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The UK is entering further into the "Imagine there's no Covid" camp, like the US.
This article proposes a fallacious argument for imposing a cease-fire on Ukraine, to be followed by negotiations under circumstances that would give Putin the territory he has conquered plus wherever else he demands.
The article starts by assuming that continued war can mean, for Ukraine, nothing other than continuing destruction and advance by the Putin forces. This is called "defeatism". I don't think it is true.
It continues by claiming that the only way to save Ukraine from putative violent defeat by Putin is to cease the fighting under conditions that compel defeat by negotiating. Putin will insist on all of Ukraine he wants by threatening to renew the war, after having brought copious supplies.
That outcome follows from that defeatism, but that defeatism is a supposition, not fact. Ukrainians do not want to be "saved" by forcing them to give up the fight. They want the chance to fight and win some of their country back.
As Putin's army gets ever weaker, he will become willing to settle for less and less. After enough damage, he will settle for taking what's left of his army out of Ukraine so that he can remain in power in Russia.
*Grassroots progressive groups on Tuesday urged Democratic congressional leaders to ignore Republicans, right-wing members of their own party, and neoliberal economists who are pushing lawmakers to hit the brakes on federal spending as inflation surges to levels not seen in decades.
The US is in danger of a recession. To cut spending now would make that recession worse, as it did for President Hoover in 1930: it hoovered up the jobs, and dumped Americans into Hoovervilles. The way to avoid a recession, as Keynes taught and FDR carried out, is to increase government spending. The US government learned to do this, until the plutocrats came to dominate the government in the 1980. Now a recession is an opportunity for the richest to get richer.
*Poor Nations Face 'Perfect Storm' of Debt, Food, and Energy Crises: UN.*
A mother in the UK systematically denied her baby, referred to as Child AU, all kinds of care and all expressions of affection. There is a scandal now about why state agencies did not do anything to take Child AU out of that situation earlier.
Child AU must have suffered terribly. I fear she may never learn to feel loved by anyone. However, beyond the question of what the state should have done differently to rescue her sooner, I raise a few other questions:
A study estimated that 21% of all reptile species are "threatened" or worse. This covers all the reptile species whose status is known well enough to determine whether each one is threatened. There are species whose conditions are so little known that scientists find it hard to determine whether they are threatened; those were omitted from the survey.
T he EU is considering an anti-SLAPP directive.
*Russia attacks infrastructure in western Ukraine to slow supply lines.*
Since I hope for Ukraine's victory, I am alarmed. However, this kind of counterattack is not an atrocity.
*Former head of Polish army criticizes [Bogus Johnson] for risking safety of soldiers.*
This was truly incompetent of him, to blurt out important military secrets for the purpose of boasting. Johnson demonstrated that he does understand the conditions of these discussions.
Putin has cut off the gas supply to some European countries and is threatening to cut off the gas supply to others. Those countries are calling this an outrage.
I disagree with them — this is simply another economic sanction. NATO countries are refusing to sell certain things to Russia, and now Russia is refusing to sell a certain thing to some of those countries. It hurts, for sure — but it is not an outrage or a crime, like some other things Putin has done.
The goal of "weakening Russia" has a range of concrete possible meanings. I believe that the only way to reach a peace that will last is for Ukraine to give Putin a defeat that will convince him not to attack again later. That is one form of "weakening Russia," which I agree is necessary.
However, to damage Russia in other ways would mean widening the war, and that would asking for trouble.
Manchin is having a meeting with billionaires who carry no political affiliation except "we want more riches".
*Minneapolis police engaged in pattern of racial discrimination, inquiry finds.*
*A state investigation accuses the Minneapolis Thug Department of systematically practicing "discriminatory, race-based policing."
Manchin and the Republicans are learning to play a new song: subsidizing new fossil fuel facilities.
(satire) *Mark Zuckerberg Asks Hawaiian Neighbor To Cut Down Unsightly, Overgrown Rainforest.*
More and costlier nuclear weapons do not deter conventional war. So it makes sense to seek nuclear arms limitation treaties.
The UK economy will lose an estimated 8 billion UKP in this year alone as a result of the loss of 400,000 workers due to consequences of Covid-19. The losses from those people will not end this year.
This November, the Utah Democratic Party will not run a candidate for the Senate — instead, it will support a non-trumpet Republican running as an independent.
Urging people to vote for an independent compromise candidate has an advantage over nominating a compromise candidate, because the former avoids giving the impression that the compromise candidate speaks for the party.
The US military outsourced housing for soldiers to private companies. Can you guess what happened?
That's outsourcing for you. When the government (or a larger company) outsources a job, that job will tend to be done in an exploitative way. (That's what makes it cheaper.) And if the job involves providing any sort of service to people, the service will be done badly, unreliably, and (whenever possible) in ways that endanger their health.
Putin has cut off sales of natural gas to Poland, saying this is because Poland refuses to pay in rubles.
Poland will sue, claiming breach of contract. However, I don't think anything can make gas flow through the pipeline if Putin decides not to pump gas into it.
If we don't restore the nonnuclear deal with Iran soon, it will develop the capacity to quickly enrich some uranium and make nuclear weapons.
That would reduce the value of the deal, but the deal might still be worth having.
The US government has reached the conclusion that it is crucial to weaken the Putin forces to the point that he won't think of starting another war.
I came to a similar conclusion a few weeks ago: that it would wrong to let Putin make peace and keep any sort of gains from he battle.
US citizens: call on Biden to expand workers' power.
US citizens: call on Biden to stop offering new leases for offshore oil drilling.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
An internal document from Facebook says that the company has no systematic control over what purposes each kind of data gets used for. "We can’t confidently make controlled policy changes or external commitments such as 'we will not use X data for Y purpose.' And yet, this is exactly what regulators expect us to do."
This is because much of Facebook's important data is derived correlations and instances of those correlations. Those didn't directly come from anywhere, but rather was calculated based on various kinds of data from various sources, including various people's personal data.
If they find that listening to a certain song has a 75% correlation with being gay, the fact that person X listened to that song is certainly personal data. What about the conclusion that X is likely to be gay? What do various privacy laws require about data like that?
If Europe is firm about regulating the whole mass of data that companies like Facebook deduce, it might make surveillance-based advertising totally unfeasible. That would be great. But Big Data will lobby for a weaker rule, or a weaker interpretation, that would make less difference.
*"We have a democracy problem": how Texas voter suppression helps keep climate action off the table.*
Global heating effects will lead to thousands of instances of viruses jumping to a new host species, due to various host species' moving to new habitats.
The prediction suggests around 15,000 such events, but I doubt that we can predict anything more accurate than "many thousands".
How a group of dentists built a great career by claiming to be experts in matching bite marks in corpses with the teeth of the alleged biter.
*Ukraine names 10 Russian soldiers in alleged human rights abuses in Bucha.*
A member of the UK Parliament has been accused of (gasp) watching porn inside Parliament.
This must be a convenient distraction from the really bad things some MPs do in Parliament, such as lying about public issues, voting to impoverish the poor, or actually sexually harassing an actual person.
*US FDA moves to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars.*
I think it is wrong to ban recreational drugs, but helping teenagers avoid being drawn into smoking tobacco is a good thing.
*Global warming risks most cataclysmic extinction of marine life in 250m years.*
The Putin forces are trying to conscript men in Donetsk, so the men there have gone into hiding away from home.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has more volunteers that it can arm and equip.
Wendy's refuses to support action against enslavement of farm workers.
Lawyer Steven Donziger has been released after almost three years under arrest, but Chevron is still persecuting him for defending the indigenous Ecuadorians whose land was polluted by Chevron wells.
He was arrested after Chevron used a series of dirty tricks and what looks like corruption to avoid paying damages to those Ecuadorians.
A centibillionaire has purchased a company with enormous influence over public opinion. Serious competition for that company is effectively impossible, so it is a natural monopoly, but it is entirely unregulated.
His stated intentions have made people fear that he will use it to strengthen right-wing movements that demonize people, or to change laws to benefit himself.
Yanis Varoufakis: *Macron's Centrist Win Over Le Pen Also Shows Why Neoliberalism Strengthens the Right.*
*Prosecutions of Corporate Criminals Hit Record Low Under Biden.*
(satire) *New Tennessee Law Requires Women To Wait 24 Hours Before Getting A Burger.*
A proposed new coal mine in Australia could have "far-reaching impact" on the Great Barrier Reef.
That is in addition to the grievous blow to the Earth's future climate.
Given predictions that the market for Australia's coal exports is going to disappear in a few years, starting another coal mine will be a waste of money as well. That's less important for the world, but might help convince some not to start it.
Burma's military rulers have made an excuse to sentence Aung San Suu Kyi to prison for five years.
This won't change anything in practice, since she was already in prison. It just means there is an official excuse for that.
Marjorie Taylor Greene urged the wrecker to declare martial law so as to steal the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Mark Meadows said he would give Congress all his text messages that were pertinent to the Jan 6 investigation, but he seems to have hidden some.
Bogus Johnson threatened to privatize the UK passport office because it is not keeping up with applications.
Privatizing it would in theory enable the same amount of money to hire more workers. But some of those funds would be diverted to profits. Meanwhile, those workers would be inexperienced and desperate. Overall I think this would result in worse service. But it would result in more profits, which is what a neoliberal really wants.
This article presents the argument that the "go back to Mexico and wait" policy at the border with Mexico can't be terminated by the executive branch because it was somehow required by Congress.
Does anyone know more details? Is it true? If so, what exactly was it that Congress did?
In Australia, poor people need to pay for funeral insurance. A company that insured many indigenous people turned out to be a fraud, and now those who paid for the insurance can't have funerals.
Poor people should not have to pay for funerals — not at all. A reasonable, non-luxurious funeral should be the norm, and the state should pay for that.
The lavish and expensive funerals that are usual in the US are not fraudulent like Youpla, but they are predatory. Your dead relative won't notice what the coffin is made of, and a well-embalmed and sculptured corpse won't be any more alive than one which decays.
Let's resist the social pressure for this and other sorts of competitive conspicuous consumption, and spend money on goods and services that are actually useful for the living. For instance, the opportunity for the relatives and friends of the deceased to meet and talk is the part of a funeral that serves them rather than a business.
The WHO warns that the world has blinded itself to the evolution of Covid-19 by eliminating massive testing.
Putin seems to be preparing to send a large force to Transnistria, an eastern sliver of Moldova which borders Ukraine and which was set up by separatists in 1992 and hosts a small detachment of the Russian army.
US citizens: Demand that Big Food and Soda disclose their global political activities and spending.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Green New Deal for Cities Act.
US citizens: tell Biden you support regulation of "ghost guns".
*Billionaires Do Not Give Anything to Society — They Take From It.*
I think one of his points is not 100% true — there are a few exceptions. Thomas Edison built a business empire based on inventions, some of which he invented on his own. Most were developed with others that worked under his direction, and I think he deserves some of the credit for those too.
Steve Jobs did not invent anything, but Apple made important innovations in computer and systems. Some of those innovations were good. Others were evil, and they reflected Apple's power and Jobs's lack of respect for others' rights.
This side issue doesn't invalidate the article overall.
*"Soft Climate Denial": The Biden administration claims to "believe the science" on climate, but its actions need to catch up with its words.*
We should recognize that this is only partly his fault. Biden has tried to do a lot more, and plutocratists (Republicans, Manchin and Sinema) have blocked it.
*Six Ideas to Address High Gas Prices That Won’t Fan the Flames of [global heating].* And why even temporarily reducing the taxes on gasoline is harmful.
Motorists perceive increases in tax on gasoline as pressure. They attribute that pressure to the government and may protest. But actually that pressure comes from the disaster our fossil fuel use is creating. If we are wise, we will recognize that we dare not press back against it.
Philadelphia ended its newly restored mask requirement after just a few days on seeing that new Covid-19 cases had leveled off anyway.
I think they should have continued the mask mandate, so as to reduce the number of new cases and spare some people the risks of catching Covid-19. These risks include death, which is unlikely for vaccinated people, plus a fate worse than death — lasting disablement.
France reelected plutocratist President Macron rather than the extreme right-wing Le Pen.
*The US Spent 7.5 Times More on Nuclear Weapons Than Global Vaccine Donations.
This is the second level of an outrage. The first level is allowing the Covid-19 vaccines to be monopolized and thus very expensive, so that poor countries need to solicit donations instead of making their own.
Biden endorsed the proposal to waive these rules for the specific case of Covid-19 vaccines, but the US was as eager as other countries to impose these deadly rules world-wide in the 1990s.
Parents of trans-kids talk about the Republican persecution that is just getting started.
The EU is considering a program to systematically test 12,000 suspected toxic chemicals that appear to endanger wildlife and humans, and vigorously ban those that are verified as dangerous.
Forensic examiners studying corpses of women killed by the Putin forces say that the women were raped first. Presumably also by the Putin forces.
Many living Ukrainian women describe being raped by soldiers in the Putin forces.
When people are ashamed of having been raped, that reflects an unjust way of thinking in their own society — the injustice of blaming the victim. Shame on those who do this! It is the perpetrator that deserves the blame.
Rebecca Solnit: *Ukraine has taught us all a lesson in moral courage.*
This lesson is applicable to any cause that requires making sacrifices for the general good — even when they are smaller sacrifices that don't generally involve violence and wounds. Climate defense, and defeating nonfree software, are two of many examples.
It is no longer possible to give the Human Rights Press Awards in Hong Kong. Giving the award would be considered a crime. The winners would very likely have been charged already.
I would suggest that the club continue to have a press freedom committee, and state publicly that it no longer has any members.
The expectancy of healthy life in England is now almost 20 years less for poor people than for better-off people.
This is surely due to the ever-increasing privations imposed by plutocratist politicians, specifically Tories.
I wonder how large this difference was in 2005, during the last time Labour was in power.
*How bad do things have to get in Britain before we start to see solidarity emerge?* There is no telling how bad, because the right wing flies into mad hatred when anyone shows a hint of supporting a left-wing cause.
Hong Kong reporters (some of whom no longer do journalism) talk about the extreme propaganda requirements that China has imposed.
Erdoğan displays his Humpty Dumpty idea of justice: the nonviolent protest in Gezi Park declared "trying to overthrow the government".
Most US states now report Covid cases every week, instead of every day. This imitates bad judgment of the CDC. The result is that detecting trends can take several weeks.
The world is about to have a shortage of the main kinds of vegetable oils. Global heating is implicated for most of them.
Florida now has a special thug department for voter-fraud.
Since real voter-fraud is so rare, I expect it will spend most of its time pursuing vague or false suspicions, the way Republicans try to prosecute women that have miscarriages — all with the aim of frightening blacks out of voting.
*Texas death row prisoner Melissa Lucio granted stay of execution.*
Jurors in her trial have stated that they may have made a mistake in convicting her.
The bullshitter has been found in contempt of court, and will be fined ten thousand dollars per day until he hands over the subpoena'd evidence.
What a weak action by the judge! A fine so small means nothing to a putative billionaire. For a measly $3,650,000 per year, he will get the opportunity to vaunt his defiance of all authority.
To have a chance of making him comply, the court should fine him 10 million dollars a day — or jail him.
US citizens: call for justice for Patrick Lyoya — fire and prosecute the killer thug.
Also call for a federal investigation into the murder and racism in the Grand Rapids Thug Department, and support alternative approaches to policing
US citizens: phone the White House and call on Biden to finalize the non-nuclear deal with Iran.
An idea for reducing gun violence in the US: to alter common situations to be less threatening and easier to handle without violence.
It appears that any machine learning model can be backdoored during training. The backdoor makes it possible to fool the model during real use.
The EFF explains the principles by which US law rejected forced arbitration, until plutocratists on the Supreme Court started trashing those principles in the 1980s.
*Pointing out racial disparities in COVID-19 makes white people more reckless.*
In other words, they think, "The danger is for blacks, so I must be safe."
Wrong!
*Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.*
Jonathan Haidt puts the blame on the changes that converted social media platforms into antisocial media, almost tailor-made to encourage factional hatred. The article ends with recommendations for reforming these platforms that he argues could correct the problem.
I wish he didn't use the term "consume" in regard to works of authorship. That word's implications are all wrong. To consume food means to break it down into small building blocks and extract what is useful, to build into other things. That is not what we do with text we read.
The word "absorb" is not very good, but it avoids part of what's bad about "consume".
A school district in Pennsylvania has refused to allow the an extracurricular activities club sponsored by the Satanic Temple. However, it has allowed a similar club sponsored by a Christian church.
This is unconstitutional and is likely to lead to a lawsuit.
(satire) *Twitter, Enemy Of First Amendment Rights, Permanently Bans The Onion.*
(satire) *Our Intern Is Being Forced Into A Hunger Strike Until Twitter Lifts [Ban on The Onion].*
*Replacing NSW coal plant with renewables would create thousands more jobs than gas, report says.*
*The key to winning the climate debate isn’t economics: it’s health.*
Global heating effects are already killing substantial numbers of people, and the GDP is not a very good way to measure that. It is also causing sicknesses that will later cause premature death for a considerable fraction. (For instance, breathing smoke from wildfires.) That doesn't show up in today's GDP at all.
I hazard a guess that the people who think about global heating in terms of effect on the GDP are the people who simply don't recognize how dangerous it is.
Anti-sex feminism saw the pornography that shows exploitative sex, and took alarm. Now right-wing extremists are using that to persecute the queer.
They want to reimpose the prudery of the 1950s. Will we let them?
Proposing that tech companies have made a religion out of working for the company, and expect/require all employees to be believers.
In Ukrainian, "rashism" means Russian fascism — except that the joke has additional layers in the Ukrainian context.
The Putin forces fired flechette shells in Bucha a few days before leaving. The flechettes have been found in corpses of civilians.
Using those weapons in a built-up civilian area, such as Bucha, is a war crime.
Other civilians in Bucha were killed by cluster bombs.
Florida banned some math textbooks because they contain examples involving data about racism.
I sense something artificial in the examples described in this article. I am sure that those passages were written that way out of a desire to encourage students to be aware in a general way of the phenomenon of racism, and subtly encourage them to think about the issue. But that is a well-known fact of life, that the students experience in their own lives. Only a white supremacist could demand denying it entirely.
Many math problems are formulated in terms of numbers of various sorts of fruits. Will Florida Republicans find them in violation of the new law restricting teaching about homosexual relationships?
The UK's minister of personal control and repression misled Parliament officially.
Interviews with Muslims in Delhi who were victims of a pogrom stirred up by the ruling BJP party and its Hinduismist movement.
