal supply of opioids.
This approach has reduced the harm that they do in the Netherlands, and in Portugal. I think it even reduces the number of people that become addicted.
We might wish that opioids had never been invented — but the real effect of prohibiting them is nothing like that.
Everyone: call on Verizon to drop sponsorship of an arms and surveillance expo for thug departments.
Human Rights Watch says Venezuela is using coronavirus as cover to crack down on dissent.
*Giancarlo Granda, the man at the center of a sex scandal involving Jerry Falwell Jr, detailed on Friday how the evangelical leader and outspoken ally of Donald Trump “enjoyed watching” his wife and Granda having sex.*
Good for him! And good for the other two! I am glad for all of them. But it was very wrong of the Falwells to go on hypocritically saying that it is wrong to do things like that.
A recent survey found that 1/4 of young adults in the US had considered suicide in the past 30 days.
More than half have mental disorders.
This may be partially due to isolation from denial of physical contact. I suspect it is also partly due to awareness that global heating disaster is going to turn their lives upside down, and perhaps kill them, before they are old.
It is very easy for mining companies in Australia to get permission to destroy old aboriginal sites. They have obtained such permission for hundreds of siteswhich they have not destroyed yet.
The sites which are of archaeological significance, or might be so — which means, all or nearly all of them — should be protected unconditionally for the sake of science.
(satire) *Fox News announced Wednesday that they had limited their pandemic coverage to avoid giving the Covid-19 the notoriety it craved.* https://www.theonion.com/fox-news-limits-pandemic-coverage-to-avoid-giving-coron-1844855729
The UK has preemptively arrested some Extinction Rebellion activists for some sort of protest plan.
*Despite DNC Focus on Winning 'Biden Republicans,' New Poll Suggests Beating Trump 'All About Democratic Turnout'.*
I think the reason that the "centrist" corporatist Democrats choose to aim for support from Republicans is that pre-wrecker Republicans are closer to their corporatist positions than progressives are.
The US fossil fuel companies stay afloat (those that aren't already bankrupt) only because of government subsidies. The wrecker has effectively increased the subsidies by cutting what these companies have to pay for extracting publicly owned resources.
*Outrage Grows Over Police Treatment of Alleged Kenosha Killer Kyle Rittenhouse Compared to Shooting Victim Jacob Blake.*
Thugs showed respect and support to the armed vigilante, not even arresting him for the shooting. Shouldn't they be fired for that, at least?
(satire) *Blue Lives Matter supporters told reporters Thursday that Kyle Rittenhouse’s actions did not reflect the nonviolent tactics favored by most police-state apologists.*
The EU is being criticized for a deal that shields a vaccine company from liability.
Vaccinating everyone for a certain disease might save 1% of the population from death or grave injury due to that disease, and might cause grave harm to .001%. If each of the people thus harmed sued the company, it could go broke. It makes sense for the government to shield the vaccine makers from liability provided it covers the .001%'s treatment and losses in some other way.
In a country with a national medical system, that arrangement is easy to implement, and is good for everyone concerned. The people suffer far fewer sicknesses and deaths. The nation has fewer sick people to treat, fewer disabled people to support, and fewer deaths to compensate. Then the vaccine manufacturer can charge a reasonable amount for the vaccine and make a reasonable, steady profit. National medical systems negotiate the price of every medicine, so the company cannot gouge.
The US is a weird case because it does not have a national medical system. The few who get sick from the vaccine, and need treatment or care, can only afford it by suing the vaccine company (or someone with deep pockets). If they can't sue the vaccine company, they go without treatment. Under these circumstances, it would be cruel to excuse the company from liability.
But what the US really needs is not medical liability, but a national medical system — Medicare for All. Then we could limit liability suits to cases where the company did something wrong.
The US Gulf coast is full of unsafe chemical plants, some of which leak toxins all the time. Putting that together with a hurricane is acutely risky, and in Louisiana one of these accidents-waiting-to-happen just stopped waiting.
Coal companies think they can get a state in Australia to approve 21 new coal mines.
The demand for coal has been declining.
QueasyJet is being sued for asking a woman to change seats because her neighbor objected to the presence of a woman in the next seat.
If your neighbor is doing nothing wrong to you, but for some reason you don't want to sit next to per, that's your problem. You can live with it, or ask to move, or get off the plane. This is obvious to most of us, but religion sometimes encourages people to think they should dominate others.
(satire) *[DNC] Chair Tom Perez asked a conference room full of truck drivers, home healthcare workers, and retail associates, offering them candy when they provided desired responses to 2020 candidates and shocking them with a small electric baton when they did not. "Me Tom. Me say, 'Joe Biden good, Donald Trump bad.' Say it with Tom, now: 'Biden good, Trump bad.'"*
One of the tentative ideas for keeping migrants away from the Mexican border was to fire a microwave heat ray at them. Kirstjen Nielsen vetoed it because she wasn't that cruel.
The wrecker's henchmen forced the CDC to sabotage its testing guidelines. They made the decision when Dr Fauci was getting operated on, to keep him in the dark.
The Tories offered to pay low-wage workers to self-isolate, but their plan won't do the job because the pay offered is less than they earn if they go to work while sick.
People who get better pay, and have savings, could appreciate a program to pay only part of what they are temporarily not earning. But the low-wage workers live from paycheck to inadequate paycheck.
The new prosecutor for Ferguson sought to prosecute the thug that killed Michael Brown, but he found it was impossible. They did not have the basis to convict him for the killing.
If your state is a swing state, vote for Biden.
Otherwise, vote Green — vote for Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker for president/VP.
I delayed my decision hoping that Biden would support the progressive programs that the US and the world desperately need, but by choosing Harris he reaffirmed his rejection of them. If we keep voting for the plutocratist lesser evil, each time the plutocrats give us something worse than the previous lesser evil.
Colombia is plagued by a wave of massacres related to various armed groups.
To really understand this we would need to know which groups carried out the massacres. They often stem from unresolved disputes about which group will dominate some local area.
Google wants to install its microphones in thousands of hotel rooms.
It says that there will be a switch to turn off the microphone. We will have to see whether that physically disconnects the microphone, or only tells the computer not to accept commands from the microphone.
Tories in part of England plan repression of the homeless, San Francisco style.
Russia offered Lukashenko support in the form of troops or thugs.
*A former FBI agent has documented links between serving officers and racist militant activities in more than a dozen states.*
The difference between people who become rich and people who don't is largely luck. One you have a certain level of talent, it is just chance how successful you are.
The article doesn't look at the moral implications of this, but I think they are the most important aspect. There is no need to let people who succeed get rich from it. What they deserve is a decent life, which is what everyone deserves.
Does it make sense to "invest" in "natural capital" for a financial profit?
Our society needs to put great efforts into protecting the aspects of nature that we depend on — for instance, to shift to consuming resources sustainably, and clean up those that are poisoned, and to protect those that face the threat of being poisoned. The payoff for society from that will not be financial gain — it will be survival.
However, the idea of making this a private investment for profit presumes a way to capture the benefits as profit for the investment. The articles says nothing about how that might work, but I fear it will cause great trouble.
*[Some people's] smartphone addiction is costing the Earth.*
The article says "our", to which I respond, "Speak for yourself!"
A group of hostile armed white vigilantes came to a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha. One hostile armed white man killed two protesters.
The group did not have a list of members, but the killer considered himself part of it.
A summary of the situation there.
Greg Palast inquires why the US indicted Steve Bannon but not his co-conspirator Kris Kobach.
*Why the DNC's Platform Will Guarantee a Loss If Democrats Don't Do More.*
Billionaires that talk about sharing some of the wealth don't necessarily translate that into actions.
*Senate Dems Climate Report: Underwhelming and Inadequate.*
Australia's planet-roaster government is reaching for natural gas as a way to keep burning something. But it has underestimated the greenhouse impact by ignoring the methane leaks before the gas arrives to be burned.
US citizens: call on Tampa to drop charges against Sadie Dean and fire the thug department chief.
Here's more information.
US citizens: call on Kenosha to fire and prosecute the thug that shot Jacob Blake.
He shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back at close range. Blake was not killed, but he is paralyzed from the waste down.
He seems to have had a knife, but was not doing anything with it when he was shot.
*Chile police using Covid-19 quarantine as pretext to crush protest, activists say.*
The US Southwest, which has always been rather dry, is getting ever drier, and the result is fire.
*Unless we change course, the US agricultural system could collapse. Our food supply comes from an environmentally unsustainable system that is going to unravel.*
There are different problems in different regions, but what they add up to is, it's unsustainable, so it will stop whether we are ready or not.
*Norway plans to drill for oil in untouched Arctic areas.*
*Antarctica: 60% of ice shelves at risk of fracture, research suggests. Collapse of shelves would accelerate loss of Antarctic ice sheet and increase sea-level rise.*
A US company bought a gold mine in Guatemala. Later, under public pressure, Guatemala shut the mine down. Now the company is using the ISDS clause in a business-supremacy treaty with the US to make Guatemala 400 million dollars in hypothetical future profits.
Mines tend to be toxic; I expect the reason for shutting the mine was to put an end to the poisoning of people, ecosystems and/or water supplies. But the business-supremacy treaties don't value people, ecosystems or water supplies.
Biden's transition team leader says that, if elected, Biden will cancel promises to help Americans in the name of deficit reduction.
Another way to reduce the deficit would be to tax the rich to grab back this year's enormous handouts. Or transferring spending from the military. But those wouldn't please the plutocrats,
Modern monetary theory explains that the whole idea that "there is no money available to spend" is misguided. Creating more money is fine if it activates idle capacity. If it exceeds the idle capacity, it can cause inflation.
The mainstream media are congratulating Biden for leading attention away from real issues and replacing them with vacuous feel-good patriotism.
It reminds me of Obama's vacuous slogans of "hope" and "change".
A Palestinian family is defying an Israeli order to demolish its own house.
Israel is concealing a million old documents that should have been opened to the public, because they give embarrassing information about the past lives and treatment of Palestinians.
An Israeli court exonerated the soldier and thug that murdered Haftom Zarhum, a refugee from Eritrea, who was passing by a place where a Palestinian had shot people earlier that day. They guessed, based on no information, that Haftom Zarhum was the killer.
It is crazy to legitimize such random acts of revenge. If they thought he was the killer, they should have held him, not killed him.
The wrecker's plan to cut off the payments to Social Security would destroy the system by 2023.
I've doubted for years that Social Security would still be functioning when it was my time to receive it.
DeJoy testified to Congress about his sabotage of the US Postal Service, but he didn't take it seriously.
Of course he should be replaced, but the board is controlled by Republicans and they know their mission just as he knows his. He agreed to restore the deactivated sorting machines if the USPS gets a billion dollars in extra funding, but since he's a Republican he would not hesitate to change his mind if that funding is approved. Not that the Republicans in the Senate would permit it.
Yanis Varoufakis says that the world has entered "post-capitalism": financial markets are decoupled from the economy of actual production.
At least one US college requires all students to install a nonfree app which records their location at all times.
The bugs discovered in the app's associated dis-service are just icing on the cake. Unintentional malfunctionalities may well be fixed when reported; intentional ones won't be.
Every portable phone — even if not "smart" — has its location tracked by the phone system whenever it is communicating. A college can't get that data from the phone, but the government sure can. I consider this tracking creepy, so I refuse to carry one of those devices.
Israel has been bombing Gaza most every day since Aug 6, and has intensified the blockade, cutting off fuel for electric generation.
Israel is also blocking most other imports into Gaza.
Hamas has been sending balloon bombs to Israel, which (like the occasional missiles) rarely actually hurt anyone.
This resembles what Israel has done to Gaza many times since it withdrew colonies and troops from there.
A poll found that 1/5 of US small businesses expect to go out of business close in the next 6 months, if conditions do not improve.
*Africa to be declared free of wild polio after decades of work.*
Only Afghanistan and Pakistan still have polio.
Global heating has enabled earthworms to spread to the Arctic, and they threaten to upset the ecosystems there.
Republicans are promoting another quack "treatment" for Covid-19: an extract from the oleander plant.
Venezuela is giving false low figures for deaths from Covid-19.
*Industrial runoff and lax standards have tainted water across the US. Senators and doctors are calling me, asking what to do.*
The three main threats to US water supply are (1) poisoning it, (2) decreasing rain, and (3) emptying the aquifers. The article deals with (1). To prevent (2), we need to curb global heating. To prevent (3), we need to eat less meat.
Can less powerful countries stop big fishing fleets from sucking all the fish out of their waters?
One step that may help is to seize and sell boats that are breaking rules rather than just chasing them away.
What about the bulk of the ocean, which is not under any country's jurisdiction? We used to depend on the limited fishing capacity of human fishing fleets to avoid wiping oceans clean of fish, but that solution is not adequate any more.
*It may seem Putin controls the Russian state personally. The reality is more dangerous.*
I won't take those claims as established certainty, but all of it could be true.
Ken Hinds is being prosecuted for calling for a Black Lives Matter protest in London. Supposedly mere individuals have no right to do such a thing.
A planned federal execution illustrates many flaws that tend to appear in death penalty convictions.
Urging General Milley to ensure that the US military supports the Constitution and an orderly transition to a new president, if the wrecker loses the election.
*We must lay the groundwork now for the kind of mass action that defends democracy and evicts this despicable, racist, wannabe authoritarian from the White House.*
(satire) *Applauding the soon-to-be bereaved widows and orphans for their profound sacrifices, the Republican National Convention kicked off Monday evening with a tribute from family members of Americans who will die if Donald Trump wins a second term.*
Republican-packed courts are granting Republican lawsuits to block vote-by-mail initiatives in various states.
(satire) *Officer Points To Unarmed White Man He Once Killed To Prove He's Not Racist.
"Look at all the people I’ve brutally beaten and killed before judging me, alright?"*
Maybe the others were in the vicinity of a protest.
The Army Corps of Engineers blocked the proposed Pebble Mine, demanding a plan to mitigate the damage that the mine would do. An adequate plan may be impossible, or may cost so much that the mine becomes unprofitable to start. Let's hope that the corps does not settle for an inadequate plan.
Proposing a one-time special tax on the billionaires' 2020 windfall.
In general, I don't think we should limit their tax increases to one time, but I am in favor of this proposal.
A US government "development" organization is investing billions in fossil fuel projects.
Reading on a screen is not conducive to reading carefully — it encourages people to skim. Students may never learn to do the former.
One case of a person infected twice by different varieties of Covid-19 has now been demonstrated with certainty. Per second infection was asymptomatic; such cases can easily go undetected until the world sets up massive testing.
The virus has mutated into distinct strains while spreading massively. If all governments had jumped on it early, as a few Asian countries did, it would not have had a chance to mutate much. Thus, if the existence of different strains has some important consequences — for instance, if one vaccine doesn't do for all of them — that is also the fault of the bad choices many governments made starting in March and even February.
It is not conclusively ruled out that a person could be infected twice by the same strain.
German doctors say that Alexei Navalny was probably poisoned, and it looks like nerve agent — perhaps the same one used to poison the Skripals.
Even moderate levels of air pollution (below EU limits) damage babies' future respiratory capacity.
China is giving several candidate Covid-19 vaccines to workers who face exposure in their work.
There is a good side to this and a bad side, but if these candidates have passed the test for safety, I suppose those people have little to lose by trying them.
Guber and Lyft are taking advantage of workers' desperation to get work even for low wages, but they don't plan to make a profit this way. They are losing money hoping for the driverless cars that would enable them to fire all those workers.
It would be a good thing to abolish these giant parasites, but that alone won't give workers a decent life.
The article gives further interesting economic analysis of the situation.
Research found that children have higher IQs and fewer behavior problems if they grew up in neighborhoods with more green spaces. The study controlled for family income.
No one knows what causes groups of beaked whales to beach together, which is almost always fatal, but it could be that military sonar is damaging their hearing.
I wonder if it would be possible to make a hose whose tip resembles a fish, so that whales would grab it in their mouths and then be able to suck fish paste through it. That might save some of them in the short term. Perhaps they would then be ok, or perhaps we could learn what lasting injury they have.
Lukashenko jailed two more opposition leaders, and is threatening to shoot people.
The fact that he hasn't already arrested and/or shot masses of protesters shows that he feels vulnerable.
*Iran says 'sabotage' caused blast at Natanz nuclear site.*
I expect that the US and/or Israel carried out the sabotage in the hope of triggering a war.
Mnuchin worked for years, step by step, to overcome the political firewall of the USPS and put a Republican operative in charge.
The records of meetings are proof that they made some sort of plans together. Their denials that they were plotting to sabotage the election are merely a Republican's word — no proof of anything. I am sure Mnuchin denied that the bank he headed had a plan to defraud thousands of people (maybe hundreds of thousands) of their homes, and he would have been prosecuted for that if Kamala Harris had not let him go.
Companies that make Covid-19 antibody tests are pressuring the FDA to relax its standards for approving them. Here's a snapshot of that pressure.
It is unfortunate that we don't have plentiful, cheap, accurate tests — but that does not imply that the FDA's standards of accuracy are too strict. It might, or might not, be better to relax them temporarily for his. Whether this is so depends on more information than the article presents, and on modeling of the consequences of using them in large numbers. I cannot judge the answer.
A commission is the wrong way to investigate the wrecker's crimes. The right way is with prosecutors and a court.
The Tories said they wouldn't choose a no-deal exit from the EU, but they have made it happen by refusing to really negotiate.
US citizens: call on Kroger to give frontline workers hero pay and paid leave.
The HEROES Act passed by the House of Representatives was written by the plutocratist Democrats, mostly disregarding progressive representatives as well as outside progressive organizations.
"Private equity" parasites are demanding the UK government subsidize their losses or else they will fire tens of thousands of workers.
This is what greedy bastards do once they get an arm around a country's throat.
*Despite Huge Number of Misconduct Complaints, Cops at NYPD's 75th Precinct Keep Getting Promotions.*
Australian government employee Josh Krook resigned rather than delete and alter two uncontroversial blog posts he had made, at the demand of his boss.
I can imagine blog posts it would be legitimate to ask an employee to delete, or fire per for making. But in this case, the reasons were quibbling and dishonorable.
Thirty years ago, the IPCC warned humanity we were headed for disaster. Humanity has done little to change course.
The reason, as we know, is that oil company money controls our politics. Oil company money gave us Biden instead of Sanders, and keeps him toeing the line against the necessary measures.
The fires now burning in California have burned .7% of the state's area already. Perhaps 1% of the state's forest area (I have no figures for that). These fires are not natural — they were started, indirectly but knowingly, by the oil companies.
*From Washington to Minsk, democracy is under siege…and losing the battle.*
China trains some Uighurs to perform dances and act happy for visiting journalists, but they are under tight surveillance and very frightened.
One reported who denounced this said, "China is doing what the British and Americans do. They’re producing fake stories in the service of their imperialism." The US does indeed misrepresent its actions, and sometimes those actions are violent and cruel. But they are not totalitarian.
Louisiana thugs shot Trayford Pellerin dead as he was walking away from them.
Since he was armed with a knife, he may have been a danger to the public (though not to those thugs). But I am confident that if he had been white they would have seen how to disarm him without killing him.
Educators oppose the harmful effects of doing school through a computer system.
The Nazis studied the Jim Crow laws of the US as a model for how to formulate repression of Jews in Germany.
The article also places US racism in a broader spectrum of caste systems.
One thing I dislike about the article is that it endorses bigotry by capitalizing "black" and not "white". I think they should be treated the same. For the most part, I decline to link to articles which do that. I made an exception for this article because I think its point is important.
*Addressing [the] Population Challenge Is Not Impossible.*
Newsweek was once a real, albeit not very deep, news magazine. Now its web site serves as a place to plant right-wing disinformation.
Various phone apps sneakily send location data to companies. Some of those companies sell locations to law effacement agencies which, legally, are supposed to obtain search warrants to get that data.
The clever technique of decreasing a mosquito population by releasing large numbers of male mosquitos with a fatal gene has flaws in practice.
One flaw is that some viable offspring do develop, containing just part of the added gene. This has the effect of transferring other genetic differences coming from the strain from which the fatal males were made.
Another is that eventually the population evolves resistance, in the form of genes that make females mate preferentially with the nonmodified males, even though they are fewer.
*Facebook is quietly pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change their rulings.*
Ten ways the Environmental Poisoning Agency has .encouraged poisoning of Americans.
The EPA used to be the Environmental Protection Agency, and it really did protect the environment, though often it was strangely slow to act. I suppose that polluting businesses had partly corrupted it. Now, however, polluting businesses have captured it entirely.
Remote education has restimulated the dispute between professors and universities over who gets the copyright on recorded lectures.
I don't care much which side wins that dispute, because it is a side issue. What is important is that educational resources should be free.
Mainstream Democrats are opposed to primary challenges against incumbent Democrats officials — but only if the challenger is progressive.
I voted for Markey today.
A Gates-funded agriculture initiative in Rwanda is pushing farmers to grow more corn and less of other things. The result is to increase production, if it is measured in calories. However, it leads to a vulnerable monoculture society, and to more dependence on fertilizer.
Don't catch the Obama Inspiration Syndrome.
*If Joe Biden Rejects His Progressive Base, Trump Will Win.*
Covid-19 offers an opportunity for climate action.
Most protests in Portland are peaceful, but the violent ones get the media attention and make the movement look bad.
H P Lovecraft was an unabashed racist. He hated Jews, blacks, and non-white immigrates, and did not hesitate to say so. What shall we make of this today?
Nnedi Okorafor, a fantasy writer who received an award which came with a bust of Lovecraft, is a member of a group he hated. Hatred of blacks still exists today, and is an important moral-political issue. She objected to the choice of trophy, and got it changed.
I too am a member of a group he hated, and that hatred still exists today. Antisemitism is also an important moral-political issue. But I don't think it matters much today what Lovecraft's opinions were a century ago, about these points or any other. He has no political influence now.
So our choice is whether to dwell on his politics, or let it be forgotten and think about him only for his fiction.
I think the latter is wiser, overall. The change Ms Okorafor achieved was, marginally, a step forward, but there is no point pushing it further. There are so many bigots alive today, and so many practices that are part of systemic racism, that de-Lovecraftizing literary activities on account of his bigotry is a distraction from effective activism.
I would not be reluctant to read his work knowing that he would have hated me if he had met me, just as I wouldn't hesitate to listen to Wagner for the like reason. As it happens, I don't especially like their work, but that is a different matter.
Sex-selective abortion continues increasing in some parts of India. Parents want sons, not daughters.
Aborting a fetus doesn't do wrong to anyone, but the preference for boys is part of a structure of systemic sexism that pervades Indian society, and the other parts of the system do do wrong to females.
I support trying to eliminate that structure, but that can't be achieved by banning sex-selective abortion. Part of that system is a requirement for parents to pay a dowry when a daughter marries. That can be such a hardship that it is difficult to convince parents not to try to avoid it. It may be easier to reduce that requirement, for instance by making it easier for women to learn good jobs.
Anything that reduces poverty in India, or reduces the birth rate, can help too, as well as being good in its own right.
However, there is no excuse for trying to stop women from having abortions for whatever reasons.
*Belarus's struggle is a powerful reminder of the value of freedom.*
Freedom is important even if it doesn't go all the way: "The oligarch who runs the factory next won’t be any worse than the state is now." And if you get some democracy, you can try to get rid of the oligarchs as the next step.
The wrecker said he will station thugs at voting booths, which is a well-known way of trying to discourage people from voting.
To see the harm this can do, put it together with the practice, in many parts of the US, of burdening poor people with fines, then late fees, then fines for not paying fines, more than they can ever pay off. They are entitled to vote — but they might be rationally scared to pass by a thug to reach the voting booth.
Monaco seeks to prosecute a whistleblower who revealed bribes paid by a supposedly-Dutch company based in Monaco.
* Covid-19 led to 9.3% reduction in humanity’s ecological footprint compared with same period last year.*
That is far from sufficient to reach sustainability.
World production of syringes is adjusted to meet the typical annual demand. If we do get a vaccine for coronavirus, we will need a lot more.
Countries' competing to buy up the production, and leave other countries without, is not a solution. That is the failure we will get if we fail to cooperate.
*Want to dismantle structural racism in the US? Help fight gerrymandering.*
*If Joe Biden Rejects His Progressive Base, Trump Will Win.*
Biden shows his disdain for progressives at almost every opportunity, and when he doesn't, the Democratic Party does.
The smoke from wildfires in California has forced evacuation of thousands of people, but the state refuses to evacuate the prisoners who are now getting sick from breathing the smoke.
The same prisons are also full of coronavirus, and smoke inhalation causes irritation of the respiratory tract, which can make people suffer worse from Covid-19 — which is also spreading in those prisons.
This shows that climate disaster is already starting. California's fires are outside what was "normal", because they are the future.
The forests that California has had will not be able to survive in the new California that human folly has made.
The charge against Bannon and others is that they raised funds to "build a wall", then used the funds for their own personal benefit.
Guber and Lyft hope that by shutting operations in California they can rouse their selfish customers to demand California resume allowing the companies to take advantage of their drivers.
Since I say they are both of those companies are based on injustice to the customer, I think that getting them to shut down is a fine way to get rid of them. However, they may win the battle this way, thanks to the selfish customers.
What will happen while they are shut? Most of those drivers will be available in taxicabs, where they will make more money, and you will be able to get their services anonymously without having to run any nonfree software.
Repression was palpable around hospitalized Alexei Navalny.
It will be easy to kill him in the hospital, and I expect that to happen.
Lukashenko's last strike against the opposition is to put the opposition leaders on trial and sentence them to many years in prison.
Mexico is prosecuting the former head of its oil company, Pemex. He has accused three former presidents, Enrique Peña Nieto, Felipe Calderón, and Carlos Salinas, of involvement in the corruption.
Facebook has banned the pages of many violence-promoting right-wing groups. Insisting on a false equivalence, it has also banned some long-standing antifa groups which have never been violent.
*With Lockdowns Cutting Off Access, Global Charity Estimates 1.5 Million Women Will Have Unsafe Abortions Amid Pandemic.*
Post Office saboteur DeJoy firmly opposes reconnection of the sorting machines that he has already pulled out of service.
*White-collar crime is barely prosecuted in the United States. It’s time for that to change.* This is not something that was started by the wrecker. It has been happening for decades.
One thing we need to do is change laws so that corporate executives are responsible for criminal conduct by the corporation. If that puts them under more responsibility than they can carry out, perhaps the corporation should split into multiple corporations, each small enough for the executives to keep track of what is going on.
*The Left Needs to Stop Falling for Absurd Sex Panics.* Such as the one fabricated against Alex Morse.
This means dismissing the idea that people with some sort of "status" should not have sex (except with someone with equal "status").
As people call for the USPS to bring back postal banking, it is considering instead allowing a big commercial bank to set up ATM terminals in post offices.
Postal banking in the US operated until around 1970, as I recall.
Proposing reforms to reinvigorate production of medicines, end gouging, and make them available to all Americans.
Amazon is so close to being a monopoly for internet sales by most companies that it can gouge them. It drives many of them into bankruptcy.
If you do internet purchases, making a point of not buying through Amazon is a way you can personally push back.
Demonstrating that the harm done by budget cuts for the poor during the Great Depression fueled the rise of the Nazis.
The worst-off people switched to the Communist Party, those who were hit badly but were not totally destitute chose the Nazi Party.
Spreading poverty in the US, since 2009, could have had a similar effect in the US today.
*'Walls of death': surge in illegal drift nets threatens endangered species.*
Sending naval ships to seize their forbidden nets could put a stop to this practice. One ship could watch several fishing boats at a time, by visiting each one daily or sending drones to look. The cost to the fishing boat owner of losing net after net, or going a long time without actually fishing, would be prohibitive.
Housing stock is often unsuitable for working at home. Many people that can't simply work over the net could work at home if their homes were suitable.
That doesn't mean people are better off if they never go to a shared workplace. And we probably will lick Covid-19.
US citizens: call on the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to define "habitat" in a way that supports conservation.
Everyone: call on Fairfax Financial Holdings to divest from US bail bond companies.
*Austin’s Vote to “Reimagine” Policing Prompts Threats From [Texas] State Officials.*
*Fashion's dirty secret: how sexual assault took hold in jeans factories.*
The US financial and business system knows only how to export jobs.
In many fields, all expertise has been lost, so it is nearly impossible to start a plant to make anything.
Alexei Navalny, Russian opposition leader, is mysteriously sick. His associates say he was poisoned.
Contending that privatization of public services (including medical care), which was done in the name of saving money, has made Australia's encounter with Covid-19 far more painful and far more expensive.
Owners of old ships frequently abandon them, with their cargos and crews. The crews may be trapped, unable to leave the ship. Once in a rare while, the ship's cargo eventually explodes.
I will make a radical proposal: require ship owners to post a sufficient bond with an international organization, in case the ship can't pay its fees or becomes abandoned. Without that bond, the ship should not be allowed to leave port, and any country can seize it and sell or scrap it.
The prestigious dum sum chain, Din Tai Fung, systematically cheated its workers in Australia.
The local gas utility organized a campaign to defeat Seattle's plan to prohibit gas pipelines in new buildings. This seems to be a nationwide practice.
How global heating in various US reasons: damage so far, and damage expected within 30 years.
The Democratic Convention is showcasing Republicans who support Biden. The goal is to convince other Republicans to vote for Biden.
For me it is a reminder the Biden's positions aren't that different from some Republicans, as they used to be before the "tea party".
Michigan will pay Flint residents $600 million as compensation for the lead poisoning Michigan's Republican government caused when it meddled with Flint's water supply.
Lead exposure causes lasting brain damage. I don't think there is any way to reverse it — the lead-poisoned children and teenagers of Flint cannot be made well. They may not be able to earn a living. I think each one may need lifetime support, and if there are more than 600 of them, I don't think a million each will pay for that.
*The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent to a million tonnes per minute across the year.*
*NYT Urges Biden to Shun His Party’s ‘Left-Leaning Brand'.*
*Being concerned with working-class Americans, to the New York Times and corporate Democrats, means portraying yourself as "an average guy," not offering policies that will actually help the working class.*
It is noteworthy that a party controlled by the right-wing plutocratists, which just rejected the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, is called "left-leaning." That has been the right-wing strategy for decades: to call Democrats "liberal" if they are not on the extreme right-wing.
Steve Bannon has been charged with planning to defraud donors with a charity that was supposed to build the bully's border wall.
*New Toyotas will upload data to AWS to help create custom insurance premiums based on driver behaviour.*
Before you buy a "connected" car, make sure you can disconnect its cellular antenna and its GPS antenna. If you want GPS navigation, get a separate navigator which runs free software and works with Open Street Map.
The Department of the Interior collected some 250 pages of information when vetting David Bernhardt as secretary of that department. Public Citizen calls for checking them for past ethics rule violations.
*House Democrats Unveil Bill to Restore Mail Service to 'Pre-DeJoy Levels' and Require USPS to Treat All Ballots as First Class.*
(satire) The economic impacts of Covid-19.
Cops in London ordered people to take down a banner on their house which said, "White Silence Is Violence."
It was wrong to make them take it down. If people wish to say that, freedom of expression gives them the right to do so. Sad to say, most countries do not fully respect freedom of expression. The UK practices considerable censorship of opinions.
Now for a related question: whether that statement is valid. I criticize it as a moral distortion. To explain why, I will compare it with two somewhat similar statements that have been made in past.
One such statement was, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem." This does not assert that those people are evil, or even that they oppose solving the problem, only that their inaction is problematical. That can well be true. For instance, people who don't reject Facebook are part of society's Facebook problem. People who don't reject Zoom are part of society's Zoom problem. How much of the blame for those problems should fall on the people who have been lead into the trap is a subtle question; my answer is to call them "victim co-perpetrators." They do not deserve the same criticism as the developers of those proprietary traps.
Now consider the statement, "If you're not with us, you're against us." This one goes further than the previous one; it equates neutrality with opposition — which is a false equation. In some situations it is valid to say, "Joining us is your moral duty," but that is different from "Not joining us is the moral equivalent of opposing us."
Equating silence with "violence" adds an exaggeration, untrue because because not all opposition is violent, and unfair because violence against a good cause is worse than nonviolent opposition to it. That slogan combines two levels of wrong, first equating silence to opposition, then equating opposition to violence.
Jordan is trying to crush the teacher's union by arresting 1000 teachers.
Greta Thunberg: *After two years of school strikes, the world is still in a state of climate crisis denial.*
Each year wasted reduces the part of the disaster that we can still avoid if we start now.
*Greenpeace Gives Democratic Platform C+ on Climate, Calling for 'Action at the Scale That Science and Justice Demand'.*
George Monbiot: *English landowners have stolen our rights. It is time to reclaim them.*
The latest manifestation of modern prudery attacks relationships with age gaps.
*Democrats spurn AOC and uplift Bill Clinton at the party's own risk.*
*MPs 'advising' big business undermines democracy. Second jobs should be banned.*
It is a conflict of interest. The equivalent for members of the US Congress is already banned. Some subtle, indirect ways for businesses to corrupt them are banned too, but not enough.
Some NYC thugs bully people frequently, and they sue, so the city has to keep on paying damages. There are 190 thugs that were cited in at least 5 lawsuits in the last 5 years.
The cost to the city is almost 70 million dollars a year.
If the thugs had to pay some of this, they would clean up their act.
Protesters in Portland, Oregon, seem to have sunk to habitual violence, and without taking care to choose targets.
If there is another side to this story, I'd like to see it.
Bogus Johnson is trying to reduce the powers of Parliament, and thus reduce democracy in the UK.
The spending needed to deal with the economic crisis would be a great opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but governments are not even trying.
*Greta Thunberg and Fellow Activists Decry 'Political Inaction' on Climate Crisis After Two Years of School Strikes.*
Explaining the tools that the rich use exclude fortunes from estate taxes, and how a tax on inheriting could tax those fortunes.
*Heat-resistant corals offer hope as climate crisis warms up oceans*, against the threat of global heating.
However, ocean acidification is another matter. The same CO2 that heats the atmosphere also dissolves in the seas as carbonic acid. Once the water gets too acid, coral (and many other organisms) won't be able to make their shells.
If we discover corals that can stand acidic water as well as heat, that would be an occasion for relief. Otherwise, we had better cut our CO2 emissions on the double.
Co-housing of several families together makes isolation much easier to get through.
Trudeau decided to shut down Canada's parliament for a month, despite the crucial decisions that need to be made soon.
There is a suspicion his purpose is to delay a corruption inquiry.
Due to global heating, California already has many dangerous wildfires, as well as power cuts as a precaution against starting more fires. It is unpleasant when the air conditioning cuts out and it is hotter than body temperature outside. Installing solar power systems can help avoid this problem from both sides.
Greg Palast's suggestions for how to stop Republicans from taking away your vote this year.
The US is allowing public lands to be used in ways that contribute massively to greenhouse gas emissions.
*First-Ever Survey of Sanders Delegates Shows Views of Ticket: Half "Disapprove," a Quarter "Approve," a Quarter "Ambivalent".*
This refers to the delegates chosen by people who voted for Sanders in Democratic primaries and caucuses.
AOC rebuked the Democratic Party for cooperation with Republicans that are trying to define the Democratic Party as "centrist" (which means, plutocratist).
DeJoy said that "all changes being made to the Postal Service would be suspended until after the November 3 election."
Does this mean that the wrecker had given up on sabotaging voting by mail? That seems too good to be true. Is there a catch?
Does "changes being made" include the changes that were made recently, which have slowed mail delivery, sometimes by a week or more. If not, those could be enough by themselves to mess up the election.
A thug in England is being investigated for just threatening to choke a suspect.
It seems that the UK is determined to put an end to chokeholds, and I think its methods have a chance of success.
Chestnut blight wiped out the American chestnut tree. A genetic engineering project is ready to introduce resistant trees. Should we allow this?
I think the worries that the blight resistance might fail are foolish. Likewise the concern about Phytophthora cinnamomi. If the GE chestnut trees can't survive, we know what will happen — they will die, just as all American chestnut trees died before. That would be a failure but not a disaster.
Could some other worse thing happen? It is not impossible. Perhaps we should do a further experiment of growing a substantial number GE chestnut trees for 20 years in a number of test plots whose other contents are wild, and not allowing the chestnuts' seeds to get loose.
However, the only way to know for certain is to try them. The loss of chestnut trees was damage to the forest, so bringing them back means repairing the damage. We should not be too frightened to try.
More than 600 attacks against members of the press covering the ongoing protests have been reported to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Many of the victims face bogus criminal charges.
Justice requires more than dropping the charges. The thugs who lied must be fired or punished.
Israel's annexation wall — which annexed part of the West Bank by cutting it off from the rest — is not well maintained. There are many gaps where people cross without being checked, with tacit Israel approval. Which shows that the wall is not very important in preventing terrorism, but also raises the question of why Israel allows this.
The fundamental Republican scam, since the 1930s: run up the national debt with tax cuts for the rich, and spending that doesn't help most people. Then use the debt to demand cuts in spending that does help most people.
The article speaks of the "two Santas". There is a crucial difference between them: giving in the form of welfare programs helps the people who need it most, whereas giving tax cuts mainly helps the people whose high incomes ought to require them to pay a lot of taxes.
Countries lead by women really did a better job of acting effectively to stop Covid-19.
Drawing lessons for Covid-10 from HIV.
Christian fanatics in South Korea have caused another outbreak of Covid-19.
The first outbreak was largely boosted by fanatics in another church.
The supporters of the wrecker are mostly Christian fanatics, too, and they readily accepted the idea of exposing each other to Covid-19 by not wearing masks.
A Senate investigation found that Paul Manafort was in regular communication with an agent of the Russian spy agency, GRU.
*Toronto [thug department will] pay $16.5m to protesters wrongfully held at 2010 G20 summit.*
I wonder, will this payment cause a loss to those who wrongly arrested them?
*Atlantic ocean plastic more than 10 times previous estimates.*
Louisiana official proposes to require a positive Covid-19 test to vote by mail. People who might catch it would not be allowed to vote more safely.
Massachusetts is investigating many impoverished parents because their children are not participating in remote education.
The ironic part is that someone who rejects the injustice of Zoom or Google Classroom or Microsoft Teams might also be threatened with this. However, I don't think these parents reject that software on political grounds. I suspect rather that they are desperately trying to make enough money to feed and house those children, leaving them no time to make sure that the children are being surveilled by the school's software.
The UK's "hostile environment" applies even to its military veterans.
The fundamental wrong here is the intent to look for every possible bureaucratic excuse to kick someone out.
Some state attorneys general are planning to sue to make the USPS reverse its changes and offer adequate mail delivery service, as it did until recently.
Given that Chief Justice Roberts is no trumpet, the Supreme Court might indeed order the USPS to deliver ballots expeditiously. But it would not surprise me if the wrecker and DeJoy defy the order long enough to ruin the election anyway.
Thus I urge people to rely rather on ballot-returning organizations, or vote in person.
FAIR: Mainstream media rarely give actual protesters a chance to speak when covering Black Lives Matter protests.
The wrecker wants to sell oil leases for the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve this year, to make it difficult to prevent future oil drilling there.
To stay within the carbon budget, We need strong measures to discourage all new fossil fuel facilities, and a heavy carbon tax. I think that they would make actual drilling in the remote arctic nonviable.
The UK needs to recognize and break up the racism that pervades its thug departments.
It is difficult to correct racism in thug departments by hiring from minority groups, because the same racism targets them and forces them out.
12% of US adults recently reported they couldn't always get food to eat. 11%-20% of adults with children reported they couldn't always get food for their children. Larger numbers are unable to pay rent.
(satire) School reopening survey for parents.
The company that makes Fortnight has sued Apple, claiming that its app store is an illegal monopoly. Ironically, the reason is that Apple enforced its rules against in-app payments, rules which protect the public, against a game, which is surely exploitative.
The app store gives Apple power over users of iMonsters, and it would be great to make Apple allow users to install games freely. However, if the only result is to make Apple permit exploitative apps, without giving users more freedom, that would be no victory for users.
It is a fundamental conceptual matter to try to define freedom in terms of how many options a person has. Freedom means having control of your own life.
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that strippers (at least at one strip club) are employees and can unionize.
TikTok exploited an Android vulnerability to obtain user MAC addresses.
Different US courts have reached varying conclusions about whether the state can compel a person to enter a password to give access to data.
Clearview AI argues in court that the First Amendment gives it an inalienable right to collect our photos and identify the people in them by their faces.
This involves distorting the first amendment on top of the error of giving corporations human rights.
Democrats joined Republicans in tremendous handouts to the biggest businesses, disguising this as helping struggling Americans.
Once again, homeless people in New York City have nowhere to use the toilet.
They also have trouble getting water to drink.
Many protesters suffer from lasting injuries caused by "nonlethal" weapons that thugs used against them. In many cases they used these weapons indiscriminately.
We need to change laws so that thugs can't do such things with impunity.
