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Each political note has its own anchor in case you want to link to it.
My intention is to make links only to publicly accessible, stable URLs. If you find a link to a page that requires subscription, please report that as you would report any other broken link.
Over 500 million children (or perhaps minors) face frequent heat waves, which tend to damage their health. By 2050, that could rise to over 2 billion.
*World close to "irreversible" climate breakdown,* according to UN environmental agency.
Italian fascists celebrated Mussolini's takeover of the Italian government, 100 years ago. Will the right-wing government, which certainly sympathizes with fascism, seriously oppose the fascists? If not, they will provide the fascists with cover for expanding their power.
Mahsa Amini's memorial service after 40 days reinvigorated protests across Iran.
* Billions of dollars ostensibly committed to addressing the impacts of the climate crisis in poorer countries are not being delivered.*
Europe must try not to cut off contacts with Russians in general. We need more understanding between Russians and Europeans/Americans.
Republican-dominated state legislatures are fabricating creative new excuses for making elections unfair, hoping that the Republican-dominated Supreme Court will rule them legitimate.
*We can't afford US Congress wavering in its support for Ukraine.*
I agree with the general position stated in this article. Putin's eagerness to arrest Ukrainian civilians, kill some, and force most of them rest into servitude in Russia, adds strength to the conclusion.
We will eventually need negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end the war, but those negotiations won't achieve anything until Putin is willing to accept peace on terms that do not subjugate Ukraine and Ukrainians.
*Fears Bolsonaro may not accept defeat as son cries fraud before Brazil election.*
Bolsonaro's campaign relies on bribery using government funds.
Funds have been designated to help poor countries cope with global heating effects, but the funds are not reaching those countries.
*Americans die younger in states run by [right-wingers], study finds.*
Describing two occasions during the Cuban missile crisis when war almost started between the US and the USSR due to confusion.
The US supermarket business is already far too concentrated. Just 4 companies made 2/3 of US grocery sales in 2019.
To allow two large companies to merge would result in neighborhoods with no supermarket near by, and would raise the price of the least expensive foods of many kinds, which are the store brands.
*Donald Trump Isn't the Biggest Grifter in This Country. The Republican Party Is.*
It is customary to call Republicans "conservative". It was partly true, decades ago, but nowadays it is simply false, as they are busy tearing up Americans' way of life in order to build an army of fanatics.
The Supreme Court will hear a case about whether section 230 of the Communications Decency Act gives platforms a right to make recommendation engines recommend anything whatsoever on the site.
I think that regulating the recommendation engines is a good idea. It might be a way to make those platforms take care not to recommend bigotry, hatred, violence, disinformation, and QAnonsense, without blocking or banning any point of view.
If it makes surveillance companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook less profitable, hooray!
*Thousands of London protesters call for UK to rejoin EU.*
A petition to Uber stops just short of mentioning the crucial changes we ought to fight for. Namely, to stop making customers run nonfree software, and stop making them identify themselves.
Identifying and tracking people is an injustice even if you don't sell use of that data to anyone else. Whereas if you don't identify and track people, the advertising problem disappears too.
Republicans are trying to show how determined they are to make it hard for poor and hard-working people to vote — by proposing federal laws to do so.
Those bills can't possibly pass this year; the reason for them is specifically to win support, in the coming election, from people who don't want to allow Democrats to vote.
Kanye West has been giving out hints of antisemitism for 10 years, but only recently made it so blatant that people and businesses couldn't avoid noticing it. Previously, people who wished to disregard it found no difficulty in doing so.
I don't particularly like rap, except when it's parody and makes me laugh, like Can't Watch This by Weird Al, so I never paid attention to West except when I read in national news that he had showed support for the corrupter. That was enough to motivate me to disregard any further news about him.
*UK music industry to implement anti-racism code of conduct from 2023.* This code applies to how businesses treat workers. It looks like a good plan to me.
The EU pledged to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030, but has not implemented policies to make this happen.
To rear fewer cattle in the EU will not help if the EU imports meat instead. That would transfer the cattle's methane emissions to some other country but not eliminate the emissions. To achieve this necessary goal would require either reducing the emissions per unit of meat or milk produced, or reducing the amounts of meat and milk going into products sold in the EU.
The former may perhaps be possible (I don't know) with different breeds of cattle or different feed. But there is not time to develop them, not before 2030. It would have to be done using existing methods.
A judge in Québec ruled that allowing thugs to stop drivers for no specific reason is unconstitutional. The reason is that thugs often choose drivers to stop based on prejudice, for instance racism.
US citizens: call on Congress to eliminate the debt ceiling.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: tell the Department of Justice that anyone who tried to overturn 2020 election results must be held accountable to the full extent of the law.
*New Zealand Uber drivers win landmark case declaring them employees.* At least, some of them will be employees. Just which ones is not yet clear.
Anyway, that's the right policy as regards gig workers who work under the direction of a company. I hope the drivers for Uber will be treated better in the future.
This does not cure the basic injustice of Uber towards its customers. So I will continue my stance of refusing to board an Uber car. Protect your freedom and privacy — don't be a customer of Uber.
The US accuses Russia and China of blocking the creation of new protected marine zones near Antarctica.
Egypt has cancelled events inside the climate conference where NGOs planned to invite scientists to meet visiting politicians.
Farmers in Kenya are selling some of their old baobab trees, which they want to get rid of to use that land.
There may be valid reasons to want to preserve the old baobab trees in Kenya, and/or cultivate new ones. However, that aside, transplanting some (provided they can actually take root and thrive in their new homes) is not particularly bad, especially if the farmers would otherwise have cut them down. It is absurd to claim this is some sort of crime.
The concept of "biopiracy" is used here with a meaning I had not seen before, but it is just as bogus as the other meaning.
It's not enough to have "grownups" as political leaders. We need grownups that feel compassion for poor people rather than for fortunes.
*'Not a Single Global Indicator Is on Track' to Reverse Deforestation by 2030.*
*Global deforestation reduction pledge [for 2030] will be missed without urgent action, say researchers.*
*Australia's Covid lockdown rules found to have lacked fairness and compassion.*
Massachusetts closed various sorts of stores and group activities, but did not have a "lockdown" in the usual sense.
*Gun used by Mexican cartel to shoot down military helicopter bought in US.*
Ohio Republicans subsidize the right-wing disinformation of a "crisis pregnancy center", but not the medical services of Planned Parenthood.
(satire) *Biblical Historians Reveal Jesus Christ Chose Stage Name To Sound Less Jewish.*
*Progressives Have But One Option on Election Day: Vote to Defeat the Neofascist GOP.*
(satire) *Netflix Limits Users To One Eye Per Screen.*
Seriously, Netflix treats users unjustly. Please don't yield to that — instead, flick off Netflix!
*Human Rights Watch Condemns Qatar Over Arrests, Abuse of LGBTQ+ People Ahead of World Cup.*
Will governments allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Putin for the crime of aggressive war? The US may try to protect Dubya from a similar prosecution for conquering and occupying Iraq — a war which he started without grounds or need, based on lies.
Dubya deserves to be prosecuted for that crime, and I would love to see him imprisoned for it.
A group of people with guns were found hanging around near a ballot drop box in Arizona, evidently to intimidate potential voters.
To increase the intimidating effect, they wore clothes suggestive of soldiers.
Millions of Americans get federal medical benefits (Medicaid) and food benefits due to a federal medical emergency proclamation that could end on Jan 11 if Biden does not extend it.
Bitcoin miners bought a mostly disused fossil fuel power plant in New York State to use solely to power their mining computers. People in the state launched a campaign that denied it an updated permit for its intensified operations.
The Nevada Republican candidate for Secretary of State (in charge of elections) has extended his election lies to cover Rep. Pelosi and other members of Congress.
New York City responded to increased violent crime in the subways by pushing out homeless people who were living there.
Does this make sense? I wonder what fraction of violent crimes in the subway are committed by homeless people. My guess is that it is minuscule, because the factors that could make you homeless have little to do with the factors that could make you violent. My guess is that this is simply a way to "arrest the usual suspects" and show that you're "doing something about it."
If the city's night-mayor has any evidence to the contrary, I'd like to see it.
I also guess that an increase in the number of cops patrolling in the subway will change little, because criminals that commit crimes for profit and can think about it will simply commit their crimes where no cop is present. However, the patrols might result in catching more of the criminals who are mentally incompetent to plan like that.