CNN's opinion: We shouldn’t trust Musk’s plans to transform Twitter.
He has made cars that have surveillance engines, so we should hardly trust him with any other digital systems.
Activists blocked the door of a printing plant in New York City, which prints the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, to protest their lousy coverage of global heating and the disaster it is causing.
*Drug Policy Alliance Applauds Biden's Embrace of Harm Reduction.*
*Gun violence becomes leading cause of death among US youth, data shows.*
This includes accidents and suicides as well as fighting and murder. Fewer guns makes all of them less frequent, and not just for teenagers.
*Homes For Ukraine whistleblower says UK refugee scheme is "designed to fail".* Basically, Bogus Johnson wants to pretend to be offering asylum to Ukrainian refugees without actually giving it to very many.
New Mexico now has fast-growing wildfires.
A long-term increasing drought covers the US southwest, so fast-spreading fires will become the norm.
Robert Reich: *Elon Musk wants to own Twitter to protect his "freedom", not everyone else's.*
Nominally-sovereign countries on the borders of wealthy countries have been conscripted as border zones to slow migration.
President Rajapaksa has united Sri Lanka's opposition; can they push him out?
(satire) *Ikea Wardrobe Contains Cheap, Poorly Constructed Fantasy World Inside.*
South Africa had flooding from rain that went on and on. The government dares to say that this is global heating at work.
I am disappointed that it used the neutral term "climate change", but at least it gets the substance right.
70% of Covid patients who are hospitalized still have serious problems a year later.
*Once a form of evidence is accepted by a judge, [US] legal precedent makes it incredibly difficult to keep even the most questionable forensic practices out of court.*
*More Than Half of US Student Loan Borrowers Say They Can't Afford [even a] Single Payment.*
An Oklahoma library board's Republican censorship decision required cancellation of the romance book club.
The House minority leader, McCarthy, privately said after the Jan 6 coup attempt that the corrupter should resign. Then, when he recognized how completely the Republican Party had morphed into the Big Lie Party, he denied saying that.
This is an illustration of how the corrupter uses power to turn tens of millions of people into liars.
*Katie Porter Leads Letter Urging Biden Not to Dump More Money Into Medicare Advantage*.
*"Private contractors, through Medicare Advantage plans, game the system and bill patients as sicker than they are to rake in billions of taxpayer dollars."*
(satire) *Struggling AMC Threatens To Clamp Down On Theater Sharing.*
*Lifting of Covid mask mandate on US transportation horrifies health experts.*
It horrifies me, too. Yesterday I went to a party in a well-ventilated space. When I got to the transfer station at Park Street I found that the train line from there was shut down; we had to take shuttle buses instead. There were not enough shuttles so there was a long line. People were waiting in line for half an hour, standing quite close to strangers, to board a packed bus; most of them had no masks. I decided not to ride a bus under conditions like that.
I waited quite some time and saw that the line was not getting shorter, so I tried to look for a taxi. No one could point me at a functioning taxi stand, there in the heart of Boston. A hotel bell captain tried to phone for a taxi for me, and got no answer. I did see some taxis go by in the street but there was little chance of finding an empty one.
On returning to the shuttle stop, I found that the line had become short and buses were no longer packed. I reached the party over two hours delayed; many of the people had already left.
A mask requirement by itself would not have prevented this problem, and I would not ride on a packed bus even if everyone had a mask. But it would have reduced the amount of infection that took place on those crowded buses.
The airlines that have gleefully eliminated mask requirements will regret it when sick employees lead to cancelling flights.
US citizens: call on Biden to remove Ginni Thomas from the Library of Congress.
US citizens: tell the SEC you support new transparency rules for private equity funds.
I think we need to regulate them a lot more than this, but maybe the SEC can't go that far on its own without new laws.
US citizens: call on Biden to sign up the US to the International Criminal Court.
New Spanish pun: las máscaras
US citizens: call on your congressional representative to pass Biden's billionaire tax.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Geoengineering schemes that work by reflecting sunlight from the upper atmosphere carry a risk of greatly increasing malaria.
California is building renewable electric generation and large batteries in a way that shows the world what everyone should do.
Mexico is nationalizing lithium deposits.
Warning to Australian politicians: the export market for coal will vanish in a few years. It must stop building expensive new coal facilities that will never make a profit.
Meanwhile, Australia imports nearly all its oil. It needs to invest in renewable power for vehicles.
OSHA must start planning to protect American workers from the heat that is coming.
The only way to protect workers from the even worse heat of 30 years from now is to curb global heating.
Physicians for Human Rights called on Biden to stop defending the cruel family-separation policy of the vicious president and instead pay compensation to the victims.
*Atlanta Apple Store Workers File for Company's First Union Election in US.*
Until we can make Apple respect users' freedom, or get rid of it, at least its workers should have a union.
*DOJ Files Appeal to Revive Travel Mask Mandate.*
One ethnic group in Tanzania has taken up the project of defending lions, while also protecting livestock from lions.
New Zealand agreed to extradite to China a defendant accused of murder there. Now there is a campaign not to extradite him, because China might torture him and give him an unfair trial.
Indeed, that is quite possible. However, it is not only China that does this. The campaign against extraditing Julian Assange to the US cites the danger of similar conduct by the US.
Florida Republicans have used gerrymandering to assure they will control 20 out of the state's 28 congressional seats.
Republicans do have a majority in Florida, but nothing like that.
Bernie Sanders: the US should stop subsidizing any part of Bezos's space business. He can afford it himself.
The mayor of Mariupol accuses the Putin forces of secretly burying corpses lying around in Mariupol, to cover up the number of casualties. And, in some cases, possible war crimes.
As long as the Putin forces hold Mariupol it will never be possible to check whether that is true.
Guardian journalists have found physical evidence that the Putin forces used cluster bombs on civilian area in towns north of Kiev.
The evidence includes, among other things, fragments found in corpses.
This article makes much of the fact that most countries in the world have signed the treaty to ban cluster bombs. However, the major powers have not signed it, and I don't think "that's forbidden" is a valid moral argument in regard to the countries that have not signed.
Rather, the valid moral argument to condemn the use of cluster bombs is the practical consequence of using them: the unexploded submunitions keep killing civilians (especially children) for decades after the war.
It is also true that using these or other powerful munitions in civilian areas is a war crime.
Sami defending their use of land for reindeer herding are in conflict with plans to make steel with less carbon emissions.
Sustainable steel is crucial for all of society; reindeer herding is a niche activity. If the two inescapably conflict, in principle we should approve the mine and the wind farms.
But not necessarily the specific plans that have been proposed. Wind farms can go in various places. Other places might cost more, but that might be a good compromise. If compromise increases the cost of mining, the Sami's interest can justify that.
We can't trust companies, and especially not mining companies. Before approving any specific plans, we should study them in minute detail looking for deceptions, and for promises they might wiggle out of — or that might be impossible to carry out.
I also wonder whether the existing mines could be used for the new, less-polluting steel plant. Perhaps the company hopes that increased output will cover the cost of building the new plant. If so, perhaps the state should pay for it as a replacement, and own it.
We are running out of time to prosecute the wrecker for trying to overthrow the US government and seize power.
*US police have killed nearly 600 people in traffic stops since 2017, data shows.*
Putin ordered his forces to blockade Mariupol so that no civilians can possibly flee. It would also stop soldiers from getting out, but I don't think there was much chance of that anyway. Putin has been taking strong measures to keep civilians from escaping. I can think of a few possible motives:
Students in Vermont Law School have demanded that a school get rid of a mural which depicts the Underground Railroad (in which whites helped escaped slaves reach Canada and freedom) in a tone they don't agree with.
I have no opinion on the mural itself, because I have not seen it. I don't know whether I would agree with the reported criticism. It doesn't say precisely what aspects of the mural are being criticized, and I don't know if I would recognize them without more explanation.
I think the court's ruling was correct. To remove a piece of art from view is not "distortion, mutilation, or … modification", just as deleting a file does not make a modified version of it.
It would be ludicrous to give whoever painted a mural in a publicly visible place the power to require it to be preserved there forever. Imagine if the mural showed adulation for Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin — should this compel the building's owner to display propaganda for them? The school must have the choice to cover up or paint over art that it does not wish to display. Indeed, it may someday wish to remodel or demolish the building, and eliminate that wall entirely.
Although this means the school has the right to decide to hide the mural, I disapprove of that decision. It is partly for the reasons stated in the article, but it is more than that.
Although I am not sure what aspects of the mural some students criticize, I can tell that it is a matter of nuance. It is not like a painting that admires Trumputin. That means that the critics are being demanding more than anyone in a free society has a right to demand. They must learn to respect disagreement on such points. I say this without knowing whether I would agree or disagree with them on their specific criticisms of the mural.
Now Arizona is the state that's dealing with a wildfire that is much worse than normal.
*Prosecutor drops all charges against Pamela Moses, jailed over voting error.*
*Vaccination Could Have Prevented 3 in 5 US Covid Deaths Since June 2021: Analysis.*
Zelenskyy accused Putin of planning to hold a worthless "referendum" in conquered areas of Ukraine. He did that in Crimea after conquering it, and the election was clearly bogus.
An Indian cabinet minister faced protests when visiting UC Berkeley for the Modi government's policies of religious persecution.
*A senior Russian military commander has said that the goal of [Putin's] new offensive is to seize control of southern Ukraine and form a land bridge to Crimea, indicating that Russia plans a permanent occupation of Ukrainian territory taken in the war.*
Another part of the statement suggests that Putin wants to conquer Odessa as well.
Scientists call for limiting the number of satellites in near-Earth orbit to avoid collisions.
The desire of a company to launch thousands of satellites is of no importance compared to this.
Modi arrested a Dalit activist elected official for accusing Modi of admiring the fanatical assassin of Mahatma Gandhi.
I don't know whether Modi actually admires him, but his party is allied with the RSS which inspired the assassin.
After years without live shows to see, some people have lost their inhibitions about disrupting shows.
With so much Covid-19 spreading around, I think it is foolhardy to go to any indoor live show where people will not follow mask discipline and stay distant from each other.
The major Australian parties are all planet-roasters.
The US should speed up the conversion of US steel production to use hydrogen instead of coal.
Biden plans to offer money to keep unprofitable nuclear power plants operating.
Shutting down a nuclear power plant has a plus — it avoids making more radioactive material and gets a start on cleaning up the site.
I wonder how these payments will work. Will they be a simple subsidy? Or would the company have to pay something in return — perhaps its own stock? I think that when the state tries to aid a company, it should never be a simple subsidy; the state should demand payment in shares.
The most basic way to prevent the switch from nuclear power to fossil fuel power is to tax the use of fossil fuels heavily. That would not lead to building any new nuclear plants, as that is far too expensive, but it would encourage building renewable energy.
The enormous profits to be made from drug patents create pressure to corrupt the details of the patent system.
That's aside from the question of whether patents should apply to medicine, or to any other field.
The level of dissent in Shanghai is so high that it is saturating China's censorship army.
It looks like someone used Pegasus to snoop on the phones of Catalunya's officials. They accuse the government of Spain.
More about the US mask mandate, whose loss will increase the danger to everyone in the US.
*“No Wars, No Warming‘: Extinction Rebellion Marches on NYC.*
Supporting Ukraine in defeating the Putin forces is a necessary part of discouraging wars launched by states against states. However, among US wars since 1960, that is an exception. For most of them, the US had no valid grounds for fighting.
Support for Ukraine is a small fraction of US military spending; we could reduce it greatly, especially via new nuclear diplomacy.
Thus, we can cut the US military budget while supporting Ukraine as much as it needs.
Putin's invasion is leading to disaster for the whole world, as it interferes with urgent climate defense measures.
*Progressives Say Climate Inaction, Student Debt Explain Biden's Drop in Support Among Young Voters.*
They reduce my support for him, too. However, they do not make planet-roaster Republicans and plutocratist Democrats any better for us than they used to be.
US citizens: call on Congress to have the US lead the IMF to give Ukraine debt relief.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on airlines to designate some flights as masks-required.
The UK has forbidden a P&O ferry to operate, after inspecting it and finding 31 different safety failures.
I have a suspicion that these failures are the result of skimping. It is urgent for the UK to bring in new requirements about the minimum pay for the crew, which the Tories said they would bring in when P&O fired all the crew in order to use subcontracted workers instead.
* It's time to talk honestly about "fewer and less": fewer people consuming less energy and materials.*
There will surely have fewer people in 2100; what is not certain is whether the population will decrease the humane way or the brutal way. Likewise, human use of resources will almost surely be less in 2100; what is not certain is whether people will have comfortable lives or live in squalor. Those questions are political questions.
The European Court of Human Rights has the power to garnish payments for oil coming in to Russia as reparations for Russia's damage to Ukraine.
(satire) *Health Insurance Plan [Covers Only] Random Hippopotamus Attacks.*
*More Fracked Gas Exports Will Worsen Climate Emergency. Send Heat Pumps Instead.*
This is basically correct, but in practice it isn't that simple. For a heat pump system to do good, it needs to be first built, then installed. I doubt that the world's capacity to build heat pumps can deliver enough by next winter to avoid shivering in Europe, and I doubt that the capacity there to install them is enough either.
No business will choose to build so much new capacity that it will satisfy the whole market in a year and put itself out of business. With public subsidy and careful planning, we could arrange to do the whole job in a few years. In parallel with that, we could insulate houses in their hundreds of millions. We should do this, but we can't do it by next winter.
(satire) *Gymnastics Program Gives Child Self-Discipline Needed To Sustain Lifelong Eating Disorder.*
Around 20,000 Ukrainians got visas to visit the UK for farm work, and some were enslaved once there.
Russian journalist Mikhail Afanasyev: * 11 members of the Russian National Guard from his home region of Khakassia had refused to fight in Ukraine, he said, and the military was hiding information about their unit’s casualties from the public.*
Now he is waiting for state censorship thugs to arrest him and accuse him for "fake news".
Two Floridians have pleaded guilty to voting twice in the 2020 presidential election. Both got a slap on the wrist.
One is a registered Republican; the other has no party affiliation but is probably a Republican, since they live in a suburb whose inhabitants are nearly all white and retired.
Republicans' outrage against voter fraud seems to be limited to the possibility of improper voting for Democrats.
Elon Musk said that if he buys Twitter, he would make its recommendation algorithm free software. More precisely, he said "open source", but it's almost the same in practice. There are a few programs which are open source but not free, as explained in https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html.
A study of gun violence records from California shows that starting to live in a house where there is a gun correlates with increased danger of being killed by domestic violence, and is no protection against killing by strangers.
DeSantis has found a way to bully Disney into silence on the question of queer rights, by proposing a law that would take away Disney's special privileges — in 2023. This means that that the law would pressure Disney to keep quiet for the 2022 election.
This contest pitches one kind of corruption against another. Companies such as Disney should not have much political influence on elections; that influence is how plutocracy works. That power undermines democracy.
However, Republicans also undermine democracy.
Woe is my country, caught between these dangers.
*US justice department appeals mask mandate ruling after CDC request.*
Australia's planet-roaster government proposes to spend lots of money building dams that may not serve any other purpose. Nominally they will collect water for irrigation, but they have not been chosen to provide useful irrigation. They were chosen to reward a right-wing governing party's voters.
One thing they will surely do is release lots of CO2 as the concrete sets.
Bogus Johnson said something valid, for once: he acknowledged that there is no chance of a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia just now.
The reason is that the sides are too far apart. Each side would rather fight than agree to terms that the other side might possibly accept. Putin wants to seize additional parts of Ukraine's territory, and Ukraine wants to recapture the areas that the Putin forces have already taken, starting in 2014. Each side sees a hope of winning. So they will fight.
Aside from territory, Ukraine also wants to recover the citizens who were taken to Russia and don't see a way to get out.
After one side or both sides recognize that the victory it had sought is unattainable, they may converge on an idea of peace that they could agree on.
For now, the best thing to do is to help Ukraine make Putin recognize that victory is impossible and he may as well accept a peace deal that gives him at least something.
Bogus Johnson was compelled to abandon the attempt to prevent an investigation into his lies about participating in parties at work during the time when he had made such parties illegal.
*[Jeremy Corbin] does not blame Nato for Russian invasion but questions role of military alliances.*
He said he *hoped military alliances like Nato could be ultimately disbanded, saying they could create "greater danger" in the world.*
I don't agree with him on that point, but I don't consider that position horrible. Despite that disagreement, I still support Corbyn. Overall, he is the one I would trust to fight plutocracy.
Protected nature reserves can ensure the survival of species, but that is not automatic. Researchers are now studying what causes a given nature reserve to succeed or fail with any particular species.
*America’s crime panic: why we can’t afford to repeat mistakes of the 90s.*
The mistakes were hiring more thugs, stop-and-search, and longer prison terms.
Geoengineering methods designed to cool the Earth could also exacerbate malaria.
Those methods would fail to counteract the acidification of the oceans, caused by the CO2 dissolving in them. That would kill a large fraction of ocean life.
Rep. Raskin, of the January 6 investigation committee, asserted that the insurrection was a coup attempt organized by the corrupter.
Workers in a major Apple store seek to unionize. As long as Apple stores exist, it would be good for their workers to have a union — but due to the injustice of Apple's hardware and software, what we should really wish for is the elimination of Apple's products (along with products running Android and Windows).
Everyone: call on Boeing to stop funding insurrectionist candidates.
Here's more information.
US citizens: Tell Biden, we're counting on you to seal the Iran deal.
US citizens: call on Congress to let its staff form a union.
*Starbucks Workers Urge Congress to Grill CEO Howard Schultz on Union-Busting.*
Senator Warren states what Democrats need to do to avoid losing Congress in November.
However, they also need to defeat the Republican corrupt election officials plot. Robert Reich points to a description of the Republican plan to install state election officials who will try to steal elections for offices at all levels, state and federal.
What he sent was a youtube URL. I won't direct people to run nonfree Javascript code so I converted it into an invidious proxy URL. Invidio.us will ask you to choose one of the many proxy sites to watch the video from.
There is also the problem of gerrymandering and voter suppression.
*DOJ Urged to Probe Whether Trump "Willfully Mutilated and Destroyed" Jan. 6 Call Logs.*
Republican censorship campaigns have reached public libraries too.
(satire) *Company Referral Program Offers Bonuses For Recommending Potential Employees To Fire.*
Australia vows unending hatred for refugees that arrived by boat. Even if they move to New Zealand and become citizens there, Australia will not let them live in Australia as New Zealand citizens generally can.