Mexico will reconsider the constitutionality of its new copyright law.
To make a good society, and cope with life's challenges, we need to throw off the values and principles that the right wing has taught us.
These include, "Rich people are wealth creators," "It is shameful to be poor," and "You shouldn't ever have to make any sacrifices for others."
*On the ten year anniversary of the United Nations historic vote to recognize water as a basic human right,* … what next?
*Hundreds of workers fell ill after cleaning up America’s largest industrial disaster (coal ash spill) without proper gear. At least 50 have died.*
It would help to make some kinds of failures crimes for which the individuals responsible can be punished.*
*In Poland we've become spectators at the dismantling of democracy.*
*Sweden's Covid-19 strategist, Anders Tegnell, appears to have asked if higher death rate for older people might be acceptable.*
Why Republicans (and plutocratist Democrats) want to undermine the post office.
The FBI and DHS are using Northern California's "fusion center" to track planned protests, leaked documents show.
The conman has withdrawn the nomination of climate denialist William Pendley to officially head the Bureau of Land Management. This is so Republican senators won't be criticized for voting for him.
However, it makes no practical difference since Pendley is already, and will continue to be, the acting head of that agency.
Most European countries are entering a second wave of Covid-19. It looks like they reopened some activities which they should not have.
*‘Silly product’: Thankyou stops producing bottled water, citing environmental damage.*
I carry a refillable water bottle with me when I travel, and I almost never buy bottled water except in countries where the tap water is not safe.
Calling for elimination of rent payments and mortgage payments during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Oxford University gave a Chinese businessman a certificate with the title of "Academician" in exchange for a donation, reasoning that the word means nothing in Oxford's terms.
The title "academician" may have little significance for Oxford, but in Russia and China it is used for members of a prestigious and important national academy. Thus, this award may be effective for impressing people in those countries. Maybe that is why Chan King Wai arranged to receive the award with a big ceremony. I wonder whose idea it was to use that particular title — Mr Chan's?
Despite the worst the wrecker could do, the inspector general of the State Department is continuing to investigate an "emergency" arms sale to Salafi Arabia. The office found that the "emergency" was fake.
Coming soon to hot places near you: Death Valley reached a record temperature of 130F, which is 54.4C.
People in England now feel they need air conditioning — a measure of global heating over recent years.
*Belarus opposition calls for general strike after biggest protests yet.*
The UK agent who with US support organized the 1953 coup in Iran, that overthrew Mossadegh's democratic government, described everything in an interview. The transcript is totally incriminating.
Iran has never had a democratic government with human rights in all the time since then.
*Extreme weather just devastated 10m acres (15k square miles) in the midwest. Expect more of this.*
Various kinds of problems caused by our intensive agriculture are acting to bring it to a halt.
As US corn production drops, the US will have to produce less beef. That will curb global heating and may help reduce obesity.
A study examined 47 tissue samples from people with neurodegenerative diseases and found microplastics and Bisphenol A in all of them.
Perhaps those substances are associated with those diseases. Or perhaps those tissue samples microplastic and Bisphenol A because everyone has them.
Edward Snowden has reportedly earned $1.2 million from 5 years of speaking engagements. The US government is trying to seize that.
His income works out to 240k per year — an amount that is comfortable but won't make him rich. He probably has a lot of expenses for security and bodyguards.
I wonder how the US expects to seize the money. Surely Snowden is not leaving it in a place where the US could take it.
An important annual college entrance exam was cancelled this year, and the company that runs it issued "predicted" scores determined by an algorithm from whatever personal academic data was available. Some students feel they got unfairly low scores.
I have no way of judging how close the "predicted" scores are to what those students would have got — and neither do they, nor universities, nor anyone else. Some teachers say that all their students got surprisingly low grades this year, which is reason to think the predictions were off. I don't see a proof that the prediction algorithm was broken (though it might be), but this way of handling the exam was bad, because students cannot tell they were not cheated.
I presume that applicants send universities all the other data that the algorithm used. If this exam provides something useful to universities, that is because it gives some independent information about each applicant, information not redundant with the other data. A substitute that is in fact redundant with the other data provides no independent information, it only gives the impression of doing so. It is phony.
The wrecker made noises about possibly pardoning Edward Snowden.
Although his main job is destroying democracy, he does other things on the side, and occasionally one of them is good. Snowden is a great hero, and I hope the wrecker does pardon him. However, when weighed against the horrible things the wrecker continues to do, this would not go far in earning my overall good opinion.
I urge all Americans, including elected officials, to support Snowden's cause. I would hesitate to urge them to push hard for it, because doing that might move the wrecker to drop the idea.
(satire) *"We get that unmarked federal vehicles taking people off the street seems disturbing to people right now, but within a few months, this will just seem like an everyday occurrence that isn’t worth a second thought."*
Sad to say, that could really happen. The way they make that happen is by doing something else even worse.
*Trump's Attack on the Postal Service Now Endangers Democracy.*
The post office is not supposed to be a business. It is ok to subsidize it.
Afghan women are pressing to preserve some rights under peace with the Taliban.
As economic growth becomes increasingly unsustainable, it also provides ever less benefit to most of the people in the developed world.
*Experts and volunteers scramble to save Mauritius's wildlife after oil spill.*
10,000 students and others protested in Bangkok for a change in the country's government.
The Thai generals overthrew democracy several times, and eventually imposed a new constitution.
Australian officials illegally bugged East Timor's negotiating team for a treaty that covered dividing oil resources. A whistleblower revealed this. The culpable officials are not on trial; the whistleblower and per lawyer are.
Meanwhile, the state is suppressing the whistleblower's name. Is it really secret? Has perse been disappeared? Are per relatives friends threatened with prosecution if they tell anyone what happened to so-and-so? Do they have to pretend that so-and-so became a hermit?
Has anyone published who Witness K is?
Is this secrecy supposedly for the benefit of Witness K? If so, does it really provide any benefit to per? Does perse want to keep per name secret, or is it being done to hurt per. Or is perse being bullied into cooperating with the secrecy?
Tens of thousands rallied in Belarus (perhaps 100,000) demanding that Lukashenko leave office. Lukashenko's thugs did not intervene.
Calling for a full investigation of Apple's use of Siri for snooping.
That investigation will be useful, but we already know the root cause: nonfree software. Apple controls the client-side Siri software. Apple controls iOS. That gives Apple power over the user, and that power corrupts.
Disastrous poverty is spreading around the United States.
Tennessee Republicans have made it a felony to set up a protest camp on state property.
Tracking apps imposed by employers on their employees violate users' privacy for their locations and for their medical data. Some may violate the HIPAA medical privacy law.
Search on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit promotes holocaust denial.
This may not be the result of a specific decision by those companies. I've read that Nazis have figured out how to manipulate the data that search algorithms operate on. Even if those companies, or some of them, do not intentionally support right-wing extremism, being its helpless tool is bad too.
I've seen arguments that the tendency of algorithms to promote extremist material — at least on Facebook and Twitter — is because they have been designed to show people things that make them want to stay on the site longer. That relates to the business models that make these sites so harmful in other ways.
Workers that make sandwiches in England get sick pay, but it is less than their normal pay, and since that is barely enough, the result is that they work even while sick.
The Tory ministers who sidelined England's public health agency, and directed the response to Covid-19 inconsistently themselves, now plan to abolish it.
*Debt in developing countries has doubled in less than a decade.*
Little by little it converts the population of those countries into debt slaves.
In the UK, nonwhite nohispanic teenagers are three times as likely to be tased than other teenagers.
Please do not refer to teenagers as "children". We must stop infantilizing them.
Fairphone aims to eliminate the injustice in the supply chain for portable phones.
I am all in favor of this. Alas, the project does not address the injustice that these products do to their users. So I will continue to do without one.
NYT: *Trump Ads Attack Biden Through Deceptive Editing and Hyperbole.*
They found this in two thirds of the ads they studied.
Focusing politics on fighting racism will not eliminate poverty. The main cause of poverty in the US is dooH niboR, and the best way to reduce the poverty of blacks is to change the systems that reduce most Americans to poverty.
The article's point is valid as regards the economic consequences of racism, but racism does other kinds of wrong as well. Blacks are not only more likely to be poor, they are also more likely to be stopped on the street by thugs, beaten by thugs, shot by thugs. Poor blacks are more likely to be denied good education, good jobs, and good medical care, than poor whites. They are more likely to be convicted of crimes than whites whose conduct is similar.
Redistribution of wealth would eliminate much of the suffering of blacks today (along with that of other groups), but racism would still be an injustice.
Thus, we should campaign against racism. But don't get distracted from dooH niboR!
Ralph Nader: many blatant forms of decay show that the US is badly broken.
The US military wants to develop "optionally manned" vehicles and ships so their crews won't be vulnerable to fast-spreading diseases.
Requiring fewer human operators does not raise any particular issue, except that such systems will be very expensive to develop and probably won't work reliably. However, designing them to operate without humans means they must either be remote-controlled — dependent on communications that will be slow and can be jammed — or autonomous killers.
The concept of "optionally manned" seems designed to smooth over that morally and practically important frontier and thus evade attention to crossing it.
AOC introduced a bill to require federal thugs to wear visible identification.
Plastic is accumulating in the fish that Pacific islanders eat; their main source of protein.
Once all the coral are gone, much of the fish will be gone, and this problem will be replaced with a worse problem.
US citizens: call on Waycross to fire the thugs that stalked then shot at a bunch of Black teenagers and children for being in a car.
*A "commitment to sustaining peace is more urgent than ever," United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday.*
*[The wrecker] Doesn't Want Law or Order. He Wants Chaos and Division.*
I think he is training those federal thugs to forget all vestiges of loyalty towards democracy and the Constitution, and obey whatever orders he gives them. I fear the purpose is a coup.
Here is a series of fantasy recommendations for Biden supposing he overcomes Republican election-theft and subsequent resistance to his inauguration.
I agree with most of them, but there are a few I disagree with.
The Mauritius oil spill happened in a special protected wildlife area, and may have damaged it permanently.
We need a law to stop employers (or schools!) from imposing "contact-tracing" apps on their employees or students which have the side effect of allowing someone to monitor where they go.
For the same reason, employers and schools should not be allowed to require that employees or students carry portable tracking and surveillance devices (portable phones).
The UK imposed a quarantine requirement on people coming from France, with such a short deadline that they could not all return in time. Flights and trains filled up.
A quarantine rule may be the right thing to do, but starting it this way was pointlessly harsh.
The US government found that the only way to save salmon runs was to kill many of the sea lions that were eating all the salmon.
Sometimes one has to choose. I won't criticize.
Greg Palast: if your state permits it, bring your postal ballot to an authorized election office, and bypass the post.
I have been supporting calls to Congress to give the USPS enough funds to deliver ballots with the usual speed. But Democrats in Congress have no way to do that if Republicans are determined to block it, and they are.
But even if it were possible to provide extra funds, that might not help.
The supposed shortage of funds was the excuse, not the cause, for the mail slowdown. We now know that Republican saboteurs have planned other ways of slowing down mail delivery ever since May. Giving the USPS more funds would not stop them from sabotaging it. Indeed, I don't see how anything could stop them from intentionally mismanaging mail delivery except to replace them with honest people. The wrecker will not allow that, and Democrats cannot force it.
I think the only solution is to bypass the post office. I have decided to do early voting, not postal voting.
A friend of mine plans to go to Florida and join organized efforts to pick up voters' ballots and bring them to the election authority.
Can anyone point me at a list of which states permit non-postal delivery of ballots?
Rep. Ro Khanna, a delegate to the Democratic Convention, will vote against the proposed platform because it fails to support Medicare for All.
Here is his statement.
Helicopter parenting makes children tend to grow up with "less creativity, spontaneity, enjoyment, and initiative", self-absorbed, and "more prone to anxiety, depression, and stress."
They say that they hate being monitored. As adults, they may no longer be monitored by their parents. But they are being monitored by tech companies, large and small. Can we make contact with them and help them fight to put an end to this?
Michael Cohen: "I personally ran that deal" (with Putin), as well as
other dishonest deals he arranged for the wrecker, and says his book
will describe them.
[Reference updated on 2022-03-26 because the old link was broken.]
I expect to see articles soon summarizing the most important specific wrongs that he describes. In the mean time, I like this passage:
I knew him better than even his family did because I bore witness to the real man, in strip clubs, shady business meetings, and in the unguarded moments when he revealed who he really was: a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man.
Campaigners criticize "vaccine nationalism", meaning the practice of certain countries to buy up large numbers of doses in advance.
The campaigners' hearts are in the right place, but they are focusing on a secondary part of the issue. Given a working vaccine, or a working useful treatment, what is needed is not that everyone have the same chance of getting it. Rather, it is that everyone get it. Anything that limits production is a problem, and that includes both patents and secrecy.
*Viruses know no borders. Until every country is protected, we are all at risk.*
The bullshitter told cronies he would defund Social Security. The White House says we should ignore that.
We cannot determine what the bullshitter will really do from anything he said, but we can deduce one thing from that statement: defunding Social Security is not unthinkable for him. Thus, if his aides are saying he certainly won't, they are mistaken. He might like to do it, and he might do it.
Apple whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec reports that Apple made a practice of surreptitiously activating the Siri software to record users' conversations when they had not activated Siri. This was not just occasional, it was systematic practice.
His job was to listen to these recordings, in a group that made transcripts of them. He does not believe that Apple has ceased this practice.
The only reliable way to prevent this is for the program that controls access to the microphone to decide when the user has "activated" any service, to be free software, and the operating system under it free as well. This way, users could make sure Apple can't listen to them.
Kamala Harris's foreign policy views are similar to Biden's. She gets along well with Netanyahu.
*American Bar Association Backs Full Voting Rights for Incarcerated People.*
This idea seemed strange to me, only because I was accustomed to the idea that prisoners could not vote. But the same reasons that apply to citizens who are free applies to them when they are in prison. They deserve a say over how society should operate once they get out.
(satire) *Trump Online Store Begins Selling Decommissioned USPS Mailboxes So Fans Can Own Piece Of History.*
Mail-sorting machines are also on offer.
The US seized cargoes of gasoline from ships in international waters which were bringing it to Venezuela.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
The USPS is carrying out a written plan to remove hundreds of its sorting machines from service.
The officials supposedly heading the Department of Harshness and Sadism were appointed in violation of laws about who succeeds to that office.
Does anyone have standing to sue?
The defunding of thug departments has started moving. The extent of change so is tiny compared with the size of thug departments in the US, but the first step is often the hardest one to take.
There are fake reporters in White House "press briefings", placed there by the White House to promote fake news.
*Each week Bejing's message to Hong Kong gets clearer: we can do what we like.* In other words, China is an absolute tyranny in which the concept of rights exists only as a pretense.
Contrast this with the United States, in which there are widespread unjust practices that systematically trample some important rights for some people and/or in some kinds of situations — but rights overall are respected enough that it is possible to use them to fight to change those practices.
The wrecker is trying to change that.
A review of scientific studies of unsustainable economic excess ("affluence").
*Party Leaders Investigating Origin of Anti-Morse [Smear] Campaign Helped Orchestrate It, Documents Reveal.*
The wrecker is converting US government broadcasting channels into shallow propaganda venues that only a Republican would take seriously.
At least this will eliminate the possibility that false broadcasts on those channels will seriously mislead anyone.
Spain's coronavirus transmission rate is going up, and foolish officials think they can stop it by small changes in policy.
I forecast it will keep getting worse.
*Millions in US face losing water supply as coronavirus moratoriums end.*
Why not bring your family to the local water board whenever you need to wash your hands?
Workers at Epic, which makes nonfree medical records software, are trying to unionize while the company fights unionization.
That company is responsible for my clinic's anti-freedom "patient portal" which requires running nonfree Javascript code. I expect its terms of service are unjust also, but without running the nonfree Javascript, I can't even see what they say.
Unionization of Epic's workers won't fix this. Epic really ought to shut down.
Belarusians report seeing Lukashenko's agents went to polling stations and added phony votes. The thugs are militarized and are using armored vehicles against protesters.
The US medical system, before Covid-19, was fundamentally inadequate but it appeared to be hanging on. Now its inadequacy is glaring.
We know the solution: Medicare for All, aka a universal national medical system.
When I read that a candidate's admirable qualities are "ambition, charisma and leadership," this makes me concerned about where that candidate would lead us.
I wondered the same thing about Obama, another candidate with the same strengths, and concluded he was no progressive, so I did not vote for him. He validated my doubts when he let the banksters off the hook for fraud that stole millions of non-rich Americans' homes. Harris did the same thing.
I voted for a black woman (Rep. Ayanna Pressley) with great relish two years ago, for the good things she stands for. Soon I will vote for her again. If Harris stood for these things, I would have voted for her too.
Three thugs from Jackson, Mississippi, have been charged with murdering George Robinson in 2019.
In April, Hawaii announced a policy of arresting arriving passengers who did not have "smart" phones.
Does anyone know if someone was really arrested in this way?
The wrecker admitted that he is undermining the USPS to sabotage voting by mail.
* Temperature and CO2 changes reduce the numbers of some species (usually the ones humans eat) and promote the growth of algae.*
Portlanders have held nightly violent protests near a thug union headquarters and in other places.
To protest a thug union is a great idea, but violence plays into the thugs' hands.
In my dreams, I see a thousand blacks come to these protests with banners and clothing saying, "NO VIOLENCE". They can tell the protesting Portlanders (who are nearly all white), "Don't use violence in our name!"
Israel and the UAE have made peace, and an alliance against Iran.
Peace between them is a good thing, in and of itself. However, cementing permanent occupation of Palestine is not good. If it helps Netanyahu draw the US into war with Iran, which he wishes to do, that will be very very bad.
*Belarusians accuse Lukashenko regime of beatings and torture.*
Protesters have filled the streets of Minsk and are keeping ostentatiously peaceful.
Every year, grouse-shooting businesses in the UK kill threatened and protected birds of prey so they can have more grouse for their customers to shoot. This year they took advantage of Covid-19 to do it even more.
*Global brands employ Uighur Muslims as ‘forced labour’.*
The TSA allows passengers to fly without officially valid ID, and has a procedure to verify who they are. It is planning to replace that procedure with a nonfree phone app.
Antibody tests suggest that 6% of the UK population has had Covid-19. That is 3.4 million people, 10 times the official count.
It is puzzling that only 32% of those 3.4 million reportedly had no Covid-19 symptoms. That implies 2.4 million did have symptoms; how did the system overlook them?
Has it been demonstrated that antibodies to other diseases don't test positive on this test? It would be useful to do that experiment in New Zealand, where hardly anyone has had Covid-19 — but there do seem to be asymptomatic cases spreading the disease occasionally.
Most people in the US have glyphosate in their blood. But the level drops 70% in one week of eating pesticide-free food.
To develop practical advice from this, we need to know which foods contain people substantial amounts of glyphosate.
*Scientists warned Trump's wall would threaten endangered species.* They were right.
*US hospitals pressure healthcare staff to work even if they have Covid symptoms.*
That practice should be a crime, but the first step is to make sure everyone has paid sick leave.
US citizens: call on Faux News Advertisers to stop supporting racism and disinformation — that is, to stop advertising in Faux News.
US citizens: call on Congress to defend the US Postal Service.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to make abortion access for all a top priority.
The mining company BHP already has permission to destroy 40 "Aboriginal cultural heritage sites".
Some of these sites have ancient art or material for archaeological investigation; those should be protected, and no one should be authorized to permit their destruction.
Since I don't know the definition of "cultural heritage site", I don't know whether all of these sites have any tangible relics of past. If some do not, I don't have an opinion about them.
Greece and Turkey are close to war over which one will extract oil from the sea bottom near both countries.
The right answer is clear: neither one. The existing fossil fuel facilities, if fully utilized, will destroy civilization. There is no room in the
carbon budget for any new facilities. In a sane world, the great powers would already have agreed to put a ceiling on the ultimate total extraction, and would clamp down firmly on any attempt to increase it.
Germans have killed too many foxes; now field mice are destroying farms.
Even thoroughly assimilated Uighurs face repression in China for any action that raises suspicion.
*Emboldened by promises of annexation, Israeli settler attacks (against Palestinians and their property) soared in July.*
The wrecker has tried hard to provoke Iran into war, but Iran's leaders are too clever to take the bait. The only big result so far is a permanent alliance between Iran and China.
The wrecker dearly wants an October surprise, so if he can't convince Iran to provide a war, maybe he will start the war himself.
Edtech provides a bad education, but it is drooling at the thought of swallowing public education and spitting out the teachers.
It is not a coincidence that they make students run proprietary software. That helps them make sure students offer up their personal information and control what students do.
Bolivians have set up road blocks to protest the repeated postponement of the coming election. The government is sending right-wing militias to attack the protesters.
*Saudi Crown Prince's Hit Squads Reflect His Foreign Policy — And Ours.*
(satire) *Biden Campaign Gets Kamala Harris Quickly Up To Speed On Candidate’s Plans For Presidential Funeral Service.*
(satire) *Conservatives Warn Radical Kamala Harris Will Impose Her Christian Beliefs On American Populace.*
Coronavirus can spread in aerosols (small droplets that don't sink).
16% of adults in the UK (outside of Scotland) have suffered food insecurity since the start of Covid-19. I expect the fraction of children is larger.
Can anyone show me an article with comparable figures for the USA?
*Amid Pandemic and Economic Pain, UNICEF Unveils First-Ever Project to Combat Child Suffering in US.*
*With Warren Sidestepped, Wall Street Execs Cheer Biden's Pick of Harris for VP.*
She endorsed Medicare for All, then changed to a supposedly "centrist" position that Wall Street likes.
On the other hand, she does endorse the Green New Deal.
Now Comes the Difficult Work of Pushing the Biden-Harris Ticket Left.
However, I think the message Biden sent by appointing Harris is that he will pay little attention.
Indian thugs shot at Muslims protesting an insult to Mohammed.
Those protesters had a right to protest; but if their demand is to censor negative statements about Mohammed, their cause is unjust. You have a right to criticize, condemn, or make fun of any religion, and any prophet, even the prophet that tells people that they are using evil, oppressive software which is an abomination.
Indian law includes many forms of censorship. The book Lajja, by Taslima Nasrin, which is about the oppression of Hindus in Bangladesh (where she was from) was banned in the adjoining state of India.
Thai students are protesting, criticizing the government (which is military in essence) and the monarchy.
The UK gave housing to every homeless person, to avoid transmission of Covid-19. Now it plans to push them out on the street again, along with thousands or millions of destitute people that will soon be evicted.
Indigenous people in the distant Amazon region call on European banks to stop lending to oil extraction there.
The UK suffers from a particular form of capitalism — rentier capitalism — where the main income is to those who have something others need to pay rent for.
This creates growing inequality.
A pumped hydro energy storage system proposed for a tributary that flows into the Grand Canyon is meeting lots of opposition.
I wonder how long a pumped hydro system could continue to function in a land which global heating is making ever more arid as time goes on. Of all the possible places, why there?
Ilhan Omar defeated a well-funded plutocratist challenger in the Democratic primary.
Cops are taught unscientific methods of trying to determine who is lying, and a dangerous technique for extracting confessions.
When they believe that these methods are valid, they become overconfident and more likely to believe bad conclusions. Both of them are unjust to people who feel little confidence, even if they are telling the truth and not guilty.
*Facebook and Instagram ban antisemitic conspiracy theories and blackface.*
Global heating is accelerating, and the past decade (2010-2019) was the hottest ever recorded.
Some people in nursing homes feel life is not worth living under the isolation restrictions nursing homes must follow.
The IMF is threatening to rescue Lebonon with "structural reforms."
"Structural reforms", in IMF jargon, means cutting taxes on the rich, telling the poor to sink or swim, charging money for public school, basically the plutocratist agenda. At least, that is what it meant in the past.
Israel's supreme court ruled against demolishing the home of a Palestinian family, recognizing that it is an injustice to punish innocent relatives of someone accused of crime.
If this policy holds, it would be a step forward for Israel, which has made a practice of punishing the innocent in this way.
An Israeli soldier shot Dalia Sammoudi through her window as she was trying to close it to keep tear gas out. An ambulance came, but soldiers fired shots to block it from reaching her house. Eventually the soldiers let the paramedics go and get her, but she died on reaching the hospital.
Biden chose a running mate who is female and black, and probably does not support Defund the Police.
Thousands of Poles protested for queer rights in Warsaw, and were attacked by thugs.
50 years ago, British companies' money corrupted a UK university. Now, China has the money to suck them into a system of corruption.
Something similar has happened in Australia, and I expect it is happening in the US as well.
Meanwhile, China exercises its tyranny over Chinese students studying abroad.
I would not want universities outside China to exclude Chinese from studying or cut off Chinese labs from research collaboration. But we must make sure they can't get sucked in to the point where they don't dare say no when they must.
Facebook has suspended one of the cheater's PACs for false advertising.
How capitalists make use of plutocratist politicians and parties to claim most of society's wealth for themselves.
The Satanic Temple has published a "sanctified" ritual which includes carrying out an abortion. Based on this, it asserts that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act makes state laws to restrict abortion invalid against an abortion thus sanctified.
I am not an expert on that law, and I would love to see a lawyer's report on whether this argument is likely to prevail in federal court. I hope it does.
Ralph Nader calls on Pelosi to resurrect the Office of Technology Assessment, which was eliminated by plutocratist Republicans in the 1990s.
Plutocratists find the rational evaluation of technology a nuisance. When it agrees with what plutocrats demand, they find it superfluous; when it disagrees, they call it an obstacle.
Novartis agreed to a penalty of almost 700 million dollars for a program of (in effect) bribing doctors.
The Dutch equivalent of the BBC found it made more money by eliminating cookies and "behavioral advertising", and selling ads based on the specific articles they would accompany.
This seems like a step forward towards privacy, but I can't tell how close it actually gets. Cookies are one way of tracking users, but there are others. Does the broadcaster use IP addresses to determine the user's location?
Does the advertiser send ads directly to the user? If so, it might use various nefarious means to get information about the user without the direct help of the broadcaster — including IP address location and browser profiling.
Fight for the Future reports on several kinds of harm that face recognition in schools can do.
To the extent that "exacerbating racial biases" refers to the reported lesser accuracy of today's recognition algorithms for black faces, I consider that an advantage for blacks. (If the algorithms were greatly inaccurate for everyone, we would all be safe from them.)
However, this disparity is likely to be temporary. I am sure that companies are working hard on making recognition accurate for all human faces. Unless we assume that this is impossible, we should not base our campaign against face recognition on the current disparity in accuracy.
On the other hand, to the extent that correct recognition of all students would potentiate the effect of the racial bias in other aspects of the school, that harm will get worse if recognition becomes uniformly accurate. If we can demonstrate this, it will be a good argument to use, one that will tend to get stronger.
The ACLU calls for breaking up the Department of Harshness and Sadism and cutting its overall funds.
Evaluating the significant steps that Billionaire Polluters has announced, and how they fall short of its share of what must be done to avoid global heating disaster.
(satire) *Promising that those responsible for the widespread damage would soon be held accountable, Chicago Police Department officials condemned Black Lives Matter protesters Tuesday for creating a violent vortex of wind that destroyed property.*
The Environmental Poisoning Agency plans to completely eliminate regulations on methane emissions from oil and methane wells.
The wrecker has been chipping steadily away at the US regulations that limit toxic pollution and global heating. It looks like he has decided to try eliminating them entirely while he still has a chance.
British soldiers who had been prisoners of war in Burma were very unhappy with the film, Bridge on the River Kwai.
A California court ordered Uber and Lyft to treat drivers as employees following the California law which says they are. This is not a final decision, however, and I expect those companies will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. Treating their drivers as employees — where they do so — can greatly reduce the way those companies mistreat their drivers. It does nothing to correct the injustices they do to all customers: making them run nonfree software, making them identify themselves, and making a dossier about the movements of each one. These injustices are the essential reasons to reject those dis-services.
As long as they continue, I refuse to get into an Uber car even if someone else booked the ride.
The cheater issued executive orders that pretend to help unemployed and poor Americans cope with the consequences of Covid-19. But they don't really do the jobs they pretend to do, they leave out lots of people, and they have intolerable side effects. They are also unconstitutional, since the president does not have the power to order such things.
More about the absurdity of his supposed "remedy".
I must disagree, however, with calling them a "failure". I think that his goals are such that they constitute a "success" according to them.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to support the MORE Act, which decriminalizes marijuana and does other related good things.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
*'As the tundra burns, we cannot afford climate silence': a letter from the Arctic.*
The article treats withdrawing from the Paris treaty as if it were a real and enormous act of climate sabotage. To be sure, the wrecker is committing large real acts of sabotage also, but this is only symbolic sabotage. The Paris climate treaty specified an insufficient goal, its signatories did not pledge enough to reach that goal,and most of them are doing much less than what they pledged.
Pulling out of the Paris treaty is only a demonstration of bad faith.
*[Covid-19 is expected] to displace more than a million across the Sahel, new tool predicts.*
Global heating is extending the range of Lyme disease and other diseases spread by ticks.
Sanders: *The pandemic is helping the rich get even richer. It's time to tax their obscene wealth.*
Up to 30 million Americans may be evicted by the end of September.
Since there won't be many would-be tenants with money to rent those apartments, some of the landlords may decide they have little to gain my evicting their current tenants. At least, I hope so. But what we need is for a decent government to protect them. And pay their rent, if the landlord is a real person who isn't rich. (Rich landlords should bear the loss of that rent.)
The riches of US billionaires are protected by millions of "useful idiots", worshipers of the Cult of the Invisible Hand.
Florida's unemployment benefits system was designed by sadistic Republicans to make it difficult to get benefits.
Releasing a vaccine that hasn't been carefully tested can backfire in many ways — depending on how well it actually works.
The tyrant of Belarus has shut off mobile phone internet connection and app communication, to hamper protests.
Alex Morse, the progressive challenging Rep. Neal, has been attacked with a vague story about sex which is supposed to be somehow wrong.
London thugs stop and search blacks at 10 times the frequency per capita of whites. They stopped Dawn Butler, MP, for the third time, this time as a passenger with another black driving, then gave excuses that appealed to bigotry.
She presents arguments that the only possible reason for stopping them was racial profiling.
*America's PPE shortage could last years without strategic plan, experts warn.*
*Street fridges of [gratis] food help Americans survive [Covid-19] pandemic.*
Dutch meat-processing companies hire workers through contractors and then mistreat and intimidate them.
There is an obvious solution: change the laws about subcontracted workers so that the ultimate beneficial employer has full employer's responsibility for them. The main reason companies subcontract is to evade responsibility
England had the highest Covid-19 excess mortality rate in Europe. The reason is the unceasing Tory campaign for dooH niboR. The Tories made the poor poorer so they were more vulnerable, and it cut the NHS so it could not do enough.
Cutting down the Amazon forest to clear land to grow corn is reducing the rainfall and increasing the temperature, thus reducing yields of corn.
I don't see any objective validity in thinking of the Amazon as "the vagina of the world". It is a personal mental association; you can think that if it pleases you. However, if it motivates people to campaign effectively against deforestation, I'm all for that.
Kentucky laws and Supreme Court decisions make it difficult to convict the thugs that killed Breonna Taylor of murder. But reckless manslaughter may be possible.
In the US, when thugs rape people they say are suspects, it is rare to bring them to justice.
I object to describing any one crime as "sexual assault" because that is vague about the severity of the crime. This article often uses that term to refer to many crimes that differ in severity but raise the same issue. That may be a valid practice.
The Lebanese are demanding the resignation of the government for allowing the deadly and destructive explosion in Beirut.
I have to wonder what people wish the ministers had done. 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate take up around 1.4 million cubic meters. It is not trivial to get rid of so much material.
After receiving on July 20 the report, "This dangerous chemical could explode at any time, but it has been stored here for six years with no trouble yet," I can understand why the ministers did not rush desperately to move it within two weeks. They would have had no plan ready, and figuring out what to do with it would take time.
I wonder why the danger of the chemical was noted only just now, and not earlier.
Lebanon was in economic distress already, and surely can't afford to rebuild its port facilities. But I can think of one country that will offer to pay for it: China.
To make a policy of test, trace and isolate function, the state must supply the lost wages of those who are require to isolate.
Every worker needs to have paid sick leave to be able to afford to stay home to avoid infecting others at work.
An oil tanker ran aground on a reef near Mauritius and is breaking up. So far it has spilled 1000 tons of oil, which has polluted coral reefs and mangroves.
The practice of shipping large quantity of oil is a recipe for occasional disaster. An island like Mauritius, which is not rich, cannot afford to be ready to deal with a problem like this in case it happens.
Neonicotinoids used on crop seeds damage birds' reproduction. The poison accumulates in a bird, over the years, and interferes with its ability to reproduce successfully.
A kind of genetically engineering can make a plant grow much faster and use less water. It has been tested on tobacco, but the idea is to use it on food plants.
Each genetically engineered product ought to be judged on its individual characteristics, but that does not mean they should be accepted without scrutiny.
Can anyone find out what kind of "algae" the added protein comes from? In particular, which phylum is it in? In any case, it can't be "closely related" to a flowering plant.
*Leaked Documents Reveal What TikTok Shares with Authorities — in the U.S.*
*Why is India obsessed with English-medium education — when it goes against scientific consensus?*
The article also describes Hindi as an artificially constructed compromise version of regional languages. Since I don't speak Hindi or any of those, I wonder how different they are.
New Zealand PM Ardern promised progressive changes before winning election, but she did not implement them. Instead, she signed the TPP, which is a business-supremacy treaty.
Perhaps she is New Zealand's Obama.
I encourage New Zealanders to vote Green.
Kiribati plans to raise its islands to protect them against sea-level rise.
This might work for 50 years, but not indefinitely. If we do not curb global heating, sea-level rise will accelerate. Eventually it will go too fast for raising the islands to compensate for.
It will also be expensive. If global heating causes the US and China to collapse, which could happen in 50 years, no one will be able to offer that sort of support.
Dredging the lagoon to get the materials could perhaps harm the wildlife in the lagoon, but that is just speculation. Perhaps the conditions in the lagoon make it safe.
*Within the Boston Police Department, complaints against officers are rarely confirmed or result in punishment.*
The tyrant of Belarus is preparing to claim he has "won" reelection with an amazing 80% of the vote.
Protests have broken out all around the country. There are reports that some riot thugs are switching sides and joining the protests.
*Bolivia protesters bring country to standstill over election delays.*
Economic analysis shows that rapidly reopening business, as red states have done, failed to give them an economic boost. The resulting wave of Covid-19 prevented the hoped-for benefits, even as it put people at some risk of death, and a likelihood of long-term medical damage.
*Progressives are pointing to Susan Rice's past fossil fuel investments — including stock in the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline — and her hawkish foreign policy as reasons to disqualify her from the running.*
It is unlikely anyone would be chosen as a national security adviser without being hawkish. If you seek someone who will end wars rather than start them, that is not a fruitful place to look.
Arkansas's artificial abortion impediments will take effect at the end of this month unless another court decision blocks them again.
*Young people have blockaded a police station in north-west London, accusing [thugs] of assaulting and arresting youth workers who had gone to investigate the arrest of a 14-year-old.*
*"It is worth fighting for a system that puts public health ahead of profits: Medicare for All," said a doctor touting Canadian system.*
(satire) *Dow Skyrockets After Coronavirus Begins Trading On New York Stock Exchange.*
Arguing that requiring a voter to buy a stamp to mail in a ballot is a kind of poll tax, and thus unconstitutional.
Ironically, ballots that don't have stamps (because they are in states which prepay for mailing back ballots) run a risk of being rejected for not carrying a postmark.
This shows that the US hodgepodge of voting systems was not designed with the proper goal of helping every authorized voter to cast a ballot.
London thugs decided to search Ryan Colaço and his car for no obvious reason. They strip-searched him, found nothing, but still jailed him. They searched his car, too, and must have decided to search the inside of the glass of one window, because when he got it back that window had been smashed.
Oh, he faces charges of "resisting". Perhaps the thugs were getting fed up after searching him 20 times and never finding anything to make it worth while.
A progressive candidate won the Democratic primary for senator in Tennessee.
For any Democrat to win there will be difficult, but I think a progressive has a better chance of inspiring support than a right-wing "centrist".
Hypersensitivity is spreading everywhere.
Ancient Americans (aka 1491), by Charles Mann, discusses the terms "Eskimo" and "Inuit" on page 341. It seems that neither term is welcomed by the entire group in question, which spans from Alaska to Greenland.
As for "Siamese twins", it is true that the phenomenon of conjoined twins is a general human trait and not specific to people from Siam. But why in the world would people from Siam feel offended by it?
While we are on the subject, the kingdom which used to call itself "Siam" (the name of the region) changed its name to "Thailand" in the 1930s as a declaration of ethnic prejudice. "Thaï" is the name of the majority ethnic group, so the name "Thailand" asserts that other ethnic groups there are subordinate. In other words, it stands for Thai supremacism.
Peter Beinart: Israelis dehumanize Palestinians by seeing them through the "Holocaust lens" and perceiving them as antisemites when they campaign for their rights.
Beinert advocates a combined state with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians. Roger Cohen argues that two separate states are still necessary and still possible.
*Calls for Woodside to pay $200m to clean up moribund Timor Sea oil site it ran until 2016.*
This is fair — but fossil fuel companies usually go to great lengths not to pay to clean up their own messes.
*Jeremy Corbyn accuses Labour officials of sabotaging election campaign.*
I can't follow the description of the events in this article, as it depends on too much else. But it is not inherently implausible. The "moderate" (plutocratist) wing of Labour certainly went to great lengths to defeat Corbyn.
Modi has a last-ditch plan to build 40 new unneeded coal mines just before the coal ceases to be worth much.
*Behind the Beirut explosion lies the lawless world of international shipping.*
It seems that the authorities in Beirut did not know about, or didn't check for, the danger of that particular cargo.
Many farms and food plants in California did little or nothing to protect workers from Covid-19, and kept them in the dark when Covid-19 started spreading among them.
Amazon heavily promotes medical quackery.
Amazon's book store, like Facebook, heavily promotes medical quackery.
New York State's recent primary election seems to be discarding 20% of postal ballots in certain areas. It depends on post offices to take special steps with ballots, and often they forget to do so.
That makes the system vulnerable.
Leaked documents from US thug departments show that they were applying a double standard, grasping at straws to accuse and prosecute Black Lives Matter protesters, while turning a blind eye to right-wing extremists, despite knowing that the latter were the real threat of violence.
Mitre is developing for the US government *a prototype tool that can [crack] smartwatches, fitness trackers and home thermometers for the purposes of homeland security; software to collect human fingerprints from social media websites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the FBI; support in building what the FBI calls the biggest database of human anatomy and criminal history in the world; and a study to determine whether someone’s body odor can show they’re lying.*
Anyone who can crack a device with a microphone can make it listen to you all the time.
The new FSF video about nonfree software in education is great.
Google Nest is taking over the security company ADT. That means ADT alarm systems will start >feeding Google information about what happens in the customers' homes. For "smart", read "snooping."
The only home security device you should trust is one that runs all free software, and communicates encrypted with a service, sending it no data except what you want it to receive.
*The Police Lie. All the Time. Can Anything Stop Them?* San Francisco DA Boudin: "Police are allowed to lie and get away with it over and over and over again in matters big and small… When you have a system of that kind of impunity, it snowballs. It teaches, encourages, and enforces bad behavior."
The problem of violence by thugs is a consequence of their ability to lie to excuse it, so cracking down on testifying is vital to ending their violence.
*[The hypocrite] wants to see 'untrusted' Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat removed from U.S. app stores, Pompeo says.*
*There are calls to ban TikTok in Australia — but you [and Australia] should worry about Facebook too*
Let's ban those Chinese surveillance apps, then proceed to ban the other apps that users can't trust — meaning, all the ones that are >not free/libre software.
US thugs are so lawless that we should not be terribly surprised to learn that they have their own secret criminal gangs.
Also their own right-wing social media hate groups.
Some US veterans say their prescriptions from the VA pharmacies have arrived as much as 20 days late.
This suggests that the cheater's efforts to sabotage voting by mail are very effective. And the saboteur plans to go even further.
Ralph Nader: Economists should develop [an index] to rank the "greed-with-power" status of the 500 largest U.S. corporations.
I think his proposed term, "hedonistic index", does not do justice to the proposal: that word does not imply greed or power. There is nothing evil about hedonism as such — imperfect, yes, but not evil.
UK police are considering criminal charges against one thug who put his knee on a person's neck.
I have to acknowledge that the UK treats discipline for its cops very seriously. When the government decides that a practice is unjust or endangers the public, it can take firm action to teach cops not to do it. I wish the US could do likewise.
Senate Republicans seem to be feeling pressure to compromise on a new relief bill, but they are yielding only a little.