*Former Uber lobbyist Mark MacGann … called on European lawmakers to take on the "disproportionate" and "undemocratic" power held by tech companies* such as Uber.
*He recalled the "almost unlimited finance" executives had to lobby and silence drivers with legal disputes.*
* MacGann said it would be unfair for drivers to be required to hire expensive lawyers and go to labour courts to prove they were employees.*
I agree with what he said, but he surely did not mention the injustice of requiring customers to run a nonfree app on a nonfree operating system (iOS or Android), and identifying themselves to pay. This adds up to tracking the public's movements — something that a free society must ensure no one can do.
Prime Monster Sunak was educated in an elite school that teaches rich boys to be greedy but not at all compassionate.
He keeps a lot of money in a secret account in the Cayman Islands so that no one can tell what he invests in. This means he has continual opportunities for insider trading.
One journalist's struggle to find out about US military operations in Africa. AFRICOM won't admit where its bases are or what countries it is fighting in.
30 progressive Democrats privately signed a letter in July calling for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. It was published and sent to Biden just now, and provoked much opposition.
If it were possible to work out a just peace with Putin, one that avoided crowning his attack on Ukraine with success, I might be in favor of that — but he's not having it.
Total agreement with me is too much to demand of the politicians I support. I support Ayanna Pressley because of the many issues on which she fights for the rights and well-being of non-rich Americans, despite disagreeing with her on this issue.
Emperor penguins face extinction as global heating eliminates the sea ice they depend on.
Xi has imposed total repression, strict even by comparison to the CCP of ten years ago. The only way one can criticize the government is by writing in a public toilet.
The author left China in 2009, and says that the straitjacket of repression in China today makes the country unrecognizable to her now.
*Xi Jinping's party purge prompts fears of greater Taiwan invasion risk.*
*Republicans want working-class voters — without actually supporting workers.*
In the 1980s, the British government had a department whose mission was to write objective nonpartisan descriptions of government practices and rules. Thatcher turned it into an advertising agency.
San Francisco decided to build another public toilet. The project will cost 1.7 million dollars and take 13 years to finish.
Building dedicated public toilets as separate facilities is a surrender to business. The cheap way to address this need is to require all restaurants, whenever open, to permit any orderly person to enter and use the toilet. If a restaurant complains about the cost of fulfilling this requirement, just invite it to move to a place with less pedestrian traffic.
* Publicly subsidized insurers are jacking up prices [on their Medicare Advantage plans] while Americans lose coverage.*
Arguing that the proposed Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would help large US newspapers get more advertising money out of adtech companies, but would not help support local newspapers or local journalism.
Robert Reich: That the US has inflation, like most other countries, is not the fault of the Democrats in office, but they must confront the issue honestly.
The Chinese consul in England who ordered his staff to kidnap and attack a protester, and participated personally in the attack, claims that he was justified because the protest signs constituted an attack against China.
This statement reflects China's contempt for dissent and freedom of speech. It illustrates how the Chinese government is a force for tyranny and repression. Alas, we can find similar views in the US too. Right-wing bullies, including the wrecker himself, frequently call for, and carry out, violence against people for disagreeing with them. At heart, would-be American tyrants are not very different from Chinese tyrants.
We also find progressives who take a similar stance, equating expression of right-wing views, or even depicting events those progressives condemn, to violence. They may claim to be "harmed" by the mere sight of them.
If we join with would-be tyrants in equating criticism with violence, we will have no basis to condemn right-wing violence except that we disagree with the right-wing views.
Just recently the leader of the Proud Boys was invited to speak at Penn State University, by a group of right-wing students. Progressive students demanded the university ban the talk.
I don't agree with the Proud Boys position any more than those students do, but if the disapproval of a group with some power is enough to ban a speech, lots of views will be banned.
On the other hand, if that speech would amount to a call to violence, that could be a valid reason to stop it.
Alan Singer: *Understanding History in the "Age of the Big Lie."*
Singer refers to E.H. Carr, who claimed that "Concern with the future is what really motivates the study of the past. I disagree, because I agree with Singer's concluding paragraph: there are many possible motivations and purposes in studying history.
In particular, it can be interesting to study history seeking the causes and explanations of the present, but we need to avoid transferring our present-day thinking and moral ideas anachronistically to people of the past.
The ACLU asked the Supreme Court to rule that laws prohibiting specific kinds of boycotts are unconstitutional, after one federal appeals court ruled to the contrary.
The authoritarian campaign to prohibit boycotting Israel has put the US in danger of broad-spectrum plutocratist authoritarianism.
After a series of ever-more-radical right-wing prime monsters pushing for ever-deeper political and economic separation from the EU, Britons are waking up to the idea that it was a mistake to leave the EU.
Many years ago, I said that splitting from the EU would have horrible results with plutocratists in charge, but could have good results with antiplutocratists in charge. Splitting would enable the plutocrats to rampage through the UK unrestrained by EU laws, if the UK government were on their side. At the same time, EU laws impose a considerable amount of plutocracy, so leaving the EU would make it possible for the UK to have less.
Now that the "Labour" Party has made sure it can never be a channel to oppose plutocracy, I see little hope that the UK could make positive use of being outside the EU. So it may as well rejoin.
Maha-Rishi Sunak is about to choose to crush the poor so as to reduce the UK's debt. He'd rather cause great suffering than raise taxes.
However, with most Britons now in poverty, they should not have to pay any tax.
He has millions and his wife has hundreds of millions. We call him Rich Sunak.
The UK could raise a lot of money by closing the loophole that many rich UK citizens (including Sunak's wife) use to pay very little tax.
2/3 of Britons support nonviolent direct action to protect the environment.
I'm impressed by their ability to value long-term well-being above short-term inconvenience.
Illegal fishing in poor countries' waters is denying local people their food, and destroying ecosystems.
Evidence casts doubt on the conviction of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is asking for a new trial.
George Monbiot: Britain is so deeply broken that it will need more than an election to fix it.
*Queensland to change laws that prevented UN inspectors entering mental health wards.*
*Cut meat consumption to two burgers a week to save planet, study suggests.* *Public transport [must be] expanded about six times faster than its current rate.* And the world must stop increasing the use of methane (natural gas).
A couple of New Zealand travel bloggers were jailed for months for trying to drive across Iran.
Perhaps it was because they were driving an American make of car, which Iran has prohibited. But that seems unlikely.
*Meet the Industry Lobbyists Fighting Efforts to Solve the Biodiversity Crisis.*
I told a gathering that I was in favor of mousetraps. A mouse replied, claiming that they are de-bait-able.
Biden's Labor Department has proposed an employment rule that would classify the drivers of Uber and Lyft as employees.
This would be a big step forward for employee's rights, but it won't do anything about the injustice of Uber and Lyft to the passengers: making them run nonfree software (an app) and identify themselves (enabling surveillane). This should be forbidden.
So I will continue to refuse to get into an Uber or Lyft car. I go out of my way to get a real taxi that I can board anonymously and pay with cash. Or I take a bus. Or I walk.
In some places, such as New York City, even taxis are part of a surveillance machine. A cab driver there told me that all NYC taxis are required to have cameras that transmit the passengers' face images immediately by radio to the city department of massive surveillance. Such surveillance is a bigger threat than terrorism, because tracking people threatens to subjugate everyone.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to co-sponsor the Resolution Recognizing the Human Rights to Utilities (electric, phone, internet, water, etc).
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Republicans blocked funding for COVID-19 vaccines and testing. As a result, next year vaccination will cost around $110.
Many Americans, who are on the brink of penury and can barely afford food and heat, will go without vaccination. That's unjust for them, and dangerous for everyone. Those who are not current on vaccination are more likely to spread the virus — to you or anyone else.
Catching COVID-19 if you're vaccinated still has a substantial chance of incapacitating you for months or years, so don't take a foolish risk. Obtain N95 masks and use them as a precaution whenever you are near other people in an enclosed space. That's what I do, and I am doing it right now. I am in an airplane, and I am going to keep my N95 mask on until I am outside the terminal after arrival.
Putin's tactic of destroying Ukraine's electric generators is having devastating effect. The drones and missiles are cheap, so the Putin forces fire many of them, day after day. Even though Ukraine destroys most of them, each power plant damaged will be out of service for weeks.
Putin's forces are also talking about blowing up a major dam near Kherson. This might destroy a lot of the infrastructure around Kherson, and maybe much of the city itself.