The US does an abominable job of protecting new mothers' health. For black new mothers, it does even worse.
*No, more police won’t make New Yorkers — or anyone else — safer. It never does.*
*Most workers at large retail and food corporations receive less than $15 an hour.* That is not a living wage nowadays.
Autopsy confirmed that Patrick Lyoya, unarmed, was shot by a Michigan thug who was on top of Lyoya while he was lying face down on the ground.
More info about the situation in which he was killed.
I agree with Lyoya's relatives that this was this was totally gratuitous, and inexcusable. Let's see charges against the thug!
In some high schools, boys harass female teachers as well as female students.
Why does this happen? Are teachers not allowed to punish students for harassing students and teachers?
Ukraine's latest stamp gives the finger to the Moskva. It is selling fast.
The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys were planning something together for Jan 6.
Some of them said they were in communication with extremist Rep. Ronny Jackson.
Argentina has legalized abortion, but one rogue prosecutor decided to prosecute an abortion doctor anyway.
When countries turn to the IMF for loans for coping with Covid-19, it almost always demands they adopt crush-the-poor policies.
The IMF has done this for decades. In the 1980s it was famous for making countries charge money for public school.
(satire) *Airlines Announce It Safe To Fly Planes Indoors Again.*
Threats of violence from right-wing fanatics forced the Family Sex Show to cancel its performances. They consist of the very beginning of sex education.
(satire) *Conservative Parents Explain Why They Are Boycotting Disney.*
The Disney streaming channel is an injustice for real — just like all other streaming channels. They all impose DRM, all snoop on you all demand you sign an antisocial contract promising not to share, and they all require you to run nonfree software
including the DRM software, Only the details differ.
* After decades of interfering in the island nation with nuclear testing, disposal of radioactive waste, and human experimentation, U.S. leaders are considering a formal apology.*
A study found that state-legalized recreational marijuana correlates with "significant reductions in the volume of prescriptions within the drug classes that align with the medical indications for pain, depression, anxiety, sleep, psychosis, and seizures."
Payment companies and stores save money by pushing people to pay using digital systems, but if we don't maintain the use of cash, we will all lose.
Long before there was any system for digital payments, a think tank predicted that those systems would be every repressive regime's dream.
The main reason I insist on paying only cash to buy products is not my own privacy — though I appreciate that too — but rather to defend the privacy of the heroic journalists and their heroic sources, the whistleblowers.
We all depend on them, for our freedom.
Please support the defense of cash. When you leave the house, bring a reasonable amount with you for the day's purchases, and use the cash at least sometimes.
If at a store you don't have enough cash, that doesn't mean you have to pay with a card or give up. You can go to an ATM, get cash, then return to the store. With that method, the bank learns only where you were when you got the cash, and the store doesn't learn anything about you.
Beware of the defeatists who predict that surveillance is (or will become) so complete that there is no use even trying for privacy. They get a perverse pleasure from urging people to despair and give up. You can tell them, "On something important, only fools give up without a fight."
The drastically wasteful business of "fast fashion" is accelerating into even more wasteful "ultra-fast fashion".
Its predatory marketing sets up a competition of consumption which wealthy "mean girls" can use to sneer at and exclude other girls. It amounts to an addiction, but an addiction of social groups rather than individuals, so that your social circle would pressure you do join in.
It seems to be bad for almost everyone, except the few who win the game and don't get in money trouble, and the few business owners that succeed.
I wonder what happens to the now-unfashionable purchases of a few months ago. Are they given away to frugal people?
Some parents of sailors on the Moskva know their children are alive. A few have been told that their children are dead. But many others can't get any information.
*India has been accused of attempting to delay an effort by the World Health Organization to revise the global death toll from Covid-19 after its calculations suggested that the country had under counted its dead by an estimated 3.5 million.*
The Hindu-theocratic movement whose party rules India is converting traditional religious festivals into violent pogroms against Muslims.
*Progressive International Outlines Four Ways to End IMF's 'Abuse of Power'.*
They say, "Only strong mechanisms of accountability -— changing both who decides and how -— can end the Fund's impunity."
One Republican extremist judge overturned the US mask mandate for transportation of all kinds.
I am very worried about the danger that will result from this. I hope the government appeals it.
There is evidence that Ukraine has used cluster bombs in fighting the Putin forces.
It appears that Ukraine used them on Putin's military, not on civilians. But regardless of who the immediate target is, cluster bombs tend to harm civilians later, because the bomb-lets lie around and can be set off later by civilians, even children.
Industry groups representing companies that systematically eliminate privacy are taking control of the development of state laws that supposedly aim to protect privacy.
These laws are mainly based on trying to limit how companies can use data once collected. That approach is inherently inadequate: it may reduce certain annoyances but what it can't provide is actual privacy. To do that, we must limit the collection of data. and that can only be done by limiting what kinds of data systems can be designed to collect.
Everyone: tell Amazon to stop blocking the Amazon Labor Union.
Everyone: call on Amazon to stop selling bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.
US citizens: call on the Senate to address marijuana policy reform.
US citizens: insist that US schools must teach American history, not just straight white history.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare climate an emergency under the National Emergencies Act. This would give him several useful powers to start climate defense.
Everyone: call on British Columbia to protect old-growth forests.
China is failing at the task of distributing food to everyone in Shanghai during lockdown. People who have run out of food and are not allowed to go out and get any.
I am surprised that China cannot organize people to walk around with pressurized air breathing masks to distribute food to everyone. It would be worth the trouble of that, to get rid of Covid-19 in Shanghai instead of suffering all the damage it would do — if it is possible.
*Labour split by leadership call for action against climate crisis blockades.*
The Tanglewood Festival Chorus joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the first concert without masks since two years ago. More than 30 of them caught Covid-19 there.
I suppose they were singing, "Imagine there's no Covid."
The EU accuses right-wing extremist Marine Le Pen of using EU funds to pay to hold meetings of her anti-EU party.
Amber was enslaved by a gang of rapists, then accused by the British state of being their assistant. Then prosecutors changed their mind and she identified some of the rapists — only to find that prosecutors had labeled her a "co-conspirator."
Putin has reportedly taken thousands of Ukrainian children and plan to send some of them to orphanages in Russia.
Some of these cases have been independently confirmed, at least partially. It appears that Kira really can talk with her grandfather, but will Putin's forces let her leave?
Christians are being forced out of the Christian quarter of old Jerusalem.
*Top 5 Charter School Myths Debunked.* "Charter schools" are funded by the government, but in other respects they act like private schools. So we get the worst of both sides.
Ralph Nader: *Consumer Protection Progress and Regress — From the Sixties to Now.*
* A refugee who fled torture in Rwanda and was given asylum in the UK has criticised [UK] government plans to fly unauthorised migrants to his home country.*
Jackie Robinson was an antiracist campaigner, both before and after he played major-league baseball.
Florida has been an abortion refuge for the southeast of the US. The new restriction there will oppress millions of US women.
Valerie Tarico: *Why I Am Pro-Abortion, Not Just Pro-Choice*.
I too am pro-abortion. I think her reasons are good, but my own principal reasons are very different. The most important one is that fewer births will reduce the horror of global heating disaster.
*Australia failing its own citizens held in 'sordid' camps in Syria.*
*Military and Economic Power Once Again Fail to Produce Happiness.*
*Rich countries that let inequality run rampant make citizens unhappy.*
Some Muslims in Sweden are violently crazed, trying to prevent a right-wing group from burning a Qur'an.
Freedom of speech includes the right to offend anyone — even you, even me. If someone burns your sacred book in a free country, whichever book that may be, you just have to live with it.
Those who demand the privilege to punish people who offend them are fighting against other people's freedom. The state must never surrender to that.
Australia is sending 2000 "pod homes" to victims of flooding.
How about providing these to homeless people, too?
New York's mayor called for an increase in state psychiatric hospital facilities as a way to deal with the recent subway shooting.
That is a step in the right direction, and better than what I had expected.
Interviews with people in towns near the Donetsk front line.
The World Food Program warns of starvation in Mariupol, present and future, after Putin's forces have stopped them from bring food to the civilians there.
Scientist Emma Smart has started a hunger strike in jail after being held for extra time after her nonviolent protest for climate defense.
(satire) *God Who Took Form Of Swan Finding It Much Harder To Seduce Women Than Expected.*
Gina McCarthy, Biden's main climate advisor, is reportedly planning to quit because she little opportunity to make progress, with climate legislation blocked by the Republicans and Manchin.
I don't know whether having done bankruptcy law work for a few failing fossil fuel companies implies that her deputy has planet roaster sympathies. It might.
Ukraine accuses the Putin forces of kidnapping Ukrainian children and taking them by force to Russia.
If this is true, I can imagine that Putin might make it extremely hard for Ukraine, or their relatives, to find them in Russia and ask where they would rather go.
Rape of civilians is a frequent concomitant of war, but it is very rarely punished as a war crime.
It seems to me that there are two big practical obstacles to prosecution of war rapists:
There is a project to reintroduce California condors to northern California, where some of them lived until 1892.
We reintroduce condors (or other species) to places that were once good habitat for them, and expect them to live there. But will those same places be good habitat for them in 2060, or 2100? Will anyplace on Earth be good habitat for them?
After an unusual heavy rain that caused a local disaster, South Africa is about to get one more.
Eastern Australia recently had a similar series of rain-driven floods.
These two regions are in comparable latitudes, and I suspect that the two series of floods are part of one single climatic pattern — due to global heating.
Women are starting to drive electric three-wheel minitaxies in Delhi.
I find it fun to ride in those. They exist in Latin America too.
On the spread of Agroecology as a movement to make farming more sustainable (and more efficient) by taking advantage of natural tendencies instead of overriding them.
The UK National Union of Students is under fire for for antisemitism.
Distinguishing between antisemitism and criticism of Israel's policy requires care. I take care because I condemn antisemitism and I oppose the occupation of Palestine.
The article presents an old example from an NUS leader which is real antisemitism. However, the NUS has adopted the IHRA's classificatory scheme for antisemitism as a criterion for judgment. That draws the line at the wrong place, and thus systematically opens the door to repressing criticism of the occupation of Palestine. Past examples suggest that some organizations, perhaps including the British government, will try to make the NUS expel all those who criticize it.
(satire) *Supreme Court IT Guy Walks Ketanji Brown Jackson Through Logging Into Gavel.*
*Biden EPA Unveils 'First-Ever' Blueprint to Protect Endangered Species From Pesticides.*
The US deportation thugs are tracking the movements of 200,000 immigrants. Even worse, it is privatized. Activists are suing to find out what data they store.
Tracking people's movements is much less than keeping them in prison, but is this change being used as an opportunity to "jail" more people?
Biden has restarted the sale of oil and gas leases on public land, but multiplied the royalty rate by 3/2.
A big enough royalty rate could discourage investment in these leases, but I have a feeling that around 20% is not enough to do that. Furthermore, I have to ask, "18.75% of what?" Many oil wells are run by smaller companies that sell the oil to a big company. If this is 20% of what the small company charges the big company, it may not amount to much money, or much dissuasion.
Unless we have a long-term increasing carbon tax big enough to make new investments unprofitable, we will have too many.
Truck drivers protested again, this time against Greg Abbott's policy of searching all trucks entering Texas from Mexico, and made him cancel it.
The search was for smuggling, of goods or people. In principle, there is nothing wrong with checking for that, but the cost was disastrous.
An idea occurs to me. Every truck that crosses the border could be required to carry inside cameras and lamps that could be used at the border to inspect the inside of the cargo compartment quickly.
Since there are supposed to be people inside, this system would surveil any people unjustly.
Now that concert halls take a large fraction of the merch musicians sell there, musicians can't make a go of it
More about the loopholes that rich Americans use to pay very little tax.
Politics offers two ways to end the injustice of neoliberalism (the system that plutocracy imposes to serve the plutocrats): democratic socialism, and hate-based fascist authoritarianism.
The article describes neoliberalism as a "failure". In a sense, it is. Neoliberalism was presented (for instance, by Reagan) as a system that would serve people better in general. In those terms, it is a failure.
However, it's not a failure for the plutocrats. That's why they fight so hard against progressives.
But they might find fascism even more lucrative. Instead of corrupting and lobbying the legal system, they could wipe away all governmental respect for popular opposition to plutocracy.
*84% of US Teens Back Urgent Climate Action to Save Future Generations: Poll.*
More precisely, they agree that "If we don't address climate change today, it will be too late for future generations, making some parts of the planet unlivable."
Most have already seen the effects of global heating in the short period they have lived.
It may be that the term "climate change" is losing its distractive ability, for teenagers, since they know the reality it stands for. However, not everyone is a teenager, so I still make sure to use terms that were not chosen to downplay the point about which overall direction this change is going.
*Bank of America Accused of Using "Accounting Tricks as Real Climate Action."*
If your bank account is in a big bank, how about moving it to a local bank that invests in your local economy.
Ilhan Omar: *If we oppose investigations into countries, like our own, that haven't joined the ICC, how can we support an investigation into Russia, another country that hasn't joined the court?*
I personally commit no hypocrisy by calling for prosecution of Putinite war criminals, because I advocate joining the ICC, for the US and other countries.
Remember when the hate-spreader ordered various thugs to clear the protesters out of a park so he could walk through it? The ACLU sued, supported by the Department of Justice, and won an agreement from the Secret Service and the U.S. Park Police to make rules against various dangerous and unjustified tactics.
The Santa Ana thug department is investigating its own thugs' practice of playing loud Disney music to cause Youtube's automated filters to delete recordings of their actions.
The "Babies not Billionaires" bill is another version of the billionaire's tax.
Its feature is that it would require the IRS to audit annually everyone with over $100 million in assets. No more harping on poor people's child tax credit.
I support the substance of this bill because it will help make sure no children in the US have to grow up in poverty. But I dislike the name of this bill because it spreads the dangerous, obsolete idea that there is something good about having babies. On the contrary, it is important to reduce the birth rate to a low number.
Educated guesses about why Bogus Johnson proposes to send refugees to Rwanda.
(satire) NATO has offered Finland and Sweden gratis one-day trial membership in NATO.
Now that Australia has thrown away the precautions against the spread of Covid-19, lots of people go to sports events, concerts and so on, 3% of the population is immunocompromised and don't dare go.
Another 3% is immunocompromised and takes a wild risk by going anyway.
It would be so easy to require vaccination and reduce the threat to all those people.
In the short term, money spent buying Russian oil is blood money. In the long term view, money spent buying oil anywhere is blood money.
*USDA Conservation Program Must Be Reformed to Stop Funding Pollution, Report Shows.*
Let's not confuse the existence of an unconscious system which handles certain problems with "knowledge" about them. That is anthropomorphism,
coated with sloppy sentimentalism.
Plants that concentrate metals are scientifically interesting, and could eventually become useful for us. Transport of nutrients between trees by fungi is very scientifically interesting, and very important.
However, the article is philosophically confused when it equates having evolved to do something, with having "knowledge". There are parts of normal human brains which unconsciously do things — such as recognizing objects in a scene — which we don't know how to do. We have funded thousands of man-years of research into developing knowledge in an area that our brains have evolved to handle unconsciously. Likewise for the immune system, except that it may be hundreds of thousands of man-years.
The "computational" feats of slime molds may be appear philosophically amazing when we realize that the experiment arranged for them to act as a kind of analog computer. The operational amplifiers in an electronic analog computer don't know anything about the quantities that people are using them to compute.
China is struggling to quarantine everyone in Shanghai that tests positive for Covid-19.
It could be that Omicron spreads so easily that this approach can't work any more.
Farmers in one part of the UK used to keep ditches around the edges of their fields to drain excess rain. Then they filled these ditches and caused a problem of flooding in the area. I speculate that they were under competitive pressure to grow the maximum amount of crops, or fail. In other words, I suspect that the social system made it impossible for them to take the wise precaution. if so, we need to alter the system so that they can do so.
Australia's prime minister butters up Modi, chose a candidate for parliament who is of Indian origin and has posted valid criticism of Modi.
Right-wing government in New South Wales is selling lots of public housing.
I suspect that results in accommodating fewer, wealthier people in those buildings. That would increase the housing crunch for poor people.
Refugees in the UK respond to the Tory plan to send refugees to Rwanda.
Macron said he favors a Europe-wide limit on executive pay.
I advocate policies to limit the income of rich people, but that is not the best way to do it.
First, many rich people are executives of corporations, but not all. I think we should limit the income of all people with high incomes.
Second, arbitrary fixed limits tend to create economic paradoxes which people then try to game. Consider for instance the trucks that DeJoy wants to make the USPS buy, which are just a smidgen over an arbitrary weight at which certain environmental standards cease to apply.
Thus, instead of an absolute cap on some or all high incomes, I think a big increase in tax rates would do the job better.
In any case, it's good for the French president to advocate such a limit, but that doesn't mean it will happen. Such a change in EU policy is beyond Macron's power to implement.
The very high income of the CEO of Peugot-Chrysler-Fiat, mentioned in the article, should remind us of the harm done by mergers and reduced competition.
The Republican Party now campaigns based on hatred for homosexuals,
and for anyone who might have an association with homosexuals, or might persecute them less than Republican do.
New York City's new mayor is a surveillance night-mayor.
He plays on foolish demands for cops to find every criminal fast — which is impossible — as an excuse for surveillance and tracking of everyone.
Planet roasters in the UK parliament showed what weak loose screws they will cling to for support as they oppose actions that would start to defend the climate.
Afghanistan is arresting journalists because of what they report.
Israeli soldiers killed an unarmed, mostly-blind Palestinian who ran towards them after they fired warning shots.
They shot her in the legs, which should not have been fatal. She actually died because they then kept medics away from her for 15 minutes. That's a common practice of Israeli soldiers who have shot a Palestinian, and it often kills people who could have survived.
It seems to be a frequent pattern that people with sensory deficiencies get killed by "law enforcement". US thugs regularly do it too.
What can be done to put an end to these pointless killings?
Predictions that speculating in NFTs would be profitable have hit a painful counterexample: an NFT that sold for almost 3 million dollars a year ago has lost almost all of that value
There is art involved in that NFT: it is a performance art piece that tells a story we could refer to as, "The Connoisseur's New Artwork."
The Republican Party has prohibited debates for its presidential candidates.
Democrats could try these responses:
Ukraine sank the flagship of Russia's Black Sea fleet, reportedly with Ukrainian-made anti-ship missiles.