This article does not mention the damaging provisions that Senate Republicans previously insisted on including in any relief bill. Those include giving businesses immunity for dangerous working conditions that let workers transmit Covid-19, and cutting Social Security in the future. They would do lasting harm, and we should not agree to them in exchange for temporary aid. In the long term, that would be a change for the worse.
Have the Republicans dropped those demands? Can anyone tell me?
The article mentions the need to provide funds to the CDC, the postal service, election protection, and Covid-19 testing, but it does mention them in regard to the negotiations. Have Senate Republicans agreed to funds for those? Can anyone tell me?
The eLearning-industrial complex: online courses teach subject material without the rest of what people get from college.
It may succeed in training people for professions but it is not designed to create an educated people.
This is in addition to the injustice of nonfree software, which today's remote education forces onto students from grade 1.
US citizens: call on the Senate to extend the census deadline.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Protests have galvanized black voters' determination to register to vote.
Black Lives Matter protesters in Nutley New Jersey posted a photo of a thug who was friendly with menacing right-wing counterprotesters and had hid has badge number. Instead of firing that thug, the thug department placed felony charges against the people who posted that photo.
Now the thug chief should be fired.
*The Department of Homeland Security is a rogue agency. Democrats must take action.*
We know that rogue agencies with the power to jail or shoot people will only pretend to reform. It will always be the Department of Harshness and Sadism. Defund the DHS along with the thug department.
* The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days.*
*Utah BLM protesters could get life in prison for splashing paint.*
Biden's choice of climate advisers suggest he will not push to reduce greenhouse emissions.
*ICE Resisted Coronavirus Testing to Avoid Releasing [prisoners].*
It's the same coverup philosophy that the wrecker followed: if they don't test the prisoners they can pretend that none are sick.
If the UK shuts the NHS for normal medical care during a second wave of Covid-19, it risks letting thousands of patients die from other treatable causes.
Around 4/5 of people who test positive for Covid-19 have heart problems afterward, as found by one study of 100 patients.
*Acting State Dept. Inspector General Resigns Just Months After Predecessor Fired.*
US citizens: call on US state governors to release prisoners that there is no need to keep in prison.
US citizens: call for the firing, arrest, and charging of the thugs who killed Breonna Taylor.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit police state practices that the conman is using.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
*The Censorship of 'Cancel Culture' May Ultimately Be Most Dangerous for Social Justice Champions.*
Presenting evidence that the US had no military need to use nuclear weapons against Japan, because it already knew that Japan was looking for a way to surrender while saving face.
President Truman later said that he did believe, when he made the decision, that the only choices were bomb or invade.
I wonder whether he was aware that most high-ranking US generals said that Japan would surrender soon anyway. Were those views transmitted to him? Perhaps his advisors kept him away from that idea.
One argument in the first article is that the use of nuclear weapons made little difference to Japan's willingness to surrender, because non-nuclear bombing had done far more damage. If we accept that as valid, what are its full consequences? There were US generals at the time who said conventional (non-nuclear) bombing of cities was an atrocity.
(satire) *Eagles vocalist Don Henley filed suit Wednesday against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s campaigns for not playing "The Boys Of Summer" at their events.*
*'Thoughts and Prayers': Gun Control Groups Send Ironic Condolences [to the NRA, in case it loses the case and gets dissolved].*
Proposing to decriminalize all drugs, and let medical agencies decide how the government should deal with each one.
(satire) *The mayor outlined a plan that dramatically restructured the municipality’s approach to public safety, replacing its nearly 850 police officers with a similar number of social workers, who would be dispatched to city streets and have at their disposal firearms, bulletproof vests, tear gas, …*
Twitter blocked the DNC from condemning one of the bullshitter's lies because it mistook those tweats for support.
It's not only Twitter that finds that condemnation of a statement can be quite similar to supporting it. People can also fail to distinguish. Repeating bullshit, even to attack it, can backfire and spread it instead.
When you want to condemn something that someone else said, don't repeat that statement in a prominently visible way.
*In Pompeo's New Hierarchy of Rights, Religion and Property, Not Humans, Are at the Top.*
USPS work rule changes are delaying mail for as much as a week. This poses a real threat to postal voting. Democrats plan to insist on including support for USPS and elections in the next relief bill.
Can there be a next relief bill? Senate Republicans say they will not agree to one unless it cuts Social Security. They could easily reject anything that will help fair elections, for their own reelection's sake. They need only old out for three more months.
Amazon offers several new surveillance microphone products, meant to be carried around by people during daily life. That will enable them to listen to whoever the device's "owner" comes near.
But don't worry — Amazon is learning how to talk the talk about privacy in a way that more people would find comforting.
A voice command system that is safe for its owner would be one that runs only free software, and does the whole job locally, communicating with other sites only when asked to. With the software inside free, the owner of this device would truly own it.
But even that would not respect the privacy of other people nearby. How to deal with that issue is not obvious.
Everyone: Demand an end to the harassment of Palestinian scientists and academics and an immediate release of Prof. Imad Barghouthi.
*A garment factory supplying Gap, American Eagle and Amazon was at the centre of one of the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in Guatemala.* Over 200 people there contracted the disease.
*How fiberglass boats have become a global pollution problem.*
I wonder, do we know of any safe way to dispose of fiberglass boats?
Sanders proposes a 60% tax on the wealth gains of billionaires.
In principle, income tax ought to be able to do the same job. But they have ways of putting their gains outside income tax. If this method gets the job done, and is simpler to enact, I see no reason not to do it.
New York State has accused the National Rifle Association of fraud and seeks to dissolve it.
Los Angeles will shut off the water and electricity to mansions that hold large parties, since they threaten public health.
With Covid-19 running rampant in that region, this is justified and necessary.
During the great depression of the 1930s, some US states distributed tiny houses where a family member sick with tuberculosis could live and avoid transmitting it to the rest of the family. This was part of FDR's New Deal.
Why not do the same now for Covid-19?
The job would be easier now, since Covid-19 will usually stop being contagious after a few weeks. The state could then retrieve the no-longer-needed tiny house and autoclave it, and provide it to someone else.
The article calls this "learned helplessness", but I think it is intentional sabotage on the part of the Republicans. Then have done plenty to demonstrate their ill will in dealing with Covid-19.
*Iowa ends lifetime voting ban on people with felony convictions.* No US state now formally has such a ban, but Florida's Republicans have constructed an excuse to partially continue it by disenfranchising them until they pay all fees or fines.
Will Floridians run another ballot petition to insist that the previous one means what it says?
Facebook deleted one of the bullshitter's postings for spreading false information about Covid-19.
US antitrust law used to prohibit "vertical integration". If we bring that back, it would prohibit a product from depending unavoidably on an online service set up by the same company. At least, for large companies.
I think we should prohibit it separately, so that the prohibition applies to small companies too.
Billionaire Polluters says it will reduce oil and gas extraction 40% in the coming decade.
Not enough, of course, but it is an important step.
*Manchester university divests from firms complicit in Israeli occupation.*
(satire) *White House officials reportedly breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday after Tropical Storm Isaias gave them a simple, run-of-the-mill hurricane relief effort to fuck up.*
Sri Lanka seems to be trying hard to let people vote despite Covid-19, but its president has been increasingly autocratic.
When his brother Mahinda Rajapaksa was president, he had his critics murdered, including the famous journalist Lasantha Wickramatunga, who forecast he would be murdered.
A bill would require businesses to get your explicit consent for doing face recognition with your photo.
This is a good first step, but not enough to prevent the danger. We need to prohibit the deployment of systems that can systematically watch or identify people. And not only by business.
*SEC Launches Probe Into Kodak After Warren Raised Questions Over Lucrative Covid-19 Deal With Trump.*
(satire) *New Republican slogan: a vote for Biden is a vote for seeing the dentist twice a year.*
India jails Kashmiris that criticize the occupation of Kashmir. To get out of jail, they have to promise not to criticize the government. As far as I can tell, this is forever, but it would be tyrannical even if it lasted for one day.
They were jailed without legitimate charges or trial, which is tyrannical too.
Senator Schiff tried to enable blanket surveillance of US internet communication, by proposing an amendment specifically permitting such surveillance of unauthorized immigrants.
The article argues that the FBI could have used this as an excuse to collect everyone's data and look through it to see who was an unauthorized immigrant.
(satire) *… critics slammed the National Weather Service Wednesday after new evidence showed they failed to stop a recent hurricane despite having advanced warning.*
The Cambridge thug department said it had no military weapons. City councilors demanded a full inventory, and discovered it had 64 military assault weapons.
The M4 assault rifle is not merely "military-style." It is a smaller, newer variant of the M16, and the US Army is moving to it.
As for the armored vehicle, indeed it is not a "tank". A tank, by definition, has a cannon. Nonetheless, it may mount other weapons. I doubt that Cambridge has ever had an event for which it needed an armed and armored vehicle, and if it ever did, surely Cambridge could ask for help from Boston. The bridges to Boston are just a few hundred meters long.
Every city should force its thug department to furnish an inventory. Don't be distracted by the question of "What weapons do you get?" The main question is, "What weapons do you have?"
Missouri voters passed an initiative to take advantage of Obama's medical insurance law to extend Medicaid to more people.
Why is the state legislature is controlled by Republicans when most of the people in the state want things like Medicaid extension? Why do a majority of the state's voters vote for those Republican state legislators?
Perhaps they don't. Perhaps Republicans maintain control be gerrymandering. They do that in many states.
Moderna is developing a vaccine against Covid-19, with the US government paying the full cost. If it works, it will charge record prices for doses of the vaccine.
Because China is an important market for cinema, China is imposing censorship on global cinema (and first of all US cinema) by censoring release of movies in China.
The report suggests that if a company works on an obscure film that China objects to, it will punish big hit films that the company is involved with.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask per to sponsor the We The People amendment. Or thank per if perse has already done so. Here is a list of sponsors in the House of Representatives.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
*How decades of racism and poverty help fuel the pandemic in America's deep south.*
We could eliminate large parts of these problems with Medicare for All and other progressive programs.
Greenpeace is pressuring UK supermarket chains to stop buying beef from Brazilian companies that accept cattle from deforested land.
The UK is considering regulating internet gambling so that it can't ruin people.
Some people never really recover from Covid-19 — they continue to have a variety of incapacitating symptoms.
Merdan Ghappar, prisoner in Xinjiang, had a chance to send out messages about torture practices there. Then he disappeared.
His uncle, an expat who condemns China, thinks China imprisoned Merdan because he had an activist expat uncle. He believes the messages were genuine.
Many European countries don't have birthright citizenship. Here's an example of someone born in France, who has lived in Belgium since infancy, who is struggling not to be deported to a country where he would be persecuted.
* A New York bill would make it easier to sue big tech companies for alleged abuses of their monopoly powers.*
Another "moderate" (right-wing) Democrat in Congress has been replaced, this time by progressive Cori Bush.
*Rats and bats that host pandemic pathogens like Covid-19 increase in damaged ecosystems, analysis shows. It found that the damage benefits smaller, more adaptable creatures that also carry the most pathogens that can pass to humans.*
Farms in the middle of wilderness also bring these animals in closer contact with humans, from which they could pick up diseases that can also infect humans, and later transmit them back to humans with some sort of mutations.
*A year on from a devastating siege, Kashmir is being turned into a colony.*
It is subject to what is in effect a permanent military occupation, with the repression that would normally imply.
Further census sabotage: the anti-voter plans to cut the census off a month early.
*Landmark obesity guidelines in Canada treat problem as chronic illness.*
The spouse of the L.A. district attorney pointed a gun at protesters at their home, and faces criminal charges for doing so.
I don't know the facts, but I agree with the ideas underlying the protesters' criticism of DA Lacey's conduct in office. I think the couple has the right to insist that the protesters get off their porch, but Mr Lacey had no right to threaten their lives with a gun, so I think the charges against him are morally valid.
The protesters have a right to protest nearby, on the sidewalk, as long as they don't harass people going in and out. (Think of the right-wing protesters outside the doors of abortion clinics, who harass patients and staff.)
Colombia's ex-president Álvaro Horrible is under house arrest during an investigation into charges he tried to frame an opposition politician.
I hope he will someday face charges for supporting the right-wing paramilitares, who were and perhaps still are the most dangerous terrorists in Colombia.
Many of the Portland protesters arrested by federal thugs were charged with the most minor of crimes, such as "failure to obey". The thugs were evidently seeking any excuse to arrest someone. And when the protesters were released from jail, their release conditions included "may not participate in protests."
That condition may be unconstitutional in the US, but it has been used often against protesters arrested in the UK.
(satire) *Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly cut the phone line outside a local nursing home Monday so no one inside could report any coronavirus data.*
*Amnesty Report Details Human Rights Violations by US [thugs] During Racial Justice Protests.*
New evidence suggests that asymptomatic children contribute significantly to transmission of Covid-19.
Covid-19 spreads easily among US military personnel because many of them are right-wing anti-maskers. When the military sends personnel from base to base, some of them bring Covid-19 and spread it to the people that live near the base, and the rest of that region or country.
The UK has stopped using an AI system to judge immigration applications after determining that it suffers from PIPO.
PIPO, a term I just coined, stands for "prejudice in, prejudice out." This failure is common in AI systems trained on the actual behavior of people in a system where there is systematic prejudice.
In an ironic way, though, converting the prejudiced habits of officials into a program made the existence of the prejudice easy to demonstrate. Will that pave the way to eliminating the prejudice, or will the ministry only drive it underground?
Researchers have released a free(libre) recipe for a possible Covid-19 vaccine that people can make at home. However, there is no study to verify its safety or efficacy.
The article includes a statement that is confusingly vague because it uses the term "intellectual property". I would expect it is trying to talk about patents, but doing a bad job of saying so.
A school teacher talks about home-schooling her own children.
*Humanity Is an Endangered Species. Can We Do What it Takes to Save Ourselves?*
(satire) *…ornithologists at Bowdoin College released a groundbreaking new study Monday that attributed owls’ nocturnal lifestyle to their hard cocaine habit.*
*Mumbai installs female figures on traffic lights. Campaigners in India say the move helps dispel the notion that only men should be out in public.*
*[Musicians] taking on political roles from Algeria to Zambia have been beaten, [jailed] and killed.*
India imposed a curfew on Kashmir again, lest Kashmiris protest on the first anniversary of the special repression there.
On Truman's decision to drop nuclear bombs on Japan.
Bombing of Germany killed more people and was ineffective against the factories that were usually the military targets. Some Allied generals considered this bombing a war crime.
Many European countries reopened business and transport too completely and are now facing a second wavelet of Covid-19.
21 prisoners have died of Covid-19 in San Quentin prison. Ironically, 9 prisoners on death row have died from Covid-19. One must wonder if this has been chosen as an official alternate method of execution.
Violence and trauma cause children to mature faster and get old faster.
The Manhattan district attorney said that his investigation of the Trump family businesses covers various kinds of corruption.
North Korea probably now has nuclear missiles. This is unfortunate, but dictator Kim decided to do this, there was no way to stop him.
The issue for the US, and for South Korea and Japan, is what significance to assign to this. I think that it does not need to lead to war. Kim thinks of North Korea as his property, and he does not want to get it nuked, so why would he launch nukes?
He may feel so much safer, with his nukes, that he would look for peaceful relations with other countries.
North Korea is a totalitarian hell. But we cannot change that by threatening war. Meanwhile, China is developing into a totalitarian hell; Xinjiang is worse than North Korea, if what I have read is anything to go by. And we cannot change that either. Since North Korea does not threaten to take over the world, we may as well make peace with it.
It would be very advantageous to have a vaccine for Covid-19 by the end of this year, but rushing things is dangerous.
The reason vaccines are generally very safe is that researchers take the time to make sure they are very safe before introducing them. The risk of a carefully tested vaccine may not be zero, but it is negligible compared with the risk of the disease it prevents. But that won't apply to a vaccine which has not been carefully tested.
(satire) *… officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security praised Bolivian leaders Monday for eliminating voter fraud through their refusal to hold general elections.*
Since Dubya, or perhaps before, the concept of holding official responsible for their criminal conduct has almost been forgotten.
We are fighting to punish thugs for their crimes. We need to extend that to all officials, from presidents to prison guards.
(satire) *"Starting this week, every American making under $75,000 will be sent a 100,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier to make certain they are taken care of when it comes to their naval arsenal," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.*
A 15-year-old Michigan teenager was jailed for months for not finishing her online homework. She was on probation and doing her homework was a probation requirement.
Aside from highlighting the cruel basic attitude of the US criminal justice system, which also shows in other ways, the case has another aspect the article does not mention. The class probably required her to use nonfree software, perhaps Zoom, or from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple. Refusing to run it was the right thing for her to do, just as it is the right thing for everyone to do.
The Focals eyeglass display, with snooping microphone, has been eliminated. Google eliminated it by buying the manufacturer and shutting it down. It also shut down the server these devices depend on, which caused the ones already sold to cease to function.
It may be a good thing to wipe out this product — for "smart", read "snoop" — but Google didn't do that for the sake of privacy. Rather, it was eliminating competition for its own snooping product.
Solar panels have made the desert bloom in Helmand, bloom with opium poppies. The result is that heroin is much cheaper. However, the aquifer they pump water from will run out in a decade or so, and that could cause millions of people to try to migrate from Afghanistan to wherever they can reach.
Unless someone invents a high-tech device to extract humidity from the air.
The EFF proposes laws to require large communications back-end companies to allow interoperability.
This would work by requiring them to offer data portability, back-end interoperability, and "delegability" (letting users communicate through independently developed front ends).
The EFF's definition of "delegability" is inadequate, because companies often permit access through independent client programs, but only if they are nonfree and satisfy various other demands. They do this by requiring the client program to contain a secret "client key" furnished by the company, which the company can revoke if it becomes known to the public, or if the client program allows users to protect themselves from certain crucial forms of manipulation.
Effective delegability requires that companies permit access by users running exclusively free software.
Edward Snowden: *The Age of Mass Surveillance Will Not Last Forever.* But he reminds us that it continues nearly unhampered today, in the supposedly free countries.
How thug unions campaign to protect brutal thugs. And sometimes corrupt thugs too.
New York City's thug union got the city to keep from the public the records of investigations into violent thugs. It turns out that over 10% of them were found to have violated the department's limits on use of force.
*We asked [thug] departments about viral videos showing cops escalating violence against protesters. Most refused to name the officers or provide updates on their investigations.
(satire) *Ornithologists Attribute Owls’ Nocturnal Lifestyle To Hard Cocaine Habit.*
"Challenge questions" generally give very bad security and users forget the answers.
I treat them like passwords.
*Comparing Poverty in India and America May Surprise You.*
Debt causes conceptual problems in making statistics about people's wealth. If one household has a $300,000 house and debts of $320,000, while another household lives in a tent and has debts of $20,000, is it meaningful to put both of them in the -$20,000 bucket?
So far this year, the world has shut down more coal power electric capacity than it has built.
We can't just count on the Invisible Hand to cancel new coal power plant construction, or the practice of burning coal. Paying for new coal plants is a waste of money, but those who build them will lobby governments to pay for their construction anyway. And they could even make a profit operating those plants, if they get a subsidy.
British troops in Afghanistan are suspected of having murdered 15 civilians, and a court is demanding explanations.
University College London quietly renamed references to its former professors that supported the idea of eugenics.
What should we say about someone in the past who did important good things and important bad things? I think it depends on the relative importance of the good and the bad in the impact of that person's life.
Rutherford says that science refuted eugenics. Saini says that's false because science created eugenics — but that, if true, would not make Rutherford's claim false. It could be that science created eugenics and subsequently refuted eugenics.
But I think it is more valid to say that eugenics, as regards race, was pseudoscience created by racism.
To correct one error: sex-specific abortion is not a form of eugenics, because it does not alter (or aim to alter) the future gene pool. This is because sex is not a characteristic that can be altered by selection. Among humans, having a female parent does not make you more likely to be female, just as having a male parent does not make you more likely to be male.
It's otherwise for aphids: having a male parent increases an aphid's chance of being male. Indeed, aphids with solely a female parent are always female.
My views on sex-specific abortion.
*Secrecy has harmed UK government's response to Covid-19 crisis, says top scientist.*
Fiji, Vanuatu, and Papua New Guinea have used Covid-19 as an excuse to impose tyranny.
With a new nuclear arms race, possibly including space-based weapons, we need to bring back the movement for nuclear disarmament.
*Qadhafi’s prophecy comes true as foreign powers battle for Libya’s oil.*
Bogus Johnson desperately tried to get people going to the office and visiting restaurants, pubs and nightclubs, but that was more than Covid-19 would allow. It is backfiring.
The right wing blames the consequences on the poor, following the strategy of right-wing government to “persuade [people] to blame themselves” for problems, rather that make things better as a progressive government would do.
Sometimes people do behave irresponsibly. In Raves and "Covid parties", people say "To hell with being responsible," and that can make a lot of people sick. Right-wing fools that spit at precautions make a lot of people sick. Nobody has to do these things, and nobody should. We should distinguish these gratuitous risks from the risks society compels poor people to run.
Government's power to eliminate practical obstacles is not infinite. Even a progressive government could not legislate away all the practical problems caused by living with Covid-19. It may indeed be necessary for people without back yards to stay home this summer, rather than going to the beach with a crowd. But a progressive government could certainly legislate away quite a few of the problems, just by deciding to try.
An interview with Grigory Rodchenkov, formerly head of Russia's sports doping program, who turned whistleblower when he was about to be caught.
He believes Putin would have him assassinated if Putin could find him.
Melbourne, Australia, has adopted a very strict lockdown to stop transmission of Covid-19 there.
The article raises some questions in my mind. Why is it that many workers are living paycheck to paycheck and do not have paid sick leave, and can the state give them that? Why is it that employers can get away with demanding workers come to work when sick, and can the state catch them and prosecute them?
*Sen. Martin Heinrich Calls On Facebook To End Its Exemption Of Climate Denial From Fact-Checking Program.*
10,000 Israelis protested against Netanyahu, for his career of corruption and for reopening Israel to Covid-19.
As some of his supporters occasionally launch violence the protesters, he accused the opposition of inciting violence, Standard right-wing lie tactic.
When the wrecker threatens to use his secret powers to destroy American democracy, he may not be bluffing. Congress should investigate what those powers might include.
Children can catch Covid-19 and can spread it to others.
(satire) *Federal Troops Tear-Gas Yankees Off Field So Trump Can Throw Out First Pitch.*
Sanders-supporting Democratic Convention delegates proposed a list of suggested running mates for Biden — three black females.
I've been impressed by Rep. Lee's courage in voting against military action and spending, for years, when hardly anyone else dared to. Aside from that, I am unfamiliar with them, but I expect they are all long-standing progressives. Maybe they are good choices. I am disappointed by Karen Bass's willingness to participate in a Scientology event in 2010, but mainly because she should have checked more carefully which platforms to speak on. Surely they are all much better than the plutocratist women we hear Biden's camp suggest.
However, I rebuke the delegates' foolishness in choosing these people based on their race and their gender. Didn't we learn, from Obama, not to let candidates' identity distract us from things that really matter?
Biden's statement that he will choose a woman was an attempt to distract us with identity. The plan was that he would choose a not-very-progressive woman and we'd be so thrilled by her identity that we would fool ourselves into cheering.
When I was asked to say which VP candidate I preferred, and offered a list of several women, I wrote in "Bernie Sanders" and said that he's a tried and true progressive. If a woman were equally so, I'd support her too, but I don't know of any.
The EU may investigate whether Google is using the medical data that Fitbit collects for the sake of its advertising business.
As usual, this fails to get to the heart of the matter. Devices such as a Fitbit should not send data anywhere. They should release it to the owner, in a fully documented format, and that's all.
*Improve your relationships — with advice from counter-terrorism experts.*
Torturing people you love is as destructive and stupid as torturing prisoners.
Rep. Gohmert is not a buffoon. He is a dangerous enemy of our democracy and our safety. His followers beat up the people rallying for his election opponent, and he pressured his staff to risk transmitting Covid-19 by not wearing masks.
His getting sick could teach a lesson that will save others.
Rep. Grijalva tested positive, and rebukes the anti-mask Republicans in Congress who may have transmitted it to him.
A Palestinian witness describes the murder of Abdul Fattah al-Sharif by an Israeli soldier, as al-Sharif was lying on the ground alive but not moving.
It may well be the case that al-Sharif had stabbed the wounded Israeli soldier who was on the ground nearby. But that does not justify giving him no first aid, nor killing him.
Ralph Nader: Nancy Pelosi's fund-raising letters accurately reflect the timid policies that she works for. No attempt to make things better, only to oppose making them even worse.
The United States on the path to being a failed state.
An ex-thug reports that he killed a man on duty, in self defense, and after some time passed he was so ashamed of this that had to quit. Now he tries to keep track of all the times anyone dies in interaction with a cop, regardless of fault.
"Honest government ad". Lots of fun.
China has placed criminal charges against Samuel Chu, a US citizen, for allegedly advocating supporting Hong Kong's independence at home in the US.
China is also firing teachers, so that other teachers will be frightened into enforcing total submission from their students.
*Israel’s Jewish National Fund is Uprooting Palestinians — Not Planting Trees.*
When it does plant trees, sometimes those cover former Palestinian land.
Israelis are protesting against Netanyahu's corruption, and his supporters have violently attacked protesters.
I think that they have learned the habit of violence from years of attacking Palestinians.
Some of them are also being arrested.
*5 Key Demands for the New Coronavirus Bill.*
Demand 5 does not mention "Social Security" but it includes "Don't cut Social Security."
Alas, the Republicans in the Senate are adamant that they will do nothing to relieve the short-term problems poor Americans are facing unless they can impose even bigger long-term harm.
Bolivians protested against delay of their presidential election, which the president installed by the pseudo-coup seems likely to lose.
*Groups call on [Biden] to appoint transition and cabinet officials determined to "serve no interest but the public's."*
US citizens: call on Detroit officials to fire and investigate the thugs that murdered Hakim Littleton.
Reportedly Littleton shot at a thug. If that is true, at that time he was a threat to them.
But once he was disarmed and lying helpless on the ground, he was no longer a threat, and there was no justification at that time for shooting him dead.
*As I first encountered the flow of sick patients coming into the emergency room, I hoped that either all these patients’ care would be covered or that insurers and hospitals wouldn’t be so ruthless as to bankrupt these patients. But these naïve sentiments have no place in this broken, profit driven system.*
(satire) *Federal Agents Drive 3 Hours Away From Portland Before Realizing Abducted Protester Still In Backseat.*
The US "vaccine chief" was allowed to award a vaccine contract to his own former employer.
That ought to be a crime. Can the official be prosecuted for it next year?
I also question the wisdom of buying 100 million doses of a vaccine before we know whether it is effective.
USPS employees warn that the new no-rush handling of first class mail could make postal ballots arrive too late to be counted.
This is especially likely where Republican election officials can choose to send out the ballots at the last possible moment. That can happen in some swing states.
Oil companies and even OPEC are now recognizing that oil demand will fall ever more as renewable electricity become too cheap to compete with.
Does that mean we are safe? No. To reduce global heating disaster we need to hurry the transition, but oil company owners will try to slow it down.
In addition, they will try to avoid spending any of their money on safely sealing off the wells. They will try to drop that burden on the public. That means we must hurry to take control and compel them to pay the price of properly shutting down the wells they built.
Republican Herman Cain supported the wrecker by rejecting the use of masks, and went to the wrecker's campaign rally. He came down with Covid-19 shortly thereafter, and since has died from it.
I won't say I am glad he died, but he brought it on himself by following the mad Republican cult.
Colonized people fighting against Western armies often followed leaders who promised to make them magically immune to bullets. Needless to say, the magic never worked, but the people could win some battles because, imbued with that confidence, they could charge the colonizing army and overrun it despite its guns. In the end, though, they lost. Can we compare the Republicans to that?
If the wrecker manages to prevent (or "delay") the November election, including the senate, Senator Schumer (a plutocratist Democrat) will most likely become president.
If Republicans disrupt the election in states they control, it is possible that some Senators will be elected, mainly Democrats.
*Special prosecutor to investigate alleged beating of man inside Lynn [Massachusetts] police station.*
Hooray! Investigation of thugs' crimes should not be limited to the small fraction that have fatal results.
*[US] Teachers fearing in-person schooling make wills, retire or plan strikes.*
It is a mistake to reopen schools physically while Covid-19 runs rampant. However, holding classes with nonfree software, and feeding students (and/or teachers') personal data to online dis-services is a vicious injustice that will be permanent unless we fight to eliminate it.
I urge students and parents to refuse to run nonfree software and demand that schools never give their names to any company.
Progressive Democratic candidate J. D. Scholten was offered support by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with conditions so odious that he declined the offer.
He thinks he can win anyway.
Relief payments that the US gave on account of Covid-19 actually helped the poor generally. We can continue to do this — Covid-19 or no Covid-19.
Proposing that local social movements can build a low-emissions sustainable society from the bottom up.
I find a few of the concepts in the article misleading. For instance, it is silly to think that we have "colonized" the atmosphere, because that implies we took it away from someone else. What is true is that we have modified it in ways that hurt and endanger us all.
But other concepts are valid, and the overall idea might be have value anyway.
Modi is trying to quash journalism that criticizes his handling of Covid-19 by arresting journalists.
Britain imprisons far too many people, imitating the US perhaps. Other countries show there is no reason for this.
Various opinions on the possibility of future population decrease.
*Revealed: super-rich donate to Cuomo as he rejects tax hikes for billionaires.*
Basically. being more progressive than the wrecker doesn't mean you're any good.
*Landmark ruling sees Ugandan poacher jailed for killing Rafiki the gorilla.*
Bravo!
*Portland sees peaceful night of protests following withdrawal of federal troops.*
*Trump badly miscalculated in Portland — and even he knows it.
The Committee of Public Safety, or should I say Department of Homeland Security, is making "intelligence reports" about the journalists who investigate the bully's repression in Portland.
Biden would have a better chance of winning if he supported the progressive policies that Sanders supporters (like most Americans) support.
1/3 of the children in the world have dangerous levels of lead.
Spain implores people to keep up their vigilance against foolish acts that can spread Covid-19.
I think, however, that it behooves governments to jump vigorously on disease transmission, because once it gets away from you, it is hard to get in front of it again.
Here is what a vigorous attempt to flatten an outbreak of Covid-19 looks like.
If what's happening near you does not resemble this, your government is doing a bad job.
In theory it could be advantageous to tune the response and shut down only the minimum necessary in a given situation. But we don't have enough experience with Covid-19 to know what that minimum is.
*Italy's senate votes to lift Matteo Salvini's immunity from prosecution. Ex-minister faces kidnapping charges for preventing docking of migrant rescue ships.*
*Australia's 'black summer' bushfires showed the impact of [previous] human-wrought change.*
Sanders calls on the Senate to reform its rules to end the filibuster. That quirk in the rules allows any 41 senators to block any law.
The Democrats are likely to have a majority starting January, but unlikely to have 60 seats. If Republicans can block laws with the filibuster, they can stop Congress from undoing the damage Republicans have done over the past few years.
The filibuster used to apply to judicial appointments, too, but the Republicans eliminated the filibuster for those decisions. That's how they were able to put so many extremists into judgeships. So why hesitate to finish eliminating it.
Hong Kong has eliminated the pro-democracy candidates for its legislative election.
It also postponed the elections for a year, perhaps hoping that by then everyone will be demoralized.
US citizens: call on Pelosi to reject the Republican plan to spend billions for more weapons as "Covid-19 relief".
How do you spell relief? "W E A P O N S".
Australia now has a plan for switching to renewable electric generation. It's not as fast as it needs to be, but it can be accelerated.
The next question is whether the planet-roaster ministers in power will allow it to happen.
Children who catch Covid-19 can have very high levels of virus. Don't assume you won't catch it from a child!
The government set up in April an alternate reporting system for hospital data, and did so in a big hurry, bypassing normal contracting rules.
This leads me to suspect that the scheme of cutting the CDC out of the loop for Covid-19 statistics, to keep the public in the dark, was planned back in April.
The US GDP decreased by 10% in April-June, which is a lot.
Notice how the article uses an indirect way to state this — with an "annualized" figure, which I think means "How much would the total decrease be if it continued at this rate for a year." Since it is clear that what happened in April will not happen every month, that is even more misleading than it would be in other situations.
Nonetheless, it is a big decrease and shows we are in for hard times.
The Washington Post has adopted a non-biased approach to capitalizing the racial color adjectives, "black" and "white".
Some organizations capitalize "black" and not "white". That expresses racial bias, and I disapprove of it.
Imagine if prejudice were centered on hair color, rather than skin color. People would argue that the adjective "blond" is an identity and demand to capitalize it.
I prefer not to capitalize either of them, because I would rather not promote the implicit assumption that skin color is a difference in kind rather than a detail. However, if it becomes common to capitalize them both, I will go along with it. It isn't worth fighting about this sort of adjective capitalism.
After months of wild handouts to the rich, plutocratist politicians have remembered the national debt as an excuse to cut Social Security.
Deficit spending is exactly what is needed at the start of a depression (or even a recession). Remember how Obama launched deficit spending to reduce the 2009 recession? However, in 2010 Republicans took control of Congress and did not allow this to continue.
Curiously, they also propose to spend additional billions on more weapons. That increase in the national debt does not bother them. This double standard has existed for years, but it is especially blatant when it applies to two parts of the same bill.
The point that Social Security does not affect the national debt is pertinent too, but it is not as deep.
Montana has approved a new copper mine which will risk poisoning one of the few unpoisoned rivers in the state.
Mine operators will promise to do almost anything to avoid pollution, as long as they will not have to do it until later, by which time the company will be bankrupt. If the mine makes millions of dollars, the mine will nonetheless go bankrupt eventually once operating it is no longer profitable.
Nowadays we must also be concerned with the danger that global heating disaster will put an end to industrial use of copper, as well as mining. At that point, anything which can leak, will leak.
*'Utter Disgrace': GOP Proposes Legal Immunity for Corporations, $0 in Funding for States, and Deep Cuts to Unemployment Benefits.*
In effect, Republicans want to give Americans permanent damage in exchange for some short-term aid.
Oregon's governor says that the wrecker made a deal to remove the federal thugs that have been grabbing people in Portland.
I hope he really carries out this deal. One cannot count on that.
Americans are starting to call for dismantling the Department of Harassment and Sadism (DHS).
An interview with Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of B'Tselem. That is the Israeli organization that campaigns to respect the human rights of Palestinians.
Tiny amphipod crustaceans break up microplastics into minute nanoplastics smaller than typical cells.
Nanoplastics could be more harmful or less, to various species of life; only investigation will tell. The reason to suspect they are more harmful is that they have more surface area per given volume, which could mean that toxic chemicals would escape from them at a higher rate.
A congressional hearing got testimony from Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, and concluded with the committee chair's saying that these companies need to be broken up and regulated.
Splitting them up could be pretty simple, supposing one overcomes their lobbying power. But a simple way would not really fix the problems. That requires restructuring their operations, and how to do that is not so obvious.
The giant Paraná river delta wetlands are on fire. They seem to be abnormally dry.
Various causes may be at work, going back in various ways to human activity.
Many oil businesses in the US continue collapsing.
This seems like a good sign. However, I suspect that some of the bigger oil companies are using their bailout money to buy these bankrupt businesses at rock-bottom prices.
The early abandonment of oil wells is a good thing, because it means that the oil still left to extract will remain in the ground. However, a closed well is a source of pollution.
Naturally the Republicans want to give the oil executives more billions to take home before those companies finally disappear, rather that fund cleaning up the wells that will continue to spread toxins.
To keep the well pumping for some more years would not reduce the problem of dealing with it. If it were shut down in 2025 instead of now, that would only postpone the burden which the drilling of the well imposed on society.
A bill would end federal funding for stationing thugs in schools.
Hurrah, let's close the school-to-prison pipeline!
The UK wants to make all NHS doctor visits "remote by default".
In principle, that is not unjust. But what software do they want patients to run? Will they accept use of free software? If not, this seems like "surrender your freedom or die."
Would someone in the UK like to see what software they normally use? If it is nonfree software, how about explaining that you'd be happy to do a remote visit if they will do it using free software?
I wonder also whether patients can use the NHS web sites without running nonfree Javascript code. The clinics I have used in the past few years want patients to communicate via online dis-services called "patient portals". They all demand running of nonfree software, so I don't use them. Nowadays they won't allow me to communicate with doctors by email, which means that all I can do is ask the doctor to phone me. That will be inconvenient if I am travelling in another country. Would the doctor even be able to try?
France will have to stop allowing use of glue traps to catch birds. The trappers have been catching endangered species.
China threatens to hold Hong Kongers prisoner by stopping them from leaving Hong Kong if they seek to move to Britain.
In the 1980s and before, Communist countries typically made citizens get permission to leave the country. Perhaps that is officially still the case in China, but in practice Chinese have been allowed to travel as tourists if they could afford to do so.
By making this threat, China is hoping to use its own citizens as hostages to demand acquiescence in its campaign to spread tyranny. It is betting that it is so powerful now, and the US so weak and dizzy, that it can make all opposition cave and start a march to world hegemony.
I don't think China will win this bet. Instead, I think it will backfire, as the world perceives ever more clearly how evil China now is. The power that the conman wishes to have, Xi already has.
*No private, unelected entity should have the power over the economy that BlackRock has, without a legally enforceable fiduciary duty to wield it in the public interest.*
I agree, but I don't think that goes far enough. I think that no company should be allowed to get as big as BlackRock. With my tax plan, we could put them under irresistible pressure to split up.
By the way, the "vampire squid" is simply an unusual-looking squid which reminded some zoologist of Bela Lugosi in Dracula. It has no other vampire-like characteristics.
When Barr testified to Congress, Rep. Jayapal attacked him for using force against Black Lives Matter protesters in Oregon while not troubling the armed right-wing protesters in Minnesota.
The Republican Senate proposal for additional aid for struggling non-rich Americans is far insufficient. And that's aside from the harm it would do: cutting Social Security in the future, and even giving additional money to the Pentagon.
This article clearly explains the effect of patents on fruit. Its only error, that I can see, is to use the term "intellectual property" to refer to patents and trademarks. Since the article clearly explains trademarks as well, you can see what an error it is to use any term to lump them together.
I have not used the term "intellectual property" even once since 2004. In explaining the various disparate laws that term supposedly "refers" to, that term is never helpful, and the idea of generalizing about those laws is the biggest obstacle.
The Masks for All Act would increase production of masks and give masks to everyone in the US. It would also provide respirator masks to all health workers that need them.
As the article shows, the Republicans in the Senate will block this from passing. But it will add to the list of evils that Americans can see Republicans are doing.
In a move to cut overtime work, the USPS plans changes that would delay some fraction of mail by an extra day.
I don't see that as a big deal. However, in a few special cases, the extra day's delay could have grave results.
A bigger danger is that the delayed mail might accumulate and lead to longer and longer delays. Will the public find out if this is happening?
One lasting damage done by Covid-19 could be a disastrous drop in trust in anyone or anything.
Many of the institutions people used to trust did not deserve it anyway. (In the US: the justice system, thugs, the military, the economy, the medical finance system.) However, others did deserve trust. (US: science, medicare, CDC, actual medicine, social security.)
By "deserve trust" I do not mean infallibility. Any institution can make a mistake, just as any person can. However, well-functioning institutions do a pretty good job, most of the time.
Republican Rep. Gohmert participated in a Congressional committee hearing, and kept taking his mask off. The next day he tested positive for Covid-19, meaning he was probably spreading the disease at the hearing.
I wonder whether he will learn any lesson from this.
(satire) * Georgia governor Brian Kemp reportedly pushed against calls for more coronavirus restrictions Wednesday by moving all government business to a packed indoor pool.*
*As many as 1,000 babies born to surrogate mothers in Russia for foreign families have been left stranded in the country.* The parents-to-be cannot come get them.
This is bad for the babies, as well as for the parents-to-be and the surrogate mothers. It must be possible to organize transport for most of them.
Increased economic inequality is stopping the non-rich from giving to charity. This means charities become dependent on a few rich, and don't dare disagree with them.
This happens even more and faster when some rich person, such as Bill Gates, makes a special effort to gain influence over a field, such as education reform.
One charity which this is not happening to is the Free Software Foundation. In most years it gets only a small part of its income from corporations or big donations. That's not to say it would reject a large donation if you give one ;-}.
NYC thugs said that the woman grabbed off the street by thugs out of uniform was specifically wanted for arrest. Supposedly she had committed some sort of crime at protests.
They also said that the other protesters threw rocks and bottles at the thugs who were doing this, but the protesters say that didn't happen. (I wonder what the video shows.) Should we believe what the thugs say about the woman they grabbed?
Wild bees are dying out in some places; this is hitting production of apples and cherries.
We need laws to keep agriculture sustainable.
*Measles vaccination disruptions due to Covid-19 put 80 million children at risk.*
Progressives in Congress have proposed to forbid spending federal funds on sending federal agents to arrest protesters for Operation Relentless Repression.