Parts of Australia blocked UN inspectors from visiting their prisons to check for respect for human rights.
Qatar made a start at reforming its unjust labor laws, but undid it when the big employers complained. Once again it is thoroughly unjust.
Chairman Xi has chosen China's highest officials (aside from him) based on personal obedience to him.
In the short term, this will encourage grave mistakes. It will also very likely leave China with weak leaders whenever Xi dies or retires. But that could be ten years from now.
China's repression in Xinjiang and Hong Kong has brought China a well-deserved increase in world condemnation.
Can we envision a way that China could become a free, successful country?
Vague glimpses of the developments in the war between Ethiopia and Tigray show that Ethiopia is doing great harm to Tigrayan civilians.
I have never seen enough clear information on what is happening in Ethiopia to understand what is going on in that war, or why. I wish I knew.
Starmer is trying to make Labour the preferred choice of British business. Perhaps it should change its name to the "Shareholding/Management Party."
*Corporate America's Big Money Could Fuel Victory for "Big Lie" Candidates.*
Harris County in Texas has asked for federal election monitors to make sure the state's Republican election monitors don't intimidate voters.
This year's election shows that the billionaires' power to buy elections is almost total.
It includes the influence of the mainstream media — which belong to billionaires — which deflect attention from the issues that electing the right politicians could fix, to other issues such as inflation.
Cancellation is done by right-wing bullies and left-wing bullies, but the right-wing bullies often utilize state power and spread much more fear.
When Florida prison thugs beat up prisoners, sometimes they break their necks and paralyze them. They did this to Craig Ridley, and he starved to death.
They left food for him every day, but he was unable to pick it up and eat it. He told them he was paralyzed, but they insisted he was malingering.
*EU Parliament Backs Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.*
*YouTube and Facebook letting Brazil election disinformation spread, NGO says.* Global Witness produced many misleading ads and ads that attacked the election, and asked for approval from YouTube and Facebook. YouTube appeoved all of them, and Facebook many of them. The organization did not actually run the misleading ads.
The state of Victoria, in Australia, has plans to build renewable electric generation facilities and produce 95% of the state's electricity from renewable sources by 2035.
The new generating facilities will be owned mostly by the state.
The Economist advocates legalizing cocaine, to reduce the danger from contaminants and reduce its corrupting power.
Campaigners are suing Amazon for a practice promoting "special offers" that are not actually better deals for the customer, but are presented to give the impression that they are better deals.
Australia plans to make another try at laws to strip citizenship from people suspected of involvement with terrorism.
Australia's previous laws that allowed ministers to cancel citizenship based on suspicion were ruled unconstitutional.
The proposed replacement will be somewhat less unjust, simply because there will be some sort of court hearing to decide. But will that hearing be supposed to respect the same rights that a trial is supposed to respect? I fear it will follow a lesser standard, and that would make it an injustice.
Exile is a severe punishment, and it should not be imposed without the same safeguards that imprisonment would require.
I suggest that if a country wants to take away someone's citizenship over alleged terrorism, it should first arrest per, then put per on trial for that terrorism. If the accused chooses to remain in exile to avoid the trial, this achieves the same goal indirectly. However, person must have the right to return and face trial so as to clear per name.
Laws to empower a government to impose temporary exile on a citizen are likewise unjust. Any form of arbitrary state power can be useful for "managing risks", but that is not enough to excuse it.
Bogus Johnson abandoned his attempt to become Prime Monster again, with the parting bogus claim that he would probably have won and was withdrawing from the race only for the sake of "party unity".
Can you trust an app as a medium for "confidential" communication with psychotherapists or mental health coaches?
Obviously not — cr…apps are made for snooping.
China continues to use enforced quarantines trying to stamp out Covid-19, though the evolution of the virus makes that ever more of a struggle.
Is it possible to develop a system that lets you show your Covid status at the door of a building or store, but won't say who you are? It should be inherently anonymous. Of course, China would not use that even if it were available, but other countries could.
I wonder how people in quarantine are supposed to get food to eat. Is it delivered to them? All sorts of things can go wrong with such a system, when you are compelled to use it and it is run by people who act hastily and don't respect the people they protect.
For instance, is the danger of dying from a bus collision in China more today than it was in 2019? I doubt it. If it wasn't a big issue then, it isn't a big issue now.
Privatized prisons fund lobbying for laws to criminalize homelessness.
Privatization of prisons creates a force that will always lobby for imprisoning more people. This is why we must abolish privatized prisons.
The price of medical insurance in the US has increased 24% in the past year. The cost of actual medical care has not increased anywhere near so much.
This pattern has continued for several years, with 2020 as the sole exception. The insurance companies are gouging.
The article ends with a comparison between this and the low price of a TV set. A modern TV set is a surveillance device — they are cheap because surveillance is part of the price.
Lawyers and law firms have come to view their work as an "industry" rather than as a "profession". The consequence, often, is that they unhesitatingly undertake to do the nastiest jobs for the nastiest rich bastards.
*Biden implores US oil companies to pass on record profits to consumers.*
How pitiable it is to see the US government reduced by Republicans to begging callous businesses to reduce prices — when it ought to legislate to tax those businesses to give aid to the poor. A few weeks ago he implored Crown Prince Bone Saw to reduce prices. Won't he ever learn that imploring your enemies does not have good results?
New variants of SARS-Cov-2, descendants of Omicron, are unaffected by the monoclonal antibody treatment. We need to develop a new one, but Republicans won't allow it.
They rejected funding for treatment and prevention of Covid-19.
*So-Called GOP "Solutions" to Inflation Are Just Another Giveaway to the Rich and Corporations.*
How the Patriotic Millionaires recommend revamping US taxes so that the rich pay a higher fraction of their income, instead of a lower fraction.
An appeals court ruled (at the first level) that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional.
I expect this case will go to the Supreme Court and that the plutocratist majority will wipe out the CFPB.
YouTube claims to give the user ways to influence what videos it will recommend to per, but researchers report that these features empirically prove to have little effect.
The story errs in asserting that users "consume" YouTube videos. Watching a video does not use it up; it remains available to be shown to others.
For your freedom's sake, don't visit youtube.com directly, Use the proxy system of invidio.us instead.
India has arbitrarily stopped Kashmiri journalists from departing on trips to other countries. Now Sanna Irshad Mattoo has been barred from leaving for the US to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
Chinese agents in the US have been arrested for trying to pressure a Chinese exile to go to China.
3% of the population of the UK have been infected with Covid-19 this month.
Ilhan Omar: *We need a Marshall plan for Africa.*
To do this, we need to make rich people and big companies pay a fair amount of tax: a much higher rate than the less-rich pay.
* Who would think a lying, hypocritical degenerate [such as Bogus Johnson] was the answer to this crisis? A large number of Conservatives, apparently.*
I can see why. Johnson is glib and can invent a lie to excuse almost anything, for the short term. Of course, people suspected the lies but it took ages to pin him down on one. That is why an act of hypocrisy which was small-scale by his standards caused such a scandal: it was one that could be proved. After Truss was brutally honest about plans so outrageous that Tories compelled her to resign, they may wish for Johnson's bogus glibness again — but it won't work. After so much time, his dishonesty has become impossible to disguise.
Iran's thugs have arrested around 12,500 people for protesting, and killed around 250. They claim to have crushed the protests.
The new right-Wing Swedish government has made the environmental ministry a part of the energy, business, and industry ministry. This is a clear statement of a policy to allow the powerful to plunder and pollute almost without limit.
The article's statement about biofuels is based on an error, the same error that EU biofuel policy is based on. The requirement to include biofuels in fuels is supposedly a way of reducing carbon emissions, because the biofuels are supposedly renewable. But they aren't, because because producing today's biofuels uses fertilizer made from petroleum.
In the future, perhaps biofuels made by microbes will actually reduce emissions. Until then, it is harmful to require the use of biofuels as they now exist.
(satire) *Food Banks Begin Accepting Donations From Homosexuals.*
(satire) *Twitter To Promote Healthier Discussion By Letting One User Tweet At A Time.*
Dean Baker: the corporate media artificially drum up concern about inflation.
This could be a way to advance Republican candidates, and it could be the work of the same billionaires that fund them.
Stiglitz: the west must adjust its economy to meet the needs of war.
One adjustment is to impose a windfall profits tax.