I would expect that ship participated in the continuous bombardment of Maruipol. Ukraine's success against Putin's most powerful warship in that region will discourage further attacks from the sea — for instance, against Odessa. And Putin forces ships won't dare come close enough to bombard cities again.
According to Wikipedia, that ship had close-in weapons system. The purpose of those systems is to destroy incoming missiles. Apparently it was ineffective this time. Other navies including the US also carry such systems, for the same purpose. Can they be counted on to work?
*Covid-19 Death Rates in Poorer US Counties Were Nearly Double.*
In the worst waves, the ratio was more than double.
Jim Hightower: Does the Democratic Party have the courage, and the independence, to fight the unpopular things that the Republicans want to do?
Ukraine reports finding 900 dead civilians in the region around Kyiv (which includes Bucha and other towns that were occupied by Putin forces).
Most of them killed by gunshot.
US citizens: call on the Senate to confirm Gigi Sohn as an FCC commissioner.
US citizens: call on Congress to end the hater's Title 42 "wait in Mexico" policy.
US Citizens: tell Congress to reject mandatory automatic censorship filters to be based loosely on copyright.
This "smart act" will sure make copyright smart. It will smart so much we will all cry out.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Army Corps of Engineers to check each proposed oil pipeline's environmental impact instead of approving them under a blanket order.
Amazon warehouse workers have almost double the rate of work injuries typical in other warehouses.
This adds to the many other reasons not to buy from Amazon.
The graduate students at Indiana University are on strike because the university administration has refused to recognize their union
It would make sense for the adjunct professors to organize together with the grad students. Why don't they? My guess is that precarious workers have fewer rights than students. They can be junct at any moment.
In a just country, workers wouldn't have to struggle to get their rights respected. Employers that violate their rights would be prosecuted like muggers.
Big oil companies do greenwashing by disregarding 3/4 of the greenhouse emissions of their operations: the part due to their suppliers.
They also omit half their methane leaks from reporting.
Alden Global Capital takes over US newspaper companies in order to turn them into profitable censored trash.
The US needs to change its tax and investment laws so that asset strippers can't operate in any industry. The only assets that strippers should work with are the sexy ones.
Accusing Wikipedia of becoming too exclusive and "deletionist", and giving businesses a dangerous level of influence.
The fight to kill the Mountain Valley Pipeline continues in court, with no final outcome yet.
*Boris Johnson’s impunity is the mark of a rotten political system.*
The Tory justice minister has resigned, rebuking Bogus Johnson.
Just Stop Oil representative after a TV interview: *The worst part is that these presenters and journalists think they know better than chief scientists or academics who have been studying the climate crisis for decades, and they refuse to hear otherwise.*
*BBC warns of fake video claiming Ukraine carried out Kramatorsk attack.*
Indonesia has passed a law to punish various sorts of sexual violence and harassment, including forced marriage.
Extinction Rebellion scientists glued their hands to windows at the UK's Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
* A preliminary war crimes assessment, conducted on behalf of 45 members of the OSCE, concluded that Russia had engaged in "a clear pattern" of war crimes, targeting, for example, hospitals, schools and places of shelter during the seven weeks of fighting.*
*Lightning-sparked forest fires set to increase in North America.* This is because global heating will make fire weather more frequent.
A campaign accuses the rich countries of obstructing vaccinating all of humanity against Covid-19, by upholding the artificial monopolies of the vaccine companies, and thus encouraging dangerous new variants of the virus.
Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter — the whole company.
He has no sense of social responsibility. Twitter today, aside from being inacceptable to use because it requires running nonfree software, makes imperfect efforts to respect human rights. Musk might drop that in the trash.
The UK has given Dogger Bank protection from bottom-trawling.
This is a vital step for protecting endangered ecosystems. It needs to be done in a lot more parts of the sea bottom.
*Women and Journalists Are Targets of Violence in Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan.* Especially women that protest against repression, and journalists that cover protests.
Just as Australia has sent refugees to Nauru, and then to Manus Island in New Guinea, as prisoners, so Tories plan to send refugees in the UK to Rwanda.
If Elon Musk buys Twitter, he is likely to reenable the bullshitter's account.
The UK wants to force refugees to "wait in Rwanda", a country whose president is accused of having exiled dissidents assassinated, and holding show trials of those he could grab.
It shouldn't be surprising the UK is not averse to this record, given that the UK is currently helping the US grab a famous dissident for a show trial.
If Rwanda proves too dirty for this use, the UK could try China ;-{.
Some European airlines eliminated the requirement to wear a mask. Now they are cancelling lots of flights because their crew staff are sick.
Teachers obeying a new Republican censorship law banned an author from reading aloud from his book, It's Ok to be a Unicorn.
It's not just hostility that leads the UK government to cause people great harm in regard to issues of residency. It appears they are prone to trivial errors, and can take months to correct them.
1/8 of the rental homes in England violate legal standards with problems that cause serious risk to health.
The agencies that ought to make landlords fix these problems are hampered by being given insufficient funds by the Tories.
US businesses are using claims of trade secrecy to override safety laws, environmental protection laws, worker protection laws, and the right to a fair trial.
The article describes some legal strategies to use in lawsuits, but I think we need to legislate to weaken trade secret law. For instance, trade secrecy must give way to any legitimate public need to know the information, and government's responsibility to keep the trade secret secret should be limited to when that is easy to do.
If Guber and Lyft drivers are independent contractors, some of what those companies do to them violates US anti-trust law.
Both the Registry of Copyright and US Congress are looking at requiring platforms to run automated copyright filters.
I appreciate that EFF's efforts against this threat, but it is disappointing to see them give more weight to whether some businesses can be profitable than to whether people are free to share, and free to post what they see. And they highlight those bad values by calling artists "creators".
Requiring these filters would in effect permit cops to block videos of their actions from being posted in popular platforms.
Will Russian shells and bullets play Disney tunes so that Youtube won't post recordings of their attacks?
Around 100,000 young Mexicans have been reported as missing and hardly any have been found.
*New York lieutenant governor quits after arrest on bribery and fraud charges.*
Elon Musk is being sued for illegally delaying the announcement that he had bought a large stake in Twitter.
Everyone, tell CBS News: No cushy jobs for the corrupter's former chief of staff.
Everyone: call on Costco to eliminate single-use plastic packaging.
Australia's planned investments in gas facilities are going to prove a big bust if we don't cause global disaster.
That means the "investors" are betting on causing disaster.
Italy will reimburse 110% of the cost of a green renovation of an old house. Over 100,000 renovations have already been approved.
Along with a million or more Muslim Uyghurs, some Christians of other minority groups get imprisoned and tortured similarly. One is visiting the US to testify to the International Criminal Court.
He reports being forcibly injected in prison with something that may have caused the unknown debilitating illness that started soon after.
The US should join the International Criminal Court; that is the way to give it wholehearted support.
Hurricanes drop 10% more rain per hour nowadays due to global heating. In some places, this causes widespread floods.
The UK has lost over a million workers since Covid-19 started.
Some of them decided to retire earlier than planned. Perhaps they don't dare go out to work and risk getting Covid-19. Some of them have been disabled by Covid-19. Maybe some are taking care of people as a result of the death or incapacitation of whoever was taking care of those people before. I wonder what other causes there are, and how each cause relates to Covid-19.
*The cost of living crisis [in the UK] has been going on for decades… What's new is the utter lack of support for those that need it the most.*
Goons and buffoons like Marjorie Greene may seem absurd, but the Republican Party expects to follow them to brutal power.
*Copying the far right doesn’t help mainstream parties. But it can boost the far right.*
High-priced union-busting consultants are becoming less effective as workers show more courage and determination against them.
About Putin's crushing of Chechnya, in which he developed the pattern of mass murder now being applied to Ukraine.
I read about the wars in Chechnya, but it was a small region of Russia I had not heard of except for Islamist extremism, and the occasional news coverage didn't make an impression on me.
Seized Russian funds could be used to rebuild Ukraine.
British teachers are fed up with the cruelty that thugs stationed in schools display towards students, and voted to call for the thugs' removal.
In my view, the race of the students who are treated cruelly is an insignificant detail, because it would be wrong regardless of who is the victim. But it doesn't surprise me that bigotry and cruelty tend to go together. That pattern is widespread: bigotry brings out a person's tendency towards cruelty.
The text of the proposed vaccine patent waiver has been leaked. It gives only a small part of the permissions needed to vaccinate the world. Activists call on South Africa to reject this deal and denounce it.
Four kinds of legal obstacles block the making of generic mRNA vaccines: patents, secrecy, propagating culture contracts, and special restrictions on generic medicines. The first two are covered in the treaty I call TRIPES (*); the last two are not. Perhaps countries can simply legislate themselves exceptions for the last two,
* Trade-Restricting Impediments to Production, Education and Science: a treaty that gives powerful corporations global power. The world should abolish the TRIPES accord; waiving parts of it could be a first step.
Crown Prince Bone Saw invested 2 billion dollars in a corporation, Affinity Partners, recently started by Jared Kushner.
Speculation says that this is a payoff for helping protecting the prince from any punishment for organizing the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
(satire) *Financial Advisor Recommends Fraud.*
(satire) *Parents Ask If Son Wouldn't Mind Stopping By To Fix Gaping Void In Their Lives.*
Bill McKibben: *Putin's Aggression Shows Why Defeating Autocracy Is Key to Combating Climate Crisis.*
Let us resist the pressure to condemn and exclude all Russians in the arts.
The UK Labour Party has gone full planet-roaster, calling for harsh injunctions that would put climate defense protesters in prison.
Sonic pollution from boats and ships is making it hard for orcas to find prey, or find their families, in some areas.
The global food shortage threatens a quarter of a billion people with extreme poverty.
The more stressed our food systems become, the smaller the margin of safety. Increasing production increases environmental damage. Each increase in efficiency is harder than the previous one.
The long-term solution is to reduce the human birth rate.
*Herd immunity now seems impossible. Welcome to the age of Covid reinfection.*
I am glad to see some attention given to the problem of long Covid. If vaccination continues to make death unlikely, I think the main long-term harm done by Covid-19 will be the steady accumulation of people disabled by it.
However, treating and helping those disabled by it, as the author proposes, is not enough. We need to reduce the number of people that are disabled by Covid-19 over the coming years.
Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice O'Connor is a Republican who still has an idea of civic duty. So she rejects gerrymandering designed to rig elections. Modern Republicans want to impeach her for that.
The difference between the two parties is clear. Democrats will impeach you for trying to steal an election. Republicans will impeach you for not trying to steal an election.
*Sunscreen chemicals accumulating in Mediterranean seagrass… UV filters absorbed by Posidonia oceanica may have damaging effects on ecosystems, scientists warn.*
Bogus Johnson has been fined officially for having a party with people from different households when that was prohibited. That law was being enforced vigorously against everyone else, and arguably in a manner that was too strict. But he was totally behind that rule for everyone else, while covering up his own disobedience.
Many Britons now hate him for this, and demand his resignation.
*Global Progressive Leaders Urge Biden to Drop US Charges Against Assange.*
To get its hands on Assange, the US government corrupted first Swedish justice, then British justice. It is clear that in both countries the end result was decided first and the rulings chosen to procure that result.
*US Limits on ICC Complicate Biden's Aim to Aid Putin War Crimes Probe.*
The article describes some of the measures that the US adopted to render the International Criminal Court null and void, but doesn't mention that the US pressured other countries around the world not to sign up to it. The European Union was too strong to be pressured in this way, but most countries did as the US bid.
I agree that when the US recognizes a crime of war, it is likely to prosecute the perpetrator. The hard part is getting the US to recognize such a crime. For example, there seems to be little move to make Dubya pay for his war of aggression which was based on that have been exposed.
The latest Russian landmines detect the footsteps of people walking nearby. Putin forces deployed them at a distance using missiles — in effect a sort of mine-dropping cluster bomb.
Interestingly, these mines are proof that potential atrocities were set up by the Putin forces, not by putative omnipresent but never-seen Ukrainian Nazis bent on killing thousands of Ukrainians to make a false accusation. Only the Putin forces had these ultra-modern mine-missiles.
The US should join most of the world's countries and sign up to the prohibition of cluster bombs.
The Federal Trade Commission ordered two companies to destroy all the data they illegally collected from children, plus all work product based on such data.
That represents a recognition that the product of collecting data can be morphed into various forms, including algorithms derived from deep learning, and allowing the culprits to retain any form whatsoever of that data would let them make a monkey out of any and all privacy laws.
On the front end, however, this shows how weak US privacy protection is. It protects only children, and that protection disappears when they get "consent". That is not enough.
Tory ministers received recommendations for changed building codes after a London apartment building fire in 2009, but paid hardly any attention.
The various reasons come down to giving the matter low priority. Basically, the priority was to help business profit more by relaxing regulations, and not looking hard when businesses stretched the regulations further — which is what caused the fire in the Grenfell building.
Right-wing extremists fund campaigns to recall school board members.
Covid-19 vaccine is no more likely than other vaccines to cause the rare temporary condition, myopericarditis.
Philadelphia has brought back mask requirements, having seen the Covid case rate increase rapidly.
New York City and Boston have high rates of Covid-19 and should have mask requirements too.
A fossil fuel company wants to do a frackwell in England to "to show that a competent operator can be trusted to develop the technology safely." This proposed "test" is a swindle, for two reasons.
Suppose the test fails because the local water supply is contaminated. (That has happened in the US.) What will the company do to correct that damage? Without a commitment to do that, this "test" would be carried out at great risk to the public. "We risk not finding a new business, you risk permanent loss of your water supply."
The test could also fail because the well appears to "work." Those wells would continue to be used for many years, and the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions would certainly not be safe.
Everyone: call on Home Depot to protect the Boreal forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the Protect America's Children from Toxic Pesticides Act.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to affirm the validity of the Equal Rights Amendment.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Russians start to see evidence of high military casualties in Ukraine.*
This may show them that Putin is bullshitting them.
Canada has banned foreign investors from buying homes in Canada. (Except those who will actually live in a home they buy.) This is wise; other countries should do it.
However, it might be slightly better to tax homes owned by foreigners (except homes they reside in) at a very high rate. That would deal with the problem of homes foreigners have already bought.
Accusing Assad of seizing the possessions (including homes) of political prisoners, amounting to 1.5 billion dollars.
* Attorney general Letitia James requests calls for fines [of $10,000 per day] until [the wrecker] complies with order to turn over files related to his businesses.*
$10,000 amounts to 3.65 million per year. That may not be enough to get the wrecker to comply — he could simply pay the fine.
Can New York State jail him until he complies? I think that would do the job.
New Zealand should treat feral cats as pests to be eliminated, like the other introduced predators, to protect the endangered birds.
A Putin forces soldier was recorded describing by radio a practice of shooting prisoners of war after interrogating them.
That was clearly not a matter of spontaneous individual crimes stemming from rage or panic. The commanders had to be responsible for those crimes.
This article recounts Putin's career since 1999, including how he step by step centralized all political power, then all communication influence, under his control.
Companies such as Nike and H&M use quirks in definitions to pretend that they are reducing greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact their emissions are increasing.
Life expectancy in the US has gone down 2.6 years since 2019. Other wealthy countries lost around .3 years. Overall, the US now has a life expectancy 5 years shorter then those other countries.
I'm sure a considerable fraction of this was caused by the crush-the-poor Covid-spreading party.
Putin has closed the Moscow offices of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Protesters plan to blockade a West Virginia power plant that burns Manchin family coal.
(satire) *Avant-Garde DJ Really Gets The Dance Floor Thinking.*
The flow of government press representatives into news media jobs tends to tarnish both sides.
The Tories are so habituated to demonizing anyone who would like to live in the UK, and creating bureaucratic nightmares to keep them out, that they can't see their way to treating Ukrainian refugees any better.
Economist Robert Pollin calls for nationalizing the three dominant US fossil fuel companies, so as to face less resistance to shutting the fossil fuel companies gradually down.
Over a thousand scientists participated in civil disobedience, blocking doors and so on, demanding adequate action to reduce climate mayhem to a level we can survive.
The corrupter did not hand in a list of gifts that visitors gave to him as president during 2020. These gifts belong to the US government, not to whoever was president. One must suspect that the corrupter has walked off with public property.
The corrupter's son, Donald Trump Jr., started privately pushing to cut short the electoral process and declare his father the winner, two days after election day, before the true result was even known.
More info.
Nationwide standardized tests have been tried for decades in several different varieties, each supposedly going to make US public education better, and each a failure in its own terms. Each time they fail, the proponents insist on trying another variation.
How about getting rid of them entirely?
The CDC's current message to the public is, if the hospitals in your county are not close to being packed with Covid-19 patients, relax and don't worry about taking precautions.
To the extent that local governments base their rules on this guidance, it will tend to encourage careless contagion.
Many UK government agencies are quick to hand debts of a few dollars worth to a collection agency, which will tack on a few hundred more and ruin someone's life.
The agency will presume that any bureaucratic confusion is your fault, and that justifies nasty treatment of you.
The challenge of investigating and prosecuting the Putin forces' apparent war crimes.
A Buffalo thug pushed Martin Gugino to the ground and fractured his skull. This was judged by an arbitration procedure which predictably ruled that the thug did nothing wrong.
Gugino is suing the city, but such damages are paid by the city, not the thug who did the damage.
The Tories have run down ambulance service in the UK to the point where patients wait hours (and get sicker).
Santiago, Chile, has been in drought for 12 years and there isn't enough water to keep it flowing in the city all the time.
Basically, northern Chile (along with Peru) is getting wiped out by global heating.
Pressing the US on the issue of its continuing support for Crown Prince Bone Saw.
A former teacher in Kabul denounces the Taliban for closing schools for women.
I wish I could see a way to change this.
Renewable energy generation grew fast in 2021, by past standards. But not fast enough to avoid global heating disaster.
Describing the organizing methods that led, over years, to a union victory at one Amazon warehouse.
Texas Governor Abbott said he would forcibly take border-crossers to Washington DC against their will. He received a hostile reaction and changed the plan. Now he says he will offer them a gratis bus trip to Washington.
I don't see anything wrong in his making them that offer — provided that's really what happens. But you can't trust Republicans to keep their commitments to anyone that is disprivileged, or even to anyone not filthy rich. Their contempt for the weak is unrestrained. Who knows what nasty things they might do, to unauthorized immigrants who decline the offer, or to make sure that they "choose" to go.