However, this wrong is not exclusive to federal thugs. Local thugs in many US cities make a practice of grabbing people off the street based on no specific grounds. A few are even in prison for it.
A few did it in NYC this week.
Congressional Democrats are pushing to repeal the Helms amendment, which prohibits giving US funds to support abortion services in other countries.
It is cruel to cause children to be born into poverty that is likely to stunt their lives.
Tahir Ahmed Naseem, charged in Pakistan with practising a forbidden offshoot of Islam, was assassinated in his trial.
*Belarus says Russian mercenaries arrested ahead of presidential election.* They were alleged to be planning some sort of destabilization action.
Given other things Putin has done, this could be true. Given other things that Lukashenko (the tyrant of Belarus) has done, this could be bullshit.
A right-wing provocateur (white) broke store windows in Minneapolis, and started the violence of protests there. His act was followed by arson at the same store.
I am not at all surprised by this act. Right-wing extremists have become comfortable with dishonesty and violence, so they have no restraints against committing false-flag attacks.
I hope they catch him and prosecute him.
The protesters who confronted him and told him to stop understood what was needed. However, the protest movement did not have the discipline to stop violence once it had started.
57% of the people in the slums of Mumbai Delhi have had Covid-19, according to antibody tests of a sample.
We may soon know what the results are when the virus fully burns through a population. If, that is, Mumbai is capable of keeping track of deaths and those who have continuing symptoms. India's public health systems are underfunded. Poor people who have continuing symptoms may never report them.
Portlanders resist the federal thugs even after they have been attacked with usually-not-lethal weapons.
The Supreme Court decisions that extend human rights to corporations, which are considered "persons" only as a fiction, enables companies to cover up toxic and dangerous products such as Roundup.
I support the We the People Amendment mentioned in the article. I am very sad to report that the organization referenced in the article carries out its activities in ways that require nonfree software. Rather than ask anyone to run that software, I ask people to phone their senators and representative to support the amendment.
Since March, various US cities have reduced how many people they hold in jail. Some reduced this more than others. A study found that the size of a city's reduction is not correlated with crime trends there.
In other words, fear of crime is no reason not to save lives by letting many prisoners out of jail.
(satire) *Defensive Chicago [thug] Dylan Wilson told reporters Monday that he was perfectly capable of disappearing protesters without help from the Department of Homeland Security.*
The Democratic Party platform committee rejected an amendment to endorse Medicare for All. It also rejected smaller extensions to Medicare.
The Democratic Party formerly supported something like this. But President Clinton dropped it in favor of catering to medical insurance companies.
It was Clinton who shifted the Democratic Party to plutocratism. Progressives are reversing this by replacing plutocratist Democrats with progressives, but it is slow going, as the Democratic Party itself opposes it.
The UK wants to make a new business-supremacy treaty with the US. It also wants new food labeling rules to reduce obesity. The US will push to prohibit that.
Under plutocratist governments, the only way a trade treaty can be an improvement is if it replaces an old one (like the old NAFTA) that was worse.
Development banks invest in growing big cattle operations even as small farms go under.
(satire) *U.S. Requires Hurricanes To Quarantine For 2 Weeks Before Traveling To Other States Along Coastline.*
UK universities are cancelling the contracts of thousands of researchers who are hired for only a few years.
The populations of migratory rivers, such as salmon, trout and giant catfish, have fallen 76% in 50 years.
This is bad in itself, but also harms other species.
Covid-19 is wiping out local journalism in the US, leaving no news coverage for large regions.
Everyone: call on school administrators around the world to stop requiring students to run nonfree software.
Covid-19 is spreading in Xinjiang, and if it gets into the crowded re-education camps used to brainwash Uighurs, it could spread to many of them.
We have seen examples, in many countries, showing that places where people are compelled to live or work in close proximity are especially dangerous for spreading Covid-19.
EFF: *Knowing the [monetary] "Value" of Our Data Won't Fix Our Privacy Problems.*
This scheme is an excuse to disregard all the serious harm that being surveilled can do. Imagine if Facebook caused you to be outed as whatever, amd said it made $2.35 from doing that. Would that datum make any difference?
The strong way to prevent collection and misuse of your personal data is to forbid deploying systems that could collect it.
*How the global climate fight could be lost if Trump is re-elected.*
Alas, there is no guarantee that Biden will try to win it either.
*Koch Group Pushing for Employer Immunity Takes $3.5M From Company with COVID-19 Outbreaks.*
This is additional proof, if we needed any, that we need to restrict what businesses and rich people can spend on elections.
*The U.S.-Supported Coup in Bolivia Continues to Produce Repression and Tyranny, While Revealing How U.S. Media Propaganda Works.*
New Zealand has adopted new principles for government use of algorithms to make decisions about how to treat individuals.
I think this is a big step forward. The article says that citizens might have the right to demand to see the source code of software that makes decisions about them. However for that to be fully effective, the government should insist that these programs be free/libre. Otherwise, agencies might deny those requests, saying "We signed a contract not to redistribute that source code", "it's a trade secret", or "We don't even have a copy."
US citizens: call your senators and tell them to pass a Covid-19 relief bill that generously helps non-rich Americans.
Republicans want to cut the extra unemployment insurance from $600 per week to $200 per week.
They say the current level is "too generous". Republicans believe that generous is only for rich people.
The National Trust in England is going to educate visitors to its old buildings about how they are linked to slavery or conquest.
The country houses and castles of the National Trust are interesting to visit, and worth preserving, because they were built lavishly &mash; by rich people. They surely got their riches by exploiting someone. If it wasn't slaves from Africa, or the natives of conquered territory, it must have been British people.
When we appreciate those buildings we should keep in mind why they exist.
Greg Palast's recommendations for ensuring your ballot does get counted.
The first step is now: make sure you have not been "purged" from the voter's list, while there is still time for you to register again if necessary.
*No Masks, No Gloves, a Single Room for Sleeping — Detainees Describe Life In [deportation prison] During the Pandemic,*
Paul Graham: society gets its new ideas from people of aggressively independent-minded personality. The aggressively conventional-minded tend to bully those who differ, and social media give them a great tool to do so. Censorship is one form of that bullying, and it stultifies society in a broad way.
One of his speculations is that "Perhaps the universities are declining because so many [independent-minded people] have already left." If it is true that they now "become quants or start startups" — activities which tend to be selfish and subjugatory — rather than professors, that is a double loss to society.
1/4 of young people get their "news" from Instagram, making giant echo chambers.
I can't argue, though, with their distrust for the mainstream media. Mainstream sites tend to have either a right-wing bias or a plutocratist bias. It is not easy to figure out what claims are true. I try my best, but I am sure I am sometimes mistaken.
Nigerian Atheist Mubarak Bala faces charges of "blasphemy" for criticizing Islam.
Fanatical officials from Kano, which makes blasphemy a crime, kidnapped him from his home state, Kaduna, where their law does not apply. Even if it were legitimate to punish people for their opinions, this would make it unjust in this particular case.
Atheists are persecuted in many countries worldwide. On the average, Americans are more prejudiced against Atheists than against any religion.
The UK electricity grid predicts negative CO2 emissions from electric generation, but that is based on hypothetical carbon capture systems which are not known to work.
Running trucks on electricity from overhead wires is expected to be profitable. That idea does not seem to presume any dubious technological advances.
Accusing China of suppressing information about the spread of Covid-19 for about three weeks in January, and covering this up later.
One specific item — taking 2 or 3 days to respond to questions from WHO — does not strike me as culpable. It can take anyone a little time to determine what to say. However, the other points do seem culpable.
But nowhere near as big a crime as what right-wing officials have done in countries such as Australia, Brazil, and the United States.
*Millions of animals trafficked from the Amazon annually — report.*
* European countries are spending big to revive their economies, but they will have no legitimacy with young people if they ignore the climate.*
Sydney is trying to ban a Black Lives Matter protest in the name of public health.
People have a right to protest even if it is dangerous. However, this protest will not be very dangerous if the organizers carry out their plans to prevent transmission of Covid-19.
A powerful right-wing militia goes to Black Lives Matter protests carrying guns. They say that they respect the right to protest, they say that they will defend protesters from violence, but their definitions seem skewed and the effect of their presence is to stop protests via intimidation.
In the US, since 2010, people killed by right-wing terror attacks number 117, while those killed by left-wing terror attacks number 21.
Yet "law and order" politicians downplay the former and emphasize the latter.
*Revealed: new evidence links Brazil meat giant JBS to Amazon deforestation.*
Prisoners of the US deportation thugs write about how the thugs crush their spirits while endangering their health and their lives.
Giant companies that mistreat the public — for instance, Chevron, Shell and Wells Fargo — are big donators to the foundations that buy military equipment for thug departments.
*One million Cambodians under threat from development of vital wetlands [near Phnom Penh].*
Team sports in US schools have become so intense and pressurized that they are no fun, even for children. Perhaps that is why most children quit sports before becoming teenagers.
I was not much inclined to sports anyway, so I don't see the importance of them personally, but if they were fun they might be good.
Ralph Nader: *Now it is time for various House Committees to publicly question Chairman Powell about the costs of the Fed's callous indifference to the real economy and struggling Americans.*
For the UK, the most dangerous meddling foreign power is the US.
Carole Cadwalladr: the corrupter is again trying to use Facebook to manipulate American voters with lies and conspiracy theories. Since it worked in 2016, we can't be confident it won't work.
Other brutal governments also use Facebook to manipulate the public.
It makes a difference, practically at least, whether people in group G tend to suffer a certain kind of harm as a direct result of prejudice, or because they tend to be poor — even if their poverty is itself a result of prejudice.
Even though in both scenarios cases prejudice is an underlying cause, the mechanism of the problem makes a difference to what we should do about it. If all poor people are being harmed, let's help all of them.
Half the world's existing beaches are likely to be lost by 2100. If some positive feedbacks kick in, it could be more than half.
If sea level rise were to stop there, eventually new beaches would develop. But the ocean will keep rising for centuries.
Followup on all the Covid-19 patients admitted to one Sydney hospital in March found that most of them still have symptoms.
Patients whose cases were not serious enough for hospitalization also still have symptoms.
* Research in Bangladesh reveals the tipping point under which the poor can’t break into higher-income opportunities.*
As Texas's hospitals are full, they need to choose, among the patients that need intensive care, which ones will get that.
Various countries foresaw the need for this in April, and made guidelines for how to choose. One country's guidelines looked wise to me. I don't recall whether those guidelines were ever needed, back then. They would not be needed now if not for the Republicans' decision to spread disease.
Because the US does not have a national health service, it has been unable to make its attempts to treat Covid-19 serve as valid tests of the efficacy of the treatments tried.
Protesters near the federal courthouse in Portland are carrying out violence against thugs and the building. The federal thugs and local thugs are working together to arrest them and/or drive them away.
The presence of the federal thugs was egregious because the city had not asked for them. Their actions were egregious too, arresting people without cause in areas away from the courthouse. If protesters keep on starting violence near the courthouse, they risk legitimizing the presence of those federal thugs
What possible good is that?
*[The corrupter] has helped the US to see its dark side. It will still be there when he goes.
As stated, racism and torture will not disappear if Biden defeats the corrupter. Nor will global heating, that can destroy civilization, nor the plutocracy that is its foundation.
The Democratic National Committee has rejected the unity climate panel's recommendations.
15,000 people protested in Khabarovsk, Siberia, after Putin replaced the region's governor, who is accused of murder.
I have no basis to guess whether the governor ordered murders 15 years ago or not.
Sanders and others have introduced a bill to end subsidies to fossil fuels.
(satire) *Victoria’s Secret introduced Friday a new sexy push-up jack for maximum lift.*
*The Tories' new trade bill means the NHS is now unquestionably up for sale.*
The result will be a US-style horrible medical system.
I warned that leaving the EU under Tory control would lead to horrible business-supremacy treaties.
Ordinary Cuban cops are not cruel to ordinary Cubans. They seriously work to serve and protect the public. That Cuba protects people from becoming desperately poor helps prevent the sort of crime that people want cops to help stop.
I post a link to that article reluctantly, because it symbolically endorses racial bias by contrasting "white" and "Black". I disapprove of this just as I would disapprove of as contrasting "White" and "black". Ultimately I decided to post a link to this article despite that because it makes an important point that I didn't have another article to use for. (Don't suggest searching; that takes me a lot of time.)
Cuba also has secret police that repress, even kill dissidents; for instance, they killed Oswaldo Payá. Cuba disrespects some vital human rights. But that is a separate issue from its policing of nonpolitical crime.
*UN Calls for Temporary Basic Income for World's Poorest 2.7 Billion People as 'Lifeline' Amid Pandemic.*
Watch out: employers will soon pay you less and mistreat you more while expecting you to gush with gratitude that you have a job at all.
*'Virtually entire' fashion industry complicit in Uighur forced labour, say rights groups.*
Refugee Behrouz Boochani, formerly imprisoned by Papua New Guinea on Australia's behalf, is now free and a resident of New Zealand.
*Why [a considerable fraction of] a generation is choosing to be child-free.*
If technological society survives global heating disaster, our descendants 150 years from now (perhaps one or two billion of them) will decide how many children to make each year, then recruit parents to raise them. They will attract plenty of volunteers for that role by making other aspects of life easy and safe for them. This way they can maintain a stable population and assure everyone grows up loved.
*US push for global alliance against China hampered by years of 'America first'.*
Pompeo is correct when he says that ‘The free world must triumph over this new [Chinese] tyranny.’ Unfortunately, it is correct to say almost the same thing about the US. The world must triumph over Xi and Trump, but how? No national leader today stands for this cause.
Is it possible to design an enforceable treaty against space weapons?
I think it is possible, if the countries involved agree to certain kinds of design features to prohibit, then allow superficial inspection of each others' satellites before launch to verify they do not have the prohibited design features.
McGraw Hill, a textbook publisher, is being asked to capitalize the word "black".
I have no opinion about whether to capitalize "black" and "white" as long as we treat the two words alike.
The UN concept of "responsibility to protect" arguably applies when a government gratuitously leaves the population open to a sometimes-fatal epidemic, as the US government is doing now.
Copyright absurdity: In Japan, retweeting a photo is copyright infringement — because of technical details of how Twitter presents the photo. Twitter has been forced to identify the people who did the retweeting.
In the US, this would typically be fair use, but that defense does not exist in other countries.
A Philadelphia thug faces charges for pepper-spraying protesters.
Erosion by waves, surely boosted by sea level rise, is eating away at rich people's homes in Australia.
To force people to leave home with two hours' notice seems heartbreakingly cruel. Even rich people, who could afford to buy a replacement for everything, will lose things that are impossible to replace.
If people want to take action to prevent seas from claiming the homes of tens of millions of people, mostly not rich, they should demand a rapid reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.
Most states, and the US overall, are weak in resisting Covid-19 because they don't have enough testing capacity.
In California the shortage is disastrous.
It is easy to have enough testing capacity if you keep the number of cases down. But once it gets away from you, you have to run fast to catch up.
I've read that the US overall needs three times as much testing capacity as it has now. But try getting a Republican to understand that.
*'Victory for the Rule of Law': Federal Judge Curbs Powers of Trump's Secret Police in Portland.*
Senator Romney, one of the few Republicans that has refused to support the conman personally, is little better than other Republicans in regard to principles. He is pushing to establish a secret system to cut Social Security. Naturally, other Republicans agree,
The UK intelligence services were so focused on terrorism that they ignored Russian manipulation of UK elections.
I still think that election manipulation by the billionaires and businesses was a bigger harm. But they are both wrong.
The US, China and many other countries are using digital technology (including phones) to monitor some people's lives totally. They have no ways to communicate which are not monitored.
The article's term, "terror capitalism", is a bit remote for the enslaved Uighurs, and doesn't fit the imprisoned asylum seekers since they don't do any particular kind of work.
Russian thugs set up an "anarchist" group to recruit people for some sort of insurrection. Apparently the members didn't want to break laws as much as the thugs wished, so they had to torture them into confessing.
A UN monitor in Colombia was apparently murdered to silence him about something he had seen.
Activists have pressured a large insurance company to stop insuring the existing Trans Mountain Pipeline, which runs in Canada to the Pacific coast.
This will increase the pressure to stop mining tar sands, which is a very powerful planet-roasting practice.
As a general question, I wonder why the government of a major country like Canada buys insurance for pipelines, or for anything. Isn't it cheaper, overall, to pay the cost of repairs, if you have a big enough budget to do so?
The Justice Department's inspector general will investigate whether the wrecker's use of federal thugs to arrest people at random is illegal.
I worry that the wrecker will fire this inspector general, as he has fired several others.
*Factory farming interests, facing potential legal risks for allegedly failing to protect workers from coronavirus-related risks, are among the many business interests now backing efforts to obtain special immunity from legal liability.*
*Israeli [thugs] use water cannon at anti-Netanyahu protest.* The protest was about his handling of Covid-19.
*[The wrecker] is using federal agents as his 'goon squad', says ICE's ex-acting head.*
Each time the wrecker takes another step down the long path to fascism, he is testing whether we will make him stop.
Turkey will probably impose strict punitive censorship on social media.
That will probably lead to blocking access to the major platforms from Turkey.
Covid-19 is resurging in several European countries.
It seems to me that reopening bars cannot be allowed as long as Covid-19 is present in the territory.
Varoufakis: despite the advance in principle of the EU's decision to do joint borrowing, the same old vicious circle of austerity (imposed by a balanced budget) will punish all the Euro Zone countries, but Greece and Italy worst of all.
*Hungarian journalists resign en masse after claims of political interference.*
Zimbabwean reporter Hopewell Chin’ono faces unbelievable charges after publishing about corrupt officials.
(satire) *a new extended-release, maximum-strength chewable peach Wednesday which they claim possesses up to four times the power of normal stone fruit.*
(satire) *Encouraging Report Finds Polar Bears Evolving Aerospace Engineering Skills Necessary To Escape Overheating Planet.*
Oregon's senators propose legally prohibiting federal thugs from doing what they have been doing in Portland.
(satire) *Clumsy Stealth Drone Surveilling Taliban Base Flees After Accidentally Knocking Over Potted Plant.* After that, things only got worse.
In most American states, the millions of destitute people face the danger of shutting off their water, electricity and gas.
Organizing Americans to mobilize if the wrecker tries to seize power by denying the November election.
Policy recommendations to curb the spread of Covid-19 have to be smuggled out of the US government quietly.
*Nazi concentration camp guard convicted over 5,232 murders.*
*Cost of preventing next pandemic 'equal to just 2% of Covid-19 economic damage'.*
*Plastic waste entering oceans expected to triple in 20 years.*
It is far too much already. We need laws to restrict the manufacture of plastic objects that cannot practically be recycled.
(satire) *Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Tuesday stressing that they had merely snatched protesters off the streets as part of a new surprise makeover series created in tandem with Netflix.*
(satire) *Congress unveiled a new stimulus plan Tuesday that would provide a national tip jar for all Americans making under $40,000 a year.*
93 Democrats in Congress voted to transfer 10% of the proposed Pentagon budget to real needs of Americans. It was not enough to win, but it shows the advance of progressive politics.
*Israeli Soldiers Demolish Under-Construction Covid-19 Testing Center.*
US public opinion is shifting to condemn Israel's occupation of Palestine, and the effect is that more elected officials are ready to criticize occupation policies.
The US government jailed Adham Hassoun, rather than deporting him, citing rumors that called him a terrorist and invoking the PAT RIOT Act. The ACLU convinced a court to order him released to another country, but that took 17 months to achieve.
The PAT RIOT Act was an injustice when first proposed and it still is.
How to use kind communication when posting to urge people to wear masks.
Fiana Tulip wrote her mother's obituary to rebuke Republican officials for the policies that caused her to catch Covid-19 and die.
The head of the DHS (Department of Harsh Suppression) says his anonymous US thugs are arresting people "proactively"; that is, without grounds to arrest them.
It's not just the bullshitter and his supporters that treat truth with contempt. His reelection campaign does it, too.
Advances in climate modeling suggest that we are on track for between 2.5C and 4C of global heating.
I am skeptical that our models can be so accurate as to merit being stated with a precision of .1 degree C.
*Shantytown residents [in Kenya] awarded compensation over deaths and health effects from lead plant.*
A true victory would be if this compels the plant to invest in technology to stop leaking lead into the environment.
3/4 of the new Covid-19 cases in the US are in states that were taken by the conman in 2016. Previously it spread mostly in Democratic states.
Maybe this accounts for his recent decision to encourage wearing masks.
*NYPD Disappeared Black Lives Matter Protesters Into Detention For Days at a Time. Lawmakers Want to End the Practice.*
In addition to attacking or arresting people violently and/or for no valid reason, thugs can also violate people's rights after arresting them.
Whatsapp invites anyone you talk with through that program to save the conversation on Apple servers — and that is not encrypted.
Facebook plans to make WhatsApp analyze patterns of communication to learn about what people are doing and identify activities.
This could apply to any sort of activities, including those which are crimes (but those which are truly bad, and those which should be lawful, such as sharing copies of copyrighted works), and those which are lawful and Facebook has no right to know about.
A Canadian court ruled that Canada must accept asylum applications at the border with the US.
In other words, the Canada may not take for granted that the US respects human rights.
I applaud Canada for recognizing this and acting accordingly, but my heart cries that my country has sunk to the point of deserving it. Patriotic Americans, let's push to make America exemplary.
More about the US government conduct which was the basis of the court's decision.
*Bolivia elections [in September] in doubt as police find bodies of hundreds of Covid-19 victims.*
The Democratic Party has proposed a platform calling for ending the US's forever wars.
*[The conman] orders undocumented immigrants excluded from key census count.*
This is a way to reduce federal funds and reduce legislative representation for the cities where most Democrats (and most unauthorized immigrants) live.
This order is simply and directly unconstitutional.
*'We were beaten': 20 LGBTQ+ Ugandans file lawsuit over alleged torture [when they were arrested].*
* Hundreds of mothers have attended demonstrations and stood as a human barricade between protesters and federal officers.*
*Federal agents retreat to Portland base as protesters control streets.*
The protesters would be wise to stop attempts to set fire to or near the courthouse. With a just government, we will still need that courthouse. To burn it now would not be an act of uncontrollable immediate passion, but rather an act of excess. And it is the one thing that works against the protesters case for public support.
What if we had videos of the civilians killed by US drone attacks in forever wars?
The cruelty and stubbornness of the US deportation thugs is illustrated by their many-year quest to deport Rebecca Trimble to Mexico because her parents didn't handle the paperwork right when adopting as a newborn, 30 years ago.
Not only does she speak no Spanish and know no one in Mexico — the US is famous for deporting people there under such circumstances — but Mexico says her records are contradictory. She may not be allowed to work in Mexico, except for a gang.
The case to accept her as American is so strong that the officials' refusal to see it shows the cruelty in their hearts. They are not fit to exercise the power they hold.
I wonder whether she could get asylum in Canada, now that Canada will allow people to apply from the US.
2/3 of sharks living at the sea bottom, near the UK, have consumed plastic.
The danger of being bitten by a shark is tiny, but the danger of biting shark meat could someday be significant. Of course, it will be the same for biting any kind fish — if there are fish left to catch, after the effects of global heating and ocean acidification.
Americans are getting evicted because they could not attend a court hearing carried out via Zoom.
Zoom is an injustice — it is a nonfree program, and using a nonfree program is always an injustice (fsf.org/tedx). Furthermore, it collects personal data, which means it is malware. Requiring people to use Zoom, for any purpose, is an injustice.
Denying them their legal rights because they couldn't, or wouldn't, use Zoom is an injustice too.
I will fight for the right not to use Zoom.
*Playing video games doesn't lead to violent behavior, study shows.*
Methane is leaking from the ocean bottom near Antarctica.
Just after condemning the wrecker's sending thugs to grab people at random off the streets of Portland, Congressional Democrats passed a bill to continue funding for those thugs, with no restrictions against doing what the wrecker is having them do.
Covid-19 is spreading so fast now in the US that testing capacity cannot be increased fast enough. It is taking people a week to get test results. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/20/nation/backlog-covid-19-tests-imperils-push-contain-infections/?et_rid=1841749494&s_campaign=metroheadlines:newsletter
*Republicans are forcing Americans to return to dangerous workplaces.*
Some work is truly essential, and we need people to do it even though it can't be entirely safe. However, we have a duty to make their work as safe as we possibly can. If that has costs, the employers must pay those costs. If they pass those costs on to us, it is our responsibility to pay them.
(satire) *the United Arab Emirates successfully launched its first migrant workers into space Monday, part of a mission to build luxury resort colonies on the surface of Mars.*
*ACLU says [the bully] sent Michael Cohen back to prison 'for writing a book'.*
*World is legally obliged to pressure China on Uighurs, leading lawyers say.*
I think that pressure about Hong Kong is even more crucial than about the Uighurs. The crushing of Hong Kong is still new, China can easily relax its grip there, and the world has more leverage about it.
Ideally the world would put on so much pressure that China would yield on both oppressions, but is such great success plausible?
*'White Collar Crime Pays': Decade After Dodd-Frank, Executives Still Lining Their Pockets.*
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the wrecker's secret police.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
Plutocratist politicians such as Bogus Johnson will try to return the world to "normal", meaning on track to the same disaster and injustice it was developing before.
Just as the energy in Portland's protests was fading, attacks by the wrecker's federal thugs have brought them new vigor.
Renommé pour ses réponses autocontradictoires.
Australian "elite" troops committed atrocities in Afghanistan. Now that the public knows this, the government is investigating and considering punishing those responsible.
What a contrast with the way the US covers up such atrocities.
In the Vietnam War, the US did prosecute an atrocity, the My Lai massacre.
The lack of systematic tracking of cases of Covid-19 and their outcomes is hampering US efforts to treat and stop the disease.
Sudan has put former dictator al-Bashir on trial for seizing power.
This is exciting because it is so rare that coup perps get prosecuted.
The violent anarchist federal agents that the wrecker has sent to Portland (and soon to Chicago) could be part of a scheme to intimidate voters in November.
Juan Cole thinks the wrecker wants to pretend that the federal thugs are trying to stop violent protesters and frighten suburban white voters, but I think that videos of the lawless violence of the thugs themselves, against people doing nothing to justify arrest, even against reporters, will turn that effect around. Americans detested the violence of local and state thugs on actually seeing it, and I expect they will react the same way now.
Using WhatsApp requires you to run non-free software either in the form of JavaScript code downloaded and run in the browser or through their app.
*Progressives can't leave criticism of China to the new cold warriors.*
Those whose mental priorities is US vs China will see every issue as a matter of boosting one country and trashing the other. We that stand for human rights will criticize either country when it deserves criticism.
California is running out of medical personnel due to the high number of cases of Covid-19.
Last February, the world had insufficient production of Covid-19 protection equipment. The British NHS could not get equipment because the French manufacturer it had a contract with for emergency supplies gave priority to another client.
Rather than fume over which client the manufacturer chose, and which client couldn't get urgently needed masks, the crucial point is that the world could not produce enough to meet the needs of a pandemic.
Each country needs to maintain a sufficient production capacity to supply its own needs in a pandemic.
*Polar bears in much of Alaska and Russia will be in serious trouble by 2080.*
Global heating keeps surprising us by going faster than predicted. I'd take that as an underestimate.
*Australia's environment in unsustainable state of decline, major review finds.* The country's environmental laws need big changes.
This is no coincidence. The governments have been extractivist for many years.
Two British Uber drivers have sued to see the algorithm Uber uses to assign rides to drivers. They suspect Uber is manipulating them.
Ireland has released a contact-tracing app that people there have adopted.
The basic approach seems to be ethical. My tentative judgment is that I would be willing to participate in a contact-tracing system which worked that way, if I could do so without running a nonfree app or a portable phone.
For instance, if it were a stand-alone device with no network connection except bluetooth and doing nothing except this job, and I could examine and understand all the data it gives me to send in, and no software would ever be installed into it, I could treat it like my microwave oven — meaning that I don't care how it works inside. I could envision that the user gets the data out via USB, in a well-documented trasparent format, then sends it to the health department through a web site that does not send Javascript code to the browser.
The design principle here should be to infringe people's privacy in the minimal possible way that can succeed in stopping transmission of Covid-19.
It is our duty to cooperate with that vital goal — just as it is our duty to protect others by wearing masks — and society's duty to avoid asking us to make any additional, avoidable sacrifices of privacy.
Systems that extract CO2 from the air should be used, but to avoid disaster we must also cut the real emissions.
Criticizing the "fetishisation of disagreement culture."
People with Covid-19 symptoms months after the initial infection describe them. Various symptoms come and go; scientists still don't know why, or whether the people will recover some day.
Instead of sending armed thugs who would face a handicap winning gang members' trust, Oakland sends an unarmed violence prevention worker.
Drifting fishing nets catch whales, which suffer terribly and then die.
The UK has approved an institutional reform to deal with the causes of the dangerous construction practice that led to a deadly fire in a tall apartment building.
The report that Russia paid the Taliban bounties to kill Americans is suspect; it may be bogus. The Taliban were fighting the forces in Afghanistan and did not require a special inducement to do that.
If the claim happens to be accurate, we should not exaggerate its significance. In the 1980s, the US did far more than pay Afghans bounties to kill Russians. It recruited them, trained them, and armed them, all under the rubric of "al-Qa'ida". In comparison to that, merely paying bounties would be a tiny matter.
Anyway, bounties are not a reason to keep the war going on and on. The US should pull out its forces and let the Taliban win. Their religious tyranny would deny important human rights, but that's not as bad as war forever.
In London, a thug put his knee on a person's neck for a moment and that was enough to get him suspended.
For all their faults in some areas, it seems that UK thug departments are serious about keeping the random violence of thugs in check with strict rules. Perhaps the UK does not enable thugs' unions to interfere with protecting the public, as they do in the US.
*China's first climate striker warned: give it up or you can't go to back to school.*
It is a rather mild punishment by Chinese standards, but insane nonetheless.
*Some on the left have lost sight of the fact that censorship only ever aids the powerful.*
The cancellationists think they are now so powerful that they can demonize and censor disagreement with them.
When the wrecker's federal agents grab people off the street, sometimes they do not carry out the constitutional requirements for an arrest. They do not tell their victims under what authority they have grabbed them. This is kidnapping.
The state of Oregon should open criminal cases against them. The president does not have the power to dismiss state charges.
Other federal agents have followed at least a sketch of the rules. This article gives additional info about protests in Portland and the conduct of the local thugs.
I think the protesters that tried to burn the thugs' building are making a strategic mistake, even though the thugs' own conduct may be worse than that.
The UK has fast and highly accurate antibody test to determine whether someone ever had Covid-19.
Interviews with insiders suggest that the wrecker convinced himself in April that Covid-19 would continue dying away despite reopening businesses, then clung to that false certainty in the teeth of the facts.
This article does not report a hint that he expected this to result in increasing spread of the disease. It says only that he was unwilling to recognize that when it did happen.
However, we have seen indications since then that he and his lieutenants are determined to do that. Just now he has told Republicans not to provide any more money for practical steps that can drive down the Covid-19 infection rate: testing and contact tracing. Nor for the CDC.
Another is his campaign to force states to reopen public schools. Now the wrecker has forbidden CDC officials from testifying to Congress about whether it would be wise to reopen public schools.
A note to Betsy S.
Betsy S met me at a lunch around 40 years ago. I am sure her recounting of her recollections is sincere, but she must have misunderstood the last thing I said to her. She said she didn't want an acquaintance with me. That no, on top of so many noes from others, impelled me to express despair; she seems to have misconstrued that as a demand.
Betsy S, I regret that this misunderstanding caused you distress. I never intended to demand anything of you. I only ever wished you well.
Body cam videos, shown to reporters and others, give a lot more information about what happened to George Floyd.
Floyd's words and actions sound somewhat suspicious, but he never did anything that justified any violence to him.
Samsung yielded to public pressure and said it would give no more financial support to Adani coal mining.
Rejecting coal is a start, but other fossil fuel projects are deadly too.
Pompeo is pulling back official US support for all human rights except property rights and religion.
I guess he won't call it wrong if you break his neck with your knee, as long as his property is distributed as specified in his will.
Right-wing censorship pressure is extremely powerful in the US. More powerful than left-wing pressure, in its own way.
One important difference is that right-wing censorship does not affect many areas of life. Its greatest power is in the mainstream media, and it has some power over candidates for office (but now many candidates defy some aspects of it). For someone like me, who had only a tangential presence in the mainstream media and didn't intend to run for office, it had little effect.
Thus, we should not think of left-wing censorship pressure as "more of the same" merely because right-wing censorship pressure is so strong and harmful.
Antibiotic resistance is spreading into the bacteria found on a wide range of animal species.
*Amazon, Google parent Alphabet and Microsoft are being sued over images used to train their facial recognition technologies.*
UN Secretary General António Guterres condemned the myths that deny global injustices.
The bully has sent federal thugs to Portland, Oregon, to grab protesters off the street with no specific grounds.
The right to protest peacefully is the foundation of the United States. Perhaps the House of Representatives should re-establish the House Unamerican Activities Committee to investigate these and other unamerican acts of trumpery.
Insisting on more efficient air conditioners, and soon, is a major part of curbing global heating.
Why do cops come to protests early?
To beat the crowds.
The UK says that Russian crackers are trying to "steal" Covid-19
vaccine research.
If that is true, it means something is very wrong: this research should not be secret. Scientific research calls for cooperation.
Florida's citizens voted to allow ex-cons to vote. The Supreme Court sustained Florida's Republican legislature in imposing a payment requirement that will cancel that for most of them.
Samsung bought part of the debt of the proposed Adani coal mine; Australian activists call for boycott of the whole company.
You certainly should not accept Samsung's phones and TV's, since they are tracking devices; that is because they contain nonfree software that talks over a network. However, their competitors are no better. They are all unacceptable.
The biased judge helping Chevron destroy attorney Steve Donziger put a Chevron-linked law firm in charge of prosecuting him on bogus charges.
Shamima Begum, a British citizen who went to Syria and joined PISSI, has won in court the right to return to the UK and challenge the decision to cancel her citizenship and exile her.
Her participation in a terrorist organization may well justify criminal charges and punishment — if convicted in a fair trial. But it is wrong to use exile as a punishment, and wrong to punish people in any fashion without a fair trial.
More about the issue.
She is being held prisoner by the Kurds of Rojava, but they may have
to transfer her (and other British PISSI supporters) to Assad or Iraq
if they can't return to the UK soon.
AOC calls for New York State to pass a new tax on billionaires' income to bail out poor people.
Senator Schumer, a plutocratist Democrat, wants to eliminate a
progressive feature of the US income tax code.
The IMF is lending poor countries money "to deal with Covid-19" but actually
they are using it to pay interest on private loans.
Those countries' debts will swallow their whole economies, turning their rising
populations into debt slaves, unless we wipe out that debt.
(satire) *Melania Trump Figures It’s Time To Sit Barron Down And Tell
Him He Was Bred For His Organs.*
By analyzing skeletons from ancient Egypt, archaeologists have discovered that
the Hyksos, a group that ruled Egypt for a century, consisted of people
who had arrived from various places in the Near East, over a period of time.
We could do similar studies on the territory of the United States if
it were not for the NAGPRA law, which required reburying the
collections of skeletons.
A corpse can serve two good purposes: organ transplantation and
science. It is a shame to waste it. At least I have made sure — or
as sure as is possible — that my corpse won't be wasted after I die.
200 Democratic Convention delegates called for cutting aid to Israel if it
goes ahead with Netanyahu's intention to annex part of Palestine.
People have pointed out that Israel's occupation policies are in many
ways similar to annexation. Nonetheless, formal annexation would be a
challenge to the world: either break with Israel now or permanently
legitimize those policies. It would be a more serious violation of
the laws of war than the ones Israel already commits.
I don't think those 200 are a majority, but they are enough to be
significant.
A tanker full of oil has been sitting near Hodeida since 2015, and has decayed
to the point where it can't be repaired and will surely spill its cargo.
That will poison life in the Red Sea, perhaps the whole of it.
The sensible thing to do would be to pump the oil into other ships and
take it away. But the Houthis will not let the UN try.
What, I wonder, is their motive; what do they demand? Surely they
don't want to poison the Red Sea — they live near it and must depend
on fishing in it.
US citizens: Join Reporters Without Borders in calling on the
UK not to extradite Julian Assange.
I could sign this, and I can post this, because I discovered recently
that Reporters Without Borders changed its web site and it now works
to sign that organization's petitions without running nonfree
JavaScript code. I thank Reporters Without Borders for making this
work.
There are several other organizations whose causes I support (at least
usually), but whose petitions I cannot sign because they require
nonfree JavaScript code: afsc.org, amazonwatch.org, change.org, coworker.org, defenders.org, democracyforamerica.com, earthjustice.org, freepress.net, moveon.org, pen.org, populationconnectionaction.org, publiccitizen.org, ran.org, splcenter.org, sumofus.org.
In addition, freedomunited.org appears to succeed but sends no
confirmation, so I think it ignores signatures.
If you can convince any of those organizations to fix their sites so
people can sign without running Javascript code, I would appreciate it,
and it would help the free software cause too.
Or, alternatively, if you can publish a free Firefox extension that
substitutes for the nonfree Javascript code which LibreJS blocks, that
too would make signing possible.
The Republicans pivoted towards a policy of "reopen business fast" in the same week when it became news that Covid-19 was dis proportionally killing minority racial groups. Was this just a coincidence? Is it a coincidence also that Georgia's governor, Kemp, is stopping Atlanta from requiring face masks?
Reportedly Republicans want to punish school systems that don't physically reopen.
*A fifth of Brazilian soy in Europe is result of deforestation.*
Tory cuts to the NHS have reduced it to the point where people die who
in the past it could have saved.
The firm initial response to Covid-19 in many countries (not the US or
Brazil) shows what it means to recognize a grave danger. No country
has treated global heating as a grave danger.
An EU court decision requires reconsideration of each activity that
sends people's personal data to the US.
*Russian state-sponsored [crackers] target Covid-19 vaccine researchers
Please do not call them "hackers" — that insults us hackers.
*Governments’ dietary guidelines are harming the planet, study finds.*
Berkeley, California, will replace armed thugs with civilians for
certain jobs, including enforcing traffic laws.
This can do good in three ways: (1) less tendency to escalate, (2) no chance
of killing the motorist, and (3) the new agency could start off without
the heritage of racism that thug departments in the US generally have.
*The White House is launching a smear campaign against Dr. Fauci for
contradicting [the saboteur in chief].*
He is trying to discredit Dr Fauci through every possible channel,
for the offense of telling us the truth.
US thugs are flying cameras over protests, and could use this for facial
recognition to identify and repress protesters.
15 US states agreed to ban sale of new fossil fuel trucks by 2045.
It's a step in the right direction, but even if the whole world
adopted that, it would be inadequate. The deadline ought to be 2030.
*Evictions Aren’t Inevitable When Tenants Fight Back.*
FAIR: mainstream media often exaggerate what authority the conman really has. Many of his announcements pretend to make sweeping changes in laws that he cannot actually make.
The pertinent inspector general approved a gross conflict of interest by the conman's head of coronavirus task force.
I concur in suspecting that the conman's persistent bulling of inspectors general has intimidated him to back down from his responsibilities. That was surely the intention.
The conman and his family have sunk to promoting companies in exchange for political support.
Who now would dream of making him comply with official ethics rules?
Those rules depended for their force on a system in which corruption was condemned by voters and would terminate a political career. The conman has ripped that up, and that could be the most fundamental damage he has done.
The wrecker has ordered hospitals to stop sending Covid-19 statistics to the CDC and send them instead to a new agency which will keep them secret.
Suggesting that hospitals defy this order.
It would be good if all hospitals did that, but would the CDC accept those data? Even if it did, that doesn't fix this artificial problem. If only some hospitals send data there so, that won't add up to valid statistics about the whole US, or even entire states and cities.
State governments dominated by wreckers are already trying to cover up the extent of spread of Covid-19, and this policy will help them cover up more.
Biden's new climate plan shows that public activism can push him towards doing more for climate defense. We need to push him a lot farther.
We should support the Chomsky et al letter for justice and open debate regardless of disagreeing with some of the people who signed it.
In other words, if you won't sign a letter whose points you agree with, simply because among the 150 other signatories are a few people that you disagree with passionately on some other specific political questions, you're practicing and fueling the harmful divisive approach of cancellation.
I excoriated J. K. Rowling's unjust lawsuit against readers in 2005,
and called for a boycott of Harry Potter in response. She has not apologized so I continue the boycott. Please do not use Harry Potter books or movies (or fan goods) in a way that will give her income.
Nonetheless I am glad that she signed this letter, because her signature will support freedom of speech. I would gladly have signed my name right after hers, despite my disagreement with her on the other issue.
The US gave Russia information about Chechen and Russian Muslim dissidents living in Europe. Russia used this to kill some of them.