He advocates a nonlinear price scheme for electricity. The first 90% of the electricity you used last year, you can buy at last year's price, the next 20% you can by at 1.5 times that price, and any more beyond that you would buy at a price based on current conditions.
He also advocates an end to paying farmers to grow less food. (I think this would have to be accompanied by rules to give wildlife a home in farms.)
DeMentis is having ineligible Florida voters arrested as a political show.
Those people, convicted of felonies, registered and voted because state officials told them — erroneously — that they were allowed to do so.
DeMentis knows they will be convicted of a crime for following officials' advice. Indeed, one's case has already been dismissed. But this may suffice as political grandstanding and make right-wing haters feel vicariously powerful.
*Early voters in Arizona midterms report harassment by poll watchers.*
The large fully-protected marine area near Hawaii is achieving what protected marine areas often do: increasing the number of fish caught in nearby unprotected areas.
State abortion bans force imprisoned women to have babies.
Parkinson's disease is caused mainly by environmental factors. The weed killer paraquat may be one of them, and farmers who used it are suing.
Lawsuits and damages are not a very good method for deciding whether a chemical is safe to use. The US does it this way for lack of a better system. The absence of a national medical system means that the people affected by expensive diseases desperately need to sue someone and collect damages to pay for their treatment.
With a national medical system, the people who are sick would get treatment without suing. The determination of whether any particular chemical is responsible for the disease, and the decision of whether to ban it, could be made separately.
*The "election-denier trifecta": alarm over [Trump-pets]' efforts to win key posts.*
The spread of bird flu among wild birds has made it impossible to leave farmed fowl outdoors. There can no longer be "free range" poultry.
Berlusconi was recorded admitting privately to exchanging expensive gifts with Putin to "reestablish ties".
We should expect two autocratically inclined right wing rich bastards to have much in common. Naturally they are friends, unless they are rivals.
Trying to grow cell cultures of fish cells, as a substitute for fish as food.
The Tories discarded Truss's plan for tax cuts for the rich. Now their goal is to reduce the deficit — quite opposite to what Truss wanted — but they plan to achieve it by cutting the UK's already-starved public services.
I've claimed that the Tories intend to wreck the NHS.
I think these cuts will finish it, as well as other services.
*Nike makes money off progressive celebrities, then donates money to far-right candidates.*
If we can make it embarrassing to be caught wearing Nike symbolism, we can put a dent in the company.
On the true cost of "fast fashion".
*American[/Saudi dual] citizen tortured in [Salafi Arabian] prison for tweets he made in Florida criticizing Saudi government.*
*What a pregnancy actually looks like at nine weeks.* (It doesn't look much like a human being.)
Parts of British Columbia, known for normally having a lot of rain, are now in drought.
The immediate causes of the drought are complex, but the short explanation is, "global heating." But over-logging made it worse.
Previous foreign interventions in Haiti have only helped to implant elites that serve foreign interests. There is no reason to think that another one will do Haiti any good.
I can't imagine what kind of actions have a chance of doing any good.
Laws proposed for the UK offer systems to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of things used in the UK, independent of where they are produced. Tories have not supported these proposals much, but perhaps they should change their stance.
Ukraine and the US say that Iran is selling exploding drones to Russia. Iran and Russia deny this and say that Russia is building the drones. I don't see why this should matter.
The wrecker broke the old non-nuclear deal, and Biden's weak efforts to restore it have more or less collapsed. That is quite unfortunate, but since that is the case, why does Iran's exporting exploding drones change anything significant?
Workers at another Apple Store voted to unionize.
If only the users of Apple computers would go on strike against the injustice in those computers,
* New Jersey on Tuesday sued five oil and gas companies and a leading fossil fuel lobby group for knowingly lying to the public about the existence of climate change and the role their products play in exacerbating human-caused global heating.*
*Pesticide use around world almost doubles since 1990, report finds.*
The pesticides harm the health of almost 400 million people every year, and are part of the cause of the great decrease of bird and insect populations.
Putin's new conscripts find that they are not issued proper equipment, armor, weapons, or even uniforms. Some beg their relatives to buy some of what is missing.
I can't imagine anything worse for relatives of conscripts to do than pay for equipment to enable sending those conscripts to the front. That is self-defeating.
If you don't have warm underwear, you might get sick or frostbitten and be sent to the rear. Isn't that a good outcome?
I've read that British soldiers in France in World War I, knowing that the generals' incompetent tactics would get almost all soldiers killed uselessly sooner or later, used to pray for wounds that would make them invalids — that was a chance for survival.
If they give you a fake helmet that won't protect you, how about throwing it away? Likewise, a rusted rifle that you can't rely on. Why disguise the fact that you lack necessary equipment? The army needs to know this.
On the other hand, asking your relatives for a bulletproof vest might make sense; that would tend to protect you from the hits that are likely to kill you.
Arguing that Salafi Arabia's oil output cut is an attempt to intervene in the US election against the Democratic Party. I fear it may be very effective.
Racism on the part of judges is visibly present in British courts.
If half of all lawyers have seen instances of this, that doesn't mean half the judges have demonstrated such behavior. I expect it is more like 1%. If one out of 100 judges displays racism, and those that do so do it frequently, and if the average lawyer gets to see observe 50 judges' behavior, then half of all lawyers would see a judge act racist.
It is unacceptable for any judge to act in a biased way in court. What's needed is a system for helping biased judges learn, or excluding them.
Economic growth based on real work depends on keeping workers healthy and well. The UK's right-wing government is not keeping the NHS functioning enough to achieve that.
The UK plans to deport Sri Lankan refugees in the Chagos Islands to some other country, disregarding the UN's ruling that the UK must return the Chagos Islands to the inhabitants it forcibly expelled.
*How the Tories' "war on nature" outraged everyone from the RSPB to farmers.*
The Tory MPs have gone through Prime Monster Bogus Johnson and Prime Monster Liz Truss. She resigned so that they can choose the next Prime Monster without an election.
This way they will still have a chance to enact arbitrary repression of protesters before the people are consulted about it.
* Three Louisiana men incarcerated for over 28 years were found to have been wrongfully convicted of murder on Wednesday, after newly uncovered evidence linked the original police investigation to a notorious [thug] found guilty of murder conspiracy and endemic corruption in the New Orleans police department.*
**Republicans aim to pass national "don't say gay" law.*
These laws spread broad fear because Republicans have a pattern of stretching the repressive potential of any law that fits their ideology. We cannot judge these laws by interpretations that would be reasonable.
Israel has announced new apartheid rules that would greatly interfere with anything but a short visit to Palestinian territory. People born in the few countries where most Palestinian refugees live would be banned entirely from entering Palestinian territory.
One good thing Liz Truss did for Britain: tying trickle-down tax cuts and dooH niboR to a crushing response from markets.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to resist Republican pressure to increase the cost of medicine.
And vote for a Democrat for Congress!
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on COP27 to stop excluding military pollution from climate agreements.
Robert Reich: *It's not just the Big Lie. Republicans are telling three other lies they hope will swing the midterms.*
The lies are about crime (rising faster in Republican, Trump-supporting states), about inflation (caused in the US by corporations as well as by shortages and the war), and the IRS (which will use its new funding to go after rich cheaters that give money to Republican candidates).
Chinese thugs came out of the Chinese consulate in Manchester, England, grabbed a protester, and beat him up.
British political leaders including Tories said that peaceful protesters must not be attacked in the UK, which makes an interesting contrast to the ways they plan to attack protesters in the future.
UC Berkeley is "repatriating" over 50,000 "sacred items" to indigenous groups.
Imagine if everything in museums that had come from a church or temple, from an idol or a statue of a god, all ancient scriptures and myths of whatever religion, or anything that was associated with them, were "returned" to someone! There would be almost nothing left about the ancient world. It would be a calamity for anthropology.
At least there is not much danger that this will be extended to artifacts from Europe, or most of Asia. So far, people of European and Asian ancestry are not trying to extend this policy of excluding our own ancestors and past from anthropology. But there may be little trace in 2050 of cultures from the Americans, Australia and Africa to compare them with.
For what it's worth, I see nothing wrong with digging up the graves or artifacts of people related to me for the sake of scientific study. And that includes my own "remains" — but I've arranged for scientists to get first crack at those, after my death.
*The Litany of Lies the GOP Tells in Order to Destroy Public Education.*
The new de-facto head of the British government is another Tory, Jeremy Hunt. He has cancelled various tax cuts, which mostly benefit the rich. So far, so good. But he plans to cut government spending, and there is nothing superfluous to cut.