So I suggest sending spanish-speaking federal marshals to monitor the whole operation, including the stage of asking who wants to go and who does not, and what happens afterwards to both groups, inviting reports and audio/video recordings of any abuses. A marshall should ride in each bus.
Everyone: call on Lockheed to start converting to peaceful industries.
US citizens: Fax your members of Congress to tell them to pass the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act.
US citizens: call on Congress to give more money to our communities and less to the military.
US citizens: call on the Biden administration to keep single-use plastics out of federal government purchases.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to stop distributing single-use plastics in US national parks.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: phone your senators to support the Stop Wall Street Looting act. A brief summary is:
(satire) *Trojan Introduces New Contraceptive Fife For Charming Sperm Out Of Vaginal Canal.*
*As US Funds Pentagon Bloat, China Investments in Green Energy Soar.*
China's commitment to decarbonization is incomplete. It is building many new coal-fired power plants, so the electric vehicles it is building will in fact be powered by fossil fuels for some decades.
However, the US is not much better.
The dynamics of an army at war systematically pressures and inspires soldiers to commit atrocities.
So we see them in all armies.
This is why the crime of aggressive war is so grave.
Putin's army seems to order soldiers to commit atrocities. But even armies which try to enforce laws against atrocities face constant temptation to disregard or cover up the atrocities that its soldiers have committed.
Joining the International Criminal Court can firm up those efforts.
13 Starbucks stores' workers have voted to unionize. 180 more stores are planning to follow.
Only one site has voted not to unionize.
The workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama voted on unionization. The outcome is not clear, because some ballots are being challenged. Meanwhile, the workers accuse Amazon of using illegal methods to pressure the workers. It is standard practice for companies to violate these laws, because the boss would rather take the risk of paying a small fine than have a union.
It is no accident that the laws that protect workers' rights are so hard to enforce. Businesses lobby for this, and plutocratist politicians are eager to be bought.
The State of the Free Software Movement
Richard Stallman will be speaking about the free software movement and your freedom. His speech will be nontechnical, admission is gratis, and the public is encouraged to attend online.
Online at fsf.org/live
*‘Toxic combination’ of issues threaten world’s health and human rights –- BMA.*
Yemen's president (according to Salafi Arabia) has agreed to let others negotiate the future of Yemen with the Houthis.
Rising sea levels (caused by global heating) are already forcing Americans to move to higher ground. Over the next few decades, millions will need to move. The US is not doing a good job of helping them.
If we were wise, we would get ahead of the problem by curbing greenhouse gas emissions so as to reduce the number that will have to move.
Republicans that control state governments are extending anti-abortion repression to forbid going to another state to get an abortion. They even want to prosecute doctors and pharmacists in other states for serving people who reside in a repressive state.
The idea that state A could prosecute someone in state B for treating a patient who has travelled from state A, or for shipping a drug by US mail to someone in state A, seems absurd. But the right-wing Supreme Court extremists can't be relied on to uphold basic constitutional principles.
People systematically underestimate the danger of catching Covid-19 from friends.
A group of many strangers is more dangerous than a group of a few friends, simply because the latter group is fewer. It is safer to eat at home with a few friends than in a restaurant with those friends plus many strangers. But even at home you should take precautions: set up a current of fresh air (strong enough you can feel it a little) through the dining room, sit far apart, and keep distance from each other whenever you don't have your N95 mask on.
*Biden needs to start going after large corporations if he wants to win again.*
An Australian bomb appears to have killed 35 members of an Iraqi family in a house in Mosul. However, because the Australian air force refuses to give details about that bombing run, the hearing was unable to determine for certain whether that bomb run killed them, so it refused compensation.
Another positive feedback cycle in global heating: as Arctic ice melts, more ships travel through the Arctic Ocean, which pump out more black carbon, which falls on ice and melts it.
Texas's right-wing rulers showed what they really want to do to women who have abortions: charge them with murder.
They can't that nowadays, because they haven't actually passed a law to do it. But now we know they want it.
What will they do to the women they convict? Execute them, I suppose. Right-wingers love the death penalty.
(satire) *Original Stan Lee Corpse Sells At Auction For $5 Million.*
(satire) *Several Wendy’s Menu Items Added To Periodic Table As Part Of New Sponsorship Deal.*
Fireproof Australia protests demanding the state do more to help people whose houses are destroyed by wildfires.
The question of tactics is secondary, in my view. I support Extinction Rebellion because it focuses on the heart of the problem, on the disease rather than the symptoms.
*As a science journalist I'm reconsidering having kids. I'm not the only one.*
A German historian thinks about what made Germany become civil and peaceful after World War II.
Bogus Johnson now wants to build more nuclear power, plus sea-based wind power, while finding and excuse to reject land-based wind power and solar power.
There is no rational reason for this as energy policy. It won't reduce prices, it won't stop the import of Russian fossil fuels.
US citizens: call on Congress to end Big Money’s stranglehold on our democracy.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Climate scientists are desperate: we’re crying, begging and getting arrested.* All in the hope of preventing global heating disaster.
*The Fossil Fuels Era Must End. Collective Transformation Must Start Now.*
Too much screen time can cause real life to lose interest — for gorillas.
*‘Learning to live with it’? From Covid to climate breakdown, it’s the new way of failing.*
I think that statement is too weak. It's the new way of saying, "Tough on you, non-rich people!"
*Global food prices rise to highest ever levels after Russian invasion.*
I have a hunch they will never again fall to the level of before the war.
Senate Republicans are holding Americans' Covid vaccine and treatment hostage to demand renewed repression against asylum seekers.
(satire) *"They Switched It For Molasses!" Yells Energy Secretary Discovering Nation's Entire Oil Reserves Stolen.*
Jesse Jackson: *The higher the price the Russian military pays in Ukraine, the less likely Putin will be emboldened to repeat his aggression.*
My view is that the resolution of the war must not give Putin anything that could be construed as a victory. Especially, no territorial gains and no legitimization of past seizures of Ukrainian territory.
It would be useful to make him withdraw troops from Moldova too.
Several US states have incorporated white supremacist bias into their standards for teaching about the reconstruction period and how it was crushed.
*Poverty: The Pre-Condition Underlying Covid-19 Mortality.*
The right-wing radicals on the US Supreme Court fabricate artificial emergencies as excuses to impose questionable right-wing decisions without even a hearing.
The most recent example was to limit states' power to challenge approval of "energy projects" — such as pipelines and export terminals — once federal agencies, if corrupted by planet-roasters, approve them.
Normally, right-wing officials claim to promote "states' rights", but that really only means states' rights to serve business. States' rights to resist big business are less appealing to these plutocratists.
Scientist Rebellion shows how fossil fuel money watered down the IPCC report.
Explaining Biden's plan for the billionaire's tax, and how it would tax their asset appreciation every year.
I think it would require people with more than 100 million dollars in assets to report those assets to the IRS. That is fine with me.
I campaign against the sorts of government surveillance that put dissidents and whistleblowers in danger. The worst things for the government to know about people are where you go, what you do there, and who you talk with.
Knowing the large property holdings of centimillionaires is not much of a threat to dissidents and whistleblowers. And even for them, it would collect little information about their daily activities.
Interviews with the Patriotic Millionaires, who advocate raising the tax rate for millionaires.
*Extinction Rebellion vows fossil fuels protest will "grind London to a halt."*
The Putin forces attacked the Kramatorsk train station where thousands of Ukrainian civilians were waiting to evacuate to the west.
At least 39 of them were killed.
The "world nuclear order" which kept us at a distance from nuclear war has been fraying, strand by strand, for decades. This means that the danger of nuclear war increases.
Amtrak wants to identify all passengers and check them against a secret suspects list belonging to the Department of Harshness and Suspicion.
This would require demanding official identification from each passenger. That's what Amtrak did until a few years ago. My response to that was never to use Amtrak.
In practice, I still never take Amtrak, because the trains I might have a reason to require reservations, and those reservations still do require identifying oneself.
People should be free to travel within a country without identifying themselves. You can support this by phoning your congresscritter.
Proposing strong measures to reduce Europe's energy use.
In the short term, these measures would cause great difficulty. Public transit systems could not cope with the extra passengers, and they would push people into dangerous proximity.
Over a somewhat longer period, giving time to prepare lots of buses and trained drivers for them, I think they could work.
I am not sure what "internal flights" is supposed to mean. If it means "flights within the EU", that would not be feasible; there are trips that would take days by train. However, the EU has many short flights that could be eliminated without great difficulties.
A mining company has, after years of pressure, joined in supporting a proper archaeological investigation of an old Australian aboriginal site, in cooperation with the local aboriginal group.
This is very good news, as it will lead to more understanding of ancient humanity.
Ketanji Jackson has been confirmed for the US Supreme Court.
That is a relief; it would have been very bad if she had not been confirmed. But I don't feel joy, because we are not out of the woods yet.
Her confirmation prevented the Supreme Court situation from getting one notch worse. But I don't see how we are going to make things start to get better.
*LA jail guards routinely punch incarcerated people in the head, monitors find.*
Each of these thugs deserves to be prosecuted, and then experience jail as a prisoner.
West Germany's first elected chancellor, Adenauer, used the country's intelligence agency to spy on political rivals.
*Methane in Earth’s atmosphere rose by record amount last year, US government data shows. Climate scientists say plugging methane leaks and phasing out fossil fuels are necessary to avert catastrophic global heating.*
We should not demand of artists that they take political stands we support — or that they take political stands at all.
Tory ministers are disregarding freedom of information law and getting away with it.
The wrecker hinted that he is endorsing candidate for state offices because they would steal the election for him.
Congress is proposing to cut the Department of Agriculture just as a global food shortage is beginning.
*Aid Groups Warn "More Variants Will Emerge" If Congress Kills Global Covid Funds.*
We can't make poor people better off through high-pressure studies in kindergarten.
Proposing the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights — a collection of the main progressive policy proposals.
Government safety regulations save lives, but plutocratists prefer to let workers and customers be sick or injured in the name of increased profits. The right-wing Supreme Court is likely to attack safety regulation and make your life more dangerous.
Minneapolis has put an end to no-knock search warrants.
I wonder if there is a good solution, such as a way to enter and search a house using robots, so there is no reason to shoot at the inhabitants even if they start shooting.
The Starbucks CEO made bizarre statements about unions coming between the company and its workers.
Starbucks is not a charity; it acts solely for the owners' profits. There is no reason for the staff to feel loyal to that.
John Eastman's emails in the Jan 6 plot have been delivered to the investigating committee. (He was one of the wrecker's lawyers.) They explicitly talk about the goal of undermining the election.
US citizens: call for eliminating preventive use of antibiotics in animals.
US citizens: remind the Democratic Party that primaries are good.
US citizens: call on Congress to adopt a windfall tax on fossil fuels.
I sent the following personalized message, advocating improvements in the bill that the campaign supports. You can send your own version of it, if you wish to.
We should have a windfall profits tax on fossil fuels, but the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax bill does too little and does it the wrong way.
- It should cover all fossil fuel sales for which prices fluctuate, not exempting smaller companies.
- It should capture more than just half of their windfall.
- Does taxing companies that sell wholesale capture all of the windfall that actual users pay? I don't know, but I suspect not.
- The funds collected should not be aimed particularly at drivers, because that is equivalent to subsidizing fossil fuels — exactly the wrong thing to do when we need reduce the amount which is used.
Instead, we should give those funds to all poor Americans, those that use fossil fuels and those that don't. That way, we will enable them all to cope with the high prices, and we will preserve the incentive for them to use less fuel if they can.
As your constituent, I urge you to sponsor a better bill.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate Clarence Thomas's unethical behavior.
Customers of big US banks: tell your bank to stop investing in climate chaos.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the EQUAL act, reducing the penalties for crack cocaine to the same level as powder cocaine.
Possession of recreational drugs should not be a crime at all.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word
Everyone: Tell the Washington Post: No more op-eds from warmongers.
US citizens: tell the US government, don't increase fossil fuel subsidies — cancel them.
Everyone: call on Travelers Insurance not to insure oil drilling in the Arctic.
US citizens: tell the SEC you support new protections for investors against Wall Street private equity.
US citizens: call on world leaders to make polluters pay to fund the transition to renewables.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Agriculture Right to Repair Act.
This is just a small part of the freedoms tractor owners deserve. The software in a tractor, or a car, or any other product, if it is meant to be changed, should be free.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call for banning members of Congress from trading military contractor stocks now.
I'd rather ban them from trading any stocks but this would be a start.
US citizens: call on congress to make billion-dollar corporations pay minimum 15% tax on reported domestic profits and on offshore profits.
*Scientists have just told us how to solve the climate crisis — will the world listen?*
The Tories plan to give oil companies priority and cut back on renewable energy construction.
Activists occupied an oil import terminal near London, shutting it down.
Many Iranian men were drafted and assigned to the Revolutionary Guards. If the US finds out that an Iranian was one of them, it treats him as a terrorist.
This tendency to jump to conclusions and act cruelly is unjust, and harms the US as well as the people punished this way.
An Australia court ruled that anyone formally adopted into an indigenous group, even if not an Australian citizen, gets a special immunity from deportation. Non-aboriginal groups have no comparable power. The government wants to change this.
English (mainly) colonists stole the indigenous peoples' land. By modern standards of universal justice, that was a crime and calls for compensation. Indigenous people today face the usual forms of discrimination of disprivileged groups, and that must cease.
But this peculiar privilege contributes nothing to that, and could even work against it because it likewise contravenes modern standards of universal justice.
US right wing in step with Kremlin over Ukraine disinformation, experts say.
The US right wing includes self-proclaimed Nazis as well as many others with similar views. (This happened because, over his four years as president, the inflamer did his best to shift his supporters to right-wing extremism.) Those of them who pay attention to consistency will surely find it strange that their movement advocates "denazification."
Over the years while President AMLO has attacked the press, violence against reporters in Mexico has greatly increased.
The Russian army made the town of Trostianets into a forward base after a blown bridge stopped them from continuing on south. They killed some residents and terrorized the rest, while gratuitously making the town a wreck.
I think they took out on the civilians their resentment at the Ukrainian military.
Finally someone turns up who committed real voting fraud in the US. He is a Republican, of course, and this year he wants to run for Congress.
The president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for "blasphemy".
He had been told that his relatives would be threatened unless he pleaded guilty, and that he'd get a short sentence if he did so.
*Analysis of the images [from Bucha] date massacre to before Russian forces evacuated the Ukrainian city.*
Unregulated companies rate prospective tenants as good or bad using questionable machine-learning algorithms and big data. They don't give reasons for blacklisting a specific tenant. Perhaps their method gives them no way to do that.
The lack of clarity about the reasons for blacklisting would-be renters adds gratuitous frustration, but the basic problem is that rents are so high that workers struggle to afford them, so many tenants don't succeed in paying rent.
To make the algorithms more transparent would change who gets to rent an apartment and who does not, but would not prevent that the shortage. The only way to do that is to make a lot more housing.
The best way to make a lot more housing is to eliminate the zoning laws that prohibit dense housing.
As long as that does not happen, landlords will see that scarcity enables them to raise rents to levels that make struggle to afford the rent, which means that some will be unfortunate and get evicted, which means that landlords will seek ways not to rent to anyone who might have get into that situation.
Amazon has a special cr…app for discussions among staff. The company plans to censor the words "union", "fire", "slave labor", "diversity" and "injustice."
That will be done using an "auto bad word monitor" which will recognize "inappropriate" messages.
This reminds us that "inappropriate" states a subjective judgment and nothing more, so we should be suspicious whenever anyone is accused of acting or speaking "inappropriately" without some explanation of why we should consider it wrong.
A Ukrainian civilian reports on three nights of torture by Russian captors, along with other civilian prisoners.
Australian federal cops, in thousands, demand Australia set up a body to investigate charges of corruption against politicians, and against cops also.
Oklahoma has made performing an abortion a felony in nearly all circumstances.
Fox News: it actually bit a congressional Democrat.
*If the House Oversight Committee is serious about getting to the bottom of the fossil fuel industry's longtime campaign to stymie climate policy, it should call [Charles] Koch on the carpet.*
Planet roasters pretend that helping Europe boycott Russia's gas justifies building new fracked gas pipelines in the US.
Europe's gas crunch will last just a few years, if European countries push hard to build renewable generation. But any new fossil fuel facilities built now will be used for decades: to stop using them will provoke powerful lobbying, as if making a pipeline investor lose money would be worse than the end of the world.
(satire) *BetterHelp Therapy Session Leads To Breakthrough In Sell-able Patient Data.*
Two of the oldest modern human skeletons ever discovered are going to be "reburied", meaning further research will not be possible.
In principle, that is a bad outcome. However, it is possible that it makes little actual difference in this case. Wikipedia says that some of the corpses found there have already been checked for DNA and none was recoverable.
El Salvador has arrested 6,000 people and plans to hold them for a long time without any specific charges or letting them talk with lawyers. The government says they are gang members, but without individual trials, there is no way to see if that is true.
Anti-racist activism focuses too much on microagressions and choice of words, instead of supporting people's campaigns for better treatment in substantive ways.
*Israel Charges Palestinian Journalists With Incitement — for Doing Their Jobs.*
Tories have damaged the UK's DHS so much that it can't keep up with the need to test people for cancer. Hundreds of thousands of people are likely to get late diagnoses before it catches up. That is, supposing they give it enough funds to catch up. Perhaps they will reduce the standard of care to the point where those who have money pay for a private exam, and everyone else just dies of cancer.
*UN Chief: Those Expanding Fossil Fuels — Not Climate Activists — Are the "Truly Dangerous Radicals."*
Hear, hear!
Orbán defeated the united opposition, in an election alleged to be crooked.
Congress has agreed to spend 10 billion dollars on Covid-19 tests, vaccines and treatments in the US, but nothing at all for vaccinating the rest of the world.
The Covid-spreader party has taken a small step back, forgoing some method of spreading the disease in the US.
Putin's stretching the concept of "human shields", arguing that all the civilians that live in a city Putin is attacking and that Ukraine is defending are "human shields", just because soldiers are fighting in the neighborhood of their homes.
The article lists other countries that it accuses of doing the same thing.
Viktor Orbán has won an unfair election to be reelected the ruler of Hungary. He handles elections the way US Republicans do.
The EU needs to be tough on Putin, and tough on Orbán, but is that possible?
The head of Australia's government, planet-roaster Scott Morrison, is a bully as well. One of his party's members of Parliament has quit the party, denouncing him as a bully for trying to offer flood aid only to the towns which had voted for his party.
He's still trying to corrupt the few decarbonization measures that Australia has.