The supposed reason for the cooperation was for Russia to kill Islamist exiles fighting in Syria.
An undercover UK thug infiltrating the animal rights movement entrapped an activist by pressuring him into buying a shotgun. The activist spent years in prison after other thugs "found" it.
The thug denies this, but he is not only an admitted thug, he is also an admitted liar. He is not a credible witness.
Microsoft got a lot of attention by temporarily ceasing to offer certain face recognition services to government agencies, but it still provides lots of support to US thug departments.
*US Corporations a Driving Force Behind 'Unprecedented Wave' of Global Land Privatization.*
Some scientists predict that nearly all countries will have decreasing
populations by the end of this century, due to falling birth rates.
This is very good news, as it will reduce the climate disaster
(thought it will nonetheless be very bad).
However, they predict a population explosion for sub-Saharan Africa
which will be caught in a trap of poverty and population growth.
While I am not a demographer, I doubt that Nigeria could accommodate
800 million people without disaster, and the climate disaster will
exacerbate that. We need to help sub-Saharan Africa stabilize its
population long before that point.
Iran has sentenced three protesters to death after reportedly torturing them
into false confessions to various crimes.
They fled to Turkey, which sent them back to Iran.
Iran's government is violently unjust to people in Iran,
but it does not lean to aggression internationally.
The US should be able to make peace with Iran.
*Google faces lawsuit over tracking in apps even when users opted out.*
*Egypt asks Spain to extradite dissident [who is also a whistleblower]
who sparked protests.*
Egypt accuses him of tax fraud, but it is hard to trust that evidence
from the Egyptian state is honest.
Some doctors in Egypt have been jailed for complaining that they don't
have PPE.
Finally, a concrete case of voter fraud occurs. The accused is a
Republican congresscritter.
It is standard Republican practice to accuse others of the wrongs that
they are familiar with by personal experience.
The recent fiery Siberian heat wave was next to impossible without
global heating. We have reached the point where all uncertainty
disappears.
The saboteur regime has ordered reinterpretation of the National
Environmental Policy Act, gutting the protection of cities and
wildernesses against absurdly damaging projects.
Enslavement of migrants in the UK is due to the Tories intentional harshness
to unauthorized immigrants.
*Car tires are major source of ocean microplastics.*
* Habitat degradation inflicts far greater harm on caribou populations
than wolves [do], say researchers.*
Glen Greenwald: *How "Cancel Culture" Repeatedly Emerged in My Attempt
to Make a Film About Tennis Legend Martina Navratilova.*
In the area of sports, the dispute about trans women is a consequence
of the artificial division of athletes into categories based on sex.
If instead each athlete gets a personal handicap, they could all be in
the same category, with the handicap of each athlete adjusted to null
out per inherent bodily advantage.
A series of absurdities in Assange's extradition hearing.
The indictment against Assange was replaced, but the hearing is
looking at the old indictment and ignoring the new one.
As fracking companies go bankrupt, they leave wells leaking methane
and other dangerous substances, and there are no plans to clean them
up.
If this were the only bad thing about fracking, one possible solution
in principle would be to require the company to post a bond to clean
up the well, before starting it. However, as reported in Collapse, by
Jared Diamond, this system has problems in practice when dealing with
abandoned coal mines in Montana.
Anyway, fracking has other big problems (globally, CO2 from burning
the gas, and locally,
pollution of water sources) and it is taking us to frack and fruin.
Fracking should be entirely forbidden.
*Livestock farming and fossil fuels could drive 4C global heat rise.*
Plutocratists funded pressure campaigns to reopen US businesses quickly.
*Sudan is to ban female genital mutilation (FGM), cancel prohibitions against religious conversion from [102]Islam and permit non-Muslims to consume alcohol in a decisive break with almost four decades of hardline Islamist policies, its justice minister has said.*
Hooray for this rejection of imposed religion.
*Increase in invasive species poses dramatic threat to biodiversity.*
The bully did something right, for a change: he cancelled Hong Kong's special economic privileges; it will get the same treatment as China.
Impeding people with Hong Kong passports from visiting the US may be a bad step, since some of them would come in order to apply for asylum. It might not be safe for them to do so while in Hong Kong.
Questioning the long-standing practice of operating to "normalize" intersex babies.
Which sorts of situations are likely to cause irreversible psychological harm is socially constructed, so it can change. It's possible that 70 years ago growing up intersex was a disaster, because it was taboo and its discovery was likely to trigger a horrible response. Nowadays, with the relaxation of imposed gender roles, maybe nowadays it is not a big deal — in some parts of the world.
Maskless drunken foreign tourists in Spain threaten to reboost Covid-19.
These reckless jerks should not get a second chance. I encourage Spain to hold them in quarantine until the opportunity to deport them.
The new censorship regime in Hong Kong is intentionally vague to terrify journalists.
US citizens: call on American Airlines to stop booking full flights during the pandemic.
*Melbourne lockdown key to getting Covid-19 contact tracing to manageable
level, expert says.*
The US is far beyond the level at which contact tracing is feasible.
The only way to reach that level is with firm and strong measures to
keep people apart.
One state in Australia is ordering immediate collection of identity data
for everyone that stays in a hotel.
The stated purpose, contact tracing for Covid-19, is a legitimate one.
But this surveillance goes far beyond what the purpose requires, and that
makes it an injustice.
Sad to say, this unjust level of surveillance has existed for decades
in many countries. In those countries that gives me one additional reason
to try to avoid hotels.
European countries want a global tax system on digital services,
but the conman's men are dead set against it.
The personal data that WhatsApp collects is also available to Facebook.
It is easy for fast talkers to get rich now. They get a government
contract to sell masks at a high price, then buy them on the open
market.
Hospitals can't fix broken ventilators (and other medical equipment)
because it has proprietary software to implement internal DRM.
US thugs don't have to pay for military equipment and arms, but the
manufacturers make a lot of money from selling them.
Thug departments are buying personal data that crackers steal from web
sites. This is data that they would normally have to get a warrant to collect.
The result is to undermine everyone's protection against unjustified
government snooping.
WHO: give up on the idea of a "return to the old normal"; the world needs strong anti-transmission measures or Covid-19 will keep spreading.
(satire) *… officials from the Trump administration reportedly
planted 137,000 corpses in Anthony Fauci’s bed Monday to frame him for
the country’s coronavirus deaths.*
(satire) before boiling a lobster, use this handy sedation kit.
I once came across a suggestion: before boiling a lobster, put it on trial
for cannibalism (lobsters eagerly eat baby lobsters) and sentence it to death.
When it comes to human criminals, I oppose the death penalty
unconditionally, but cannibal lobsters are a different issue.
AIPAC's power is diminishing; it can no longer force members of Congress
to endorse Israel's occupation policies.
Analyzing the insufficiencies in the Sanders-Biden climate plan.
I disagree with that analysis in regard to carbon taxes.
If the tax rate increases fast, and if the tax is on actual emissions
and not some weasely "net emissions", it could impose powerful pressure
to cut down use.
Boeing fired an executive for an essay he published in 1987. Some
employee complained that the essay made per feel "unsafe" even though
he had retracted it long before. Insanely, the company validated that
complaint.
Golightly's 1987 essay represented patriarchal thinking which never
made sense to me. For some reason, I never picked up the usual sexist
habits of judging people's behavior; I took for granted that right and
wrong were the same for females as for males.
I have also never understood the "male bonding" that the essay refers
to. No such thing happens with me. (Perhaps this is why I don't care
about team sports.) If cohesion of a military unit depends on that,
men like me should be rejected from the military.
These days I admire Kurdish and Yazidi women fighters, as well their
male comrades, because they are fighting against gruesome, hellish
tyranny: PISSI. And sometimes against dictators that attack them
(Assad, Erdoğan).
However, when it comes to the US, I think American women, and American
men, should be in combat a lot less than they are now. We need to end
America's forever wars, most of which had no justification even at the
outset.
Glenn Greenwald leads a discussion about the moral and practical issue
of violence in protests.
Here is what I think. It may be inevitable that people who are
long-oppressed and then suddenly angered by violence break out in
violence. But it is crucial for their movement to organize itself to
reject that violence, so that repressive forces can't use that
violence to smear the cause and repress the protests.
In case the black bloc shows up, protesters should train in advance to
insist it is not welcome and not part of their protest. Besides,
surely some of the black bloc are provocateurs, perhaps thugs
without uniform, and their aim is to harm the cause.
Australia may consider modifying its law that authorizes it to
secretly menace any software developer in the world with punishment
for refusing to insert a backdoor on Australia's command.
The decision not to menace employees individually would remove one of the
many menacing aspects of this law.
Nonetheless every free software contributor would still be a target.
For this reason, I urge all free software developers to stay away from
Australia.
A country willing to prosecute a whistleblower secretly and conceal his name
cannot be trusted to follow any norms of decency.
Plutocratist Democrat Duckworth joined with a Republican to propose to pressure cities to sell off their water systems. The people would pay various kinds of price for that year after year.
Facebook's plan for a global digital currency and payment system would certainly expose people to surveillance of their purchases, just like other non-cash payment systems. However, if it achieves the size that Facebook hopes for, it could be dangerous in other ways.
"Buyer, beware" is not an adequate response to systems backed by giant
corporations that pressure people to use them.
Our system for anonymous payments, GNU Taler, is being integrated into
the Euro banking system and aims for official approval for general use. Recently developers made the first transfer from one real bank account to another real bank account, as part of a test.
A Catalan elected official accuses the Spanish state of inserting the spyware that was found in his phone.
*Outcry from environmentalists as Brazil fires official monitoring deforestation.*
*Experts say at worst 120,000 coronavirus patients could die in NHS hospitals during winter*, if the UK does not take action to avoid a second wave.
Requiring plain packaging for cigarette packs in the UK had a positive effect:
smoking was already declining, but it has declined faster after that law.
*Israeli [thugs] tear down anti-Netanyahu protest camp*.
Last week the bullshitter reached a total of 20,000 false or
misleading statements while in office.
A Texan, age 30, went to a "Covid party" thinking that the virus was a joke. Perse repented that decision on per deathbed.
Internal CDC documents warn that reopening US schools would dangerously spread coronavirus.
Why hasn't the CDC published this? I would guess that the saboteur in chief blocked it somehow.
Massachusetts's strong measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 enabled its hospitals to cope with all the seriously ill patients.
A new law would empower Do-dirty's thugs to call dissidents "terrorists" and jail them for a long time.
*Hunger could kill millions more than Covid-19, warns Oxfam.*
When prisoners in US immigration prisons catch Covid-19, the US does
not give them medical care. It deports them to their countries of
origin, which can't give them any medical care, where they can either
spread the disease or die or both.
*Humanity on Track to Soon Hit 1.5ºC Paris Accord Limit as Atmospheric CO2 Nears Level Not Seen in 15 Million Years.*
Sanders wants the US to do more to stop the rich from evading their taxes.
*Immunity to Covid-19 could be lost in months, UK study suggests.*
More precisely, the study finds that antibodies to Covid-19 tend to
disappear after some months. Other kinds of immune response may last
longer. We do not know whether people will become vulnerable to
reinfection 3, 6 or 12 months after recovering from Covid-19.
This is additional reason why we should try hard to cut off
transmission and quickly — the approach used by East Asian countries
rather than the approach of the numskull.
US citizens: call on Congress to block price gouging for Covid-19 treatment.
China believes it is so powerful now that all other countries must submit to
its economic colonization. They must choose between kowtowing and trade war.
Given that choice, other countries must choose trade war, and they must hit
hard enough to make China back down. This does not have to be done in a
hostile fashion; there is no harm letting China save face.
A study from Sweden shows that people's wealth is correlated strongly
with the wealth of the families they are brought up in — more so than
with their biological parents.
*Making a beeline: wildflower paths across UK could save [rare bee] species.*
More reports that Israel sabotaged Iranian nuclear and missile
development facilities.
This, together with US hostility, is helping right-wing extremists take power in Iran.
Washington DC will allow prisoners to vote.
Prisoners will be able to vote for officials that will release them —
and if the prisoners are so numerous that this has a big effect on the outcome,
I think it will be fair.
Iran reported that the firing of a missile which destroyed Ukraine
Airlines 752 on errors by the missile launching crew, including violating
the rule not to fire without specific approval.
Don't confuse the "wet markets" of China, which sell live wild animals,
with the stores in the US that sell live farmed chickens.
The bullshitter has NOAA downplaying the decreasing numbers of North
Atlantic right whales.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights will hear the case
of people kidnapped and tortured by the US.
Please don't use the whitewashing term "rendition" to refer to the practice
of handing prisoners over to be tortured.
Ilhan Omar Demands Pentagon Acknowledge, Compensate US Drone Strike Victims
'Illegally Killed' in Somalia.
The first step, for the US, is to stop denying and hiding the killing
of civilians.
*Facebook agreed to censor posts after Vietnam slowed traffic.*
Voting for a candidate that opposes Medicare for All is voting for
avoidable suffering and death.
The bullshitter has put Dr Fauci in the doghouse and no longer meets
with him.
*Fauci Admits Penchant for Facts About Covid-19 Threat Explains Why He's Not
on TV So Much Anymore.*
Asadullah Haroon, prisoner in Guantanamo, explains his hunger strike — it is the last thing left to him.
Australia plans a secret trial against Witness K for exposing Australia's commercial spying on East Timor. Witness K's lawyer is being prosecuted too.
This makes Australia the moral equivalent of a gangster that tries to assassinate the witnesses to his crimes.
Ironically, this all concerns the question which country will get to extract oil from which parts of the sea between the two countries. The right answer is obvious: "Neither country can touch that oil — keep it in the ground!"
UN special rapporteur: the reported achievement of reducing extreme poverty masks a misleading failure to lift people out of poverty in most of the world.
What we lose when we lose an office we work in.
I lost this in two stages, When the mob vilified me in September, I lost my own office. Then in March I found myself with nowhere to go, ever, at all.
California is suffering from even faster spread of Covid-19 than in the spring, and its testing capacity is overwhelmed.
The state's response is small, and I doubt it will stop the disease from spreading further.
It is a positive step to release 8,000 prisoners, but taking 7 weeks to do that will spoil the intended effect. Thousands of them could catch Covid-19 in prison before they are released.
Victoria, a state in Australia, will set up a truth and justice commission to examine and recognize wrongs against Aboriginal people.
A thug killed Andres Guardado in Los Angeles by shooting him five times in the back. Then the sheriff's department tried to keep this secret.
With no video to substantiate the thugs' story, we cannot assume it is true.
Melbourne's support for the people quarantined in high-rise housing project was chaotic, as different agencies with their own rules, and sometimes hypercaution, got in each others' way. It took three days to work out how to give people the various things that they needed, including food, medicine and diapers.
The government had not thought of trying to plan how to deal with such a situation.
The corrupter has released his crony Roger Stone from prison.
A description of his case.
We need a constitutional amendment to limit the president's power to pardon convicts whose crimes were related to the president. The authors of the constitution may have supposed no president would sink so low.
*Holding US Government to Its Treaty Promises 'For Once,' Supreme Court Rules Nearly Half of Oklahoma Still Native American Territory.*
A new assessment of endangered species studied 132,000 species and found 1/4 of them to be in danger.
If Israel claims to annex parts of Palestine, it will probably effectively confiscate large tracts of land from Palestinians, as it has done in the areas near Jerusalem that Israel claimed to annex decades ago.
Ehud Olmert, former prime minister of Israel, says that Netanyahu's corruption is turning Israel into a fascist state, with repression of protest and mass surveillance thrown in.
A string of fires and explosions in Iran could indicate that Israel is trying to push Iran into a war while the bully is still president.
(satire) *sources confirmed Thursday that 17-year-old Kevin Albright, a local teenager who died of coronavirus, probably had undiagnosed old age.*
Most US states are not testing enough people for Covid-19 to have a chance of holding back the increase of cases. Overall, the US is doing less than half of the rate of tests that would require.
The figure "39%" represents a degree of precision that makes no sense here. We can only estimate the rate of testing required; we don't know enough to state it within a precision of 1 in 100. I think that "40%" would still be excess precision. What we really know is probably only "less than half the necessary rate but more than a quarter."
(satire) *&hellp; consumer trends researchers confirmed … that teens are flocking to a new app where they just enter their own personal data into a form.*
US citizens: call on the Philippines to drop charges against
journalists including Maria Ressa, and stop attacking independent media.
US citizens: call on Attorney General Weiser of Colorado to prosecute
the thugs that killed Elijah McClain.
The US government has stopped printing green cards. Authorized US
residents receive no way to prove that they are such, which means they
will suffer various sorts of harsh treatment that was designed for
unauthorized immigrants.
*From Fossil Fuel Companies to Schools, 350+ Facilities Stopped Tracking Water Pollution Under EPA's Temporary Pandemic Policy.*
*'No Militarists' or 'Corporate Goons': Progressives Urge Biden to Appoint
Foreign Policy Team That Rejects Status Quo of Endless War.*
The criteria for personnel are good, and the goals are good to first
order. However, in regard to promoting treaties for international
cooperation, we must not forget one kind of harmful treaty that Obama
promoted, and I think Biden would too: business-supremacy treaties such as the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison
and NAFTA. The new, replacement NAFTA is less bad than the original
one, but bad nonetheless.
Rejecting neoclassical economics, which has many flaws, leads to an idea
for how to construct an economy that avoids coming collapses.
I disagree, though, with the idea of treating the economy as an "ecosystem"
because that implies it evolves rather than being constructed and planned.
You could say that our problem is that neoclassical economics taught
us to make the mistake of allowing that.
The actions that (according to the conman) would make America "great"
have in fact made it weak and isolated.
This includes ever-increasing military spending.
A statue of Frederick Douglass was torn down secretly, presumably by
white supremacists.
In my view, Frederick Douglass deserves a statue and Robert E Lee does
not. But there are advantages to making these decisions through a
democratic process, rather than letting might make right.
Malaysia is threatening to prosecute Al Jazeera journalists for publishing something that makes the government look bad.
Spain closed half its remaining coal-powered generators on June 30
and plans to close the rest.
California is considering setting up a public bank, which would
enable state entities and others to store their savings while
supporting the public rather than a private company.
Italy is pushing to finish the system of movable barriers intended to
protect Venice from especially high tides.
Such a system can be effective for a time, but it always has an inherent limit
for the height of water it can block. As sea level keeps rising, it will start
to exceed that limit. Eventually it will wash over the barriers.
How high is that, and when is it likely to occur?
Bahrain is on the verge of executing two democracy advocates after
reportedly false confessions.
As I recall, the kings of Bahrain are Sunnis but the majority of Bahrainis are
Shi'ites. In 2011 they protested for democracy, but Bahrain brought in
troops from a nearby Arab country (UAE?) to crush the protests.
The Biden-Sanders unity panels won Biden's assent to a number of
progressive proposals, but not Medicare for All.
The climate defense proposals go beyond what Congress has considered,
but the use of the term "net zero" suggest they are based on a weak
foundation.
The bullshitter started a commission to investigate supposed voter
fraud in the US. (Answer: there isn't any.)
Matthew Dunlap, a member of the commission, discovered he was there
only to make it look honest — the commission refused to show him the
supposed evidence it was looking at, and the staff were working on a
report which the supposed members were not told about.
He sued, got a copy, and found the staff had no evidence to go on.
As has been reported many times before, there is no evidence of any
significant level of fraudulent voting in the US. The only fraud that
really happens is when Republicans disenfranchise citizens that are
legally entitled to vote.
The EU talks about protecting pollinating insect species from pesticides, but its policies are inadequate because of loopholes and exceptions.
Erdoğan plans to convert Justinian's Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque.
*[The bullshitter] is a hypocrite on China [as he generally is] — but China deserves to be condemned.*
The fall in CO2 emissions caused by Covid-19 is far less than what is needed to avoid global heating disaster. Even if the observed decrease were repeated annually, it would be far from sufficient.
Delaying a massive switch to renewable energy by one year would more than cancel it out.
Several US states are closing some sorts of businesses to reduce transmission of Covid-19.
It is foolish to apply anti-transmission measures by baby steps. That will take a long time to make transmission taper off. States should instead take a big step which is surely enough to drive R well under 1.
*Wildlife traffickers target lion, jaguar and leopard body parts as tiger substitutes.*
They should try using cow parts or domestic cat parts. Those animals are not endangered, and their parts can be obtained easily and lawfully.
Starr County officials were licking Covid-19 until the governor of Texas imposed reopening everywhere in the state.
The Philippines have closed the biggest radio and TV broadcaster in the country as punishment for not running Do-dirty's campaign ads.
The Center for Body Donations in Paris neglected many donated corpses and allowed them to be eaten by rats.
Why do people make such a fuss about what will happen to their dead bodies? If those corpses would have been useful to science, it was a sad loss to science that they were instead wasted on feeding rats. A wasteful failure, but not a heinous crime. It can't have any effect on the people whose bodies they formerly were. Those people are dead.
Someday one of those bodies might be mine, since I have offered my future dead body to research. (That is the most useful thing I can think of to do with it.) My opinion about wasting those donations is the same regardless of whether the body in question is mine or another's.
Republicans in Wisconsin have seized legislative power permanently despite being opposed by a majority of the state's voters.
(satire) *Corrupt Policeman Worried About Working With Partner Who Has Never Once Taken Bribe.*
The conman's rally in Tulsa on June 20 only half filled the arena, but it achieved a substantial success in spreading Covid-19.
Fossil fuel companies are borrowing money to pretend they are financially stable. Lending to them only helps them continue the pretense longer.
*Police across England and Wales face an inquiry to establish whether they racially discriminate against ethnic minorities in their use of force and stop and search.*
The antiwar movement is booming among US military veterans and current soldiers.
A strange confrontation between three groups of armed protesters: blacks, white supremacists, and white anti-supremacists.
What is clear is that guns are a significant cause of death in the US, and more guns will mean more deaths per week, even fighting does not break out.
*Police Surveilled George Floyd Protests With Help From Twitter-Affiliated Startup Dataminr.*
*Banks and pension funds among investors bankrolling meat and dairy.*
*If I don’t think the world will be livable in the future, how can I bring a child into it?*
I found singular use of "they" especially confusing in that article.
Several individual right-wing terrorists have attacked Black Lives Matter protests with cars and trucks.
The Supreme Court ruled that New York State is allowed to subpoena the conman's tax returns.
They might eventually provide evidence of some sort of fraud which could be used to prosecute him, but I don't expect them to have great political impact, because it has taken too long (almost four years).
In 2016, he chose his tax returns as an example to show contempt for our political system. When that didn't cause Republicans to reject him, he moved on to spit on other things far more important. This year he has fired inspectors general, turned environmental regulations and financial regulations into nonsense, packed the US courts with right-wing extremists, and ordered soldiers to attack peaceful protesters. Will showing we got his tax returns disappoint his supporters? I doubt it.
US citizens: call on the Senate to support Essential Workers Bill of Rights.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Congressional Inherent Contempt Power Act.
Here is an explanation of that bill.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
Spending military funds through contractors makes the work they pay
for both more expensive and less accountable.
The history of US "robber barons" from the 19th century to the 21st,
and how they increasingly rob the non-rich.
*Teachers Say Rush to Reopen Schools Without Covid-19 Safety Plan Shows Trump
and DeVos 'Do Not Care About Students'.*
*Law Firms Are Recruiting Corporations to Attack COVID-19 Policies in ISDS
"Corporate Courts."
The political prisoners murdered at Stalin's orders were buried in
mass graves. Yuri Dmitriev, who discovered one of them, has been jailed based on extremely strained accusations of "child pornography".
On the freedom that comes from being childfree.
Western universities must limit their involvement with China and
dependence on funds from China, so that they don't fear a cutoff of
those funds.
China will surely try to make universities compete for most subservient.
*Biden Defends Undying Allegiance to For-Profit Healthcare During Interview
With Dying Medicare for All Advocate Ady Barkan.*
The Supreme Court extended the damage done by giving human rights to
inhuman corporations, by saying they have the right, on account of
their religion, to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees.
One more reason to enact Medicare for All
and disconnect the medical system from employment.
We also need to amend the constitution to reject the idea that corporations
are entitled to the rights of humans.
Please phone your congresscritter and say so.
A corporation once begged me to allow it get down on its knees and pray.
Except it wasn't "pray", it was "prey".
*New Report Finds Economic Benefits of Protecting 30% of Planet's Land and
Ocean Outweigh the Costs 5-to-1.*
(satire) *Adreese Fowler admitted
Wednesday that he just couldn’t seem to shake the creeping sensation
that someone other than the government, his employer, and advertisers
was watching him.*
US citizens: call on Congress to ban use of tear gases in the US.
A violent right-wing anarchist extremist movement uses the term
"boogaloo" to refer to a proposed civil war in the US.
The lying right-wing extremists in power in the US government say that
"boogaloo" is not right-wing, but that is their usual big lie tactic.
The difference between those violent right-wing anarchists and the
right-wing anarchist Antisocialist Party
(which calls itself
"Libertarian") is a matter of degree. Since there is a spectrum of
views among the supporters of "boogaloo" also, it should not surprise
us that the Antisocialist presidential candidate looked for support
among them.
Nonetheless, the two do disagree. "Boogaloo" right-wing anarchist
extremists would like to destroy the state, which would allow anyone
to plunder anyone else, whereas the right-wing extremists in power
want to use the state to plunder everyone else.
Lost in all this is the purpose of a democratic state: to restrain the
rich from plundering everyone else and give everyone a decent life
with human rights.
The US made a pretty good effort at this, and in the 1960s tried
specially to include minorities.
Only half-hearted vestiges of that effort remain today after 40 years
of increasing plutocratist dooH niboR, but Medicare, Medicaid, Social
Security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and support for housing
and education still do considerable good for non-wealthy Americans.
They are insufficient to overcome all the harm the US government
encourages big business to do, but without them things would be much
worse. That's why the right-wing extremists now in power are rushing
to sabotage them as much as they can.
The Federal Reserve has refused to tell the public the facts about
giving "bailout" money to fossil fuel companies.
*A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.*
I endorse this letter wholeheartedly.
Belgium is confronting its colonial past in the Congo.
*'Our spirit will never be crushed': Hong Kong activists vow to keep fighting
despite new laws.*
The tyrant of Chechnya is assassinating exiled Chechen dissidents in Europe.
Conservationists say the UK must cut insecticide use by 50% as the EU
is planning to do.
In the US, we used far less insecticide a few decades ago when farmers used
a system called integrated pest management.
Protesters in Darfur report that armed gangs attack people and the
governor does nothing to stop it. They want the governor replaced.
*Mexico border towns try to stop Americans crossing amid Covid-19 fears.*
It seems rational to me. If the US has a higher infection rate than
Mexico, Mexico should limit entry. However, ISTR that Covid-19
is ballooning in Mexico.
A hospital in London has closed because of an outbreak of Covid-19
among the staff.
The UK made good progress in curbing Covid-19 after Bogus Johnson stopped
obstructing measures to achieve that. But since relaxing its measures,
Covid-19 seems to be getting out of hand again.
Spreading rock dust on farms could absorb large amounts of CO2 out of
the air, while improving the soil.
We still need to eliminate most of our CO2 emissions, but using this
technique as well could enough to go beyond that and start
decarbonizing the atmosphere.
Ultimately, the conman gave millions of dollars in PPP loans to big
businesses that didn't need help, while many small businesses got
small amounts — even as small as one dollar.
The saboteur has given millions in bailout loans to companies with
unpaid fines.
The fines are for environmental and workplace safety violations.
We know that saboteur seeks to encourage those violations.
*Kanye West's company granted millions in coronavirus stimulus.*
Kanye really still show your face in public?
President Grant set up the US Justice Department in 1870; its mission was
to protect equal rights for blacks and defeat the KKK.
Two Oklahoma thugs face murder charges after killing Jared Lakey by tasing
him 50 times.
They lied afterward about what they had done. Can't they be
prosecuted for that too? The murder charges may or may not stick,
but conviction for a false report should be easy, and that would make
sure they can't get hired again as thugs.
BMW will remotely enable and disable functionality in cars
through a universal back door.
Researchers discovered 1000 phrases that made "smart" listening devices
wake up and start transmitting to the company's servers.
The CEO of Procto-rio showed what an asshole he is, using that
company's exam software to crack a students' computer and posting per
chat logs.
*The War on Logic: Contradictions and Absurdities in the House’s Military Spending Bill.*
The House refused even to limit the power of the president to aim the US military at peaceful protesters.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been thoroughly perverted and has just deregulated interest on payday loans.
If our system were not set up to impoverish people, there would be no issue about payday loans because people would not need them. But until we can fix the system at a deeper level, these band-aids are important.
*'Dangerous Complacency': UN Expert Issues Scathing Report Denouncing Global Failures to Tackle Poverty Even Before Covid Pandemic.*
He says that global efforts to reduce poverty let themselves be deluded by the World Bank, and achieved almost nothing, but presented an image of success because China reduced poverty in China.
Deforesters are burning up the Amazon forest again this year, even faster than last year.
Bolsonaro considers the forest an obstacle to farming.
China is trying to bully tech companies to act as censorship proxies over Hong Kong, threatening to arrest their employees.
China has no need to threaten Apple; Apple surrendered years ago.
The UK plans to deport two twins to different countries. Both have lived since birth in the UK.
The US has done similar deportations for decades.
Each twin is in prison for gross bodily harm — which suggests getting into a fight. Since they are were brought up in foster care after their mother died, it doesn't surprise me. A good society would have helped them better. But even if someone can't live in society, sending per to a country which isn't and never was per home only makes things worse.
(satire) *In a lengthy report laying out recommendations it described as absolutely essential to its client’s future success, consulting firm Hewitt Lord Advisors suggested Tuesday that a business keep the consulting firm on for six more months.*
The changes in the new NAFTA have made little difference to the domination of Mexico by lawless US businesses.
In other words, it is still a business-supremacy treaty.
Nonetheless, the new NAFTA eliminates one of the outrageous parts of the old one: the ISDS clause that authorizes foreign companies to sue governments over laws that get in the way of their profits. We must eliminate all ISDS clauses.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to ask per to sponsor the Migratory Bird Protection Act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Eric Garner Act, prohibiting thugs from using chokeholds.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to give the USPS more funds ASAP.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
When prisoners are homeless when released or paroled, it is much harder for them to find their way to a life without crime. Society should make sure that each released or paroled prisoner has a home to live in. However, poor people shouldn't have to get themselves jailed in order to find a home. We must do this for everyone.
The National Environmental Policy Act requires environmental reviews for actions carried out, or specifically authorized, by the federal government. The saboteur is trying to undermine that by a series of steps to reduce its coverage.
*UK has no clear PPE strategy for second wave of coronavirus, MPs warn.*
Bogus Johnson screwed this up once, and he's heading for doing it again.
Several medical treatments and products for women have caused problems,
which the medical community did not attend to because it had a tendency
to disregard complaints from women.
*After Barr Ordered FBI to "Identify Criminal Organizers,
" Activists Were Intimidated at Home and at Work.*
Professor Simukai Chigudu, a Zimbabwean, talks about his wish to
remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes, who colonized Zimbabwe and some
neighboring countries and ran the whole as his plantation.
Bolsonaro, after doing everything possible to expose himself to
coronavirus, caught it last week.
On Saturday he carried it to a meeting with a number of right-wing
cronies, not wearing as mask.
Bolsonaro claimed that the majority who don't get seriously ill in
the short term escaped unscathed. We just recently learned that most
of them have significant medical problems afterward. There has not
been time to find out whether they are permanent or resolve after
a few months.
Seattle has once again enacted a tax on business income,
but better this time: the tax rate is progressive.
Only big businesses have to pay the tax: just 800 of them in the city
of Seattle.
*Purdue Pharma Made Political Contributions After Going Bankrupt.*
The FBI says that China is trying to coerce Chinese dissidents in the US to
go back to China, using threats against them and their families.
Those that do could face a horrible fate.
The article uses the term "intellectual property espionage"; as
always, "intellectual property" is intended to confuse.
I presume this is meant to refer to spying to obtain trade secrets,
"Trade secrets" is a coherent term, unlike "intellectual property".
That does not mean we should reflexively condemn attempts to "steal"
those secrets, because keeping a generally useful technical
information secret is an attack against humanity. Since 1984 or so I
have refused on principle to accept a nondisclosure agreement for
generally useful technical information, such as software. I carefully
refuse such agreements, because it is wrong to carry them out.
So if China is trying to obtain the trade secrets of US companies, the
morally valid response is to obtain the trade secrets of Chinese
companies — and publish them.
Many trans rights activists and many feminists want to
reach agreement and support each other.
*‘Yazidi women are strong’: Kurdistan's female landmine clearance teams.*
Scihub is loved by the scientists that write the articles it
redistributes. Only those parasites, the journal publishers, hate it.
If we can simply eliminate the publishers of paywalled journals, there
will be no more opposition to Scihub
Bogus Johnson wants to be thought of as an FDR by launching a minuscule
imitation of FDR's New Deal.
Australia has warned its citizens of the danger inherent in going to China.
All countries should do that. But it is ironic that Australia also
has made a law that claims global jurisdiction and requires
free software developers to stay away from Australia.
Movies are escaping from the decades-old pattern of presenting
abortion as inexplicably unthinkable.
That strange tendency became known decades ago,
and I wonder whether the antiabortionist right-wing played some part
in establishing it. In any case, I'm glad to see it go.
Movies that treat abortion as a normal part of life will help
spread that idea, especially in countries which repress abortion
in the name of religion.
To see abortions mentioned as asides in movies which are mainly
about something else would do even more.
Under the current rules and situation in England, reopening pubs is a step too far.
People in total quarantine in Melbourne pointed out the danger of their apartment buildings three months ago, and asked for help in controlling the spread of coronavirus, but they did not get help.
All of Melbourne is now under stay-at-home orders due to the beginning of a second wave of Covid-19.
It seems that reopening business went too fast.
Hong Kong is now officially a police state.
*Over 5,600 fossil fuel companies have taken at least $3bn in US Covid-19 aid.*
*Goal to eradicate poverty by 2030 ‘completely off track’, says outgoing special rapporteur, with Covid-19 likely to impoverish millions more.*
A woman who wants to live childfree practices explaining this to us. I hope that, with practice she will feel able to tell her friends this. As with any other group that hides, coming out and showing people that "each of you knows some of us" will help win acceptance and reduce the pressure.
The companies that wanted to develop the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have given up on the project. Years of resistance helped to bring this about.
*UK's big accountancy firms told to split off audit arms by 2024.*
This will eliminate an important kind of moral hazard. All countries should do this.
Efforts to shift global "development" loans away from fossil fuels need to move quickly, if they are to substantially reduce global heating disaster.
There is a glut of natural gas, due to faster than expected construction of renewable electric generation. Many proposed natural gas terminals are being canceled.
Indeed, a major US fracking company recently went bankrupt.
So what is California Governor Newsom thinking when he authorizes continued fracking and even new wells?
The bully has a new plan to make foreign students' lives difficult: bar them from the US if their schools are classes online.
Distance learning, as such, is not wrong. (Whether it is as good for learning as being in a university and going to classes physically is an open question, outside my expertise.) However, they are almost surely doing it with nonfree software, and that is an injustice.
I expect the bully is doing this simply as another way to express hostility to foreigners, and is not interested in what the universities do. But if this does convince some universities to stop making students use nonfree software, that will be a positive side effect.
Proposing to combine the Tobin tax on stock transactions with guaranteeing a job to every American.
(satire) *[the bully] reportedly slaughtered dozens of U.S. service members Monday in hopes of cashing in on the bounties [being paid by Russia].*
A black man watching birds in Central Park asked a woman to put her dog on a leash. She responded by calling 911 and making a false accusation against him. She now faces criminal charges.
One aspect of racism is that whites think they can get away with bullying blacks with false charges. To Kill a Mockingbird presents a fictional example.
Noctilucent clouds are caused by methane in the air. They are spreading, as harbinger of disaster.
A gang of white supremacists attacked Vauhxx Booker when he went to a lake for the fourth of July. Then injured his head, and threatened to get a noose.
He called 911, and the thugs came, but they didn't arrest any of the attackers.
Phoenix thugs shot James Garcia while he was in his parked car.
The thugs said Garcia had a gun. It's possible he did — not everything they say is a lie. If he did, their violent response was nonetheless recklessly abrupt.
The Antisocialist Party presidential candidate gave an interview to a
podcast closely associated with the ‘boogaloo’ movement that proposes
a right-wing uprising against the US government.
That party calls itself "libertarian", but I dispute their entitlement
to that term. It is a way of pushing their perverse definition of
"liberty" which says that the government should not help people and businesses should be able to gouge without hindrance.
They call all positive government activities "socialism",
so I think the right term for them is "antisocialists".
A court shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline because its environmental
review did not satisfy legal requirements.
I am glad, but keep in mind that it is not a final outcome.
A one-time wealth tax of 10% would give the UK the funds it needs to undo the
damage of Covid-19.
However, it first needs to finish getting rid of the disease.
US citizens: call on BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to stop donating towards
military weapons for the New York Thug Department.
A revised study estimates that climate mayhem was responsible for 67
billion dollars of the 90 billion caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
Many "mild" cases of Covid-19, patients not hospitalized, lead to
persistent medical problems, occasionally even strokes.
Some of them are fatal.
In other words, the "let it spread until herd immunity" approach
would saddle millions of people with medical difficulties.
Despite years of effort, sharks are still threatened by catching them
and keeping only the fins.
I had a small chance to oppose this directly at a restaurant in Taiwan.
Some officials are pulling back support for Black Lives Matter now
that it is a matter of policy and spending changes.
I disagree with the article on one point: wearing a Black Lives Matter
badge is political. It is a campaign for political policy changes.
Thus, people who are required to take a neutrality position on TV
can't show support or opposition.
*If small businesses fail after Covid-19, the big boys will become even
more powerful. A radical 1930s policy could be the answer.*
*[The conman] wants to put a rightwing zealot in charge of public land. Here's why it
matters.*
US courts are starting to use internet communications, and this has a
potential to improve the judicial system.
It sounds good, but, it won't be just if people have to use Zoom to
participate. When meetings with colleagues and teachers (including
classes) impose Zoom — or any nonfree program — that is unjust too.
When lawyers are required to use a nonfree program, that too is
unjust.
The conman has blocked Dr Fauci from speaking to the public for three
months.
Canada is allowing BlackRock to convert its infrastructure bank into a
giant giveaway to Wall Street.
The UK has imposed a necessary lock down in the city of Leicester,
where there was an outbreak of Covid-19. However, this would not have
been necessary if government had done its job properly earlier.
Melbourne, Australia, recently ordered the residents of certain large
apartment buildings not to leave their apartments except in an
emergency. Coronavirus was spreading quickly in these buildings.
The start of this was managed thoughtlessly, but since then the city
has arranged to bring them food, waive their rent, and give them some
money to make up for missed work. Since this quarantine is only for 5
days — enough time to test everyone — I think it is legitimate. It
should keep coronavirus from spreading to everyone in the building,
and thence to many other people.
I suppose the residents that are actually infected will be quarantined
for two more weeks.
Some demand to remove s statue of Lincoln which presented him as
having just broken the chains of a black slave. A letter published by
Frederic Douglass and the history of abolitionism show that the criticism
is only half right.
The issue about statues of President Grant reflects hypercritical
attitude which has become common. His temporary co-ownership of a
farm with slaves on it was a small aspect of his life, and a small
effect on the world. His defeat of the Confederacy, and his work, as
president, for equality were enormous. Doesn't a great good outweigh
a small wrong?
If we take a perfectionist attitude towards judging our heroes, we
will soon have none.
There was an explosion in Iran's research facility for uranium enrichment,
perhaps due to an attack by Israel or the US or a proxy group.
Coronavirus is spreading exponentially in Arizona, Florida and Texas.
*Hongkongers face a Kafkaesque reality as censors outlaw the words of protest.*
Some are protesting with blank signs. Some tried the word "Conscience"
and were arrested for that. Hong Kongers are deleting their files,
wiping out parts of their lives, fearing they will be prosecuted for that.
The one possible good side of this is that the world will see how evil
China is. It will be hard for people, in any country, to convince
themselves that getting close to China is safe.
China will seek to use overseas Hong Kongers as hostages, hoping that
we will tone down our condemnation lest it give China the idea of
punishing them. To do that would mean becoming agents of China. We
must tell Hong Kongers that they should stay away from our discussions
rather than ask us to censor them for China.
People discussing Hong Kong will have to watch out for Chinese agents
of disinformation, provocation, or pleading, some of whom may be
Hong Kongers who have cracked.
Academics have the duty to refuse to censor their judgment of Chinese
tyranny in order to be able to visit Hong Kong or China again.
With all the injustices that the US has done, it is far less evil than
China. We have to steer between two facile errors: (1) equating the
US with China, and (2) excusing the wrongs of the US because it is not
as bad as China.