(satire) *Astronaut Returns From ISS With Annoying Space Accent.*
The corrupter and his Republicans hope to finish off the remains of democracy that plutocratist Democrats have not already wiped out.
Polls suggest Americans will express their resentment of rising prices by voting for Republicans. Which means, punishing non-rich Americans for it and destroying what remains of democracy.
How foolish of them, and how sad.
*Ron Johnson’s campaign paid law firm associated with January 6 false elector scheme.*
Over a million Americans with diabetes were unable to afford (in 2021) all the insulin they needed to take.
World Meteorological Organization: *Clean Energy Production Must Double by 2030 to Stave Off Catastrophe.*
Otherwise *there is an increased risk that worsening extreme weather disasters turbocharged by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis will further diminish energy security and even imperil renewable power generation.*
* The defeat of free market ideology will be worthless if it results in a fear of public spending and an unquestioning faith in the markets.*
I think we can count on Starmer to fall into that trap. He already leans that way.
*House [of Representatives] report alleges [the wrecker's] aides blocked [CDC] officials from providing accurate Covid-19 information during pandemic.*
Arguing that for Musk to own Twitter would threaten US national security (as well as democracy and human rights).
Republicans plan to cut taxes for the rich permanently.
They hope that non-rich Americans will be too busy to vote, especially when voting gets really hard for them.
Various people's opinions about Just Stop Oil protests.
The Putin forces are planning to move the population of Kherson into Russia, claiming that they are going voluntarily.
To make damned sure they all "volunteer", the Putin forces claim the city will be destroyed by shelling. I guess that means they are planning to destroy the city by shelling it.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Boundary Waters in Minnesota.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Wall Street banks to stop supporting a lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
A letter from a Just Stop Oil protester in prison, defending the need to overcome the British government's determination to drill more.
*Oil addiction will keep the west in hock to dictators.* It also helps dictators take over western countries.
*Belarus jails opposition activists on charges of terrorism and treason.*
When Ukraine is through with Putin, he may no longer have the strength to keep Lukashenko in power.
Jeremy Corbyn presents a basic economic program to repair the damage that Tories have done in 12 years in power.
Dr Anthony Fauci acknowledges: *Long Covid is an "insidious" public health emergency.*
He calls on Congress to put funds into research on treating it. I agree — but we already know of ways to protect people from developing long Covid: masks, distance, and improved ventilation. Every level of government should use all methods it can use to convince or require more Americans to use masks and keep distance, and help and require all work and gathering places to increase the rate of replacing the air.
Research is already starting, and it may eventually help people with various other long-term "post-viral" syndromes whose mechanisms are mysterious.
Global heating has caused hurricanes to increase in intensity faster than before. This will make them do more damage.
The Oakland thug department wants armed robots that can shoot people.
If this is allowed, the next step will be to allow robots to decide when to shoot someone, based on heuristics.
Autistic scholar Temple Grandin: *The education system is screening out visual thinkers.… essential skills are being lost.*
Senator Warren rebuked the Federal Reserve for pushing the US into recession.
Half the sale of PFAs in the US are authorized by EPA loopholes that should not properly apply to them.
George Monbiot: *Do we really care more about Van Gogh’s sunflowers than real ones?*
His points, about the shocking level of repression that the UK plans to impose without trial on anyone who has participated in a protest, comparable to putting per on probation, and about the danger government plans pose to nature at every scale, are valid. But I want to quibble with the hook that he has used in the title.
Do I care more about that series of paintings (or just the one in the UK's National Gallery) than about some real sunflowers?
I think any painting by an admired artist has more value to the world than a few cut flowers in a vase. The species of sunflowers is not one I personally adore, but preventing any species' extinction is important, arguably more so than saving a famous painting. But so what?
Those comparisons are pure distraction because there is no reason to compare them. Humanity does not face a choice of "this painting or that species."
Neither did the protesters — their protest did not risk damaging the painting.
So why does the comparison suggest itself? I think it is implied, though misleadingly, by that method of protest. Even if it can't actually damage the painting, it suggests an attempt, threat or wish to do so.
That is why I think that particular form of protest is misguided. It leads people to make the misleading comparison.
A painting won't survive for millennia without help — it needs protection, conservation, and restoration. If global heating wipes out technological civilization, the humans that survive won't have the skill, tools, or spare wealth to attend to such work.
So we can argue that Just Stop Oil's goal is necessary for preserving that very painting, along with the civilization it forms a part of.
*UK data shows authoritarian or neglectful parenting linked to higher weight in children and adolescents.*
Modern life under plutocracy, with parents under stress all the time and having little time for their children, is likely to result in the kind of relationship that might make children seek comfort from junk food. This could be part cause of the increase in obesity.
Public pressure has convinced many large insurance companies to stop insuring coal mine development. Refusal is spreading in oil and gas extraction too. The article argues that this already makes it almost impossible to start a new large coal mine, except in China, which still tears through our atmosphere. China does not allow environmentalist protests.
Around 15% of people in the UK can't afford enough to eat. More than half are reducing their use of heat, hot water and electricity.
It is hard for me to understand why they don't all march demanding Corbyn as their next prime minister.
* The Scottish farmed salmon industry is using loopholes to cover up evidence of environmental harm, poor animal welfare and high levels of disease, an investigation has found..*
Texas governor Abbott calls Mexican drug mobs "terrorists" while adopting gun laws that help them get lots of guns.
Everyone: call on Amazon to radically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
You can help reduce Amazon's emissions by boycotting Amazon, as I do.
Just Stop Oil has returned to protesting by blocking streets in London, and now demands subsidy for public transport as well as quick reductions in oil extraction.
* Guatemala cracks down on protesters in the streets and in the halls of congress—where lawmakers are pushing a bill that would justify the use of deadly force.*
Criticism of The Woman King for presenting a sanitized and false picture of Dahomey, and hiding the fact that its main business was capturing Africans and selling them as slaves.
The first article I read about that movie mentioned that it was about Dahomey, and I immediately wondered how it treated this basic fact. This article shows the answer.
There may be much to appreciate in The Woman King, but this is an important flaw. In general, I'd always prefer if "based on a true story" were more true and less "based on."
After Hurricane Ian wiped out Cuba's electric system and destroyed some buildings, Cubans protested, and the state responded with repression.
Cuban repression is wrong, now as it was in the past, but I don't think the Cuban state is responsible for the weakness of its power grid. US sanctions, increased by the wrecker, are responsible for that.
Poor People's Campaign marches aim to reach 5 million US voters before the election.
Atlanta thugs have a habit of harassing air passengers just as they are about to get into an airplane, and asking them to "voluntarily" answer questions about whether they are carrying illegal drugs.
Of the 400-odd passengers questioned. the thugs took the cash that 25 of them were carrying. It added up to a million dollars. Only one of those 25 was charged with a crime. How very lucrative.
How one county in Minnesota gives homeless people apartments and helps them learn how to pay for them.
The Republican candidate for governor of Arizona is suggesting, in a vague dogwhistle manner, that if she loses the election she will try to steal it by pretending that she had won it, and hope other Republicans will support lie.
This sort of conduct ought to land a candidate in prison.
The London thug department allowed hundreds of "racist, corrupt and misogynist officers remain in their jobs."
Even worse, the new head of the department says he may not even have the authority to fire them.
A retired London cop says that the London thug department was "corrupt, racist and misogynistic" for the 30 years she worked there.
Iranian government thugs attacked a girls' high school and ordered students to sing a song that praises Ayatollah Khamenei, whom they call "the dictator". They refused, so the thugs attacked them, arresting some and injuring others. One of the girls died afterwards; protesters claim she was beaten to death.
There is an ethnic element in protests in the Kurdish and Baloch regions. I wonder how strong the protests are in the rest of Iran.
One person argues, *If you don't like climate activists staging art gallery protests, organize something better.*
I think it is wrong to damage art as a protest. To make a statement, there is no need to damage things at random.
However, it turns out that Van Gogh's painting, Sunflowers, was in no danger of being harmed by the soup that protesters threw at it. It is protected behind a piece of plastic. I suppose they knew this. So there was no objective harm in protesting that way, no objective reason why they should not.
Still, that method may still have been self-defeating, influencing people such as me who did not know how the painting is protected.
It appears that the Putin forces are aiming missiles at monuments to Ukrainian historical nationalists of the past.