Zelensky spoke to the UN Security Council and pointed out that it is a failure at its stated goal.
That truth is well known. We also know why it is true: because we don't know of any way to set it up that would make it able to enforce justice without being corruptible too.
Many government agencies, and anyone pretending to represent a government agency, can get people's personal data from Apple and Greater Facebook just by saying, "This is an emergency".
People will be tempted to try to fix this problem through a system for authenticating real government agencies and real emergencies. My view is that companies should not have so much data about people.
*Oregon’s bold drug decriminalisation sees some success — but use still rising.*
*Sri Lanka faces medical emergency as economic crisis hits drug supplies.*
*US power outages from severe weather have doubled in 20 years.* Mostly because severe weather happens more often, due to global heating effects.
The Tories have cut off welfare benefits for children after the first two in a family. Research shows that this does not reduce the number of children in a family, it only increases the number of children growing up in poverty.
Poverty often results when people lack the ability to make good plans, or the ability to stick to a plan. It is hard to fill those lacks by punishing people.
I don't know whether Tories were seriously seeking to avoid overpopulation, or only used it as an excuse to keep more money for the wealthy. No children should grow up in poverty, but it is very important for people to have fewer children.
San Francisco's mayor wants to loosen the recently adopted restrictions on surveillance by city government. The thug department would be allowed to watch directly through surveillance cameras in areas which have seen certain kinds of crimes.
This exception would still keep limits on their surveillance, but the use of the exception needs to be monitored. Here are my suggestions:
Leftists should resist the compulsion to blame the US for every problem in the world. A non-imperialist Russia had options for trying to keep Ukraine out of NATO without launching a war.
The Taliban have banned opium cultivation again.
Prohibition is not a solution to the problem of opiates and opioids.
Looming behind the cheater's Big Lie is another Big Lie: that the US economy as it exists nowadays works for everyone.
Gaza is facing a water crisis: nearly all of its water is undrinkable.
When Russia took Ukrainians from Mariupol to Russia, some wanted to go. Others were effectively compelled to go.
Some who had brought money found it was not too hard to get out of Russia. No one was actively trying to stop them. But those without money may be trapped there.
When Putin forces soldiers shot civilians in Bucha, sometimes it was clearly murder. Sometimes it might have been a panicking soldier who shot someone unidentified who seemed like a possible threat.
That danger is an inevitable concomitant of war, which is why fighting a war without a valid justification is a heinous crime.
Discussing various ways Putin could be prosecuted for war crimes, or for the crime of aggression (starting a war without valid justification). All approaches face obstacles.
I read of an argument that Russia was never properly authorized as the successor of the Soviet Union's permanent membership in the Security Council. If Russia can be replaced there, it would unlock many things.
Dubya set the US on a policy of undermining and weakening the International Criminal Court. (Perhaps he feared being tried for the crime of aggression.) Will the US now give the ICC support?
Two bills being considered by the California senate would take significant steps to reduce massive surveillance. But they don't go half far enough.
S.B. 1189 requires that companies and organizations ask for "consent" before collecting biometrics. That will protect you in many situations, but not all, because it is easy for that entity to arrange for others to pressure you to consent. Those others could be employers, schools, or social groups. If it is the general practice for people to chat on Scroo'm, and Scroo'm won't let you use it unless you consent to its collection of biometrics, the pressure may feel irresistible to people in general.
The Student Test Taker Privacy Protection Act (STTPPA) would take a substantial step forward in putting a limit the snooping that these prokto-programs do to students. But the limit in this bill would be vague, because it is easy for the company to argue that collecting your face image, your fingerprint, your voice print and your gait pattern is absolutely necessary. To assure real effect, the bill should set a standard that snoopers can't stretch.
In the event that some kinds of biometric snooping — or other snooping — become accepted, there should be limits on storing the data. Also, having your school testify to your identity, rather than letting the prokto-program's developer see your face, should be an option.
Simply requiring you to run that non-free program (perhaps developed only for Windows and MacOS) on your own computer is an unacceptable injustice, and we need to press the campaign until that is prohibited.
More generally, see https://gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
The IPCC has now published its third report, the one on how to save civilization from global heating disaster.
*"Now or Never", if world is to stave off climate disaster.*
Here is a summary of the specifics.
Planet roasters' influence in IPCC was strong enough to make the organization delete the called-for denunciation of planet roasters.
The Tories are trying to resume fracking in the UK.
Meanwhile, an organization that puts on airs of supporting "renewable energy" is campaigning against land-based wind power.
Negotiations are progressing towards a treaty to ban the use of heavy bombs in cities.
It looks like the US and Russia will not sign it.
Society and institutions in the US put poor people in bigger danger of death from Covid-19 than well-off people.
*People in poorer counties have died overall at almost twice the rate of those in richer counties. … During the third pandemic wave in the US, over the winter of 2020 and 2021, death rates were four-and-a-half times higher in the poorest counties than those with the highest median incomes.*
I wonder how a similar comparison for long Covid disabilities would come out.
*Democrats see hope for a clean energy bill, but Manchin is adding a new hurdle: More funding for fossil fuels.*
His "reason" is balderdash. The efficient and safe way to make the US self-sufficient in energy generation is to use 100% American sunlight and 100% American wind. Manchin is not trying to offer a rational argument, only an excuse that will suffice for a sound bite.
Ukrainian women report being raped by Putin forces soldiers. Some may have been raped and then killed.
Witnesses from Bucha report seeing Putin forces soldiers murder civilians with extreme cruelty.
These acts of cruelty do not indicate whether commanders encouraged the cruelty. Perhaps they did, perhaps they didn't. Many soldiers could have done these things on their own initiative, after hearing that other soldiers were doing it. Each soldier who intentionally shot at civilians committed a war crime, but without more evidence, we have no basis to pin responsibility on commanders or on Putin.
Planting mines is a different story. That takes effort and time, as well as specific training. I don't think many soldiers would have planted mines or booby traps unless they were ordered to do that.
Even if the commanders did not order soldiers to kill civilians, they have the responsibility to prosecute murderers in their ranks.
*Yemen: two-month ceasefire begins with hopes for peace talks.*
As global heating dries up the US mountain west, wild ecosystems have to compete with humans for water.
Climate scientists warn that getting distracted from global heating will guarantee disaster.
US citizens: call on the Dept of Justice to investigate the cheater for removing/destroying official records.
US citizens: call on your senators to keep toxic pesticides out of wildlife refuges.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
(satire) *Ukrainian Delegate Knows It Is Dangerous To Eat At Peace Talks, But Brownie Just Too Tempting.*
New Tory strategy to confuse the public and smooth the way for plutocrats: they talk about measures to do justice, change their mind back and forth.
By the time they eventually do nothing about the problem, the public is confused about the outcome.
Ukraine said that the Putin forces have pulled out of the region around Kyiv, but they have planted mines in homes and on corpses.
Ukraine reports finding lots of corpses of civilians, and that the Putin forces used buses full of children as human shields for tanks.
Ukraine also reports finding corpses of civilians who were murdered by Putin forces soldiers who were close enough to see who they were shooting at.
When Argentina's military rulers invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, the officers of the invasion force used torture to punish soldiers for even the smallest infractions,
and made them sign nondisclosure agreements about the torture they had experienced.
*Protesters continue to block UK oil terminals despite arrests.*
Russian scientists say that conferences and journals in other countries are refusing to consider their papers.
Boycotting individuals because they are Russian is wrong. We should protect scientific cooperation to keep it safe from wars and nationalism.
Minnesota investigated the behavior of thugs at George Floyd protests and found many things they did badly.
Ukrainian journalist Oleh Baturin describes his 8 days of torture after the Putin forces lured him into a trap.
Russian émigrés and dissidents are using a white-and-blue flag to show they are Russians opposed to Putin's war.
Long Covid frequently incapacitates people in their prime working years. Governments must put more research into how to treat it.
In the mean time, governments must recognize the long-term damage they risk by allowing Covid-19 to run rampant through millions of people.
US citizens: call on Democratic leaders to say that Putin's invasion reaffirms America must lead on clean energy.
US citizens: call on Starbucks CEO to stop union-busting.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass two bills that would restrict anticompetitive actions by Big Tech.
One bill would reduce the power that Apple has over use of iMonsters and their app stores.
This would eliminate some of the injustice, but not all. It would certainly not make non-libre apps, or non-libre spyphone operating systems, safe to actually run.
Another bill seems to be aimed at curbing the power and abuses of dominant online stores.
Other interesting US antitrust bills are described here.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to investigate the corrupter's possible crimes in connection with the Jan 6 insurrection and efforts to steal the 2020 election.
Everyone: call on Condé Nast to recognize the Condé Nast Union.
With all communications channels in Russia repeating Putin's lies in different forms, he has created the ultimate disinformation system. Its effectiveness shows us how vulnerable people are to such disinformation system.
I am convinced that we must disassemble the right-wing disinformation system that operates in most countries. What I don't see is how to do so without the risk of building up a system that would be perfect for enforcing disinformation, as Putin is doing.
*The latest threat to democracy? A [cheater]-backed candidate willing to "find extra votes."*
*Low-wage workers have paid dearly for Qatar's glittering World Cup.*
Food aid is finally reaching Tigray.
Putin forces continue to promise to permit evacuation of civilians from Mariupol, and continue not actually doing so.
A team of Greenpeace activists in kayaks tried to stop the transfer of oil cargo from one supertanker that had brought it from Russia, to another supertanker that might have passed it off as non-Russian.
A UK thug is being prosecuted for using a taser on a man who was leaping a fence, which caused him to fall down and be permanently paralyzed.
Biden intends to promote mining of minerals needed for batteries. Before new mines start, we must replace the old law that almost guarantees the mine will be left leaking pollution for decades, or millennia.
The obvious step is to require the mine, before it operates, to put aside a bond to clean it up — and then pay during operation to increase that bond, since the cost will probably increase.
But even better would be to operate the mine in a way that reduces or avoids the source of pollution. Has anyone developed a way to do this?
A parliamentary committee is treating the payment of a debt to Iran as a ransom.
By tying the payment, which the UK owed to Iran since around 1980, to the hostages, this investigation treats the money as a ransom and effectively criticizes the government for being slow to ransom them. Governments must not pay ransom for hostages; as Reagan taught us when he did precisely that, paying ransoms tends to encourage further kidnappings.
The reason why the UK had to pay this money to Iran is that it owed Iran the money Iran had paid for goods that were never delivered.
Australia has approved a long extension for a large coal mine.
New South Wales finally did pass the law to put people in jail for blocking roads, with the support of the principal "opposition" party, which doesn't oppose very much.
*Democracy is in peril when our leaders [such as Bogus Johnson] no longer care about being seen to lie.*
Workers at an Amazon warehouse voted to unionize.
*Democratic-Aligned Firm Slammed for Working on Amazon's Failed Anti-Union Effort.*
If Amazon workers generally unionize, they may succeed in putting an end to a substantial subset of that company's predatory practices: those aimed at workers. That won't be enough to make Amazon safe for our anyone to tolerate. For its anticompetitive activities, and its denial of freedom to its customers, it would be better to get rid of Amazon entirely.
But as long as it exists, I hope its workers will have a union.
(satire) *Dozens Of Aborted Fetuses Flee Through Back Window After D.C. Police Bust Down Door.*
Ralph Nader explains how Congressional committees used to scrutinize the US budget — and how Congress handed most of the control to lobbyists.
The US government has made lynching a federal crime.
Since murder (and attempted murder) are crimes already, why is this law necessary? Because some jurors are racist, and some prosecutors are racist, and they often protect people who commit crimes of hatred.
If you call a suicide hotline, it may send the thugs to arrest you "for your own good." This is standard practice now in the US.
(satire) *Scientists Speculate Universe May Be Simulation After "Trial Version Expired" Appears Across Sky.*
*City of Los Angeles agrees to provide thousands of beds in homelessness crisis lawsuit settlement.*
Contrast this with Malibu's plan.
*Europe faces a future of extreme droughts, due to global heating.*
*A 19-month-old child has died in Gaza after waiting for five months for Israel to grant her permission to leave the blockaded enclave for treatment.*
Russia says that Ukrainian helicopters attacked a Russian oil storage facility inside Russia.
Morally, I see no reason why Ukraine should not do this. It is not escalation, since the Putin forces regularly attack targets in Ukraine from bases in Russia, so this is just a little bit of turnabout. That oil is surely there to be be transported into Ukraine for Putin forces vehicles.
It is natural that the powers that are arming Ukraine might be concerned that Putin might react to this by a real escalation. But he could not make the attack on Ukraine much more heinous, so no reason to worry greatly about that.
What if he reacts by bombing NATO countries? That is conceivable, but he would recognize that that is more likely to bring him great harm than any good.
Big Oil companies are raising their prices more than they need to, so as to increase their profits.
Those companies' owners don't deserve more profits — they deserve to lose everything. But what they deserve is less important than what Americans deserve, and what the rest of the world deserves. Above all, we all deserve to avoid global heating disaster.
The crucial question is whether Americans, and the US government, can take the long view and respond to this gouging by pushing quickly to decarbonize.
So far it appears that Biden is planning to do the exact opposite: to fine oil companies for whatever fossil fuel reserves they do not drill into
Putin is acutely evil, and dangerous. Oil companies are evil on a longer time scale, and far more dangerous. We must defeat them both, and we know how to do it. we know how to do it.
*Hundreds of environmental protesters have blocked seven oil terminals across the [UK] as part of a campaign to paralyze the UK's fossil fuel infrastructure.*
An interview with participants.
This is a last-ditch effort to stop global heating disaster from killing them before they get old.
*Amid Renewed Medicare for All Push, Study Shows 112 Million Americans Struggle to Afford Healthcare.*
Providing medical care for everyone who lives in a country is one of the missions of the state.
London thugs handcuffed Eric Taylor because they considered his heavy coat to be suspect. He posted a video. They didn't like that, so they handcuffed him again, and this time deleted the video he was making.
If the thug department allows its "officers" to defy people's rights with impunity, it has surrendered to lawlessness.
Hundreds of soldiers from the Putin forces dug trenches in soil near Chernobyl which has a high level of radioactive contamination. They developed radiation sickness and have withdrawn to a hospital for treatment.
The workers who take care of the ruined reactors are back in unimpeded control. That is a step forward, for safety.
What is the situation with the Zaporozhzhia reactors?
A large clinical trial found that no category of Covid-19 patients benefits from taking Ivermectin, and some categories have it worse.
*Malibu [agreed to plan] an "Alternative Sleeping Location" for up to 30 homeless people, some place outside of Malibu.*
Nokia has built products for years to help Russia snoop on dissidents,
much as Apple has helped China's surveillance
and Microsoft has helped the NSA's surveillance.
In Russia, it started with snooping, but it didn't stop there; it continued to shutting down their organizations, putting them in prison, and even poisoning them. In China, also, it surely includes the first two; we don't know whether China killed any of them.
Speaking of Apple, it treats its users unjustly in many ways,
even censorship, since the iMonsters are designed so users can't even freely install programs others have released.
Plutocratist Democrats in the Senate blocked Biden's nominee for a subunit of the Labor Department that deals with disputes about which workers are employees.
Authors argue that if the west can receive 4 million Ukrainians, or perhaps eventually 10 million, it can accept climate refugees without limit, even if they number in the hundreds of millions, or eventually billions.
That claim is absurd. For any kind of burden, there is a limit.
It is clearly true that western countries are motivated by prejudice when they decide how to treat various groups of refugees. But western countries would find it hard to admit hundreds of millions of refugees even if they were all Europeans, even today. 20 years from now, when all these countries will have shortages of food and millions will be homeless, it would be even harder.
The only way for the world to get through this is to cut our greenhouse emissions, fast.
Florida Republicans plan to eliminate financial incentives for installing home solar-powered electric generation.
Republicans are not on humanity's side, not on civilization's side. They are on the other side.
*Citing Likely Racist Motives, Federal Judge Blocks Florida GOP's Voter Suppression Law.*
*I Want You Back: Getting My Personal Data From Amazon Was Weeks of Confusion and Tedium.* It uses a dark pattern to make it slow and inconvenient.
I think the latter can only be anti-ship missiles.
*Airport Workers Protest Across US Demanding "Living Wage" and Right to Union.*
A recent court ruling shows that it is possible to prosecute the wrecker for trying to interfere in the 2020 election.
Amnesty International denounced Putin for massive persecution of anyone in Russia that opposes his invasion of Ukraine. Even describing what is happening is a crime. Like the bullshitter in the US, Putin unhesitatingly labels all unflattering truths "fake news."
US citizens: call on the DoJ to investigate the wrecker's crimes, now that a judge ruled he is likely to have committed some.
US citizens: call on your senators to permanently protect the Grand Canyon from uranium mining.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
*Why is Biden boasting about drilling for oil? Our planet demands we stop now.*
Governments are disregarding the future cost to society of long Covid, both the cost of taking care of those disabled and the harm done by the loss of people's ability to work.
When you risk catching Covid, you risk needing someone to take care of you and losing the ability to work. You can reduce those risks by getting fully vaccinated, and minimizing how much you are indoors with other people without an N95 mask and good ventilation.
Arguing that Ukraine will only be safe from Putin if his attack ends in unambiguous failure that he cannot spin as a kind of victory.
Putin is replying to sanctions with sanctions: European countries that want to keep buying Russian gas would have to do it by dealing in roubles.
Erdoğan seeks better relations with Crown Prince Bone Saw, so Turkey plans to halt the prosecution of the direct murderers of Jamal Khashoggi, and hand it over to Crown Prince Bone Saw himself. (Crown Prince Bone Saw commanded the murder, but he is not a target for prosecution anyway.)
It is true that the trial is unable to make progress. The accused are in Salafi Arabia, protected by their master. But this plan is dishonest.
The UK proved in 2020 that it could provide housing to all homeless people. Then it sent them back to the street.
I use the term "homeless" in the US manner, meaning people who have to live on the street unless they find temporary space.
Unions call for Oregon's state employee pension fund to divest from the company that makes the Pegasus spy software, as well as from fossil fuels.
*Covid vaccines give extra protection to previously infected, studies show.*
New South Wales is trying to impose a two-year sentence on protesters that block roads. The Green Party is trying to stop it.
(satire) *Terminal Cancer Wasted On Man Who Was Already Living In The Moment.*
The UK's Tory government refused to insist on competent evaluators for fire risk in building designs because that would be "red tape".