*Facebook is out of control. If it were a country it would be North Korea.*
One man decides whether to allow it to wreak havoc on any particular
target.
People say they need to try to use Facebook to persuade people of
something-or-other. But even if something-or-other is a good thing,
Facebook is a much bigger bad thing. Because if you think you are
using Facebook, really Facebook is using you.
So don't be a zucker! And don't encourage anyone else to be a zucker.
For Facebook to cease to mistreat its useds would require big changes.
But ceasing to promote hate, lies and violence (above love, truth and
peace) requires only changing the propagation system to reduce the R
value that polarizing statements tend to get on Facebook.
Censorship, as such, is not necessary.
*Srebrenica 25 years on: how the world lost its appetite to fight war crimes.*
Since Dubya, the US has become responsible for atrocities around the
world — and has constantly fought the ICC's efforts to prosecute them.
Dubya start this, Obama continued it, and the bully has pushed even
harder on it.
*Knife-edge Polish presidential race could slow the march of
(right-wing) populism.*
I added "(right-wing)" so we will not forget that populism around 1900
was a movement for reducing inequality.
*Weak, divided, incompetent... the west is unfit to challenge Xi’s bid for global hegemony.*
*Mississippi's racist state flag has finally come down. Now the real work
begins.*
How should we remember Woodrow Wilson, "a great American president
and, on the other hand, … a racist son of a bitch."
Perhaps with a statue in which one side depicts a great president
and the other side depicts a supporter of the KKK.
*This pandemic has exposed the uselessness of orthodox economics.*
*Costs outweighing benefits is the oldest excuse for not taking
precautions — and is a recipe for disaster when the benefits, or
the costs of inaction, are vastly undervalued.*
A campaign to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline by pressuring insurance
companies not to insure it.
(satire) *In an effort to ease tensions with the public and restore
their tarnished public image, the New York Police Department reportedly
commemorated Independence Day this week by using fireworks for crowd
control.*
London cops, apparently not thuggish this time, shut down a dangerous
rave, but the participants threw bricks at them and broke bones of two.
That the rave was illegal is what authorize the cops to act, but
morally it is a minor detail. What does matter morally is that the
rave would tend to spread Covid-19. It therefore threatened harm to
people in general. For public safety, raves can't be allowed until
the Covid-19 problem is licked.
Venezuelans who fled to Colombia now can't find any work, so some are
returning home.
Leaders of Amnesty Turkey were convicted of "terrorism" charges based
on the assertion that one of them had a certain encryption app on his
phone. Although investigation reported he did not even have it.
They were arrested while holding an event with a visiting foreign encryption
expert to teach people how to use encryption.
We need to cover immigrants' medical bills and unemployment, or they won't get tested for Covid-19 and they won't be able to stay home if sick.
The rational, scientific approach to reopening the economy carefully and slowly.
A global Green New Deal would provide a way to let flattened, indebted poor countries out of the IMF trap.
Britons were prosecuted for "aiding terrorism" for helping their relative go to Syria to fight for Rojava. The judge just ended the trial by declaring them innocent.
Shame on Britain for trying to criminalize this.
The conman really did send troops to Washington armed with bayonets, as well as (of course) rifles to mount them on, with protesting Americans as the enemy.
Tim Bray recommends how to split up Google, taking account solely business questions and competition.
He doesn't address the issues of making users run nonfree software, and making them get accounts and identify themselves, which are the main reason I don't use Google services. But even in regard to competition, we need to go further. Gmail is too big; it should be split into several companies that compete.
Somerville, Mass, has given limited legal recognition to groups of any number of people that declare themselves to constitute a family.
Congress is considering a bill to accelerate installation of internet fiber everywhere.
This practical boost would be very useful, but watch out for three points the article doesn't mention:
*Mining on Indigenous Territories [in Amazonia] Brings Ecological Devastation, Land Invasions, and Renewed Cycles of Violence.*
Venezuelans who fled to Colombia now can't find any work, so some are returning home.
Muslim countries don't trouble to criticize China's imprisonment and brainwashing of a million Uighurs. They get too much financial support from China.
Iran has been struck with a suspicious series of fires and explosions.
US citizens: call on officials to demand Bob Kroll resign as head of the Minneapolis thug union.
The UK will require people eating in restaurants to identify themselves.
New Zealand's previous system, recording info about customers on paper, respected anonymity. It made the information available to collect when contact tracing needed it, but avoided creating a tracking database that the state could use for unjust purposes.
I am alarmed to read that New Zealand now requires customers to scan a QR code — with a Stalin's Dream device, evidently. That is not safe. And what about the people who don't have a portable phone?
Australia's extractivist government is not interested in endangered species, so it has stopped bothering to update records of where they live.
Progressives are trying to reclaim the term "populist", which around 1900 referred to a campaign to strengthen democracy and reduce economic inequality.
One supporter is persistently deleting everything from Kamala Harris's Wikipedia page showing her hash approach towards small-time street crime as well as her lax approach towards the theft of billions.
*Heatwaves have become longer in most of the world since 1950s.*
The change in the next 20 years could exceed the past 60 years.
A judge in the UK fined Greenpeace heavily for occupying a North Sea oil platform last year.
The judge's reasons are all valid, in a narrow sense, disregarding the fact that oil extraction is leading to the death of billions of people.
Once a government goes to those lengths to snuff out climate defense protests, I fear it will succeed, removing the last obstacle to mass murder.
The UK wants to send a girl back to Sudan where she would suffer female genital mutilation.
To evade legal obligations, the government will pretend to send her to Bahrain, never mind that Bahrain would not let her stay there and would send her to Sudan.
US citizens: call on elected officials to reject support from thug unions.
*'Greed Is a Danger to Public Health': Progressive Caucus Urges Ban on Big Pharma Coronavirus Price-Gouging.*
If Gilead Sciences' executives are shamelessly greedy, they could drive the price up by reducing production and making rich customers bid for the doses. This would be no less bad than setting a high fixed price.
The effective way to prevent gouging on remdesivir, and make sure it is available when needed, is to allow other companies to compete to produce it. That is what we ought to do.
*Cancellation might feel good, but it's not activism.*
*While denouncing someone can get you high, it ignores human complexity, and is no substitute for the hard work of persuasion.*
Hong Kong democracy campaigner Nathan Law has left to try to persuade other countries to impose sanctions.
Since China has made that activity a crime, he may never be able to return home.
Hugo's Tacos in Los Angeles closed its stores because of repeated harassment by customers who demanded service but refused to wear a mask.
The bully has already trained his supporters to throw off all scruples against lying; they eagerly invent and spread disinformation to attack his enemies.
Following his lead, they have now translated that contempt from the internet to the physical domain. The attitude of mask-rejectors is, "If I cause you to get sick, or even to die, fuck you. If you're not on my side, your life means nothing to me."
Now there has been another plot twist: the bully changed his stance on masks 180 degrees this week.
The governor of Texas, a fervent anti-masker, turned too, making masks mandatory in public places, with two exceptions: religious activities and voting.
That latter exception would be consistent with the theory that Republicans are intentionally spreading coronavirus so that Democrats won't dare vote.
I think that the bully's supporters will be reluctant to change their attitude towards masks 180 degrees overnight. I suspect they will keep on defying the use of masks.
Amazon has deals with 1400 thug departments in the US to facilitate their access to Ring street surveillance cameras.
Amazon does not do face recognition on the video from these cameras, but individuals and thug departments that get copies of the videos could do this using some other system.
I think that it should be illegal to install cameras that transmit video over the internet and watch public areas, without a special warrant for a specified place and a specified period of time.
German climate defense activists have occupied a coal mine which is used to feed electric generation. They demand ending coal combustion now, rather than tarrying lackadaisically until 2038.
Germany's industrial strength is great. It can replace the coal capacity with renewables and batteries in two years if it makes this a national priority equivalent to repelling an invasion of CO2.
It appears Connecticut proposed to raise the radiation threshold for evacuation after a nuclear power plant accident, because evacuation would be more dangerous during Covid-19 than it was before.
I won't criticize this attempt to find the safest path between two dangers. The basic idea seems valid to me. However, this should remind us that we should replace nuclear power plants with renewable energy plus storage batteries.
While renewable electric generation was expensive, the US government bought large quantities of solar cells to stimulate research to make them cheaper. That was a success. We need investment now to make large energy storage facilities cheaper.
Oregon will vote on a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of all forbidden drugs.
Many other legalization initiatives are being pursued in other states.
Senators have proposed a bill to end qualified immunity for officials that violate people's constitutional rights.
It should be noted that qualified immunity applies to civil suits by victims, but not in criminal prosecution.
California requires thug departments to show their training materials, but some try to use copyright as an excuse to keep them secret.
*What if we treated Confederate symbols the way we treated the defeated Nazis?*
*Ireland voted for radical change, but it may end up with greenwashed austerity.*
*Cattle-feed crops, which end up as beef and dairy products, account for 23% of water consumption in the US.*
*Revealed: legislators’ pro-pipeline letters ghostwritten by fossil fuel company.*
*How we can truly repay our frontline health workers: clear their debts.*
US citizens: call on state legislators & election officials to implement online voter registration nationwide.
They should take care not to exclude freedom-lovers: make it work for people who won't run Javascript.
I was thinking of joining a Juneteenth rally, but when I found a site that was said to list the events, I found that the site depended totally on running nonfree Javascript software. Without that, the site would not show me anything whatsoever.
There will be another Juneteenth next year. If you can contact the people who run the site, please ask them to provide a way to download the whole list of scheduled events, so that people who won't run Javascript can see the list and show up at one.
Australia aims to prosecute an Australian journalist for investigating war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
In the House of Representatives, militarist Democrats and militarist
Republicans are working together to keep the war in Afghanistan going.
16 Democrats in the senate helped defeat an amendment to repeal the
authorization for use of military force.
The amendment would also have withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan,
but I think repealing the authorization is even bigger.
Compared with past attempts, having 40 senators vote for this
is a lot of progress. In a few more years maybe we can win.
US citizens, if your senator is one of those listed, complain!
E-waste contains a fortune in tiny amounts of gold and platinum. Because
we do not recover it, it poisons people and animals.
Arizona's rainy season fails to be rainy, and three large fires are
sending smoke around that could augment the damage done by the
many cases of Covid-19 in the state.
Nothing could have avoided the failure of rain,
except perhaps curbing global heating since 10 years ago,
but the US could have curbed Covid-19 if it tried.
*60% of fish species could be unable to survive in [their current
habitats] by 2100 – study.*
California has shut down bars, restaurants and cinemas in counties
where Covid-19 is growing.
The right-wing laws to facilitate cutting down forests in New South Wales
(Australia) have been effective.
*Plurality of Americans Oppose Israel's Annexation Plans.*
Organizing in a US Jewish community to oppose annexation.
*1080 European Lawmakers Sign Petition to Reject Israeli Annexation of
West Bank.*
OSHA systematically disregarded workers' complaints that employers did not
give them protective gear.
The Hong Kong and Singapore Banking Corporation is centered in Hong Kong
and has publicly supported China's repression law.
How about moving your money out?
The main trade organization of US drug companies is suing to overturn
a Minnesota law to provide affordable insulin, to save the diabetics
whose lives are endangered by the high price of insulin in the US.
Most major drug companies are members of PHRMA. Each one should
either explain what it is doing to end gouging on insulin and other
drugs, or quit PHRMA.
How the government of China chooses the people who run new Hong Kong
repression apparatus, and directs what it does.
They have the power to jail people arbitrarily within wide, vague
limits.
Medea Benjamin: *A New Anti-War Mobilization Must Topple Trump—and
Challenge Biden.*
Oklahoma voters rebuked their Republican politicians by approving an initiative
to extend Medicaid to cover many more people.
US journalism has punctured the rule never to hint that uniformed
thugs are the ones responsible for violence at protests.
The US government is signing contracts about possible treatments for Covid-19
and choosing to put no limits on gouging.
Europe is harvesting its vast tree plantations faster than they grow.
Thousands protested in Hong Kong, and 400 were arrested.
The thugs attacked protesters and journalists violently.
Every aspect of this law, and the way it was imposed, has been
designed to show that China's repression will be totally arbitrary.
*“If you’ve ever said anything that might offend the PRC [People’s
Republic of China] or Hong Kong authorities, stay out of Hong Kong,”
said Donald Clarke, a law professor at George Washington University.*
*German [army] commando company is disbanded due to far-right culture.*
1/5 of tropical plant species could be wiped out by 2070;
it will be too hot for their seeds to germinate.
I would expect this was based on estimates of heating that have already
been found too low. Not long ago it was reported that the numbers have
to be adjusted upward.
Mississippi has modified its state flag to remove a copy of the
Confederate flag.
Several southern states put that into their state flags as a symbol of
racism.
The conman's officials sought to keep Adham Hassoun in prison
permanently without any sort of hearing. A US court ordered him released,
though the decision is likely to be appealed.
(satire) *God, Our Heavenly Father, reportedly sent a
sympathy card Tuesday to 56-year-old Arizona resident Greg Harris after
killing his wife.*
*Progressive Lawmakers Call on US to 'Take a Clear Stand' by Suspending
Military Aid If Israel Carries Out 'Illegal' Annexation.*
Annexation would violate the international laws of war, just like the
colonization and theft of land and water resources which Israel has
already done.
The improved labor rights clauses in the new NAFTA may not do much good
when lawyers who try to exercise them are jailed on absurd charges.
The Democrats' "bold" climate plan fails even to include ending the
construction of fossil fuel facilities.
The companies that own oil or gas facilities will fight like the devil
to keep on using them till the last possible moment. To allow
continued "investment" in destroying civilization means creating
additional enemies for later stages of the fight to save civilization.
*The Case for Medicare for All Has Grown Stronger Than Ever* based on current economic and expense figures.
The Supreme Court ruled that the president can fire the head of the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arbitrarily.
This gives the president even more power over it, but the conman
already replaced the head of the CFPB, which shows it already
had insufficient independence.
A California ballot initiative aims to limit targeting of advertising based on "sensitive" personal information.
I think it will do some good — but there are ways to game the new
requirement about personal data. Users could tell companies not to
use the sensitive data, if they find which companies to give this
instruction to. But companies can use observed behavior as
approximate proxies for the personal data. Facebook and others can
tell with high probability whether someone is gay, or what per
religion is, by what perse visits and searches for. However, those
proxy data are not, in fact, part of the sensitive personal data.
In addition, this requirement is vulnerable to the manufacture of
consent(*): "to use our service, which everyone believes one cannot live
without, you must consent to our using your sensitive personal data
for advertising."
What we really need is anonymity in searching and paying on the internet.
Senator Sherrod Brown has proposed a strong internet privacy law
that would make some real difference. His proposed law would limit the collection of data.
He has grasped the issue of the manufacturing of consent.
Whether it would fully address the problem depends on details that I
have not seen. It would prohibit selling personal data; would it
prohibit selling the service of selecting people based on their
personal data, which is what Facebook actually does? The California
ballot initiative does that.
He talks of allowing collection of data that is "necessary" for the
service that is offered, but that rule has strong interpretations and weak interpretations.
Nonetheless, Senator Brown has advanced the discussion considerably.
He rejects the supposed imperative to keep nasty businesses going.
* It amuses me no end to repurpose this term, which Chomsky coined for one
nasty practice, to describe another nasty practice.
India has banned 50 apps made by Chinese companies based on concern that they
are being used for snooping on Indian users.
One must ask if the Indian government thinks it is acceptable for US
companies, or Indian companies, to snoop on Indian users.
If these apps were free software and were running on a free operating
system, then India would not be able to ban them, and people would be
able to assure that they don't snoop, or fix them not to snoop.
Republican senators plan to prohibit services from offering end-to-end encryption, by a set of practices to be decided later by various agencies that want to snoop on everyone.
This will restrict the nonfree communications applications that are supplied by specific services. If you are wise, you will not trust them; you will use free programs, independent of whatever communications servers you use, to do the encryption. However, lots of other people will use those nonfree applications, and that will allow the US government to snoop on almost everyone in the US.
All across the US, corporations are suing local governments — for instance, for trying to protect people from Covid-19.
These corporations are responsible for the specific wrongs they do, but the system that facilitates it is broken and we need to fix it.
Ceding to pressure from advertisers, Facebook announced plans to block some hate messages and misinformation about voting. This will hamper the bully and his supporters from using the platform to stir up hatred and interfere with voting.
Facebook mistreats users in fundamental ways; let us not think that this change makes Facebook ok.
*Hundreds of Occupy City Hall protesters demand NYPD cut budget by $1bn.*
*If more Americans wore masks the pandemic would slow, experts say.*
US citizens: call on Biden to dismiss Larry Summers as an advisor.
All sides in Yemen's civil war are torturing prisoners.
Americans are losing their homes due to exorbitant water bills that they
cannot pay.
With Covid-19 building up in most countries, will the wealthier parts
of the world cooperate with treatment in the rest of the world?
*The Toxic Rise of Toxic Positivity.*
As much of my life has been unhappy — for reasons that were pretty
obvious to me — I have been visited many times with demands that I be
helped by the help they offer, and become cheerful. Or at least
pretend to be.
China's draconian law has crushed the organized protests of Hong Kong.
We must not forget Hong Kong's years of resistance, just as we must
not forget China's massacre of students supporting democracy
in Tian An Men Square.
Stone Mountain Park romanticizes the Confederacy, but when the giant
statue was built, in the 1960s, it embodied the spirit of
segregationism. This article proposes ways to make it ineffective.
Iran has sentenced journalist Ruhollah Zam to death.
Sanders explains the need for his amendment to reduce
the US military budget by 10%.
Some US states are banning certain group activities to try to slow the
accelerating spread of Covid-19.
(satire) The Onion's suggestions for reforming US thug departments.
(satire) *economist John Stephens confirmed to
sources Monday that he has a great idea for a sitcom where a Keynesian
and a Friedmanite have to live together.*
Chess: patriarchal
or feminist?
Some economists forecast that 10% of US workers will not get their
jobs back even if we eliminate Covid-19. That will amount to a big
recession.
Gilead Sciences plans to charge $500 per dose for remdesivir.
The company would make a profit selling it for $50 per dose,
and if we had a national medical system, it would push the price
down to such a level.
The role of government funds in developing remdesivir is not an
exception, it is the normal case. Medicine is one of the areas
where it is important not to allow patents.
The US government has bought nearly the entire production of
remdesivir for July through September, making the drug unavailable
to other countries that are subservient to the patent system.
I hope that they will go through with the plan to make compulsory
licenses, which are permitted by the WTO treaty. The US has lobbied
for decades to convince countries to forego that right.
Maybe they are prepared to defy the conman to help their
hospitals cope.
The article claims that the US government has tried to keep supplies
for treating Covid-19 available in the US, but that's not its usual policy.
There are examples
where it did the exact opposite, in particular with masks and ventilators.
Even now, Fauci says that US medical personnel face shortages.
And the numskull has no wish to ensure there is sufficient testing
capacity in the US.
Thus, the purchase of remdesivir is contrary to the usual practice, and
makes me wonder what his motive was.
House Democrats have proposed a "bold" plan to do a substantial
part of the Green New Deal — but nowhere near all of it.
2050 is far too late a target. The target we need, to avoid disaster,
is 2020, or perhaps 2010. But since that's impossible, at least make
it 2030.
The plan seems to be formulated in terms of "net" emissions, meaning
that it will rely on planned "offsets" that are intended to cancel out
emissions. However, these plans can fail. You can plant trees, but
over thirty years of global heating, the changes in climate can kill
them, and whatever carbon they absorbed will be released again.
The New York thug department invited the FBI to join in interrogating arrested protesters (and non-protesters) about their political views.
Thugs in Arizona used pepper spray to disperse protesting violinists.
This might have been justifiable if they were playing Schönberg's atonal music. Didn't the Atonal Brigade in Guatemala torture dissidents during the civil war? ;-}
Is being the first American woman to bomb Yemen, or operate a CIA torture operation, an advance for Women's equal opportunity?
Reducing gender bias is an important cause, but it is not the only issue of right and wrong in life.
The Green Party won many local elections in France. This convinced Macron to adopt most of the recommendations of the Citizens' Commission for the Climate, though Greenpeace says he weakened them in the process.
A book reports on how the CIA and the KGB have manipulated elections in various countries.
It might be true that the CIA no longer tries to manipulate elections as such, but the US helped overthrow governments in Honduras and probably Brazil and Bolivia. And it is trying to do so in Venezuela.
US medics have a shortage of protective gear again, thanks to Republican efforts to boost Covid-19 infection rates and pack the hospitals.
*No more going viral: why not apply social distancing to social media?*
Mayors of 11 US cities call for an automatic monthly cash payment to every American.
Here is their web site.
I'm in favor of this, but it is not sufficient by itself. For instance, it will not be enough to give everyone medical care; we need Medicare for All.
Instead of working to keep Libya's oil wells shut, there is a scheme to reopen them by letting the two warring governments cooperate and split the income.
This might lead to peace, which would be a great thing for Libya, but the increased oil extraction could speed the world towards global disaster.
The US Supreme Court rejected Louisiana's latest indirect scheme to effectively ban abortion.
China is singling out Uighurs and other minority groups in Xinjiang for special limits on having children, and imposing them with forced sterilization.
When it comes to the economy, only 6% of Britons want to return to the Tory-style economy of recent years.
Too bad they will have Tory government for 4 more years. They should have voted for Corbyn and Labour.
*Australian government powerless against lobbyists with hidden interests, audit finds.*
A shortage of state funds for what cities need has pushed UK cities into corruptible deals to get funds from developers in exchange for permission for bad projects.
US citizens: phone your senators to ask them to vote NO on the 2021 military spending authorization act.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
3500 square miles of the Siberian forest is now on fire
due to rising temperatures there.
Biden leads the cheater with voters over 65 in battleground states.
The cheater surely knows that. Could that be part of why he is trying
to spread coronavirus as much as possible?
The Oak National Academy, a UK government operation, plans to make 10,000
digital lessons for use in teaching over the internet.
If these are free/libre, they will revolutionize online education. If
they are free/libre and copylefted, they will liberate online
education. Otherwise, they will be more bait for exploitation.
If you are British, how about writing to the Oak National Academy to
urge them to make these lessons free/libre? Please spread the idea on
social media and with letters to the editor, too.
The UN refrains from criticizing Salafi Arabia for attacking Yemen
so as to encourage Salafi Arabia to give humanitarian aid
to compensate for part of the damage that it does.
*Getting Real About the Job of Police: A Letter to Barack Obama.*
When thugs kill, main, or bully people, they are doing their job —
their real job. And that is the underlying problem.
Someone shot two protesters at a rally for justice for Breonna Taylor.
I suppose the killer is one of the violent right-wing extremists that the
extremist-in-chief has stirred up.
New York City thugs went berserk during the curfew, mauling people who were minding their own business in their back yards.
Naturally, they made up absurd accusations against their victims —
that's standard thug procedure.
*We are what we eat, so we’re right not to trust what goes into American food.*
30% of Americans have decided, never mind if we catch Covid-19
and never mind if we transmit it to other people. The result
is a swelling outbreak.
Republican politicians are pushing this, and surely they can't be
unaware of where things are going. Therefore, they want that, and it
is surely for the sake of their power. But what is their strategy?
In Brazil, a campaign to show support for democracy and teach young people
what dictatorship was really like.
*Australia could create hundreds of thousands of jobs by accelerating shift to
zero emissions.*
Some US schools have installed Summit Learning, Facebook-sponsored
proprietary software which sends students' data to a servers so as to give them "customized" lessons.
Students say it is tiresome and they don't learn much.
The company's PR chief says, “I want to make clear to you that we are
in no way misusing student data.” Whatever it does with the data is,
apparently, just fine in the organization's view.
My view is that none of that data should ever leave the school itself.
The two main armies in Libya are about to start
fighting for control of Libya's oil fields. One has support
from Egypt and the other from Turkey.
Someone should propose a deal by which both sides get paid
to leave the oil in the ground. Then maybe they could make peace.
Afghanistan defeated Daesh as a field force, leaving only scattered
underground terrorists. (Hooray!) About 600 of them surrendered, of
whom around 1/3 are radicalized women.
Here's an idea, for some, those who are not full of hatred: send them
to live in villages with people who suffered Daesh's atrocities, but
who do not see them as targets for revenge, so they can learn to
understand what it was about Daesh that was so bad.
This might be good for some American supporters of imperialist wars, too.
The word "whitening" is becoming taboo. A company said it will stop
describing its skin creams with that word. It will still sell them,
though.
Is it wrong to aim for better treatment by trying to lighten your skin
color? Is it wrong to sell whitening creams that purport to do that?
I don't see how.
Is the idea that people should organize to reject the idea of
lightening their skin, to insist that skin color should not matter? I
can see the sense in that idea, if people do it. But I do not think
making it taboo to say "whitening" will help matters.
Covid-19 is spreading faster in Florida, and filling the hospitals,
and Rebekah Jones (who was fired for refusing to falsify figures)
accuses Governor DeSantis of falsifying them again now.
Since he is a firm supporter of the saboteur in chief, I wouldn't put
that past him. But it raises the question of why he seeks to spread
Covid-19 in Florida.
Published warnings about global heating go back at least to 1912.
*Greta Thunberg hits out at leaders who use her fame to 'look good'.*
It's easier to ask for a photo with her than to champion climate defense.
Political correctness threatens to put the word "master" under taboo regardless of the meaning.
Opposing slavery and racism does not require that we blot out every word that had a use in relation to slavery or racism.
How Rojava reorganized the police, so that most patrolling is done by volunteers from the community.
What it says about the rest of Rojava's system is fascinating too.
The three thugs that killed Elijah McClain for looking suspicious (including wearing a mask because he was shy) will perhaps now be prosecuted.
When thugs are allowed to start violence because of vague fears, that will systematically lead to killings based on no reason except their imagination.
*Charter seeks FCC OK to impose data caps and charge fees to video services.*
While reminding us that we should never give big companies anything on credit because they do often cheat on the deal, the main reason this merger should not have been allowed is that we need more competition, not less.
Thousands of fools having street parties have started raising London's Covid-19 infection rate.
Covid-19 has effectively nationalized the UK railways, but it remains to merge the systems and realize the benefits of nationalization. Meanwhile, it won't be feasible to keep them running if masses don't return to using them.
Large corporations are donating funds to anti-racism campaigns, but mostly not changing the harsh working conditions that they impose.
One exception to this picture is that Target announced a $15-per-hour minimum wage for the whole US.
Scientists are taking the first steps that might some day lead to artificial wombs. (Not that the road will be quick or easy, even for nonhumans.)
If it becomes possible to move a 9-week fetus to an artificial womb and bring it to term, what moral implications should that have?
Except for the benefit of protecting the health of gestating women (and, ideally, fetuses also), not much. A fetus is not a baby, regardless of where it happens to be located at the time.
To protect Women's rights from theocratic oppression, we will need to reject, clearly, the idea that once a fetus is outside the mother, it has been "born" and is therefore a human being.
Chemical pollutants combine with Covid-19 to cause deaths.
"Fusion centers" and other government "intelligence" agencies sent thugs in Minneapolis and later elsewhere warnings of violent protests, which were not based on facts, and may have encouraged the thugs to be violent.
*'Huge Win': Court Orders DeVos to Cancel Loans for Mass. Students Defrauded by Corinthian Colleges.*
I suppose the cheater will appeal this decision.
The House of Representatives passed a bill that would make Washington, DC, a state.
I think that residents of Washington, DC, should have representation in Congress. There are various ways to give them that. Making Washington, DC, a state would mean two more Democratic senators, probably progressive senators. That would be a change for the better, but it ensures that Republicans will block DC statehood.
Another way is to have Washington, DC, vote as part of Maryland. That is natural since it was originally carved out of Maryland to create the capital district. This would not change the balance in the Senate, but it would enable the residents of Washington to vote for Congress.
Animal rights activist Regan Russell was killed, in a protest, when truck carrying pigs hit her. The protest was against an ag-gag law criminalizing various kinds of protest and journalist activities.
I do not support the animal rights movement, but I support journalism and freedom to protest, and condemn ag-gag laws.
Brazilians are studying how to regrow forest where it has been cut down.
The Antelope Valley of California is a center of white supremacism, and the thugs there have a history of murdering blacks.
The Movement for Black Lives aims for more than getting thugs to stop killing blacks. It includes advancing equality along many fronts, described here.
I support all of them.
US citizens: call on Congress to keep up a high rate of coronavirus testing.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to promote safe storage of guns.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641
and 888-355-3588. If you call, please spread the word
These concerns are not mere speculation. The reason I do not have fiber internet is that I could not find a way to get that connected without connecting to a web site and running its nonfree software.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit face recognition.
Here is the message I sent.
If "law enforcement" agencies can use face recognition to track and find people, that creates opportunities for oppressive surveillance. We need to prohibit that &mdash but not only that. If other government agencies such as the NSA are allowed to do it, the FBI will get the data. If the UK is allowed to do it in the US, the UK will give the US that data. If businesses such as Clearview AI are allowed to systematically track Americans, that data will be so widely available that police departments will surely get it. (Police departments are not known for obeying laws.) But even if only businesses use the data collected by Clearview AI, that can still amount to oppressive surveillance. I therefore urge you to prohibit the installation of systems that systematically collect Americans' images, or any biometrics that enable recognition of individuals in general as they move around the US. The same should apply to vehicles — for instance, systematic recognition of car license plates, or other tracking of cars, should be legally limited to when the system sees an offense, or when there is a warrant to track a particular car. Digital toll payment should be done by anonymous payment systems so that they do not create a database of people's movements. I can tell you about these systems.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you contact them, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to choose a progressive new leader for the Foreign Affairs Committee — replacing Eliot Engel.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on advertisers to stop advertising in Facebook, as pressure for it to remove hatred.
The principal terrorist threat in the US today is from right-wing extremists.
The study does not count terrorism by the president, such as sabotaging the response to Covid-19, but that dwarfs casualties of the September 2001 terrorist attacks and I think it should be counted as a terrorist attack.
I agree that we should not further attack human rights in the name of "anti-terrorism". The PAT RIOT act authorizes too much surveillance and it needs to be weakened. Most of the right-wing terrorism is not susceptible to being prevented. But we could cut back on the spread of right-wing extremist recruiting with suitable changes in Facebook's algorithms for what postings to propagate.
Thug departments are fond of harping on minor wrongdoing, claiming that this will discourage all crime. (There is no evidence it works.) But when they commit nonfatal wrongdoing, such as minor false accusations, they want us to disregard them.
I think that cops, because of their special powers and privileges, should be held to an especially strict standard.
Countries where the US is perpetuating an endless civil war now face war together with Covid-19.
Reportedly, many Hong Kong protesters are giving up in despair on seeing the arbitrary power that China is imposing on Hong Kong.
China can accused anyone of a "national security crime", which means anything China wants it to mean, and the trial will be conducted by puppet judges chosen by China.
Hong Kongers struggled so valiantly, hoping that China would be dissuaded from blatantly crushing Hong Kong's autonomy, or else that China would pay a price for doing so. They did not attain the first. Let's help them attain the second.
It looks like Biden is planning to escalate the US economic warfare with Venezuela.
Replacing Maduro's dictatorship with the crushing international plutocratic empire (which will get worse with time) is not a solution to Venezuela's problem.
US economic sanctions on Venezuela are killing people just as sanctions on Iraq did.
They are deadly in Yemen, too.
Congress should investigate the Drug Enforcement Agency, then eliminate it.
Let's decriminalize possession and use of any and all drugs. Clinics should distribute dangerous, addictive drugs to registered addicts, to kill off most of the black market. This works in other countries.
*Judge orders US to free migrant children from [immigration prison], citing virus spread.*
I suspect the article uses the term "children" to mean "children and teenagers."
Plutocratist politics in the US is making household water more expensive. Many Americans can't afford their water bills. By 2030, with current trends, that will happen to a considerable fraction of the population.
*The FBI has a history of targeting black activists. That's still true today.*
*The bill HR4 would put the teeth back into the Voting Rights Act. For the sake of racial progress, the Senate must pass it.*
If sick leave pay is much less than normal pay, workers are compelled to go to work when when sick. They can die from that.
Those that do decide to stay home may face pressure to work even while sick.
The UK's CO2 emissions went down because of lockdown, but they will go back up if it doesn't adopt more green policies.
An anonymous gay man, after a man tried to push sex on him and eventually relented, looks for another choice besides prosecute, denounce, and do nothing. One that would not "preclude the possibility of rehabilitation and restorative justice."
*California governor grants clemency to 21 prisoners as thousands infected with Covid-19.*
*Controversial Data-Mining Firm Palantir Vanishes From Biden Adviser's Biography After She Joins Campaign.*
*Now Is Still a Good Time to Raise the Minimum Wage.*
Boston has ordered city officials not to ask for face recognition data from any source. However, you can't expect thugs to honestly obey the rules.
What if the data is given to officials without their asking? What if it is not explicitly identified as based on face recognition?
Companies such as Clearview AI can oppress people even if they give their data only to businesses. We need to prohibit systematic tracking of people by any means whatsoever. Only a government agency with a specific warrant should be allowed to do that.
Egypt made Alaa Abdel Fattah a political prisoner last year. Now they have jailed his sister, Sanaa Seif.
(satire) *… law enforcement officials warned Wednesday that defunding the police could lead to a spike in crime from ex-officers with no outlet for their violence.*
*Leadership That Neglects Science Led to Worst COVID Crises in US and Brazil.*
Environmental activists delivered a box of toxic plastic pellets, fished out of the Gulf of Mexico, to a lobbyist for a company that wants to build a new factory to make more such pellets. For this symbolic act, they are being prosecuted for an imaginary felony.
In a victory against euphemism, a New Zealand supermarket company has decided to remove a level of euphemism from descriptions of its products for menstruation.
Bunnie Huang reports on the stand-alone contact tracing device, the TraceTogether Token, in a pre-release version.
I respect Bunnie highly; if he says something respects privacy, I suppose it does.
One issue the report does not discuss: the device is meant to be used for months — does it delete information about past contacts after a few weeks pass? Older contacts should not be relevant to Covid-19, so there is no justification for reporting them.
Bunnie explains why using mobile phones for contact tracing gratuitously puts privacy in danger. In brief, it's because carrying a mobile phone gratuitously puts privacy in danger, and running an app gratuitously puts privacy in additional danger.
An AI system claims to predict who will be a criminal based on people's photos. Actually it predicts who will be accused of crimes, using a simple heuristic: black skin => more likely to be accused.
The heuristic gives valid results because of the racism in society's systems.
Yahoo did not pay its taxes, and the IRS is suing, but has given up on billions of what was owed.
*For the Rich to Keep Getting Richer, We Have to Sacrifice Everything Else.* Excuses that the rich give for dooH niboR.
The main source of disinformation attacks against the US is the bullshitter and his army of eager liars, though various other countries do it too. This article surveys their methods and targets and explains typical signs to recognize disinformation by.
Thugs confiscate bicycle repair tools from protesters, then make announcement that these tools were "the tools of criminals".
I suppose some criminals ride bikes, and would carry the same repair tools that other bike riders carry. People who recognize the tools will laugh at those idiotic thugs. But people like me, who don't ride bikes, might believe the thugs because we don't know any better.
(satire) *Heaven Flush With Cash After Trump Administration Sends $1.4 Billion In Stimulus To Dead Americans.*
*Movement to Remove Police From Schools Gains Momentum as Seattle and Oakland [school] Boards Sever Ties With [thug] Departments.*
However, Chicago and Los Angeles rejected the proposals to do that.
Boston's thug department commissioner had a meeting with Barr, and pleads incredible naive excuses to deny it had the effect of political support.
The fact that the commissioner is black is not actually relevant. The moral imperatives of the situation would be the same for anyone in it.
The murderer of Americans just told medical insurance companies they are not required to pay for Covid-19 tests for people that work in nursing homes.
The result will be that workers (not very well paid) skip testing, and thus risk infecting inmates. Some nursing homes will have outbreaks and many of their inmates will die.
Various right-wing extremist rulers of various countries are taking absurd approaches to Covid-19, and there is no obvious explanation.
Could it be that they want many deaths as an exciting background for their lives?
Chomsky: *The pandemic is serious enough that we will emerge from it at terrible cost. The cost is greatly amplified by the gangster in the White House, who has killed tens of thousands of Americans, making this the worst place in the world [for the coronavirus]. We will emerge [from the pandemic, but] we’re not going to emerge from another crime that Trump has committed, the heating of the globe. The worst of it is coming — we’re not going to emerge from that.*
Bayer-Monsanto will pay ten billion dollars to 100,000 people who sued, claiming that Roundup gave them cancer.
It is too bad that a court eliminated California's requirement to warn other people so that they can avoid Roundup and not get cancer.
Australia is considering building up medical manufacturing capacity so that it won't face a shortage in the future.
Every country should do this! Surplus capacity, distributed around the world, may seem like a waste, but in an emergency it is crucial.
Now that the saboteur in chief has made Covid-19 spread rapidly in the US as never before, his next step is to cut back on testing.
Perhaps he is trying to infect a lot of people and make voters scared to vote.
The cooling system in a meat factory seem to have spread Covid-19 among the workers.
Three North Carolina thugs have been fired for expressing bigotry.
Ordinary citizens have the right to express those views. We must defend the right to state views we find disgusting, lest powerful people who feel disgust for our views censor us.
However, cops (whether they are thugs or police officers) are given special powers over the public. With special power goes special responsibility, including the responsibility not to give in to bigotry even when under pressure. If some thugs blame the stress of the job for their expression of bigotry, in effect they are saying they are not up to the requirements of the job.
I think it is important to make a distinction between the one who advocated a civil war to massacre blacks, and the two who did not (especially the one who opposed the idea). Those two should get a second chance to show they can do their job.
What are the consequences of the heat wave in the Arctic?
*New York police officer faces charges over apparent chokehold.*
Finally the impunity ends.
*Atheists and humanists facing discrimination across the world, report finds.*
This prejudice is found in the US as well. A substantial fraction of Americans believe that Atheists are bad people. Some states nominally do not allow nonreligious people to run for office, and an avowed Atheist would be unlikely to win.
WWF says that the Australian government is not bothering to enforce laws to protect wildlife habitat.
The UK government's Committee on Climate Change recommends a list of policies.
*Honduran Family Sues US Govt for Separation Lawyers Say Was Deliberately Meant to 'Torment and Traumatize'.*
*Rise of Iran hardliners threatens nuclear diplomacy, Europe warned.* The leader of parliament says that negotiation with the US is "harmful and forbidden."
What a shame if the US becomes willing to resume the non-nuclear deal and Iran's right-wing rulers would rather keep the sanctions up.
Militarist Democrat Eliot Engel has been defeated by a progressive challenger.
Being against the conman is too low a standard to judge candidates by.
*Zara and Primark factory workers say they were fired after forming union.*
Their factory is in Burma. Overseas production sure works wonders for evading workers' rights.
Students call on universities to defund their cops.
Robert Julian-Borchak Williams was arrested and accused of theft specifically because a computer matched a photo of the thief to his face. It was mistaken.
Once the thugs got the computer's answer they believed it with total faith, That often happens with prestigious technical systems.
To be falsely accused is annoying, occasionally disastrous, but it is not a new danger. It happens plenty often without a computer. That is why I believe the main danger of computerized identification of people is not that it may make mistakes, but rather that it may function correctly. Suppose the system correctly recognizes you as a protester, or as a journalist. Suppose the system recognizes you repeatedly as you walk along the street.
Suppose businesses set up millions of cameras and recognize everyone.
We must ban face recognition, and systematic tracking of people, not only by the state but by any entity whatsoever.
Under the influence of Covid-19, 1/3 of US women want fewer children and/or later.
A smaller human population will make dealing with environmental problems easier, and that includes global heating.
Rich countries donate vaccines to poor countries, through a system designed to preserve the exploitative monopolies. It has the effect of preventing the systemic changes we really need, and it keeps the production down so that we're helpless against a pandemic.
Google says it will delete old search records after 18 months. I am not impressed. That is plenty of time for the NSA to look at them.
*Global Health Experts Alarmed at Signs US Has “Given Up” Fight Against COVID-19.*
Massachusetts has not given up — the R value is less than 1 — but many state governors, as well as the conman, seem to have opened the gates and welcomed the enemy in.
Due to the conman's sabotage (beyond mere incompetence), the Americans will probably be barred from going to Europe for a long time.
The New York City thug department focuses heavily on minor offenses, and this is useful chiefly as an opportunity for repression.
*America Is Exceptional in All the Wrong Ways.*
Israeli, particularly the "settlers" continue various forms of violent harassment and destruction against Palestinians.
Israel continues seizing Palestinians' land and building more colonies on it. Colonies cut Bethlehem off from the rest of Palestine.
In Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, an Israeli argues that both the Jews and the Palestinians are peoples indigenous to Palestine.