Putin says he aims to eliminate Ukraine as a nation. Destroying those monuments might be one method of trying.
*Wildfires in US west causing extreme weather in other states, study finds.*
The extreme weather has caused $100 million in damage, including to houses and crops.
The Tories have left Truss in position as "prime minister", but allowed a newly appointed Chancellor Hunt to reverse all her economic policy decisions. This seems paradoxical to me, but my knowledge of the UK's unwritten constitution is limited.
Practically speaking, Hunt has cancelled plans for tax cuts (mainly for the rich) that were supposed to to achieve mythical trickle-down, and is perhaps amenable to a windfall profits tax.
He has cancelled plans to limit what people pay for heating their homes, but so far he doesn't seem to intend to replace that flawed method for protecting the poor from inability to afford heating with any better method.
He also intends cuts in government programs that non-rich Britons depend on: education, medicine, and such. He seems to be ideologically opposed to even trying to protect poor people from being driven out to starve on the street while dying of illness.
Anti-insurrection Republican congresscritter Kinzinger is campaigning for the Democratic opponents of Republican Big Liars.
I hope this defeats them, but at the same time, counting elections honestly is just the beginning of the duties of a politician loyal to democracy. We need Democrats that will defy the plutocracy and reduce its power.
Queensland lags behind the rest of Australia in renewable electricity, but now has a plan to invest big and advance.
The UN accuses the Putin forces of planning the use of rape as a part of war.
The UK's health secretary admitted giving partial prescriptions of leftover antibiotics to others. This is very dangerous as taking a short course of antibiotics promotes resistance.
It may also be illegal in the UK, but that is less important, morally, than the fact that it can be harmful. Preventing antibiotic resistance is the responsibility of everyone — including, above all, the farms that promote resistance by dispensing pounds and pounds of antibiotics to large numbers of animals that are not even sick.
The UK's new "climate minister" is a denialist across the board. Two scientists debunk his claims that fracking benefits the environment and can lower prices in the short term.
*Alaska cancels snow crab season over population decline.
King crabs are in trouble, too.
Although scientists don't know the full cause of the problem, it is clear that global heating plays a role.
The Tory Party is rapidly self-destructing, and Britain may have a general election soon.
One lesson from this is the system of allowing the governing party's members to choose a new prime minister when one steps down is a disaster. The Tories have done this three times since they got into power, and each one was worse than the last. The right thing to do is to hold a general election.
Another lesson is that the Tory approach to leaving the European Union was too extreme. Corbyn wanted to negotiate a customs union, and in general a closer relationship that the Tories wanted. This would have been much less damaging, and might even have done some good.
We can expect Labour to return the UK to sober and sensible implementation of a somewhat gentler form of plutocracy. Maybe it will move to renewable energy faster. But non-rich Britons need bigger changes, and I doubt Labour will advocate them.
Ukraine accuses the Putin forces of murdering conductor Yuriy Kerpatenko for refusing to conduct an orchestra in a celebration of Putin's conquest of Kherson.
Three Republican lies corrected:
Central banks aren't "fighting the last war", they are fighting some dimly remembered war from long ago. According to UNCTAD, it's entirely wrong way to control today's inflation.
Arguing for breaking diplomatic relations with Russia, on the grounds that Putin does not want peace except on the basis of conquest, and his "negotiations" and "diplomacy" are all dishonest.
That's 90% true, but I am not convinced. Even though there is no hope that diplomacy will lead to an acceptable peace now, that may change in the coming year. We should be ready for that. In the mean time, there are other issues to be discussed, and some of them are important. The Ukraine food export deal, by itself, is no small thing for the poor people of the world.
US Muslims join with US Christians to advocate censorship in the name of repression.
Two soldiers being trained by the Putin forces opened fire on the other trainees, causing many casualties before they were killed.
Things like this happened repeatedly in the Afghan government army which was supported by the US.
Those soldiers were not from Russia, and volunteered for the Russian army. It bespeaks powerful hatred, though I am not sure what they hate or why.
Iran's regime is applying repression to the press, forcing formerly honest journalists to become puppets for the state.
If a troll farm is directed to systematically promote war crimes or crimes against humanity, can we draw a line between that and freedom or speech?
US citizens: call on Biden to acknowledge that Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory are illegal.
US citizens: call on the the Department of Justice to investigate Govs. Abbott, DeMentis and Ducey for their human rights abuses against migrants.
Cancer in adults before middle-age is increasing every decade, in many countries.
The cause is not known, but the obvious suspects are lifestyle trends (such as obesity) and environmental pollution.
(satire) *LIV Golfers On Saudi Course Forced To Putt Around Woman Being Beheaded.*
On life and death for Palestinian children, in villages invaded repeatedly by Israeli soldiers who are protecting Israeli colonies that shouldn't be there in the first place.
Both India and Pakistan have called for "return" of the Koh-i-noor diamond by the remnant of the British Empire.
These requests are silly because they are anachronistic. The Koh-i-noor was part of the spoils of conquest on several occasions, across centuries, back when despoiling after conquest was normal.
Nowadays we reject the idea that victors in war have the right to loot whatever wealth they find in a defeated country, and we try to prevent that. That is a step forward. But it is absurd to selectively denounce one specific long-ago instance of this practice, and demand "restitution" of specific pieces of loot to a previous conqueror.
*5 Things Biden Should Do to "Re-evaluate" Saudi Relations.*
The misleading details of Big Oil's greenwashing PR.
(satire) *Ron Johnson Shows He's Tough On Crime By Hanging Bread Thief In Town Square.*
The current labor shortage is a good opportunity to for businesses to start seriously considering candidates that don't have college degrees.
This could help people avoid the expensive student loans that would shackle them for life, and still get good jobs.
As bullshitter-supporting Republican Adam Laxalt runs for the Senate in Nevada, 14 of his relatives have endorsed Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto.
*ALEC Held Third Voter Suppression Summit with Dark Money Group This Summer.*
Drought has stopped freight transportation on the Mississippi river. This is going to happen more and more in the future.
Using ground transport would enormously increase the fossil fuel required. I wonder if it is possible to correct the problem by dredging a narrow channel in the riverbed. The same amount of water would be deeper if it is narrower.
Bernie Sanders: *Democrats shouldn't focus only on abortion in the midterms. That's a mistake.*
Simple reasoning from basic facts shows that the Republican "stolen election" claim is bogus.
Peter Thiel is a declared enemy of democracy and is spending tens of millions on politicians who aim to sabotage it.
He is also specifically working to sabotage climate defense. It follows that, unless you are old, his plan includes your probable death, and most people's death, though not right away.
And he is not the only billionaire Republican megadonor, but he is the one that is most deeply hostile to Democracy.
The movement to end the death penalty reports that 170 countries have abolished it or stopped using it.
However, some of the recalcitrant countries are executing more people now than before.
(satire) *Trump Outmaneuvers New York Lawsuit By Changing Name To Donald 2.*
*[Human Rights Watch] Says Egypt's Pre-COP27 Silencing of Climate Voices Should Be a "Wake-Up Call."*
Iran confiscated director Mani Haghighi's passport and stopped him from attending the London film festival, where one of his films will be shown. He believes this was meant as punishment for stating his support for the protest movement.
The US election on Nov 8 will depend, as always, on volunteer poll workers — around a million of them.
A free and fair election depends on impartial poll workers.
CSIRO (Australia's scientific research organization) had an admired program for forecasting future climate, but in 2021 a government minister forced CSIRO to shut it down.
That government, right-wing, was firmly on the planet roaster side,
so it would naturally prefer to eliminate honest and thoughtful forecasts to leave a gap for its patrons' bullshit.
It is now 16 months later — is it possible to resume what was cancelled?
CSIRO has been accused of abandoning research of importance for whatever research business wants.
Musk changed his mind and said SpaceX would continue to pay for Ukraine's use of Starlink satellite communications.
* Lost nets, lines and hooks (including 25 million pots and traps and 14 billion hooks) trap wildlife for years as they float in the ocean, sink to the bottom or are washed ashore.*
Proposed solutions: *local governments introducing buy-backs of older fishing gear which tended to get lost more often than new equipment. Tags or labels could be attached to gear, and free facilities could be introduced at harbors to allow fishers to discard unusable nets safely.*
If Kroger and Albertsons are allowed to merge, it will probably increase the prices in US supermarkets.