Strangely, the same government always wants more red tape to tie up immigrants, disabled people and poor people.
*Transition to Zero-Emission Vehicles [in the US] Would Deliver $1.2 Trillion in Public Health Benefits.*
Facebook's political manipulation is not done solely by targeted ads. The choice of what posting to show each used also depends on per profile.
IC manufacturing has hit another obstacle: a shortage of neon. The main producer is Ukraine.
It is very important for the industry to develop redundant supplies, both for raw materials and for manufactured goods, to cope with breakdowns 30 and 40 years from now when there could be many happening each year. If industry learns to plan for redundancy now, and incorporates this into planning, it may enable technological civilization to survive.
*Trump brazenly asks Putin to release dirt about Biden's family.* The alleged dirt may or may not exist, but the corruptor's coziness with Putin shows what he stands for.
Oregon has allowed people who live elsewhere to come there for assisted suicide. This right is slowly spreading around the US, but it is limited to people who are expected to die soon anyway. Those who can look forward to years of helpless agony are still condemned to a life sentence.
Ukrainians who got out of Mariupol describe life under Putin's bombardment.
Manchin said he will protect billionaires from paying more taxes.
The cheater made a call from a White House phone on Jan 6 and arranged to delete it or omit it from the White House call log.
India blocked dissident journalist Rana Ayyub from traveling to Europe by stopping her from boarding her flight. This is part of a systematic pattern of repression against those who criticize Modi and the bigotry and violence his regime promotes.
A wood stove cause substantial harm to the health of people who live in the house. About 40 times as much as a gas-fired boiler. (I presume an electric heater generates roughly the same amount of indoor pollution as a fossil-fuel-powered heater.)
Warning: planet-roasters are spreading false criticisms of today's renewable energy generating systems.
*Many of New Zealand’s glaciers could disappear in a decade, scientists warn.* The rest will shrink.
Mining peat and using it implies releasing its stored carbon. We must stop that practice.
Tunisia's president is trying to crush its parliament.
He decreed parliament "suspended" last year; but Parliament met anyway and canceled that decree. So he made another decree to "dissolve" parliament, and now the question is whether he will arrest the members of parliament and revert explicitly to tyranny.
* Rain forests looked after by communities absorb twice as much carbon as other lands, analysis shows.*
Driverless taxis, which could receive orders to take you where you really really don't want to go, are one step closer to being a real and practical danger.
If you were in Russia, would you get in a taxi that knows who you are? I wouldn't take one in any country.
The UK Parliament voted to continue a two-year trial of mailing women abortion pills to use at home.
The US needs something similar, to thwart the Republicans who are trying to make abortion impossible in some states.
The strategic situation in Ukraine.
*The planet needs global cooperation to heal from the damage humanity has wrought—more war is the opposite of what we need.*
Due to global heating, drought has extended to the southern plains of the US, and with it wildfires.
Spring has barely started and they have had 500,000 acres burnt.
*We are currently pushing existing vaccines to their limits with high infection levels, but we should instead be supporting them by reducing transmission. Returning to normal behavior does not return us to normal life. It returns us to a life with more disruption, more sickness and more strain on [the medical system].*
The UK meteorologists will adjust their criterion for heat waves based on the new, hotter, normal.
That's reasonable as far as it goes. The concept of "heat wave" becomes useless if heat inflation results in a heat wave every week. Just as long as people don't get fooled and lulled by it.
*EU wants to force fashion firms to make clothes more durable and recyclable.*
That could be a great step forward, if it is enforced thoroughly.
The UK government is running ads promoting one of its notional policies, just where it will help Tories win local elections.
"Level-ling up" might be a good thing if truly implemented, but that would take lots of money, which Tories have no intention of spending on this.
Many US schools have installed "security cameras" with facial recognition. Perhaps most schools.
It's legitimate (and useful) to have cameras with computers that detect people with guns, or people without masks. Likewise to send the photos of those people to school staff, who could take appropriate action — or sound an alarm. Those are legitimate precisely because they don't track anyone who hasn't done something that requires attention.
What is not legitimate is to identify students, or make pictures of them available to anyone else (at the same time or later), in the absence of a specific wrong that they are doing. They must be true security cameras, not surveillance cameras.
The big increase in the already-bloated Pentagon budget is not necessary for supporting Ukraine.
If the wrecker runs against Biden again, the wrecker might win the popular vote, according to a recent poll.
Since the wrecker's fraction in this poll exceeds his general popularity, this must be due to Biden's unpopularity. Why is Biden so unpopular? I don't know, but I suspect that people blame him because Republicans blocked the mostly-good laws he proposed. I have seen that particular irrationality in the major media (when I see that). Instead of "Manchin and Sinema plus the Republicans blocked the bill," stories say "Biden failed to get his proposal enacted," as if that were his fault.
When and as Biden's proposed laws are inadequate, that's his fault.
*Why do we still have no answer for these four long Covid questions?*
The "let Covid rip" policy might almost make sense if our vaccines and treatments reduced the danger to a very small chance of death. There are two big flaws in that picture: (1) the substantial fraction of the population (perhaps 1/4 of the US) who are particularly vulnerable (and face a much larger chance of death), and (2) the risk of a fate worse than death: lasting disability due to Long Covid.
Information about the frequency of Long Covid is limited, and it comes mainly from unvaccinated people infected in 2020 by the original Covid-19. With Omicron, it could be so rare that it is no longer a major problem. Or it might be larger than before. BA.2 might be just like Omicron or it might be quite different.
In the face of this ignorance, the one thing we can be sure of is that the "let Covid rip" approach risks crippling considerable numbers of people.
Has anyone determined what fraction of the Americans that quit their jobs last fall quit because they were disabled? What fraction can't find child care because some of the people who previously provided child care had become disabled? To what extent was it, rather than the "great resignation", actually the "great incapacitation"?
One thing is clear. Now that Republicans have eliminated the funds for testing (as well as vaccination and treatment), many Americans, including those who can't escape being exposed every day, won't ever get tested for Covid-19. If they develop Long Covid symptoms, their doctors won't know they had Covid-19 at all.
*Contraception myths mean nearly half of pregnancies worldwide unintended.*
US thugs kill, overall, three people per day, the same rate of killing as in the past few years.
The UK policy for people who might have Covid-19 is, don't get tested (unless you're well-off), go to work anyway, don't bother with a mask, and make people sick.
Some politicians call for rejection of the narrow and weak patent waiver proposal, because it would supersedes the adequate deal proposed by South Africa and India.
Ukraine accuses the Putin forces of kidnapping thousands of Ukrainians and taking them to Russia. Due to obstacles to communication, imposed by the Putin forces, it has not been possible to verify the facts. I can't take for granted that the Ukrainian statement is accurate. However, I trust the Ukrainian state more or less. I wouldn't trust Putin to tell the truth about the time of day.
In Putin-occupied cities, the Putin forces want journalists to become collaborators. Journalists face attempts to corrupt them, followed by Soviet-style repression if they refuse, including jail, beatings, and threats to their relatives.
However, those who demonstrate their firmness are sometimes released.
(satire) *McDonald's Launches $99 Ripoff Menu.*
Campaigning to make oceans absorb CO2 or else reduce emissions from on land.
AOC and some other Democrats say that Clarence Thomas's collaboration to undermine the Constitution by stealing an election is a reason why he ought to resign, and a reason to impeach him.
I fully agree — but as a shameless "by hook or by crook" Republican with no loyalty to American democracy, he will never resign for trying to undermine and destroy it. Furthermore, the "by hook or by crook" Republicans in the Senate will never vote to remove him from office, so impeaching him is about as useless as impeaching the wrecker.
*Progressive Caucus Says Pay-For Concerns 'Evaporate' When It Comes to Pentagon.*
Ukraine's government is investigating a video that appears to show a Ukrainian guard shooting Russian prisoners in the leg.
It could be fake news, but it could also be true. If it is true, I hope the government will punish it strongly to set an example. Each country must set an example of refusing to tolerate such behavior, to influence other countries.
We must reject the idea that pointed words can justify violence.
A slap is nowhere as bad as a gunshot, but let's not take a step in the wrong direction. Moreover, one side of our politicized society loves guns, exults in violence, and believes in winning by hook or by crook.
*From "herd immunity" to today, Covid minimisers are still sabotaging our pandemic progress.*
This proposal specifies a minimum policy of readiness for future developments (including new variants). It does not try to avoid leaving millions of people incapacitated. I have seen no statistics on how what fraction of people become incapacitated after an infection of Omicron, nor of what fraction remain incapacitated after 3 months.
Heavy rains are going to flood towns on Australia's east coast, whose houses were rendered uninhabitable by floods a few weeks ago. Perhaps people had better move those towns.
Modern life, since a few decades ago, disconnects people from the ingredients that go into real food, and many children nowadays don't learn anything about them.
Amnesty International condemns the Tories' plan for tearing up the human rights of anyone that is treated badly or unjustly by the state. Plus a separate, special attack on refugees.
US citizens: Urge Congress to end corporate tax loopholes that companies like Tesla continue to abuse.
US citizens: call on Democratic leaders to thwart Putin by uniting to reduce fossil fuel use, and fast.
*Want to Defeat Putin? Deliver the Green New Deal.*
The wrecker's phone call log on 6 Jan 2021 has a surprising gap from before noon to almost 7pm. He made calls during that time, so apparently he either prevented them from being logged or destroyed part of the log.
Australia's planet-roaster government plans to cut "climate spending" by a total of 1/3.
In Australia, the opposition party (Labor) is usually only a little to the left of the right-wing coalition; it can't be relied on to defend the climate firmly.
Republicans are deregulating the hidden carrying of guns in the states they control.
Progressives have warned Biden that victory at the polls in November will depend on his using executive orders to fulfill promises.
Russian billionaires use the same tax-dodging haven countries to evade sanctions that other billionaires use to dodge taxes. By changing the laws that were designed to facilitate this, we can crack down on wrongs.
The Institute for Digital Archaeology requested to scan one of the Parthenon marble sculptures and use numerically controlled tools to cut a perfect imitation out of similar marble. The British Museum refused. The Institute says it will sue for permission.
The project seems like a good one, and should go forward, but the article doesn't explain on what grounds the institute could win such a suit.
A preliminary investigation found "credible evidence of attempts by Russia to interfere with the UK’s electoral processes," but the UK has failed to investigate further to reach a conclusion. Some UK elected officials have asked the European Court of Human Rights to demand that the UK do so.
Why would the Tories choose not to investigate? Perhaps because the intervention helped the Tories.
*Why do Putin, Trump, Tucker Carlson, and the GOP sound so much alike?
It's not just that they're all authoritarians. Their culture wars have similar agendas.*
Davis, California, and the University UC Davis, have worked together for 1.5 years to resist the spread of Covid, and had great success, keeping the case rate to a level far below the rest of California.
A proposed outline for a peace agreement for Ukraine and Russia.
I think this proposal is acceptable in its overall lines, but we must be careful about the specifics of certain points.
*A security agreement for Ukraine will be worthless if it is controlled by the UN Security Council, in which Russia has veto power.
I propose instead a one-way alliance between NATO and Ukraine. That is, NATO countries would be obliged to defend Ukraine if it is attacked, but Ukraine would never have an obligation to join in a war involving NATO countries. This might convince Russia there is no danger to Russia in the agreement.
Perhaps the nuclear-armed NATO countries would agree to provide funds and arms but not fight Russia directly unless it attacks their forces.
*Autonomy for any parts of Ukraine should be limited to civil matters, and some kinds of national laws must apply. They must not have their own armies.
The people of each district — those who lived in it before 2014 — should get to vote on whether that district is included in an autonomous region or not,
Ukrainians that Putin took to Russia should be returned so they can vote freely.
(satire) *Wealthy Couple Founds Art Museum To Foster Public Appreciation For How Wealthy They Are.*
Robert Reich: *Inflation Won't Be Remedied by the Federal Reserve Imposing Higher Interest Rates. The result is likely to be a recession.*
Scientific institutions are going overboard in cutting scientific cooperation with Russian institutions and Russian scientists.
Scientists should cooperate regardless of wars, as long as their work is not related in the short term to military use.
*A worker objected to Google’s Israel military contract. Google told her to move to Brazil* or be fired, with 17 work days to decide.
A different issue also raised by this contract is that allowing a company to run the state's computer facilities is a threat to the national security of that state. No country should trust such cloudy computing facilities.
There are many other reasons to boycott Amazon. I ask people not to use Amazon to buy anything for me.
Booster doses of the existing vaccines may not be very effective at maintaining immunity towards current and future variants of Covid-19.
I am disturbed by the brief report that the US has cut funds for vaccine development. Can anyone send me more info?
*Neither Nato nor Ukraine can de-Putinise Russia. We Russians must do it ourselves.*
The great challenge we face now is to break through Putin's web of censorship. During World War II, airplanes dropped leaflets. What can we do today?
It is worth noting that Ukraine was ruled by Stalin, and subsequent Communist rulers, for just as long as today's Russia. Since Ukraine has managed to become democratic, maybe Russia can too.
*Push for new UK nuclear plants lacks facility for [radioactive] waste.*
It is hard to be sure that a radioactive waste storage facility will continue operating for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, especially if it will require continual attention during that time. Especially since we don't know whether technological civilization will still exist 50 or 100 years from now.
Besides which, nuclear power plants are so expensive that it would be preferable to build renewable generation plus energy storage facilities, and avoid the nuclear waste entirely.
On the third anniversary of Julian Assange's expulsion from the Ecuadorian embassy, rally from 11am to 2:45pm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the park opposite the British Consulate (which is 245 Main Street).
The rally is in the park with the big globe in the middle.
*Dalai Lama, Other Nobel Winners Demand Explicit Vow Not to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine.* They demanded this vow from the US and Putin.
I support this demand.
*Uninsured Americans Will Now Be Charged $125 for a Single PCR Covid-19 Test.*
DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. This law prohibits teachers from explaining to students about sexual orientation and gender identity, through third grade.
That's long enough that the kids are likely to learn everything from other kids, and learn it wrong.
*[Biden]’s playing into Putin’s hands* by talking about regime change.
Senator Scott of Florida listened to a description of measures from his own tax plan, and condemned them. He said they were "Democratic talking points."
*Biden to announce "billionaire minimum income tax" in budget plan.*
All in all, the countries that set out to eliminate Covid-19 did very well, until variants much more contagious supplanted the original virus.
If all countries had approached the disease this way, the more contagious variants might never had evolved. Of course, that was not possible for all countries; many didn't have the money, or didn't have the social cohesion and trust, or didn't have the necessary leadership, to make the attempt. But we should learn to do that in the future.
Australia's right-wing ruling parties aim to win reelection by spending a lot of money on infrastructure in precisely the districts where they need more votes.
A coup in Russia might get rid of Putin, but if it did, it could lead to other bad situations.
Past imperialism of present-day NATO countries is provoking hostility from their former African colonies, which express it in a bizarre way: by supporting Putin's imperialism.
They have valid grounds for a grievance with former colonizers, but it's not fair to take it out on Ukraine, which is in the same position today that they were in a century ago.
Campaigners in Iceland have been working for 15 years convincing tourists to stop eating whale meat, with substantial success.
US citizens: Tell your representative, senators and president not to declare a no-fly zone, and to avoid war between the US and Russia.
*Taliban reversal on girls’ education derails US plan for diplomatic recognition.*
I think this is the right sort of way to exert suasion on Afghanistan about women's rights. It can potentially influence the outcome but won't backfire by arousing resistance. It is not certain to succeed, but no other method would be either.
The false confessions of the Birmingham Six — beaten out of them by thugs — show that Britain shares the pattern of injustice which in the US is typically applied to blacks. In the US, 100 years ago, it was applied to the Italians Sacco and Vanzetti.
The US tolerates problems that cause many avoidable deaths, partly due to distrust of science. Covid-19 has been one of them, and is likely to be tolerated on a permanent basis.
US students from poor families can't afford to go to college because they can't afford to live anywhere near it. That's in addition to the cost of the university itself, which is also prohibitive.
The EFF proposes prohibiting advertising based on behavioral profiling.
This might substantially reduce the extent of tracking, but won't eliminate the danger from tracking. Only part of the danger comes from online advertising as such. Profiling can be used in other ways than online advertising, including offline political activity, "predictive policing", and state repression. Personal data can be used for other things than profiling in the usual sense.
In particular, the proposed exception to allow advertising based on the user's current location will give companies an excuse to collect the user's current location. This location history will be useful for finding whistleblowers and dissidents.
I fear that the EFF has found a compromise plan that would eliminate a lot of the tracking that annoys individuals, but won't protect society politically at all,
Miami declared a state of emergency because of students coming for spring break.
Some suspect that this is because many of the students are black. That might indeed be the motive. But there is a good reason to do this, one that has nothing to do with their skin color. Those people on he beach threaten to spread Covid-19!
Arizona legislators from the Repressive Party passed a law against making videos of what uniformed thugs do.
We used to have confidence that the Supreme Court would stand by the right to do this. I feel less confidence nowadays.
To Endure, Peace Needs to Weaken Putin But Not Ruin Him
Belarus has shut down nearly all nature conservation organizations, and has jailed some of the activists.
Sanders proposes to enact again the law which in World War II taxed profiteering companies up to 95%.
An EU directive will regulate how internet tracking servers use their data.
This directive may boost competition, and limit somewhat the harm that surveillance companies do to the public. But as long as data are collected, they will be misused, and misused by various entities that get the data. This law is inadequate; what we really need to do is make sure people have the right to as much anonymity as we had 30 years ago.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reversed its new regulations gently limiting fossil fuel extraction, and approved new projects.
Amory Lovins still enlightens the world about the way increased efficiency of energy use can eliminate most energy use for heating, cooling and transportation.
Increasing humidity in the Atacama desert is causing the 7000-year-old Chinchorro mummies to rot.
Reportedly US Democrats have got political advice to declare that Covid-19 is no longer a problem so that Americans will relax, give them credit for a nonexistent victory, and spread Covid-19.
This is almost as callous as what the Republicans have done for two years, intentionally spreading Covid-19.
New York's new mayor is a night mayor for the homeless. He ordered the thug department to break up all homeless people's encampments within two weeks.
It's that living in an improvised house of cardboard on the street is an inhumane situation. But this reasoning from that starting point is screwy. Is it more humane to make someone live on the street without even a cardboard house? Yes, there are dangers to living in subway tunnels — but are they more dangerous than living on the street? Thieves and killers can go in the tunnels, but they can go on the street too.