Nearly all Americans want to prosecute thugs for unjustified violence, but but only 1/3 support transferring funds from thug departments to other ways of dealing with emergency calls.
Reportedly the bullshitter wants to blame the CDC for his bad decisions about Covid-19.
The Earth's worst mass extinction was caused by global heating, which resulted when giant volcanic eruptions burned large amounts of coal.
It is clear that Attorney General Barr is morally unfit for his office. Should the House vote to impeach him? Rep. Nadler says it would be ineffective and useless. His primary opponent disagrees.
We ought to remove Barr from office, but since impeachment can't do that, is it worth the effort? I don't think it would influence the outcome of the election very much, given that impeaching the conman failed to do so. On this question, I agree with Nadler.
I've read that Nadler is more plutocratist than progressive, on policies. If so, replacing him in the primary might be a good thing to do.
A US appeals court ruled that California can't require glyphosate to carry a cancer warning, because the evidence for that isn't completely conclusive proof.
There is lots of evidence that Roundup causes various kinds of harm. Something needs to be done to discourage its use.
As China prosecutes Canadians as hostages, what should Canada do?
Canada cannot rescue those two hostages, nor stop China from taking more hostages. So Canada should warn Canadians against going to China.
It can also invite Hong Kongers to move to Canada.
Above all, Canada should cancel with immediate effect the business-supremacy treaty that would require Canada to pay billions in "compensation" to some Chinese company if it doesn't build one of the tar sands pipelines.
It was over 100F in the Arctic.
*"Six Months To Avert Climate Crisis": Climate Breakdown And The Corporate Media.*
If we did climate disaster protests the way we now do thug violence protests, maybe we could limit the disaster so that civilization survives.
*Improve water supply in poorer nations to cut plastic use, say experts.*
There should be a substantial tax on small water bottles, of the size that are normally not reused with another batch of water.
According to a defector, the egg on the GRU's face after exposure of its botched attack on the Skripals reflects the essential incompetence of that organization today — and its inability to cope with the modern world of big data.
In rural Afghanistan, the wives of opium addicts have to earn money for their children and their addict husbands who won't let them leave the house.
* On Public Service Day, don’t just thank all the workers combating Covid-19. Help them fend off punitive budget cuts.*
*US nurses at for-profit hospital chain to strike over cuts and PPE shortages.*
*Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, nearly 14m US households were unable to afford their water bills.* Soon it will be far more.
Mexico is cutting funds for protecting ancient sites from looting.
Such damage is impossible to repair. Artefacts stolen before being scientifically examines lose their context, so that even if scientists have a chance to look at them later, what they can learn is much less.
*'We can stop the cycle': crime survivors work toward prevention, not policing.*
Thug unions in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles spend million of dollars a year on lobbying. Much of that lobbying is so that thugs can get away with the occasional murder, lots of lesser crimes, and frequent lies.
Parisian thugs put a delivery driver in a choke hold, which mortally injured him. Then they lied about what they did.
They offer the excuse that the victim called them "fools". "Disrespectful", they called it. That is no excuse for violence.
The great oppressors of history had as their base a society in which people generally supported the oppression they did, got a share of hate profits, and chose not to question. Germany, in the 1960s, chose to try to root this out.
Extra, extra! The bullshitter told the truth! It was just where we wished he had been lying — saying he had cut back on coronavirus testing so as to cover up how much it had spread.
The Department of Harm and Human Suffering received 14 billion dollars for expanded coronavirus testing, and did not spend it.
Facebook's management knew in 2018 that it profited by stirring up division between users, and decided to continue.
When your furniture doesn't move smoothly.
Thugs in Columbus, Ohio, hit a protester then sprayed him with mace. Since his legs were prosthetics, he was unable to remain standing and fell on the ground. Then they tried to steal his prosthetic legs.
*New Research Suggests Racial Justice Protests Have Not Led to Covid-19 Transmission Spike.*
Uniformed thugs often do not wear masks at protests, and that threatens to make the public sick — literally, this time. City governments should impose a strict requirement for thugs to wear masks, with specified punishment for every thug found near the public without a mask.
*House Dems Introduce Bill to Prevent Big Pharma Price-Gouging During Covid-19 Pandemic.*
(satire) *White House Announces Entire U.S. Populace Of 6,200 Attended [the bullshitter]’s Tulsa Rally.*
(satire) *Facebook Announces Plan To Break Up U.S. Government Before It Becomes Too Powerful.*
One irony is that pervasive decentralization was designed into the US constitution, and still exists.
Another irony is that another function of the state is to be powerful enough to defeat threats to subjugate people — but it is too much under the control of those threats.
*115+ Groups Urge Biden (and Trump) to Support 'Fair and Just Foreign Policy Regarding Israel and Palestinian Rights'.*
*William Barr Has Turned the Justice Department Into a Law Firm With One Client: [the conman].*
Covid-19 is spreading twice as fast in Texas as one month ago.
California has had a jump in new Covid-19 cases because of people who refuse to wear masks.
Some advertisers are boycotting Facebook demanding that it block "hate speech".
That they have influence, and people do not, strikes me as a problem.
*The Trump administration’s engagement in misinformation makes it harder for other nations to counter disinformation campaigns waged by China.*
Give his kowtowing to Xi, why would he mind that?
The Tories' "universal credit" system which combines various welfare payments was ruled illegal by a court, for arbitrary rules that screw poor people.
In the New York Thug Department, a chokehold no longer needs to kill someone to provoke punishment for the thug who did it.
This is important progress, because this can start teaching lots of thugs not to use chokeholds.
In the 1920s, a plutocrat used his political influence to get the US estate tax reduced. As a result, his heir has a giant fortune and used it to get the conman elected.
Birthday parties made a new Covid-19 hotspot in Melbourne, Australia. In response, lockdown has been reimposed.
People in the houses next to mine seem to have family parties every weekend. I am sure they will get sick one of these days.
*Report finds not one police department in the 20 largest American cities are compliant with international rights laws.*
These failings relate directly to the killings that Americans are protesting now.
*Fear mounts bullshitter may pressure FDA to rush Covid-19 vaccine by election.* In other words, approve it without proper testing.
You can see how powerful the anti-vax conspiracy theory is even with no factual basis. Imagine would would happen if the saboteur in chief contrives to give it a factual basis.
Since the Tories took power in 2010, they have cut local government funds especially in the poorer areas, which (perhaps not coincidentally) had elected local officials from the Labour party.
The Tories did this by making numerous changes in the formulas, and most of the changes tended to privilege wealthier areas. So they could punish Labour — or was it, punish the poor? — in a disguised way.
The UK recognized after 5 years that Anthony Williams was a British citizen all along. But it has delayed two years in paying him any compensation.
Racism may well contribute to this mistreatment, but it's also part of the general right-wing and contempt stinginess towards the poor. Whenever there is uncertainty, they prefer to err in the direction of shafting people.
Federal Attorney Berman resigned in favor of another tough prosecutor, so that the conman gets no benefit.
The numskull and Republicans have surrendered the US to coronavirus. We may have to suffer its effects forever. The rest of the world is shocked.
Modeling predicts another 85,000 Covid-19 deaths in the US by October 1.
At this rate, it will take us till October 2021 to reach herd immunity, and then the disease might mostly disappear.
UK thugs show a pattern of mauling blacks before searching them, which they don't do to whites. A witness made a video of one example, and the department at least says it is investigating the way the thugs acted.
To get a US thug department to go that far would require a week of protests.
The author of The Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key, was an ardent champion of slavery. What does that imply about his lyrics?
In my opinion, nothing at all. When one person does something good and something else bad, which ironically conflict, let's reproach the bad and respect the good. Let's reproach Key for his support for slavery, while admiring what his lyrics say.
Deepfake videos are starting to provide an extended opportunity for fake news.
David Brin predicted in 1998 that this would happen soon. Now, 22 years later, it has happened, and I wonder whether it will make a big difference, as was expected. Fake news is already widespread, and it does not need to be indistinguishable from truth because so many people are eager to believe it. The long-predicted new method of falsification may turn out to add little to the initially-surprising old method.
Opposition to face recognition has recognized that its racial problems go beyond being less accurate for blacks. Perfectly accurate face recognition makes it easy to implement policies of bigotry.
The extreme example is bigotry against Uygurs, in China.
The UK's plutocratist government will use the heavy spending on relief measures as an excuse to sell public assets to businesses very cheap.
The US is short-circuiting that process by giving away trillions to big businesses.
Automation in work is aimed at atomizing work, making workers fungible, and running them to exhaustion.
I think these practices ought to be prohibited, even if it requires imposing stiff, harsh penalties on employment systems. It is wrong to apply such laws to people, but an employment system is not a person, even if it is part of a business that belongs to a person.
Voting machines made by ES&S conceal data against independent audits, so it is hard to investigate why some ethnic groups' votes sometimes mysteriously get dropped.
By 2050 the Winter Olympics may not be feasible, as temperatures may not be suitable. The article predicts other obstacles too, such as flooding.
By 2070, I predict, the idea of organizing a global activity involving travel will be laughable. Local leagues will divide players into diet categories based on how much food each player has access to.
France's constitutional court overturned a law that required platforms to delete "offensive" postings so quickly that no appeal or thought would be possible.
This was the law under which France ordered the Internet Archive to delete thousands of works.
Women who are denied abortions often fall into poverty, and 6 years later they are still in poverty.
The Chinese companies that have implemented the total brainwashing life for Muslims in Xinjiang are closely connected with American businesses, and got some of their ideas and technicals from the (itself evil) US reaction to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Even some school district thug departments have received armored vehicles and heavy weapons.
Apparently US right-wingers see students as possible rebels.
The Boston City Council is considering having some other agency handle a large fraction of 9-1-1 calls, to avoid the danger of involving thugs.
The bullshitter's big Tulsa rally failed to fill the stadium.
Either many of his supporters have changed their minds, or they are disregarding his advice by protecting themselves from coronavirus.
*The Room Where It Happened review: John Bolton fires broadside that could sink Trump.*
*… it will be [the conman], not Biden, who will be catching grief for being the Middle Kingdom’s poodle.*
*What Defund the Police really means: replacing social control with investment.*
This would reverse a decades-long harmful trend of replacing aid with repression. That goes with Reagan's ideology that the government can't help the public. To ack up that claim, he started undermining and then eliminating the government activities that did help people.
The existence of a permanent police department is a fairly new thing in Europe and the Americas, and in many places they have been thugs all along.
A UK court ruled it was illegal to support Salafi Arabia's fighter planes since they were used in fighting in Yemen. The government disregarded the ruling.
*Saudi dissident warned by Canadian police he is a target.* Target of Crown Prince Bone Saw, that is.
There is a racial disparity in the UK's jailing of unauthorized immigrants.
The bullshitter wants his supporters to admire him for (according to him) covering up the spread of Covid-19 in the US.
Whether he actually did that, I don't know. He said he did, but that means nothing. Then his staff said that statement was a joke, but that means nothing. What we can be certain of is that he would not scruple to do that — and that's all we really need to know about him.
Over a million children in Britain are expected to go hungry in the next few months. Over two million are being abused at home.
The article proposes how the UK could help children and young people recover from the harm done by lockdown. It does not mention, though, the need to stop global heating, lest its effects kill most of them before they get old.
*Culture wars risk blinding us to just how liberal we've become in the past decades (in the UK).*
Now if only people didn't get so distracted by identity politics.
China seems to have engineered a bizarre gunless border skirmish with India. Medieval weapons that were deadly hundreds of years ago can still be deadly today.
My theory is that Xi figures that the world is already disgusted with China, and can't get much more disgusted, so why not do every disgusting thing he would like to do, right now?
*Last chance for the Persian leopard: the fight to save Iraqi Kurdistan’s forests. Minefields left over from the Iran-Iraq war are one of the last bastions against illegal logging and poaching.*
*Florida’s Covid-19 surge shows the state's reopening plan is not working.*
*San Francisco protesters topple statues of Ulysses Grant and other slave owners.*
In regard to President Grant, I think they have rejected the idea of weighing the bad someone did against the good.
The Conman claims to have fired the US attorney for Southern New York, but he may not be able to actually do it.
I think this is another step in the conman's plan to intimidate and corrupt every part of the US government.
At last, a privacy bill that starts to take the right approach: limiting the collection and acquisition of data, not merely "protecting" it.
*Those Who Exercise Free Speech Should Also Defend It — Even WhenIt's Offensive.*
This is why I generally do not suport campaigns to shut down some sort of expression; only a special aspect of the situation that would make that legitimate. For instance, I do support campaigns calling on companies not to advertise in a right-wing show, or people to boycott it.
If it were forbidden to say things you or I find disgusting, saying things that the bully finds disgusting will be even more forbidden.
Some of the refugees that arrive in Greece from Turkey find that Greece denies that they ever arrived. What really happens to them is not known.
Bolton's book describes the conmen as betraying the US, now to Russia, now to China. There is almost nthing to prevent a president from doing this except if per party will desert per for it.
*Coronavirus has widened America's vast racial wealth gap, study finds.*
US citizens: email or phone your congresscritter saying to preserve the Open Technology Fund, which develops free/libre programs to protect freedom from the repression of many governments.
It can't hurt to contact your senators as well.
There is an organized campaign to preserve the Open Technology Fund. Although I was put off by its use of the term "open source", which is a philosophically weak substitute for "free software", its arguments for the OTF are valid and look effective. So I decided to sign it.
Alas, to sign one has to run nonfree Javascript software, which I refuse to do. Likewise I am morally bound not to encourage you to sign it, which is why I do not post a reference to it here.
You can probably have as much influence with your own direct emails as you would by signing a petition, and with phone calls even more influence. Please show your support.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
UK citizens: phone or write your MP to insist that any register of who has visited a pub or restaurant be stored offline, in that place, to prevent the state from using it for other than the ostensible purpose. Each day's records should be sent separately when needed; if contact tracers inquire about June 5, they should not receive data about June 4 or June 6.
You may wish to add that you do not trust Boris and Dominic to follow any rules they may make about use of the data.
Please spread the word!
*Croatian police officers arrested over beating of Afghan asylum seeker.*
One of them is charged with the beating, and the other with covering it up. To charge thugs for covering up the crimes of other thugs a direct challenge to the conspiracy of silence.
England is in the process of getting rid of the practice of "restraining" children in ways that cause them great pain or danger of injury.
Corporations fund thug departments' military weapons indirectly by donating to "police foundations" that in turn donate to the thug departments.
This is another reason why we need to regulate whether thug departments can have or use military weapons — not merely the funds they use to get those weapons.
If you get a phone call asking you to donate to the local "police foundation", it could be your opportunity to add to the funds for those weapons. Please don't give!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the CORE Act, which would strengthen accountability for the executive branch (in particular, for the corrupter).
A trumpet was appointed to run of the US Agency for Global Media, and fired the heads of Middle East Broadcasting, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Open Technology Fund.
US hospitals with lots of black or Hispanic patients tend to be badly funded.
Robert Fuller, a black man, was found hanged in a park. The thugs quickly called it suicide. That could be true, but people are skeptical.
Now his half-brother, Terron Boone, was shot dead by thugs. The thugs said he fired at them first, making this "suicide by cop". That could be true, but people are skeptical about this too.
*This is what defunding the police is all about: defunding a system that sees social order as obedience to armed authority; that is growing increasingly militarized; that has no complex understanding of human behavior; and that has deep roots in white racism, which not only goes back centuries but is alive and well in the present moment, in the form of poverty, voter suppression and endless forms of discrimination.*
*We Need Solidarity, Not White Guilt, to Fight Racism.*
In 1946 a group of British Jews, many of them veterans who had just helped defeat the Nazi regime, encountered violent right-wing British extremists and organized to fight back.
PISSI once again has the strength to attack in Syria and Iraq.
As is usual with underground rebel groups, killing its leader did not incapacitate it for long.
When PISSI was thoroughly defeated but not entirely crushed, the Kurds could have wiped it out, but the numskull instead decided not to turn against them. This result is no surprise.
Viktor Frankl's lessons from Auschwitz, related to today.
* International Energy Agency chief warns of need to prevent post-lockdown surge in emissions.*
*"Women are not paid less because they are less educated, less motivated, less ambitious, less willing to ask for more money, weaker, more cowardly, lazier, meant to be stay-at-home mothers, or any of the hundreds of 'blame the women' excuses that popular culture spits out," runs one blistering passage. :They are paid less because hostile men, and the institutions they create, keep finding ways to frustrate gender inequality."
*[The conman's] rally in Tulsa spurs renewed call for 1921 racial massacre reparations.*
I've advocated reparations for the victims of slavery and their descendants, and for the targets of Jim Crow laws, and their descendants.
If we make Juneteenth a national holiday, it would give us a commemoration of the victory over slavery and the Confederacy.
* The coronavirus crisis is making organization efforts difficult for unions and bosses seem keen to take advantage.*
Human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for defending human rights in accord with China's constitution.
The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the DACA program which permits many immigrants who were brought to the US as children and grew up in the US to remain here.
The DACA program is the right thing to do. It is cruel and unjust to deport someone to a country which perse never knew except as a child.
Now if only people would stop using the hokey, oversentimental term "dreamers" to refer to refer to them.
The Biden-Sanders climate policy council published a recommendation which would make some real progress. Democratic Party leaders (plutocratists) don't like that.
Cubans voted to approve a new constitution, about 84% in favor. Some volunteer poll watchers reported seeing that local totals were in line with that figure, suggesting the election was honest.
The new constitution takes a step towards more support for democracy and human rights. How big a step, I don't know.
A US soldier associated with right-wing extremists has been charged with two murders: one of a sheriff's deputy and one of a federal court guard.
Reagan was wrong: The nine most terrifying words, for the wise, are: "Conservatives rule now. We won't let government help people."
Maybe Americans will understand that now.
Groups call on Congress to reduce thugs' surveillance of protesters.
As usual in the field of surveillance, this does not go far enough. But it is heartening to see that it is now on the political map.
I've warned that if the UK leaves the EU under Tory rule it will sign business-supremacy treaties that put Britons under the power of foreign companies and negate their democracy. Now it is not a mere prediction. The Tories want to join the Treacherous Plutocratic Poison.
(satire) *… heavily armed fans reportedly guarded a statue of Yogi Bear Wednesday on the off chance that he turned out to have supported the confederacy.*
In response to public pressure, the thug that shot and killed Rayshard Brooks has been charged with murder and other crimes, including attacking him rather than getting him medical attention when he was lying on the ground dying.
The other thug was given lesser charges. If he does turn state's evidence, it would be a tremendous breakthrough against thugs' >mafia-like bonds to each other.
US meat factories falsely claimed there was a shortage of meat, in May, when in fact they exported a record amount of pork to China.
I don't see anything wrong about selling meat to China, as such. But it is hardly so essential that it justifies operating while workers are transmitting viruses to each other.
More extensive details of a few of the conman's scandals as described in Bolton's book.
Protester Martin Gugino suffered a grave brain injury when a thug knocked him down.
It will take him a long time to regain the capability to walk up to a thug. Maybe he never will. At least his capacity to think is unimpaired.
Now I will follow his advice and focus on issues, not him.
As part of the "War on Terror", US thugs (and CIA torturers) started modeling themselves after the way Israeli thugs and soldiers treat Palestinians.
Bolton's reports of the conman-bully's crimes are very useful, but don't admire Bolton too much. He helped conceal those crimes, including during the impeachment.
A German MEP tried to film Belgian thugs harassing some blacks. The MEP was also black, so the thugs attacked her and took her phone.
They refused to believe the documents that said she was an MEP, but that's a side issue. You shouldn't have to be an elected official to have the right to film the thugs.
Georgia claims to have arrested an assassin sent to kill a TV host who presented condemnation of Putin.
*Officer who killed Rayshard Brooks accused of covering up 2015 shooting.* He and other thugs shot a black man who allegedly was driving a stolen truck, then they concealed the fact that they had shot him.
South Africa has arrested the executives of a bank accused of corruption, together with politicians.
Mowing a lawn just once a month allows many small wildflowers to grow and feed bees.
US citizens: call on Congress to adopt Medicare for All.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: take these simple steps to block common methods by which your vote could be stolen.
When Tacoma thugs killed Manuel Ellis in March, they used a chokehold and put a knee on his neck or back.
Barr's department claims that Bolton's upcoming book contains government secrets and has sued to block publication. However, the conman claims, falsely, that everything he says is a "government secret", so he's probably making it all up.
Bolton claims to have thoroughly checked what government secrecy laws require, and I am sure that he did — it would have been foolish not to. Therefore, I suppose the conman is making a bogus claim hoping to delay the book till after the election.
Some scandalous nuggets from the book.
The conman wasn't entirely wrong in thinking that Finland was part of Russia. That was true until around 100 years ago. Perhaps he has not caught up to modern times.
At an Oñate statue protest in Albuquerque, a right-wing extremists started shooting and wounded a protester. Cops then arrested some of them, suppressing their thuggish nature because the shooters were white.
Organized violent right-wing militias in New Mexico work in cahoots with various groups of official thugs. They refer to each other as allies and protect each other.
One such gang protected the man who shot a protester. A prosecutor seems to have tried also to protect him. Now the forces of law and order face the challenge of defeating those militias, as well as the thugs and officials that protect them.
The rate of Covid-19 infections in US prisons is increasing rapidly.
These outbreaks tend to include prison thugs, who bring the disease home to their families. That turns the local area into a hotspot.
The conman is telling his followers to get ready to fight "Antifa". When they do this, naturally there is no sign of "Antifa", and they say "It worked."
*Trump Willing to Kill Hundreds of Thousands of Americans in Effort to Win Election.*
20,000 Americans are dying each month from Covid-19 because of the government's totally wrong-headed response. But it could easily go back up to 30,000 a month, as Republicans "reopen the economy" without having prepared to make that safe to do. Meanwhile, the mad killer encourages Americans to stop wearing masks and spread the disease more.
This could add up to more than 200,000 before inauguration day, at which point (assuming the election wasn't rigged and doesn't get overturned) the new president can start adopting the policies known to stamp out Covid-19.
Until that gets done, we are in the position of competing with everyone else to be among the last ones that remain uninfected until herd immunity protects us, perhaps 18 months and 600,000 deaths further along. (Assuming we have around 10% exposure and need 70% for herd immunity.)
US sanctions are sabotaging medical care in Cuba, even as Cuba sends doctors to help other countries that are hard hit by Covid-19.
*With no plans to raise clean energy investment, demand [for oil] will soon reach pre-crisis level.*
Rep. Barbara Lee has proposed 350 billion dollars in cuts for the US military budget.
That is almost half the total — but since the US spends more than 7 (or is it 10 now) largest other militaries, it would still have the advantage over any of them.
The saboteurs are working to neutralize enforcement of laws on coal mines in the US, to make sure they can continue polluting land and water unhindered by those laws.
A phony "consumer group" has asked the Federal Electricity Regulatory Commission to stop states from managing programs to promote home solar energy installations.
If the FERC manages them instead, it will easily be able to mismanage them to prevent new solar energy installations — and the saboteur in chief will make sure that gets done.
9 independent fishery observers have died inexplicably on ships since 2015. Very likely they were murdered by the crew.
With so many native species now close to extinction after the giant fires burned much of their habitat, the Australian government sees a great new opportunity to wipe them out once and for all, by eliminating environmental review of large activities that can take additional steps towards extinction.
*Iran bans vasectomies and contraceptives to improve birth rate.*
Competing for bigger population means competing for a bigger disaster. See the four factors of the apocalypse.
(satire) *[Dallas] Mayor Eric Johnson told Dallas residents Friday that they would soon officially be entering Phase 4 of pretending the coronavirus was over.*
A discussion over renaming US Army bases named after confederate officers includes an illuminating disagreement between a whites vs whites perspective and a freedom vs slavery perspective.
Two black men died in California in what looked like suicides, but there are reasons to suspect white supremacists murdered them.
Republican donors are supporting plutocratist Democrat Eliot Engel against a progressive primary challenge.
New Mexicans are removing statues of Juan de Oñate, a Spanish colonial leader of Biblical cruelty.
Oñate killed around 1000 people of Acoma after a dispute, then amputated a foot from many of the captured survivors.
*'It's not about bad apples': how US police reforms have failed to stop brutality and violence.*
Policies prove ineffective because thugs make excuses to disregard them. Body cameras prove ineffective because the system usually fails to punish thugs for the observed wrongs.
The New York Thug Department proposes to shuffle personnel and calls it a "seismic shift".
Advocates for the deaf want transparent masks to be available for their companions.
In the US, surviving Covid-19 could leave you with a million-dollar hospital bill.
It's not inconceivable that this would result in seizing your future wages, and perhaps therefore cause your death.
*Britain needs a truth and reconciliation commission, not another racism inquiry.*
Perhaps the US as well.
Bogus Johnson continues a long-standing British tradition of lying about its history, especially atrocities and injustices. He is hardly entitled to criticize anything like removal of statues in the name of honesty.
Proposing to rename the ten US Army bases named after officers of the Confederacy, after ten foreign that came to the US to fight as officers for the independence of the United States.
Here's another proposal with American soldiers of the past.
(satire) *ExxonMobil announced Friday that they had developed a simpler process of extracting oil that involved cutting the Earth in half.*
*Tulsa newspaper and top health official call on [the exploiter] to cancel rally.*
Italy decided to overlook Egypt's murder of Italian student Giulio Regeni and sell arms to Egypt's military rulers anyway.
Lukashenko, the dictator of Belarus, is facing aroused public opposition and arrested one opposition candidate already.
Protesters pulled down Jefferson Davis's statue in Richmond, Virginia, which was the capital of the Confederacy.
Good riddance — Davis did nothing to deserve admiration from people who are not right-wing extremists.
Philippine journalist Maria Ressa, editor of the dissenting web site Reppler, was sentenced to prison for an article published in 2012, under a law of criminal libel.
A law that makes libel a crime is always unjust; it is a fine tool for crushing dissent.
The TransMountain pipeline has had yet another oil spill. This has happened at least 80 times.
If that spill happened in your town, or its river, you'd call it large. Compared with the amount of oil the pipeline carries, it is tiny.
But the spills remind us that the oil which does not spill is likely to be burnt — and that endangers the whole world.
(satire) *Amazon Temporarily Halts Police Use Of Facial Recognition Software Until It Can Perfect ‘Other Faces You Might Be Interested In’ Feature.*
*Amazon had reportedly offered as a concession free same-day shipping on any evidence police forces might need to plant until the issue was resolved.*
Cambodian garment worker Soy Sros faces criminal charges for posting true information about her employer's illegal plans to dismiss workers.
The Australian government set up a system to demand that poor people "repay" supposedly erroneous "excess" welfare payments. The system imposed false charges on many poor people, and the ministers let it continue until a court made it stop. Now it looks like the court may require the government to pay interest as well as returning the false "excess".
Dunning poor people for money you said you were giving them is cruel, stingy and vile, even if you really had given it by mistake.
Will the ministers learn their lesson from this? There is nothing more stubborn than a right-winger demanding money from a pauper.
Camden, New Jersey, abolished its thug department seven years ago and replaced it with a new department that, from these reports, seems to train and employ police officers rather than thugs.
Some protesters in Atlanta brought water in case anyone started a fire.
That is a good humorous way to defuse tension.
Rebekah Jones, who was fired by Florida's Department of Health for honestly reporting statistics of Covid-19 in that state, has continued making honest reports so people can compare them with the state's official reports.
Her figures say that only one county in the state meets the criteria for reopening businesses. The reopening is premature and will spread Covid-19.
The thug that killed Rayshard Brooks knew that Brooks had a taser in his hand, and could not threaten his life with the taser.
If one can believe the thug, Brooks started fighting to grab the taser after he failed a sobriety test. I supposed Brooks feared arrest as a consequence, but why? The thug did not find him driving the car, only sitting in it, and that is not a crime.
Brooks' theft of a taser called for some action, but it did not have to be immediate. So did his being drunk and in possession of a car, since he could have started driving it and killed someone. But towing the car should have been sufficient to prevent that. If the key was still in the ignition, a faster and cheaper solution would have been to move the car to where it was not in anyone's way, then hold the key until Brooks came in, sober, to claim it.
The US indictment of Julian Assange accuses him of publishing many secret US materials, but strangely omits the best known example: the Collateral Murder video.
It appears the US would rather people forget about that one while the British government absurdly distorts its legal system to extradite Assange.
Sudan kicked out its dictator al-Bashir a year go, but the US continues to impose the sanctions that it placed to push al-Bashir out.
Faux News published edited and mislabeled photos to make Seattle's protests seem violent.
*Fear of coronavirus, not lockdown, is the biggest threat to the UK's economy.*
In other words, the Bogus Johnson screwed the pooch when he failed to aim aggressively to stamp out Covid-19.
Wild salmon in Canada's Pacific coast are mostly wiped out, and many species of animals and plants are suffering as result.
*Covid-19 pandemic is 'fire drill' for effects of climate crisis, says UN official.*
*US supreme court rules employers cannot discriminate against LGBTQ+ workers.*
I approve of the decision, but what is most reassuring is that this was not a partisan vote.
Americans are rapidly becoming aware of systemic racism and the systemic injustice of the thugs.
*Republicans are hypocrites. They happily 'de-funded' the police we actually need.*
Strictly speaking, those are not police. They enforce other laws, which regulate business activities that can put thousands or millions of people in danger.
A thug in Seattle maced a 7-year-old child who was at a protest with his father. Another protester posted a video of this. A week later, thugs sought him and arrested him on made-up grounds, apparently just for revenge.
*He now feels there is a target on his back, which has given him a very small taste of what black people deal with every day.*
Mere hundreds of right-wing racists held a protest in London, and went in heavily for attacking the thugs.
It is not a good thing for decisions (even decisions about which statues to pull down) to be made by contests physical force. That is not how to make valid decisions or wise decisions.
Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop.
The article explains how police academies teach cops to be thugs and says that there are no exceptions. He is in favor of "defund the police".
He uses the term "bastard" where I say "thug." I don't think it is right to insult people because their parents were not married to each other.
*The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn’t Work.*
So many problems on top of the injustice of nonfree software and snooping.
US plutocrats hope that we will get so preoccupied with racism and its symbols that we won't notice dooH niboR.
The new broader awareness of thugs' violence gives us an opportunity to make progress against the systems that perpetuate thugs' violence, and we should take advantage of it. But in order to make headway against the harms of racism in general, we must follow its connections to plutocracy.
Institutions of racial subjugation tend to change form when you think you've eliminated them.
*I Saw My Friends Beaten by [Chicago] Police. This Is What Happens When Cities Prioritize Property Over Black Lives.
I am not convinced that the reason the author gives is the main reason these thugs rioted.
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit funds for nuclear testing.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
Massachusetts citizens: call on state legislators to end racist policing.
Why did Martin Gugino walk towards the thugs that shoved him? His friend says, *What I think he was doing was trying to offer them something to read on his phone: about the law, about the right of people to assemble. Or asking why they were preventing people from exercising that right.*
In Albania, tearing down statues of the Communist regime made it harder to remember, and notice the aspects of injustice that persisted, or got worse.
Statues of the champions of injustice call attention to them and lionize them. Tearing down the statues ends the lionization but makes it easy to forget what they did. How can we end the lionization and encourage attention to political issues about them.
Would building prison cells around the statues be a useful approach for some of them? For many of them, there are grounds to sentence them to tens of thousands of years in prison, even in some cases millions of years. The prison cell could be permanent.
Another idea is to replace the statues with a holiday celebrating the end of the bad things they did — for instance, in the US, an annual holiday to celebrate the defeat of the Confederacy.
Disputes are developing over whether to remove statues of controversial people who are mainly known for doing something generally agreed to be good, but also professed bigotry — for instance, Baden-Powell who founded scouting, and Winston Churchill who, more than anyone else, defeated Hitler's empire.
I think Churchill's statues should remain. He was racist and a colonialist (almost everyone in the UK was that), he defended the power of the rich (most Britons disagreed, and voted in Labour before the end of the war), and his decisions caused a deadly famine in Bengal. Those are large wrongs. Yet he did an enormous good: Churchill, more than anyone else, defeated Hitler's empire. On the balance, I think he still deserves admiration, with attention also to his wrongs.
Canada experienced enslavement of Africans, and later treating them as second-class citizens. Meanwhile, its legal repression of indigenous people continued till just a few decades ago. Canadians are just starting to recognize that this has given Canada systemic racism fairly like that of the US.
The RCMP are also famous for violence against protesters.
Should we call for impeachment of Attorney General Barr?
I think the situation is similar to that of impeaching the bully a year ago. In justice, both should be removed from office. But that can't succeed. I said that it was a tactical question and I would leave it to the Democrats in Congress.
They impeached him, partly because many people demanded it. Republican senators responded with blatant contempt for justice. Did that do any good against him? I don't think so, but I am not confident I can judge. Does anyone know of objective arguments to judge by?
Something to show your state legislators: why voting over the internet cannot be trusted.
Online courses dishonest practices that a physical school would have trouble carrying out.
That school seems to be getting in trouble, as it ought to. But the article does not mention the injustice that most people won't recognize: making people run nonfree software and get ephemeral access to what they are supposed to learn from. I doubt any watchdogs are going to investigate that.
I hope you have the wisdom to reject opportunities to "learn" that way.
The US military has a strong tradition of refusing to obey orders that violate the constitution, going back to the founders of the country. If the conman ordered the military to intervene in politics, there is a good chance generals would refuse.
I interpret General Milley's apology for walking with the conman to his church steps photo op as a reminder that generals are very much aware of this aspect of their duty.
Americans adults of all ages have been having sex less in recent years. The data extended through 2018.
Some of the decrease may represent fewer people having reluctant sex. I'm glad for people who can avoid what they don't want to do. But I am sure that in most cases this represents rejection and loss, not an escape, one that has gone on so long that it turns the world gray.
The survey did not cover teenagers, but I expect this decrease extends to them too. The new wave of prudery is part of the cause, but the general infantilisation of teenagers (epitomized by calling them "children" even when they are 17 years old) may be a bigger part.
Society should lead teenagers how to please their lovers and themselves; how to do well in joyous sexual relationships. Leading people to be confused and left out is society's failure.
A new technique of planting forests with diverse trees enables them to grow faster.
Vultures are being wiped out in large parts of Africa, and that allows animal carcasses to rot slowly and spread germs.
*Amazon’s Facial Recognition "Moratorium" Is a Public Relations Stunt. Lawmakers Should Ban this Dangerous Surveillance Tech.*
I agree, but the phrase "using face recognition for surveillance" can be interpreted in various ways. Some interpretations would permit dangerous data collection by face recognition, because organizations will claim that what they do is not really surveillance.
Big Tech is starting to recognize that face recognition is too toxic to be involved with.
When even a commentator such as John Naughton, who doesn't like to be very far ahead of the opinion makers, can say this, that shows we are making progress in the fight to prohibit it.
Isn't it amazing that the US Army runs bases named after traitors?
It's not as if those traitors worked for Russia, China, or the Axis. It was even worse — they worked for slavery!
Atlanta thugs found Rayshard Brooks sleeping in the right front seat of a car, blocking a store' drive-through lane. This nuisance to the public called for some sort of action, but it should not have involved shooting him dead.
The idea of Defund the Police is to send helpful nonviolent teams rather than armed cops to situations like this. Imagine if he had been visited by a homeless aid team instead of armed thugs. They would have unblocked the lane by helping him rather than by trying to arrest him.
The Lancet explains why Medicare for All is essential for the US to stop Covid-19 and future pandemics too.
New observations about global heating and clouds shows that global heating will be much worse than predicted. The same amount of greenhouse gas will produce a larger amount of heating.
As a result, there is no chance of avoiding 2C of global heating, the level at which disaster will be widespread.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect workers' rights to publicly report unsafe working conditions.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to enact a new federal holiday on April 9th, to celebrate the defeat of the confederacy (and slavery).
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
OmniBallot, a system for voting over the internet, is insecure in all the usual ways such systems are. But it's even worse: it snoops on piles of the voter's personal information.
As big email companies take over email, they start blocking senders unaccountably.
Several months ago, yahoo.com started blocking my mail from gnu.org. As far as I could tell, they only fix was to inform those people (if I could reach them) that they should switch email providers.
The conman declared a national emergency because the International Criminal Court plans to investigate Americans for war crimes.
The ICC investigates people for war crimes when their own countries fail to do so. The real shame here is that the US has not done this, not under Dubya, not under Obama, and still not under the bully.
*Corporate Media Are Focusing on Race — and Dodging Class.*
Not just the corporate media. Just about every organization that posts about an injustice nowadays feels obligated to talk about how it hits blacks more often.
Suppose an injustice fell on people randomly in an unbiased way — would that make it less bad? If racism did not exist, and people of whatever race were equally likely to suffer hunger, homelessness, lack of medical care, and persecution, would that make those afflictions acceptable? I'd still campaign to end them.
The US Constitution presumes that the elected officials are honest people of good will, at many points in the electoral procedures. This gives a crook like the conman many points at which to try to discard an election in which he loses.
That is assuming he did not arrange to "win" the election by voter suppression.
*New Campaign Prepares Mass Mobilization Should Trump Refuse to 'Leave Willingly' If Defeated in November.*
ACLU: US schools have too few guidance counselors. They have hired thugs instead. Instead of counseling, students get arrested. That sucks them into the school-to-prison pipeline.
Everyone: call on Walmart to give workers hazard pay and a seat on the board of directors.
The BBC deleted an episode of Fawlty Towers which mocked an old officer's racist views.
John Cleese: If you put nonsense words into the mouth of someone you want to make fun of, you’re not broadcasting their views, you’re making fun of them. The major was an old fossil left over from decades before. We were not supporting his views, we were making fun of them. If they can’t see that – if people are too stupid to see that – what can one say?
I read that this convinced the BBC to retract the deletion.
I think that that episode is the only one I ever saw. I felt it painted the principal irony ("Don't talk about the war") too thick, so I did not like it.
There are many forms of irony. Nowadays, right-wing bigots slather some irony over their real bigotry to pretend they don't mean it. But Fawlty Towers was many decades ago, and people did not do that then.
Senator Warren and Rep. Khanna have introduced a bill to make the US military approach investigations of killing civilians in a more honest way, and make the results available.
This may be a helpful step, but it won't make a big difference if the army just clams up.
Please don't use the term "war on terrorism" seriously.
*Louisville Lawmakers Ban No-Knock Warrants as Advocates Escalate Demand for Arrests of Three Officers Who Killed Breonna Taylor.*
No-knock home invasions are a regular path to homicides. The thugs also tend to damage people's houses and kill their dogs, sometimes before the people inside know their is a raid.
If Covid-19 spreads at protests, it will be largely the thugs' fault. They go unmasked, refusing to protect protesters or even each other, and they spray tear gas which makes people more susceptible.
Hate-ridden machista fools!
Apple still censors for China — and acts as China's enforcer to make other companies censor for China.
Apple is responsible for its actions, but one general problem that tends to encourage this behavior is the fact that companies are multinational. China will always find a way to censor companies that do business in China. And so will many other countries.
I think we must limit a forum to doing actual business in one single country. It could allow people to post and read without asking them what countries they are in. This way, other countries would have no levers over the company, no way to make it censor anything.
Violent protests open a door to violent racist provocations.
Community defense groups can substitute for official thugs, but they face the same temptation to slide into gang warfare.
*The US is still segregated — but is our democracy up to the challenge?.*
The underlying cause of the Siberian oil spill was global heating, but the immediate cause was the lack of proper required maintenance on the facility.
The spill has reached a lake which is an important regional water supply. Next stop, the Arctic Ocean.
Facebook has developed a chat system for coworkers which allows the company to censor words of their choice. For instance, "unionize".
Protesters have turned a region in Seattle around Capitol Hill into a friendly cooperative no-cops zone.
Arizona is having a big, predictable increase in new Covid-19 cases as a result of "reopening" the economy.
Full intensive care wards cannot be an artifact of increased testing.
Microplastics in enormous quantities rain down in remote national parks.
*As Calls to Defund the Police Grow Louder, Joe Biden Wants to Give Them More Money.*
Sanders says that Biden is listening to what progressives tell him, more than usual for a plutocratist Democrat. But evidently there is a long way to go.
Syrians are again protesting because they are hungry, as in 2011.
The 1900 New York City Anti-Black Police Riot.
Essentially all the thugs attacked blacks indiscriminately on the street and in their homes, without the slightest shame or self control.
Most businesses do better if they have an office and the staff actually see each other for a while every week.
Sanders Demands Congressional Ban on Police Use of Tear Gas and Rubber[-coated] Bullets Against Protesters.
Amazon has told thug departments that for one year they cannot use its face recognition system.
However, there are other face recognition systems that thugs can use.
To ban thug departments from using face recognition directly is insufficient. What about when Clearview AI turns itself into a general service for tracking people, without saying how it localized them?
We have to make it illegal to set up a system to do systematic face recognition or other biometric tracking.