*Corporate Media Mostly Ignoring GOP Ploy to Cut Social Security and Medicare.*
As climate disaster settles in on the US west, more and more effort to adapt is required.
Victories in the US against the spread of Hinduismist bigotry and hate.
Almost 1/5 of the world's population lives in countries that can't pay their debts. Many of them spend more on debt interest than on health, education and social protection combined. The system is headed for a collapse.
It is fundamentally unjust to the people of poor countries to keep making them pay interest on unpayable debts. The world must make a way to cancel those debts.
Eastern tree frogs in the neighborhood of Chernobyl have evolved black skin. This benefits them because melanin protects tissues from radiation.
The Florida law restricting discussion of racism, slavery and other injustices by teachers is no joke. The right-wing fanatics in the Supreme Court may be inclined to uphold it, thus attacking academic freedom. That may lead to firing many teachers, even for what they say outside of working hours. The US did not recognize academic freedom as a legal priority until 1957.
DeMentis may be surprised to learn that flying refugees to Martha's Vineyard ended up helping them, indirectly.
But he won't care. His goal was to show Republicans he will find excuses to be cruel.
Several cases before the Supreme Court provide the right-wing extremists with opportunities to limit governments' ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and protect the environment.
An unusual public protest in Beijing caused Chinese to spread the word intensely.
This despite systematic intimidation of suspected protesters for the past month.
*Egypt silenced climate experts' voices before hosting Cop27, HRW says.*
*January 6 panel’s case against Trump lays out roadmap for prosecution,* using evidence provided by the non-corrupt Republicans that worked for the wrecker or had been elected.
Turkey is considering a law to criminalize "fake news." Following other right-wing bullies, such as the bullshitter, Bolsonaro and Putin, Erdoğan will call news "fake" if he does not like it.
The last hearing of the Jan 6 coup investigation committee filled in the last part of the criminal case that the wrecker planned and led an insurrection on that day.
I wonder whether Attorney General Garland has the courage to charge him now. But I also wonder whether today's Republicans would hesitate to vote for the supporters of this criminal plan.
Various hospitals in the US gag the doctors that work for them from describing their experiences of harm and danger to patients caused by denying them needed abortions.
The article describes this censorship even in states where abortion is still lawful.
The worst part is that these hospitals' censorship conceals their censorship, too, so that we cannot condemn them for it specifically.
Interesting idea: a higher tax bracket for millionaires can act as a trap to reveal the real intentions of trickle-downers.
However, to make these brackets just a little higher misses the opportunity to make the rich contribute substantially to help the poor. We should do that too. With so much dooH niboR, we need more Robin Hood.
The Brothers of Italy party claims not to be fascist, but its founders show nostalgia for fascism. One, Ignazio La Russa, collects fascist memorabilia.
Meloni, the party leader, has moved the party partly away from fascism but its symbols continues to allude to it.
Putin's puppets in Donetsk are denying the International Red Cross access to prisoners of war. (Perhaps they don't want to admit having murdered some.)
Putin's ceremonial annexation of Donetsk could offer an avenue to make progress on this — he can no longer deny that he is responsible for everything that happens there.
The article also reports that Putin's "help to evacuate civilians from Kherson" means conscription.
Musk has punished Ukraine for responding negatively to his "peace plan," which consisted of letting Putin keep his conquests. The punishment consists of withdrawing Ukraine's Starlink service, which SpaceX had been providing.
Musk has shown a tendency to shape facts to suit his own wishes. Now he claims that the cutoff of service is due to financial motives. I doubt that it is true.
Two large US supermarket chains, Kroger and Albertsons, want to merge. Progressives have told Biden to prevent this. I fully agree.
Protesters disrupted the IMF/World Bank meeting, demanding that those organizations stop funding planet-roasting fossil fuel projects. Bravo!
I disapprove of protests that consist of throwing soup on famous paintings. Why risk damage to humanity's heritage, when it has nothing directly to do with the problem?
By contrast, these protests against organizations that directly promote global heating disaster are right on target.
(satire) *New Corkscrew Whirlycoaster IUD Gets Sperm Cell Too Dizzy To Find Uterus.*
US citizens: call on the EPA to speed up the rest of its climate and clean air standards.
US citizens: call on Congress to support the SEC's plan to protect retirement savings from climate-related financial risks, by making investment funds publish more about their exposure to such risks.
Everyone: call on Maximus to cease union-busting efforts.
US citizens: call on Biden to replace Donald Moak on the USPS board of governors with someone that will replace DeJoy.
An employee at Mar-a-Lago testified to helping move boxes of documents at the cheater's orders after he received a subpoena to return them.
The DART planetary defense test was a success. We can save the Earth from being hit by an asteroid.
Can we save the Earth from being hit by human-caused global heating?
* Transform Trade charity says British-based companies are among main bringers of cases based on [business-supremacy treaties].
These cases aim to use ISDS clauses (I Sue Democratic States clauses) to sue states that respond to their citizens' demands by adopting laws that protect the public but reduce the profits of foreign companies. Usually they force the retraction of those laws — or ensure the laws are never passed.
ISDS also stands for I Spread Death and Suffering. We must put an end to the regime of these treaties. It's not easy to effectively abolish the treaties, or for a country to pull out of them, since normally a country remains subject to the treaty for a long time after that.
What is needed is to make powerful countries pass laws that they will not enforce these treaties, perhaps limited to certain cases where those laws are crucial.
Several sensible US policies that won't hurt Ukraine but can reduce the danger of nuclear war, both now and for the long term.
The original note was updated and can be found here.
One of the undercover British thugs that was detailed to infiltrate nonviolent dissident groups traveled outside the UK to infiltrate dissidents in other countries. A German court has ruled that this was illegal since it was not authorized by a German judge.
I wonder what consequences this will have, for the British state and for that thug.
Why the paradoxical claim of "trickle-down economics" continues to be taken seriously despite never achieving the claimed result.
A new EU directive will make companies that use AI algorithms to decide how to treat individuals liable for damages if they cause harm to those individuals thereby.
I don't know the details; I can't judge the directive at that level. But I approve of the general idea, because innovation must not be our highest goal. Innovation can do good or harm. Treating people justly and helpfully is more important than innovation.
Freedom is also more important than innovation; the argument that nonfree software leads to "progress" is fallacious because using nonfree software is inherently a change for the worse.
*The cheater privately admitted he lost 2020 election, top aides testify.*
Putin's stooge has announced a plan to "evacuate civilians" from Kherson. Given what we have seen the Putin forces do to civilians in Donetsk, I think this is an item in Putin newspeak and stands for capturing Ukrainian civilians in Kherson and taking them forcibly and permanently to Russia, or perhaps other parts of conquered Ukrainian territory.
It would be easy for the Putin forces to allow Ukrainian civilians to evacuate to Mykolaiv or Kryvy Rih, but we saw in Mariupol that Putin doesn't want to permit that. He would rather take them to Russia and pretend that they chose Russia over Ukraine, interrogating them along the way (and murdering some) in transit prisons he calls "filtration".
Global heating has disrupted Australia's wheat harvest, and it's getting worse.
10% of dwellings in Canada are now uninsurable because the climate risk has become too great.
People whose homes are destroyed won't have the capital to buy another. Government must buy them out, while imposing building codes that make new housing safer.
The article did not mention tar sands, but the Canadian government has a duty to recognize that its tar sands exports are fueling disaster for Canadians (as well as for the rest of the world). Fossil fuel extraction is tantamount to planet roasting. The Canadian government must reverse its policy of supporting that.
Demand for surgical sterilization is increasing considerably in the US, and some clinics are offering gratis vasectomy. I don't think the rate is large enough to visibly affect the future population.
*Let Saudi Arabia’s friendship with Putin be a wake-up call for the west.* But not only for realpolitik, and the larger goals should not be limited to human rights and democracy. Curbing global heating fast must also be a first-priority goal, and that means that, starting as soon as possible, we must keep the wholesale price of oil low and the retail price high.
The natural way to do that is with a heavy tax on fossil fuels that is scheduled to increase predictably every year.
During the Covid-19 emergency, a few UK ministers imposed laws by decree, which Parliament hardly looked at. This could easily happen again.
This year over 150,000 refugees have crossed the Darién Gap, the wild area that straddles the border between Panama and Colombia. You have to be totally desperate to undertake a trek so difficult and dangerous. Most of them are people from countries where things are very desperate — last year Haiti, now Venezuela. Nearly all heading towards the US border, more than 3400 miles away.