If you want to see whether your effort to help the homeless is doing any good, one way is to see whether homeless people move there from the street voluntarily. If you want to make success more likely, you could give homeless people more say. If you want them to stay somewhere that isn't a street, you could make some other space available that they can get to.
Putin's war is building up around him a coterie of repressive and unjust regimes — a real life Axis of Evil.
Its not quite a coherent alliance. India and China, which are permanently at the edge of war with each other, are both part of it.
Unarmed protesters who wouldn't stop protesting convinced the Putin forces to pull out of the town of Slavutych.
25 years after the civil war ended, Sri Lanka continues torturing Tamils to get false confessions.
Some victims are suspected of "terrorism" because they are human rights lawyers. For other victims, it simply isn't clear.
Russia had a sophisticated plan for a war based on cracking and disinformation, but strangely Putin is not using it.
The whole length of the Great Barrier Reef is suffering severe bleaching of corals. In some places, deaths of coral organisms have already started.
This is no surprise at all. The main causes of coral bleaching are heat and water pollution. The Australian government stubbornly promotes both global heating and pollution in the region near the reef.
The UK is not giving local governments enough money to repair 3000 damaged bridges. They also struggle to provide housing and welfare benefits for the people of their district.
The US is turning the job of schoolteacher into a low-wage job; many teachers are planning strikes.
Poland's partly-authoritarian government hopes that its strong opposition to Putin will shield it from EU pressure.
The two partly-authoritarian governments in the EU, Poland and Hungary, have protected each other from pressure through EU rules that require standards of democracy, and independence of the judiciary (often referred to in this context as "rule of law"). If Orbán is defeated in Hungary, the EU will be able to pressure Poland much more effectively.
The British royal family invested directly in transporting slaves to Jamaica. I would expect the same is true for other British colonies, including the ones that rebelled and became the United States.
I believe that Britain owes reparations to the descendants of those slaves.
The article linked to above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
The US will export more natural gas to Europe so that it can stop buying natural gas from Putin.
Whether this hurts Putin depends on whether some other country will buy the gas he would have sold to Europe. I don't know, but I would not assume it is impossible.
US citizens: call on the CDC to eliminate "Title 42", which is used to expel asylum-seekers without a hearing.
US citizens: tell Biden that every refugee deserves an asylum hearing.
US citizens: call on Biden to pick up a pen and cancel student debt.
US citizens: call on Congress to Investigate critical new evidence that the wrecker committed crimes trying to overturn the election.
US citizens: support the Stop Gas Price Gouging Tax and Rebate Act.
Sanders's bill might be better, but this one would would do some good.
Everyone: call on Chevron not to drill in the Arctic Refuge.
Many bird species in the UK are laying eggs a month earlier than they did 100 years ago.
Republicans in Colorado have organized to send groups of armed whites to intimidate black voters at their homes.
Gangs of armed whites in the US have committed violence against blacks thousands of times, so it's plausible that this might terrorize some blacks so much that they won't vote. The attempt reflects the arrogance of white supremacism, nowadays endorsed by the Republican Party.
The article linked to at the start of this note displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I object to bigotry, and normally I decline to link to articles which promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles which give important information about racism or the fight to eliminate racism. That article is one of the exceptions.
The UK government renewed a big railroad operating contract with a company that 6 months ago it fined and terminated another contract because it acted in "bad faith."
UK immigration bullied 2,000 asylum seekers into giving "voluntary" permission to seize and keep their phones, then look through them. A court ruled that it broke the law by doing that.
When they tried to apply for asylum, they were stymied because UK immigration demanded information they couldn't provide because they were unable to get it out of their phones.
The UK transport minister, a Tory evidently, privately told P&O ferries in November that it was ok to fire all the crews and outsource the work to low-wage workers. Then, last week, he pretended that it came as a surprise to him.
With a serial bullshitter as prime minister, who makes incredible claims to avoid admitting that he lied, it has become hard to demand that Tories follow even the most basic standards of honesty.
P&O seems to have one valid point: that it had a competitor, Irish Ferries, that was already outsourcing the same job to low-wage workers. There were two possible ways for the UK to deal with that: (1) let P&O pay low wages too, or (2) impose better wages on all ferries through a new law. The former fit with the natural inclination of Tories.
Big Oil's investment in Russian oil companies gave Putin 100 billion dollars of investment and income, which paid for much of the weapons he is using for attacks and massacres in Ukraine.
Even in oil- and gas- extracting Oklahoma, enormous wind-power developments are being built, purely to save costs. This may not go fast enough to save humanity, but with a sensible amount of attention to the goal of saving technological civilization we might succeed.
Two weeks after Massachusetts eliminated regulations to slow transmission of Covid-19, the new case rate increased almost 30% compared with the previous week, 5735 compared with 4459. If this continues, the new case rate will double every 2.5 weeks or so.
Vanguard funds invest in injustice and climate destruction.
(satire) *Ginni Thomas Dismisses Text Messages To Mark Meadows As Regular, Run-Of-The-Mill Infidelity.*
Clarence Thomas has already flagrantly disregarded the basic rule for unbiased judicial proceedings, by ruling on a case involving his wife's political activities.
They just happen to be activities directed at overthrowing the US government.
Tigray and Ethiopia have agreed to "cessation of hostilities" which could mean an end to their war.
*Australians with the most to fear from Omicron living in "permanent lockdown".*
That could happen in many European countries, and the US.
Dubai is an inviting home for rich Russians facing sanctions elsewhere. All the luxury goods they can no longer buy in Russia, they can buy in Dubai.
The Senate judiciary committee showed absolutely no interest in Judge Jackson's views, or her knowledge, about the power of big business and the laws that were meant to restrain it.
Since the UK threw off all precautions against the spread of Covid-19, the disease has spread quickly. Last week, 6% of the people in England had Covid-19.
Such worrisome news will not repeat, because the UK's policy of charging for testing will discourage people from getting tested.
*"Decide who you are with," Ukrainian leader tells Viktor Orbán.*
Actually it's the Hungarian people who will soon choose who they are with: either authoritarian Orbán, or the opposition coalition that wants to return to substantive democracy.
A heatwave at the north pole and collapsed Antarctic ice shelf are reminders to redouble our efforts, and focus on climate.*
*Mariupol theatre bombing killed 300, Ukrainian officials say.*
Bureaucratic conditions added to the proposed vaccines-only temporary patent waiver would make it very difficult to use the deal.
*[A] new paper shows that the climate and biodiversity crises "need to be tackled in a joined-up way by central banks and supervisors to build a nature-positive financial system."*
Republican senators used their "questioning" of Judge Jackson as an opportunity to spread bullshit and racism to their supporters.
US law gives the government the power to issue compulsory patent licenses for a product (including a medicine) if government funds paid for part of its development, unless the patent holder makes it available "in reasonable terms."
Arizona Republicans are passing a law that would give already-registered voters just 30 days to dig up proof of citizenship or be removed from the voting list.
If they need to apply for copies of papers, it could be impossible to accomplish the task in so little time.
*Special Assistant District Attorney Pomerantz explains in his letter of resignation that he believed the case of financial crimes against the cheater was ready for prosecution.*
The cheater actively threatens free elections and human rights in the US. If there is evidence to prosecute him for a serious crime, I agree with Pomerantz that we should do so without delay.
Reportedly Ukraine is trading corpses of Putin forces soldiers for living Ukrainian prisoners of war.
That makes no sense to me. If I commanded an army, I wouldn't release a captured enemy in exchange for a corpse. Doing so would not bring the soldier who died back to life, and the corpse would be of no help in a fight.
In general, I don't understand why people care so much about corpses. Even the corpse of someone you loved is not a person, just a keepsake, and other keepsakes would serve better to remember per by.
I have a file where I put the names of the deceased who meant something to me. Sometimes I go through it and remember them one by one.
Ginni Thomas (insurrectionist wife of Justice Thomas) sent text messages to the cheater's staff (including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff) calling for overturning the election.
We don't have evidence that the couple explicitly conspired together for this strange coup, but I suspect that they did.
California plans to give $400 to each car owner in the state, to help compensate for high fuel prices.
This is much better than the Republican proposal to make fuel cheaper. In the long term, the high price is good, as it will encourage people to use less of it. Thus, it is wise that the $400 aid payments are independent of how much a person actually drives the car; this way, they will not encourage more driving.
The plan has one flaw: it is limited to car owners. It follows that people will not have an incentive to sell the car and start taking the bus or a bicycle instead. The aid payments should go to every adult in the state.
If you get one of these debit cards do not use it to buy anything. Convert the money into cash, and pay cash!
*France opens inquiry into alleged torture by Interpol’s Emirati head.*
*Ukraine uses facial recognition software to identify Russian soldiers killed in combat.*
This is one of the few uses of facial recognition that isn't an injustice. I don't think that the dead are entitled to privacy rights.
The existence of exceptions where facial recognition does no wrong is no grounds to legitimize the repression that massive use of facial recognition tends to imposes on living people. We need laws to make it impossible for any company to do what Clearview AI does.
*New data suggests forests help keep the Earth at least half of a degree cooler, protecting us from the effects of climate crisis.*
Tories voted to allow businesses to fire workers and rehire them (or replacements) for half the wage. That's what permitted P&O Ferries to do that. But the worst damage to workers is that many unions have lost their focus on fighting.
Researchers looked at blood from 22 donors and found microplastics in the blood of 17 of them.
There is a lot more research to do in this field.
A study found a general tendency for countries in which people generally trust each other more to be more effective in reducing Covid-19.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and senators to oppose the "College Transparency Act" or "CTA". This bill would set up centralized surveillance of all US college students, continuing for the student's whole life.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US residents: call on US mayors to invest in mass transit now, so as to reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Everyone: state your support for the striking workers at Maximus call center.
We should move beyond supporting each group of outsourced workers and put an end to the outsourcing. The US government should put narrow limits on outsourcing so that it can happen only to limited quantities of jobs.
US citizens: call on the House of Representatives to strip Greene and Gozar of their committee assignments for participating in a meeting of white supremacists and Nazis.
Everyone: call on AT&T to keep right-wing channel OAN off DirecTV.
*Peace in the Balkans is again under threat. EU governments must confront the Serb government before it is too late.*
It is surely no coincidence that Serbia maintains friendly relations with Russia.
Use of sewage sludge for fertilizer has rendered farmland in Maine too poisonous to use — ever — because of PFAS that contaminates anything grown there.
If technological civilization lasts through the global heating disaster, maybe we will eventually be able to develop ways to destroy the most used PFAS.
The number of homeless people in California keeps growing, inevitably, because the state has a growing shortage of available housing.
The full solution is to unblock construction of dense housing in the cities with public transportation. That will make housing affordable.
However, lockable tiny rooms could also help.
(satire) *Senate Republicans Attack Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Lack Of Experience On U.S. Supreme Court.*
P&O ferries is offering to pay workers around 6 months' salary (more for some workers) in exchange for not criticizing the company.
This stingy offer would only slightly soften the harm done to workers.
Ferry workers at that company, and any competitors that follow the switch to temporary workers, will lose a large fraction of that amount (let's guess half of it) every six months for the rest of their lives. Perhaps for decades. This "compensation" compensates only for the transient harm, not for the lasting harm.
The change will harm passengers too, with bad service and increased risk of accidents that would result from the frequent turnover.
The company may be fined millions of pounds if convicted of illegal dismissal, but even that wouldn't undo the damage.
The only way to correct the damage is to make the company back down. Of course, Bogus Johnson doesn't want to do that.
Prime Minister Corbyn would have kept his eye on the ball.
*Khanna-Warren Bill Would Ban Wall Street Profiteering on Water Scarcity.*
* New research out of Texas reveals how wind and solar can replace coal power across the state and serve as a "model for the nation".*
The Republican state government of Tennessee wants to abolish the town of Mason, with its mainly-black population and black (and Democratic) elected officials, so it will be controlled by the mainly white county government.
The smallest "tactical nuclear weapons" today are about the same power as the Hiroshima bomb, which killed about 150,000 people soon and more later.
Britons who visit food banks say "no thanks" to potatoes because they can't afford the cost of the fuel or electricity needed to boil them.
The Republican Party is now completely the Covid Party. Beyond organizing supporters to reject masks and vaccination, and lying to dissuade others, it has now eliminated federal funds to pay for them.
It has also eliminated federal funds to pay for treatment for uninsured poor people who catch Covid-19. This will kill tens of thousands of additional Americans — killed by the Republican Party.
Republican senators tried to smear Ketanji Brown Jackson by associating her with the principle of human rights, justice, and the US Constitution.
I have a hunch that Faux News broadcast what the senators said and not her replies. Does anyone know? (If you don't normally watch Faux News, please don't let this lead you to start now!)
Ukraine is unable to identify the dead soldiers of the Putin forces. They carry nothing that states their names. They carry dog tags which show only a serial number.
Russia refuses to accept the corpses from Ukraine — a very strange thing for an army to do.
Putin is evidently set on supporting his denial that there is a war by preventing Russian families from finding out that their sons are dead.
Their absence can't be concealed forever. What will happen when the families find out?
Sanders opposes the "America Competes Act" for big giveaways to big businesses.
I've been saying for years that when companies want help from the government, they should sell the government stock at a fair price.
* A Tennessee [thug] fired his stun gun at a food delivery man who had begun recording his traffic stop for speeding and asked to see the officer’s supervisor.*
*US man charged in Capitol attack gets asylum in Belarus.* This further demonstrates the alliance between the wrecker and Putin.
Edward Snowden must be extremely embarrassed to be stuck in Russia. He isn't there by choice. He never intended to stop there — he simply had a flight connection through Moscow. He was blocked from boarding his next flight because the US had revoked his passport.
The US contrived to block his later efforts to travel onward; the US had its allies violate the diplomatic rights of Bolivia by forcing a search of the president's plane to look for Snowden. (He wasn't in it.)
This was just one step less nasty than what Lukashenko did to seize a Belarusian dissident from an airliner that was crossing Belarus.
Thousands of Cubans are seeking asylum in the US, or in Mexico.
*"Surely a chancellor wouldn’t choose to do the wrong things, knowingly, when he has the power to set the country in a better direction?"* Oops, he's a Tory.
Biden is planning to use the Defense Production Act to order an increase in electric vehicle production.
Persecutor Paxton has arbitrarily declared that Pride Week in a school is illegal "sex education".
In general, parents should not have the power to insist that their children remain ignorant. Everyone has the right to good sex education. But Pride Week is education about kinds of relationships, not about sex.
The UK is planning to follow the US and Australia in making it a crime for refugees to go there and ask for asylum.
AIPAC, the lobbying group for continuing Israel's occupation of Palestine (the west bank, and Gaza), is lobbying for insurrectionist Republicans.
Rigidly prudish right-wing Indian bigots are freaking out at the use of a rubber penis model to demonstrate how to put a condom on.
Rigidly prudish right-wing American bigots are not very different, with their repression campaigns about everything that relates to sex.
George Monbiot: *The latest wave of climate deniers claim green schemes are "unaffordable." Success stories from around Europe prove that’s not true.*
Journalist Chris Mullin reports that he protected the anonymity of the bombers that he interviewed so as to prove the innocence of people who were falsely convicted of that crime.
Israel refused to sell Pegasus spyware to Ukraine.
Now if only Israel had refused to sell it to all other clients…
US agencies are dedicating more funds to study "long Covid" disabilities, now that tens of millions of Americans may have them.
The easiest way to deal with the problem of these disabilities is to prevent them. Effective measures to prevent transmission of Covid-19 will mean that fewer people catch it, and fewer people get disabled in this way.
One thing I have not seen is reports about what fraction of people that catch Delta get long Covid. What about Omicron? What about fully vaccinated people?
The Putin forces have cut off Chernihiv from supplies of water (and food). They say they plan to grab specific civilians and take them by force to Russia.
Don't assume "oligarchs" means we're talking about Russia. Yanis Varoufakis explains the harm they do, world wide.
I've read that the concept of "oligarchs" is obsolete in regard to Russia. They used to have political power, but Putin took it away from them.
*What Florida's endangered panthers need to survive.*
My "childhood sweetheart", that I fell in love with when she and I were both 40 years old, campaigned very cleverly against development that threatened their habitat.
The Taliban have rejected letting girls above age 11 go to school.
US citizens: call on Congress to hold Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene accountable for speaking at AFPAC, a white-supremacist and Nazi meeting.
The Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to Make Massive Investments in Clean Energy, so as to fight global heating and authoritarianism.
Everyone: call on Home Secretary Patel to block extradition of Julian Assange by sending email to Public.Enquiries@homeoffice.gov.uk.
(Priti Patel, Home Secretary, Home Office, 2 Marsham St Westminster, London SW1P 4DF, UK; +44 20 7035-4848)
*As Biden Continues [Medicare] Privatization Ploy, Sanders Vows to Reintroduce Medicare for All.*
Ukraine accused Putin of seizing a food aid convoy near Mariupol and taking the drivers and aid workers prisoner.
We don't have confirmation of this, but since it would fit Putin's modus operandi, I find it plausible.
Putin is also accused of starving the people in the occupied city of Kherson. A country that has occupied territory has the legal responsibility to provide the occupied people with food and medicine.
Putin is bombarding Mariupol from warships in the Sea of Azov. A few antiship cruise missiles could put an end to that. The Ukrainians don't have to be fully trained in how to launch them — they can get remote guidance over the internet.
US agencies are dedicating more funds to study "long Covid" disabilities, now that tens of millions of Americans may have them.
The easiest way to deal with the problem of these disabilities is to prevent them. Effective measures to prevent transmission of Covid-19 will mean that fewer people catch it, and fewer people get disabled in this way.
One thing I have not seen is reports about what fraction of people that catch Delta get long Covid. What about Omicron? What about fully vaccinated people?
Washington DC is suing Grubhub for charging hidden fees and using dark patterns to get customers to pay them. For other reasons to reject Grubhub and the other food delivery surveillance companies, see here.
There is now a chance to prevent a giant oil spill in the Red Sea, but that chance could blow up any day.
*Progressives are resisting rightwing book banning campaigns — and are winning [sometimes].*
(satire) *TurboTax Threatens To Tell IRS Customer Cheated On Taxes Unless [Perse Upgrades] To Deluxe Version.*
P&O ferry workers live on the ship. The 800 ferry workers who were abruptly fired were, ipso facto, evicted with one day's notice.
(satire) *[Senator] Josh Hawley Slams Ketanji Brown Jackson For Letting Pedophi