The danger of false matches is a secondary issue. As long as such errors are common, they will make it easy for anyone to argue, "That was a false match &emdash; I wasn't there." To understand the real danger we face, imagine that someday computer face recognition is perfect.
Suggestions for going beyond the bill proposed in the House of Representatives.
I agree with most of these suggestions, but the one for body cameras needs to be more selective. We want body cameras to record when there is violence but not when there isn't. If they recorded all the time, they would turn every cop info a surveillance system.
We can't depend on the good will of cops to turn the cameras on and off when they ought to be on and off. So I've proposed a technical system to do it automatically.
See When Should Body Cameras Record.
Family farmers reject carbon trading as a tool for greenwashing.
1,250 Former DOJ Officials Demand Investigation Into Barr's Involvement in Violently Dispersing Demonstrators Near White House.
US citizens: call on Congress to go further against dangerous thug
practices.
Here's the message I sent:
I urge Congress to take stronger action against dangerous police practices. For instance, to entirely end the provision of military weapons and vehicles to police departments, and make them get rid of most of the military weapons and vehicles they now possess.
Each SWAT team must be used, to keep its skill up, and that means many opportunities each year for it to kill or wound. We should eliminate most of the SWAT teams, leaving just enough that one can reach any necessary location by helicopter in 90 minutes. Then they will be used only when that is truly necessary.
In addition, it is vital to put an end to no-knock and quick-knock raids at all levels of jurisdiction.
US citizens: call on the CEO of Faux News to fire Tucker Carlson.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass legislation to deliver direct aid to families who need it most, not more handouts to corporations and the rich.
FAIR: the US mainstream media are starting to recognize that the violence at protests comes chiefly from the thugs.
Since 1970, Republicans have used veiled white supremacism to convince non-rich whites to support dooH niboR, even though they are among the victims of it.
The International Criminal Court wants to investigate Israeli crimes that violate international law, but US threats may instead destroy the ICC.
Large, expensive weddings are now forbidden, which makes it easier to avoid wasting lots of money that you will soon need for other things.
It is interesting that an expensive wedding goes with a short-lived marriage. I wonder why. Perhaps saving your money helps the relationship last. Perhaps rejecting the social pressure to do something foolish is a sign of people who are wiser and capable of making it last. Perhaps it indicates that they feel secure about their relationship and don't feel a need to burn money to "cement" it.
Georgia Republicans made an all-out attack on voting while black. *"It's their test run for November," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.* * What Georgia did yesterday was criminal, a racist crime against our democracy, and it’s time to criminalize voter suppression once and for all.*
The UK's protected marine areas are effectively negated because giant trawlers are allowed to fish in them.
*Coronavirus nearly ended homelessness in the UK. Why can't we end it for good?*
Australia forced tens of thousands of aboriginals and Melanesians into a system that was little different from slavery, though it was disguised.
Malta prohibits abortion, and due to Covid-19 it is very difficult for women to leave the island to get an abortion.
The National Writers Guild, a union affiliated with the AFL-CIO, called for that organization to expel thug unions.
I support the campaign, but I think slightly different tactics would do more to stop those unions from protecting violent thugs. I call on the AFL-CIO to adopt rules that an affiliated union cannot make demands that tend to give its members immunity from prosecution for acts of corruption, dishonesty, or violence, and cannot encourage bigotry.
Under those rules, the thug unions will either reform or be expelled for violating them. Either of these outcomes will be better than expelling them directly.
Hong Kong is setting up a special thug branch to attack political crimes.
The UK will undo the privatization of probation officers.
One privatization down, dozens or hundreds to go. Tory privatization was a blind ideology underpinned by dooH niboR.
Occasionally the state does something there is no need for the state to do, because it works for people to get that something privately from a competitive market (properly regulated, to be sure, and assuming that the state makes sure people don't fall into poverty). In that case, the state can simply stop that activity and leave it to private business.
However, outsourcing a state activity to a business is never a good policy. It leads to low pay for the workers and bad, unaccountable service for the public
*How do you stop the far-right using the Punisher skull? Make it a Black Lives Matter symbol.*
Iowa's legislature has passed a new ag-gag law, imposing a two-year prison sentence on trespassing in a farm.
Zimbabwean thugs arrested some political opposition leaders and tortured them, as was demonstrated by their injuries. Now the thugs have arrested them again, and accused them of lying about being tortured.
Zoom enforced Chinese censorship against commemorating the anniversary of China's murderous repression of the protests at Tien An Men square in 1989.
The Palestinian Authority says it will declare itself a state covering the whole of Palestine's territory, including Jerusalem, if Israel claims to annex any more of Palestine.
New York City will cut some funds from the thug department.
It's a start.
The EU accused China of running disinformation campaigns against the EU.
Why in the world would China refrain from doing so?
The US deportation thugs want to buy thousands of tasers.
How often do immigrants physically resist arrest by the deportation thugs? That must happen almost never.
Taking down statues of people who traded slaves or fought to own slaves punctures a one-sided false picture of history which was constructed for motives of bias.
In Britain that false picture included the convenient side of empire and forgot the oppressive side. In the US, it romanticized the defeated Confederacy and its slave-based plantations.
People now seek to take down other statues in Britain.
Columbus and King Leopold carried out enormous oppression, and that was a large part of what they did in their lives. I support changing or removing monuments to them.
French thugs are being prosecuted for making false charges against an aid worker who complained about their brutality. First they knocked him down onto a busy highway, then they lied to make an excuse.
What is exciting is that some are being prosecuted specifically for bearing false witness. If France can do it, other countries can do it.
New York City thugs have arrested 2000 people in or near protests. Many are held incommunicado in filthy jails without water and without face masks.
*It's time for Britain to think seriously about reparations for slavery.*
A gang of local man tortured a Maya healer and burned him to death, apparently accusing him of witchcraft.
Superstition can kill.
*[Bogus] Johnson's US trade deal will make Britain a paradise for disaster capitalists.*
*Burundi president dies of illness suspected to be coronavirus.*
*Amid Easing Restrictions, Study Estimates Shutdowns Prevented 60 Million Covid-19 Cases in US Alone.* 60 million cases would have meant millions of deaths.
The question now is whether the US converts that temporary preservation of lives into a permanent preservation of lives. Careless reopening is likely to causes those 60 million avoided cases to happen now.
Measures that could help keep thug departments from being oppressors.
The founding principles of London's police force make an exemplary contrast with how thug departments in the US behave.
Minneapolis and Minnesota thugs slashed tires of specific people's parked cards during a protest, then told some of the victims, laughing. Some were caught on video carrying out this vandalism.
The thugs later claimed they had done this to prevent dangerous driving and other unspecified sorts of "harm". One must suspect that in some cases the harm that they feared was journalism. If such concerns justified slashing tires, slashing cop cars' tires would always be justified.
In some cases, the thugs did this indiscriminately to every car in a lot. If you define the people as the enemy, you can justify vandalizing any car.
As Bolsonaro tries to destroy environmental protection organizations, Brazilian journalists continue to protect them.
New Zealand cops can't shoot innocent people because they don't carry guns. New Zealand tried having a few armed cops but has dropped the plan,
Black video journalist Christopher Frierson was pepper-sprayed by a thug who apparently paid no attention to what Frierson was doing: standing with a camera and a press badge. He didn't avoid the spray, but he got the video.
*Minneapolis lawmakers vow to disband police department in historic move.*
Starting a new agency with new personnel provides an opportunity to start a different culture, one that doesn't treat the public as an occupied people.
However, the city council does not plan to entirely eliminate the existing thug department, only to make it substantially smaller and have other agencies attend to many of the situations that thugs deal with now.
Protesters in the US have faced a series of violent right-wing attacks, using cars and guns as weapons.
The bully has lost a significant amount of support in his base since Black Lives Matter protest swept the US.
In Brazil, where the government has done nothing to try to control Covid-19, some people are having parties where they figure they are risking getting sick.
Perhaps they figure that they will catch it sooner or later so there is no use trying to avoid it.
Well-governed countries such as Taiwan and New Zealand have prevented most of the people from ever catching Covid-19. In such a place, society has a real option to keep most people safe from that illness. In Brazil, Bolsonaro has eliminated that option.
*IBM quits facial-recognition market over racial-profiling concerns.*
That one particular company doesn't develop face recognition won't make us safe from face recognition, but can influence the society's decisions about face recognition.
We need to recognize that racial profiling is only one of many dangers that face recognition can cause.
Derrick Sanderlin gives de-escalation training to San Diego thugs. During a protest, a thug shot a rubber-coated steel bullet at his groin, which is prohibited because it tends to cause grave injury. That's exactly what it did.
The UK has charged another suspect with suspiciously resembling a terrorist.
The UK jails people on suspicion, but disguises that as criminality by declaring that being suspect is the crime. This suspect may be imprisoned without any attempt to determine whether he ever planned to hurt anyone or anything.
The New York Times acknowledged that the OAS's claims that Evo Morales committed electoral fraud last year were false. The election appears to have been honest and he was going to win.
This affirms the conclusion that the OAS helped perpetrate a coup in Bolivia.
The people have covered the bully's new wall around the White House with protest signs and art.
*By "elevating" us as warriors, the elites conspired to reduce us as citizens, detaching us from a citizen’s code of civics and moral behavior. By accepting the conceit of such an identity, we warriors and former warriors became, in a sense, foreign to democracy and ever more divorced from the citizenry. We came to form [51]foreign legions, readily exploitable in America’s endless imperial-corporate wars, whether overseas or now here.*
When veterans become cops, and when they are taught the same spirit, they too can think of the public as "the enemy".
Governor Cuomo thinks it would be unconscionable to tax billionaires to pay the expenses of dealing with Covid-19.
Greg Palast explains several ways that Republicans have blocked people from voting in recent elections.
That in addition to gerrymandering, which affects the election of legislative bodies but does not function through voter suppression.
(satire) *Los Angeles Police Department officials announced Tuesday that they didn’t spend millions on an awesome tank just to let protests stay peaceful.*
Given how willing thugs are to violate thug department policy with their violence, criminal penalties seem to be the only way to restrain them, under current circumstances.
Replacing the department entirely might bring in a different culture which would achieve this.
US citizens: call on Biden to ditch his plutocratist advisor, Larry Summers.
Seattle's mayor told the city thus that they were forbidden to use tear gas on protesters unless they want to use it.
Radical city council member Kshama Sawant was one of the protesters who was gassed; she calls for the mayor to resign.
The staff of a McDonalds in California have been on strike two weeks demanding protective equipment. 11 of them now have Covid-19. It is clear they were spreading it to each other, because they could not help it.
All workers that work in proximity to other people should have protective equipment, and employers should be legally required to provide it,
What about when there is a shortage, as now? We could make the employer pay hazard pay on top of the usual wage, plus the full costs of treatment as well as lost wages to all workers that get sick. Then employers would push our plutocratist government to make sure enough protective equipment gets made.
The Justice in Policing Act, proposed in Congress, would help restrain violence by thugs, but it doesn't go far enough.
Eliminating qualified immunity will do some good. Reducing the standard of intention will, too. Keeping track of thugs that have been dismissed for brutality could do some good but only if violent thugs are more likely to be fired than they are now — and none of the provisions seem designed achieve that.
Nothing in the bill, as far as I can see, would directly affect whether prosecutors protect violent thugs.
Helping the Department of Justice investigate violent thug departments would do some good if someday we have a Department of Justice run by someone that aims to reduce wanton violence by thugs, rather that promoting it as now.
The bill would not make thug departments give up any of the heavy weapons that they already own, or reduce the number of SWAT teams, nor stop the no-knock raids carried out by state and local thug departments to give SWAT teams practice.
*Group Warns USDA May Be Quietly Trying to Outsource Chicken Processing to China.*
The idea is to let Chinese companies inspect them, or claim to inspect them, to bypass the already-weakened US inspection requirements.
Almost a million Britons signed a petition to stop the export of tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets, and other instruments of repression to the US.
I wish change.org would enable people to sign without running nonfree Javascript code. That requirement is why I never post change.org petitions.
Quebec's government hesitates to require masks for disease protection, in the name of personal liberty. It should apply the same principle to masks worn for other purposes.
In particular it should apply to hiding one's identity from face recognition and other tracking.
Britons are demanding, and getting, the elimination of memorials to rich slave owners that are found in the cities where their wealth bought them local admiration.
People comment on the pulling down of one slave-trader's statue.
*US and UK 'lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs'.*
Murder of tens of millions to extort from a few hundred millions.
If New Zealand has eliminated Covid-19, what should it do to keep it eliminated?
The idea of developing a special bluetooth device for contact tracing, rather than trying to adapt snoop phones to that purpose, offers the possibility of making it properly respect privacy. This means that unless and until you test positive and are quarantined, the device gives no data to anyone. Anything less will have loopholes that will be used for purposes unrelated to public health.
A car company's vision of travel in the future is total surveillance. Your snooper phone will let you combine all sorts of transportation modes, and Big Brother/Big Tech will follow you everywhere.
It's not too late to stop this, but we must start pushing. There are two ways to push against a product that mistreats you: condemn it so others will see you, and refuse to use it.
Is it sane to trust Huawei equipment in the US and Europe?
Senator Cotton's example seems absurd to me. It must be fairly easy for China to determine where F35s are stationed — no need to track their supply chains. But the basic idea is valid: no company in China can refuse to follow the state's orders. In principle, there is no basis to trust their products.
That includes the companies such as Foxconn that manufacture digital products for "US" companies.
Unfortunately, we can't trust the US in principle either.
*Koch-Funded Americans for Prosperity Opposes Bailout of State and Local Governments Hit Hard by COVID-19 Pandemic.*
*A Short History of U.S. Law Enforcement Infiltrating Protests.*
Thugs in Phoenix rioted and arrested people for being somewhere near a protest, citing made-up crimes. Some of them are unauthorized immigrants, and may now be deported due to false accusations.
6000 Jews and Arabs demonstrated in Tel Aviv against Israel's plan to claim to annex parts of Palestine.
Some US schools plan to track the movements of students within the school, for contact tracing. This is on top of demanding they be used by proprietary malware (it spies on them) to do their work, and giving their personal data to companies that profile them.
Contact tracing is legitimate if it collects no data about contacts between people when neither of them is spreading the virus. But if the system is tied to a snoop-phone, it is sure to be an additional injustice.
Thug unions defend a broad range of crimes by thugs — even extortion. In effect, they are mafias.
By the way, mafias get their power by protecting people lots of people who can't get anyone else to do that. In Italy, this year, mafias have been feeding poor people.
Hinduismist fanatics in India used Covid-19 quarantine as cover for a pogrom against Muslims.
In Mexico there are protests against the murder by thugs of a man who was arrested for not wearing a mask. Many thugs began kidnaping protesters and robbing them.
Thugs have arrested over 10,000 protesters at protests over the murder of George Floyd.
Sometimes they make far-fetched excuses.
How foreign occupation practices contributed to the thuggery of modern practices and training of US cops.
*Sandinista leaders fall victim to coronavirus outbreak they downplayed.*
It was more than "downplaying"; they mocked it like the conman.
Ilhan Omar plans to introduce four bills for criminal justice reform.
The first one, for the National Police Misuse of Force Investigation Board, should go further. It should not be limited to the killings by thugs; it should tackle also the lesser acts of violence, and false accusations.
Also, we should require thug departments to divest themselves of military weapons, with few exceptions, and to eliminate most SWAT teams.
Cuba is defeating Covid-19 with lots of attention and strict isolation measures.
They are not very different from Taiwan. Although Cuba disrespects human rights — even occasionally to the point of murdering dissidents —
I think these measures are legitimate when used temporarily in an emergency.
*America for the Rich or the Poor? Which America will be ours after the pandemic?*
*Vallejo police kill unarmed 22-year-old, who was on his knees with his hands up.*
Killing unarmed blacks is a long-standing tradition there.
*Protests about police brutality are met with wave of police brutality across US.*
*Police — Not Protesters — Are Overwhelmingly Responsible for Attacking Journalists.* 80% of the reported attacks were by thugs.
(satire) *Calling the various geriatric protesters the "greatest threat to officers thus far," the Buffalo Police Department requested reinforcements Friday until the frail elderly men rampaging through their city were fully contained.*
Philadelphia thugs welcomed a gang of 50 - 70 white men who threatened Black Lives Matter protesters with various sorts of weapons, and attacked journalists.
A thug that tolerates partisan violence or threats of same ought to be fired, at least. Will Philadelphia fire them? And the officer in charge of that group?
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, historian of fascism, says that the bully is not exactly a fascist, but rather an authoritarian — a somewhat broader category.
She says that he will try to set aside the election, but that history shows that mass protest can stop an authoritarian.
Covid-19 is dangerous, but thugs are. too — protesting is necessary. But while you are at a protest, never take off your mask.
Surveillance is dangerous, too. There are no physical protests against surveillance (I wish there were), but you can protest against surveillance by refusing to run nonfree software (always likely to spy on you), and refusing to use snooping dis-services. Stand up and say no!
Everyone: consider demanding that Netflix cancel the video programs that glorify thugs.
I signed the petition after some hesitation, because I condemn Netflix totally for its injustice to its users. To watch anything via Netflix entails surrendering to injustice.
I cannot envision Netflix as ever doing any sort of business in a way that doesn't mistreat the customers. I think the right campaign goal is to eliminate Netflix entirely, not just a subset of the videos it streams.
However, eventually I concluded that the petition does not explicitly legitimize Netflix's business practices, so I could sign.
Whether you sign the petition or not, please join me in >rejecting Netflix yourself.
*Court overturns EPA approval of popular herbicide (dicamba) made by Monsanto.* The court saw that the Environmental Poisoning Agency knew it was dangerous and decided to ignore than fact.
A Canadian chief of an indigenous group says that national thugs ("mounties") beat him up, injuring him badly, then arrested him and accused him of "resisting arrest" and attacking the thugs.
The thugs also beat up his wife, who was with him.
The ACLU is suing the bully for ordering the violent attack on peaceful protesters so he could walk to a church and use it for a photo op.
Some US government law-twisting agency seized shipments of protective masks that had printed protest slogans. The owners were given no explanation or justification and are not even sure who took them.
This is total lawlessness.
Seeking to destroy as many ecosystems as possible during his time in office, the saboteur in chief has eliminated the protection of a marine reserve near the New England coast.
Australia has its own Black Lives Matter movement, about indigenous people killed by thugs.
Interesting musings from Caitlin Johnstone.
*If you are more interested in the fact that Lindsey Graham is a hypocritical closeted gay Republican than you are in the fact that Lindsey Graham is a murderous war pig who advances mass military slaughter at every opportunity, your priorities are disordered.*
*There’s a pervasive belief in [thug] culture … that it is okay to physically assault a stranger who has made you feel emotionally upset. An attack on the officer’s ego is treated as an attack on the officer.*
And others. I agree with some, including those two.
*What if restaurants continued to feed local communities after lockdown lifts?*
Tokyo is gradually reopening, having put in place a system to stop transmission of Covid-19. Japan did not use snooping apps, but made a success of contact tracing by human investigators. It did not force anyone to do anything, but people complied with the sensible measures announced.
By contrast, the US is reopening, in a careless way, without any system to stop transmission, while transmission is increasing.
This reminds me of cargo cults. In the 1940s and 50s, some charismatic leaders in New Guinea and nearby islands had their followers construct imitation airports. They hoped these would fool the spirits that sent "cargo" to European colonists and soldiers into sending some to them too. It did not work. The practice ended many decades ago.
Now it's the turn of the US to follow a path that is an imitation of a rational policy, missing only the rationality.
Guardian reporters from various cities describe what they have seen in protests — including wild vandalism as a response to wild attacks by thugs.
When protesters get so angry that they attack whatever comes to hand, they become the mirror image of rioting thugs.
I saw a video of a protest which cops (not thugs, those) joined in. I was glad to see their solidarity, but distressed for all of them that so many were close together and did not wear masks to protect each other.
*New Yorkers Confront de Blasio Over Defense of NYPD Violence as Calls Mount for Mayor's Resignation.*
Governor Cuomo is also denying the thugs' violence. You can't see it if you shut your eyes.
(satire) *Los Angeles Police chief Michel Moore vowed Friday to take concrete steps to better cover up violence.*
(satire) *The Oakland Athletics stadium was immediately converted into condos Friday after the team missed a rent payment.*
*Anger mounts over selective curfew rules: 'A license to decide who to arrest'.*
These laws appoint thug departments as despots. When a despot happens to be benevolent, you can get good government for as long as it lasts. But will the next despot be benevolent too? Probably not.
The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China will join countries to pressure China on its cruel actions.
Activists in Glasgow have unofficially renamed various streets that were named after rich slave traders of the past.
West Virginia has made protests against oil and gas facilities a felony, including pipelines.
Some French thugs have a Facebook group for racism.
Why do some people launch themselves into hate?
*Senior clinicians fear UK has no plan for second wave (of Covid-19).*
Bogus Johnson's idea of a "plan", when talking to the public, is "Don't worry about it, we will do something and everything will be fine."
National Guard soldiers, with armed military assault rifles, are raising tensions in US cities. Their mission is to protect black and brown coffee and the stores that serve it.
I expect they are armed with military automatic weapons, which are ideal for mass shootings but not so much for anything less indiscriminate.
*A Short History of U.S. [thugs] Infiltrating Protests.*
Sometimes all they do is snoop. Sometimes their reports are lies. Often they encourage violence, or start the violence themselves.
(satire) *Republican leaders reportedly claimed Thursday that New Yorkers would greet the United States military as liberators.*
New York State's sales tax on stock transactions gets handed back to Wall Street every year. Ralph Nader suggests that the state keep it this year. to help pay the expenses of dealing with Covid-19.
*How Endless War Contributes to Police Brutality.*
*[thugs] are explicitly trained to conceive of themselves as warriors in battle, always on high alert and prepared to kill.* And who is the enemy they are about to fight?
The federal government is directly involved in this; a change of one law could put a stop to it.
Calling on the ACLU to expel thug unions, which oppose its stated support for criminal justice reform.
Alternatively, the ACLU could make a rule that its member unions are not allowed to make demands about when and how they will be investigated, charged, or prosecuted for crimes. If they persist in doing that, they will be expelled — not arbitrarily, but as a consequence of not following a rule that is obviously valid.
Bolsonaro has ceased publishing statistics on the spread of Covid-19 in Brazil.
Daily quantities are not very useful as an indication of trends. But they are the basis for three-day running averages, which give a more meaningful picture. Denied the former, Brazilians can't calculate the latter.
UK economists are mostly not in favor of squeezing the poor to "pay for" the programs to help with Covid-19.
However, the idea is ridiculous. Just stop the handouts to the rich, and take back those that have already been given.
*How does it feel to be black in newly 'woke' America? Strange - and dizzying.*
The bullshitter stands for "law and order" — law as in "martial law", and order as in a cemetery.
US citizens: call on Joe Biden to support Medicare For All.
US citizens: call on Congress to ban use of tear gases in the US.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to endorse the resolution to end thug brutality.
A resolution won't directly change rules our laws, but it can have influence on thugs, and on state legislators.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: call for limiting thug departments' weapons and arms.
I gave this message:
In addition to what others are asking for, I urge you to greatly reduce the number of SWAT teams in the United States and limit by law the situations where they can be used. A city that has a SWAT team needs to keep it trained by sending it on missions that don't call for one, and each mission risks killing people.
There were massive peaceful protests across the US on Saturday.
This followed a week of protests in which thugs demonstrated their cruel nature by rioting — and even white Americans saw what racism concretely means to blacks.
That doesn't mean it will be easy to change this. Meanwhile, the bully and his supporters are egging each other on to impose yet another repressive military regime — this time in the united states.
People who have survived other dictatorships warn us where this could lead.
The fist is now exposed for all to see.
If he destroys the postal service, he may have trouble converting it into a mailed fist ;-{.
One of the people quoted in that article erroneously assumed that the bully was democratically elected. Actually Republicans stole the election by voter suppression.
Zoom will offer end-to-end encryption only to paid customers.
Even for them, it won't be trustworthy. A nonfree program is never trustworthy, and in particular you cannot trust it to protect your privacy. (It could send the unencrypted version to Zoom when asked, bypassing the encryption.)
And you cannot trust nonfree encryption code to do a good job.
Tens of thousands of Britons with dementia are dying from lack of contact with their families.
Tens of thousands are in danger because they can't get needed heart operations.
Virginia will remove a statue of Confederate General Lee from the state capitol, Richmond.
Insiders report that Attorney General Barr personally ordered thugs to attack a peaceful crowd of civilians to get the bully his photo op on the steps of a church.
The ACLU is suing the bully for the damage done by that assault.
Diesel fuel has spilled in a river in the Russian Arctic; it could take decades to recover from the effects. Arctic ecosystems are especially slow to heal.
It is possible that global heating effects caused the spill.
A poll reports that most Americans now acknowledge the racist tendencies of thugs in general, and support the anger at the killing of George Floyd.
Most Americans think that the actions of protesters are at least "partially justified". That is a rather ambiguous term.
*'Should Be Bigger News': Analysis Finds Nearly One Third of Owed Unemployment Benefits Have Not Been Paid.*
(satire) *Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday that he would hold a virtual roundtable with American hate groups around the country to better understand how they work.*
*Solidarity Includes Wearing a Mask at Protests.*
The bully has authorized the Drug Enforcement Agency to surveil all protesters (or suspected protesters) and look for something to charge them with.
Six Atlanta thugs face charges for attacking a couple sitting in a car, pulling them out and tasing them.
It is very important to punish thugs that commit lesser crimes, not only those who kill. The violence comes from the same sources regardless of how far it goes.
Decades of research shows that when thugs approach a protest prepared for violence — wearing armor, for instance — it provokes violence.
The challenge is to make thugs stop being part of the problem.
Naturally, the US government has increased spending on provocation gear.
However, lately the protests have become peaceful and cities have begun deescalating.
10 ways Democratic elected officials can protect protesters, hold back the violence of thugs, and thwart the bully — right now.
Two central bankers say: *The world must seize this opportunity to meet the climate challenge.*
*Jane Goodall Warns Humanity Will Be 'Finished' After Covid-19 Without Ending 'Absolute Disrespect for Animals and the Environment'.*
Beef raised on destroyed Amazon forest reserves is being sold to the UK (and, I suppose, the US and other countries too).
The Lancet has retracted a paper which stated that hydroxychloroquine was dangerous for people sick with Covid-19. Now it seems we do not know whether it is dangerous or not.
It appears that the paper was based on false data.
Peer reviewers usually try to check the methods and assumptions, which they can read, but they have no easy way to check the underlying data when those are not published. However, personal medical data must not be published.
Meanwhile, a large experimental study has found that hydroxychloroquine provides no benefit to people ill with Covid-19.
The Minneapolis thug union has fought every initiative to teach thugs to reduce their violence.
This suggests that cutting funds for the thug department is a good idea.
The worst things that US thug unions do, getting special rules to make it hard to prosecute thugs for their crimes,
Toronto thugs manifest behavior comparable to US thugs.
At least Canada does not have to deal with a governing party that is explicitly racist and violent.
Erdoğan has arrested three opposition MPs and made the usual criminal charges for political enemies.
US thugs attacked or arrested journalists 148 times in just three days.
Stampeding Buffalo thugs pushed an elderly protester to the ground so hard that it wounded his head. One of the thugs tried to help him, but was directed by another thug to go attack another protester instead.
Then they lied about what they had done.
This calls for firing all the thugs that lied, plus the one who said not to help the fallen protester, but the one that tried to help him deserves some forgiveness on account of doing that.
What encourages cops to be violent, to be thugs that is, is above all unaccountability, and that depends on getting away with testilying. Therefore, we must place special priority on punishing cops' lies about their violence.
In fact, the city fired both of the thugs that attacked the protester.
In response, 57 other Buffalo thugs, the rest of the "emergency response team", resigned from that team to "support" the fired thugs.
The city must defend the safety of its residents, so it must not yield to the thugs' demand. It can do without an emergency response team for the time being, and cut the thug department's budget.
When news media present sunny, warm, too warm weather as a pleasure, it is a subtle form of climate denialism.
Minneapolis public schools have terminated the stationing of city thugs inside schools.
This will protect students from the risk of violence by thugs and also the risk of being directed by thugs into a life going in and out of jails. (This is called the "school to prison pipeline".)
(satire) *… NYPD chief Terence Monahan publicly defended his squad’s controversial use of non-lethal rubber tires Wednesday as a means of de-escalating ongoing protests against police brutality.*
The New York Times has said it made a mistake publishing an opinion piece by Senator Cotton, which was a right-wing extremist call for state violence.
It is important for newspapers to publish opinions that they don't agree with. Indeed, that is how progressive views occasionally get into the Op-Ed pages. This naturally has to include right-wing views, too.
But it should not extend to demonization and calls for violence.
Senator Kaine proposes a bill to prohibit using the military against protesters.
*Proposals to Ease Covid’s Blow on the Hardest Hit All But Ignored by Corporate Media.*
A study suggests that the fossil fuel industry will lose 2/3 of its expected future profit due to reduced use due to the effects of Covid-19.
The direct effects of this will be a financial disaster, but it could avert the physical disaster coming from global heating. We can deal with a financial disaster much more easily that the effects of climate mayhem.
It follows that everyone investing in fossil fuels is a chump.
The European Central Bank pissed away 7 billion euros on this. The bank should consult a eurologist and stop.
US citizens: call on Louisville to take several tangible steps of justice and prevention in response to the thugs' killing of Breonna Taylor.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop giving military equipment to US thug departments. This does not go far enough. We should require most thug departments to get rid of their heavy weapons, and allow only a limited number of SWAT teams.
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to ditch plutocratist adviser Larry Summers.
US citizens: call on your state's governor to take the state's National Guard off the streets.
George Monbiot: *Britain's claims to being a functioning democracy are only skin deep.*
*Jane Goodall: humanity is finished if it fails to adapt after Covid-19.*
This change will require much less sacrifice from each person if we let the human population peacefully decline.
Someone I don't know sent this to me, describing surveillance in China today.
I live in Hangzhou, and here are some of my experiences. It still remain mandatory for people to show the app's readout to get into subway, trains and supermarket, and etc which could be the most of the public areas. For instance, there is at least one security guard in each entrance of that area, almost all of residential areas have only one entrance by now. And except the health code (jian kang ma) you have to have in order to get elsewhere, you aslo have to identify yourself to get another ID card to get in the residential area, and have to show the ID card every time before you get in. In their practice, residential A area's residents won't be allowed to go to residential B area, vice versa. If you don't have these identifiers, the so-called security guard would love to harass you even they know you just got out the area. It's ridiculous to check that out again. If you forgot your phone or card, they would take down your personal information, and they don't have to take a picture of you since the cameras just in front of you!
*Student protesters and journalists in 1989 recall the joy and hope before the crackdown* in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
*New York [thugs] take seconds to restore reputation for brutality.* Thugs attacked protesters for no reason on many occasions. They even besieged protesters on a bridge. Even worse, Mayor de Blasé legitimized their violent attacks.
When repressing protests or preparing to, they cover their badge numbers so they can get away with crimes.
*The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats.*
*Atmospheric CO2 levels rise sharply despite Covid-19 lockdowns.*
Mattis, the first Secretary of Defense appointed by the bully, condemned him for his church steps photo-op, for which he used the military counter to the Constitution, and for trying to divide Americans.
Some of the bully's evangelical supporters were repelled by the way he used the Bible as a prop for hatred.
California and 20 other states have experienced a rise in Covid-19 cases in the past few days.
A state senator from New York City proposes to transfer funds from the New York Thug Dept to other agencies, which would be tasked to handle humanely some of the situations that the thugs now handle.
I don't think this is a panacea. Racism shows up in other agencies, too. Also, some of the situations will, due to the circumstances, come first to the attention of thugs. To get good outcomes would require those thugs to know how to handle them well.
But there are certainly opportunities to make things better by giving problems to other agencies. For example, thugs in schools tend to solve problems by arresting students and getting them started on the school-to-prison pipeline.
Back when there were not normally thugs in schools, the same kinds of problems occurred but most of them did not result in criminal charges.
*Minneapolis public school board to vote on terminating its contract with police.*
In France, wearing a face mask is mandatory in public, but wearing a niqab face mask is punishable with a fine.
I am concerned about face masks, not because of their religious use, but because they are a way to resist massive surveillance.
*ACLU Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Minneapolis Police for Attacking Journalists at Protests.*
The symptoms of exposure to tear gas promote the spread of coronavirus.
Everyone: call on Biden to ditch plutocratist advisor Larry Summers.
The Environmental Poisoning Agency's new rule mostly eliminates states' power to stop projects that put water supply at risk.
Thus, if the EPA's bogus criteria approve the project, there is meant to be no way to stop it.
*New York [thugs] Are Attacking Protesters — They Know They Won’t Face Consequences.*
*UK government urged to protect access to cash for most vulnerable.*
Where privacy is concerned, we are all vulnerable and we all should be paying cash to protect our privacy.
*Coronavirus will haunt US economy for a decade and wipe out $8tn, says CBO.*
20,000 people protested in Paris against racism and violent thugs.
The Tories want to pull Britain out of the EU with no trade agreement. The ones who won wanted this all along, but didn't dare admit it because Britons wouldn't have voted for them last winter. Now they can force that path and blame Covid-19.
Black Lives Matter protests are likely to spread Covid-19 substantially. I was alarmed by the way the protesters in videos were taking this risk.
Do protest, but keep distance, wear masks, and sanitize your hands!
I was struck by the statistics in the article comparing the danger of being killed by thugs (if you're a black male) and the danger of being killed by measles.
*Whether it’s police violence, poor medical care, or simply trying to breathe, we (blacks) suffer from an underlying condition: racism.*
The temporary fall in air pollution is now being reversed as China and Europe reopen their economies.
*Spain (actually, Podemos) rekindles a radical idea: a Europe-wide minimum income.*
Women living near active gas and oil wells tend to have babies with lower birth weight (which bodes ill for the babies' future health).
Wells that were shut down do not show the same effect, so this is not a matter of correlation between poverty and having oil drilling around.
Thugs in Atlanta killed the son of a Ghanaian diplomat, and said he shot at them first. His family say that is absurd.
You can't put total faith in such statements from a victim's family, but they have more credibility than statements from thugs.
*China accuses UK of gross interference over Hong Kong citizenship offer.*
Apparently China's rulers think of Chinese people as "human capital stock", just like some US officials.
Some old Hong Kongers say, "Britain, please take my children instead of me!"
Brazil and Mexico are rapidly "reopening" while Covid-19 is nowhere near under control.
(satire) *…sweatshop worker Li Chen was devastated to hear Monday that the jacket she worked so hard on was looted. "It breaks my heart that I slaved away for 14 cents an hour in an extremely hot and poorly ventilated factory just to have my hard work stolen from Zara."*
Speaking seriously, I don't think that sweatshops paying so little are found nowadays in China. Wages in China have risen quite a bit in the last two decades. Last I heard, clothing sweatshops are now sited in poorer countries, such as Bangladesh.
The Internet Archive acquires and scans paper books, then "lends" each copy digitally with DRM. It argues that this complies with US copyright law. The few consolidates publishing companies have sued the Archive, claiming that this is is "piracy".
The main question in the lawsuit is whether the Archive's practice is covered by fair use. For the Archive's sake, I hope it is, but my main disagreement with the publishers is at the moral level. I say that everyone should be free to non commercially copy and share any published work. Regardless of what laws say, what they are doing is wrong.
Ironically, those "borrowed" books are off-limits to me because reading them requires nonfree software. I won't run that software, naturally.
Unless paper copies are available, the only copies of most of those books that are distributed nowadays without oppressing the readers are the unauthorized copies. In any case, insist on having a local copy that is not encrypted or copy-protected, so that you can share copies if you decide to. Accept nothing less.
Please join me in refusing to use or legitimize the term "piracy"; it is propaganda for repressive copyright. I respond to the term with the retort that "piracy is attacking ships."
There are protests around the world against the murder of George Floyd and other associated acts of repression in the US.
Thugs in Washington DC trapped a group of protesters on the street and tried to arrest them all. Residents welcomed the protesters into their homes to protect them.
Thugs fired tear gas into a house, and at one point blocked a delivery of food for the protesters.
Non selectively arresting everyone in a large group implies that, for most of them, the thugs had nothing specific to accuse them of. It was repression, pure and simple.
The Manchester (England) thug department sabotaged the prosecution of its thugs for killing an innocent man (supposedly planning armed and dangerous, but he wasn't) by refusing to turn over evidence in its possession.
It is absurd to allow thug departments to sabotage justice.
*How the Credibility Gap [of Nixon] Became a Chasm [under the bullshitter].
The bully is training US troops to get comfortable with attacking American protesters.
US soldiers are supposed to refuse to obey an illegal order, and military veterans are calling on soldiers to refuse orders to attack civilians.
That it is a daunting step, since the military can claim the order was legal and put soldiers on trial for disobeying it. Then a court will decide, typically a military court which is biased against the accused.
I urge US soldiers to discuss, in advance, at what point they will deem an order illegal and refuse to obey it.
Covid-19 caused Pakistan to cancel polio vaccination, and the disease is now spreading around the country.
It could spread to other countries, too. I suppose some other countries have interrupted polio vaccination for the same reason.
The fake polio vaccination team that was actually searching for Osama bin Laden may have made the difference between eradicating polio and suffering from it forever.
A Kurd in Istanbul was murdered in a possibly racist attack. This has focused attention on Turkish prejudice against Kurds.
The civil war of 2015 was started intentionally by Erdoğan after he did not win as many seats in Parliament as he thought he deserved.
He figured that war would get him a better result, and it did.
Reportedly Minnesota is using contact-tracing to investigate the social graph of the protesters.
Contact-tracing is a preventive medical activity, like vaccination. According to that report, Minnesota is using it as a front for a criminal investigation. This is a very dangerous tactic.
Remember what happened after the US disguised a manhunt as a polio vaccination campaign? The Taliban and allied Islamist fanatics became suspicious of polio vaccination, and blocked the vaccination efforts for years. Polio is still not eradicated in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Would we have eradicated it forever if not for this US action?
This backfire was no surprise to medical experts; they rebuked the US.
Disguising a criminal investigation as action to stop an epidemic threatens the same sort of backfire.
Can anyone find confirmation of the report?
A right-wing group is suing to try to force various parts of the US to aggressively purge voters. This is a practice that Republicans do voluntarily to try to suppress the Democratic vote.
Colombia is evicting poor people while they are subject to nationwide lockdown and have no money and no work.
China concealed important information on Covid-19 from WHO through the whole month of January.
Some rich antisocialists are hoping that Covid-19 will complete the process of business-driven globalization, rendering states almost powerless to restrain the power of the rich money-barons.
US citizens: call on Congress to legislate release of incarcerated people who are medically vulnerable to Covid-19, absent strong reasons not to include them.
*[A prisoner in] a Federal Jail Said Their Coronavirus Symptoms Were Ignored. The Government Is Fighting to Keep the Records Secret.*
The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.
If you call please spread the word
The narcissist wanted to use a church near the White House as a prop for propaganda, so he sent thugs to violently attack the Christian clergy who were set up on the church steps, offering peaceful support to protesters, so he could use that space.
Rioting uniformed thugs attacked an Australian TV crew covering a protest outside the White House. The Australian government will complain.
Israeli soldiers killed harmless, autistic Palestinian Iyad Halak. Then they pointed their guns at a witness who had cried out not to shoot him.
Now a "Palestinian lives matter" movement has started in response.
*Minneapolis police chief: all four [uniformed thugs] "complicit" in George Floyd's death.*
*Obama shares advice on how to make George Floyd protests 'a turning point'.*
*Sixth mass extinction of wildlife accelerating, scientists warn.*
*WHO warns overuse of antibiotics for Covid-19 will cause more deaths.*
An Minneapolis medical examiner ruled that George Floyd died of a cardiac arrest caused by violence committed by the thugs. He found no other medical conditions that would have made Floyd more vulnerable than anyone else.
This is mostly the same as the report of the private autopsy.
Louisville thugs were fired on while enforcing a curfew against protesters. They shot "back" and killed a bystander.
The thugs didn't turn on their body cameras. The mayor fired the chief of the thug department for this. Making sure thugs carry out the requirement for using their body cameras is the thug chief's responsibility. The chief did not do the job well. But maybe perse has not been in the job very long; if so, perse should get one more chance.
Another important responsibility of the thug chief is to make sure that the thugs are trained not to fire when they are not sure of the target, regardless of the supposed reason. Because that reason, whatever it is, is not a reason for killing bystanders.
Can anyone determine how many people were standing in the area that the thugs were firing towards?
New Zealand has been overly strict about keeping foreigners out, even foreigners who live and work in New Zealand. So people are angry that it made an exception for a movie crew composed of foreigners who do not live or work in New Zealand.
After Zealand's success in driving down Covid-19, it has good reason to limit who it lets in. However, as long as it k