The main Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, have agreed on a plan for national elections.
An Iranian official says that thugs are putting arrested student protesters into mental hospitals.
Scientists that publish in Elsevier journals called on Elsevier to stop its support for fossil fuel companies.
I agree, but I point out that Elsevier does other things that are even worse. For instance, keeping many articles under a paywall. For the sake of science, scientists should drive Elsevier and other paywalled journal publishers out of business.
Sad to say, this includes many scientific professional organizations.
Most of the large companies operating Medicare Advantage plans have padded their bills to the US government. Some are being sued for fraud.
They will do it again, too, if they don't get charged punitive damages in the tens of billions.
"Utility redlining": systematic underinvestment in the infrastructure of neighborhoods with a large nonwhite population. The result, in the case of electricity in Detroit, is that they get frequent power outages which the same company prevents (with newer equipment) for the wealthier neighborhoods (where more whites live).
Do all electricity customers pay the same rates? If so, some other factor convinced the electric company to serve the white neighborhoods better. It would be interesting to find out how that operated.
*Judge says Walmart and CVS must face lawsuit for placing homeopathic nostrums with actual medicines.*
Hooray!
US businesses have been inventing "holidays" as excuses to get people to spend money for more than a century.
About 10 of the many examples.
I decided long ago to disregard all the holidays that pressure people to give gifts.
The strange history of Candy Day.
I would not "celebrate" Record Store Day, but I do wish there were a good record store in Boston, with a big selection of classical and world records — I would visit it from time to time to look for interesting CDs to buy. The CD is the last media substrate that was invented without malfeatures to restrict people or impose nonfree technology, and I am happy to use it.
Meanwhile: Out, out, damned Spotify!
It has the same injustices as Amazon e-books(PDF), and even one of those injustices is too much.
People who use a digital method to pay for parking are contributing to a system of tracking which endangers human rights and democracy. Occasionally, some of them also get scammed and then screwed.
Robert Reich: *A personal question to powerful people who continue to deny the results of the 2020 election: What do you tell yourself in private?*
Reich cannot expect an actual answer, but his speculations about the possibilities are interesting.
* IMF says taking swift action to achieve 25% cut in greenhouse gases by end of decade will cost less than failing to act.*
Since this goes against the pressure from powerful planet roasters, I think we can trust it confidently.
*21 out of 70 low- and lower-middle-income countries spent more on external debt repayment than on education in 2020.*
The 70 countries considered are those for which data was available.
Due to Republican votes against, the US does not have an adequate supply of Covid-19 tests or vaccines for this winter. However, public anti-vax sentiment is an even bigger problem. A study forecasts around 90,000 additional deaths from Covid-19 through this winter that more booster shots now would prevent.
A trump-pet burned his own camper van to commit insurance fraud, and claimed "antifa" started the fire. He was caught and charged.
The bullshitter taught his supporters that lying for victory for their party is acceptable; this naturally leads people to think up many different lies to try.
*Want to Punish [Salafia Arabia and Crown Prince Bone Saw]? Fast-Track [the non-nuclear] Agreement With Iran and the Green New Deal.*
Regardless of oil prices, the US should end its cooperation with Salafi Arabia and the UAE's war in Yemen.
Wild animal populations (of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles) have fallen 70% on the average since 1970.
When a population becomes small and localized, it is at high risk of being wiped out by random events. One wildfire, one storm, one new mine, one new housing development, and it could be gone. Mines and housing are made by humans; nowadays, wildfires and storms are, too.
The Tories plan to treat enslavement of foreign workers in Britain as an opportunity to punish those enslaved.
As most Americans choose to forget that Covid-19 is still here and infecting many new people, measures to track infections have been discarded along with measures to prevent them.
One measure may still show us that the Covid rate is increasing: people buy scented candles and report that they seem to have no odor.
How the Espionage Act, together with kidnappings and threats of violence, were used to crush the American Socialist Party, which was pushing for a national medical system as well as to keep the US out of World War I.
Now it is being used to prosecute Julian Assange and to force Edward Snowden to remain in exile in an oppressive country where he never intended to go.
In the US, Republicans have been more likely to die from Covid-19 than Democrats. Especially since vaccines became available and Republicans convinced other Republicans not to get vaccinated.
This holds *even after controlling for location and age differences.*
Robert Reich: "Trickle down" economics never deliver the paradoxical benefits that they promise. They deliver more riches to the rich. The rich buy politicians to get them enacted, and they buy economics departments so paint them as beneficial.
*New evidence details Oath Keepers' "civil war" timeline.*
UK "libertarians" believe the state should let rich people do whatever they like … while actively restricting the poor as well as letting the rich walk all over them.
For example, *Poorest families would lose £400 a year under Liz Truss benefits plan.*
Among all forms of government we know of, the only one that doesn't allow crushing the non-rich is democracy — when the non-rich understand that that is its purpose and know how to use it.
*Over 2 million people in the United States live without running water..*
*Toxic air pollution particles found in lungs and brains of unborn babies.*
Air pollution, whether generated by natural phenomena or made by human activities (which nowadays include wildfires), puts each person born at risk, and harms society with complete certainty. However, some people profit greatly from continuing to cause pollution, and fight hard to resist efforts to reduce it.
*Children of mothers who eat junk food more likely to be overweight.*
Coal companies around the world, but mainly in in China, India, Australia, Russia and South Africa, are planning to build new mines and increase production.
That implies almost certain global disaster.
The US is not building new coal-burning power plants, but it is not shutting down the existing ones fast enough.
*Just Stop Oil activists arrested after gluing themselves to road in Whitehall.*
One protester sang a protest song as cops carried her off.
*The secret British plan to keep Italy's communists from winning the 1976 election in Italy.*
*Pro-Kremlin neo-Nazi militia inciting the torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners.*
They murder prisoners without reporting having captured them.
A drug combination that might treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is being sold for $158,000 per patient.
The US Patent Office is such a patsy that it will allow a company to patent using two known drugs together.
The fact that this combination might not even work well is a side issue.
The Student Borrower Bankruptcy Relief Act would allow people who owe student debt to get rid of it through bankruptcy.
Until around 2000, Americans with burdensome student debt could declare bankruptcy and eliminate it. Then a law was passed to make an exception for student debt: it was exempt from bankruptcy. This bill would eliminate that exception.
The Onion filed a parody as an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, in the spirit of Ha Ha Only Serious, to defend a man who was jailed for parodying the web site of the local thug department.
*Perils of UN Climate Summit Hosted by Despotic Egyptian Regime.*
*Unless political freedoms are defended, there will be no meaningful climate action. Not in Egypt, nor anywhere else. These issues are intertwined, as are our fates.*
*We are deeply concerned that the Biden administration is minimizing Covid at a time when it needs to be redoubling its efforts to ensure funding and resources to prevent another surge.*
Biden pardoned US citizens that were convicted of possession of marijuana. He ought to pardon noncitizens, too.
Biden has established stricter controls on drone bombing attacks by the US military and the CIA.
Despite these rules, drone attacks against civilians, away from battlefields, will continue.
Russia states it has repaired the train tracks on the Kerch bridge. I expect it is true.
This is unfortunate, because it means the bridge is once again functional for delivering military supplies to the Putin forces.
Logging companies are cutting tall trees in Papua New Guinea, and crushing whatever gets in their way.
The protests in Iran did not happen now by sheer chance. They are the response to a recent intensification of repression, which was itself the regime's reaction to public opinion's shift away from strictness.
There is a lot of other interesting material in the article.
China's repression of racial minorities, and dissidents, is pervasive. The state uses a dissident's relatives as hostages.
Imagine the worst injustices of the US, as the official and systematically enforces policy of the state, and you get China.
* Despite the passage of nearly $370 billion in renewable energy funding, the nation's utilities are squandering "a massive opportunity for clean electricity and electrification."*
Mozambique has large reserves of natural gas. Oil companies describe natural gas as a "transition fuel to get us to support extracting them. Too bad that the extra global heating could destroy civilization.
There is no hint of that in this article,
which focuses on the threat that a predatory terrorist army (related to PISSI) might prevent the extraction (and unwittingly save us all).
This form of distraction is a standard pattern for global heating denialism nowadays.
The UK's "Online Harms" bill will grievously harm privacy and freedom of speech.
Article 19 also warned of a threat to freedom of speech.
There is currently a moral panic in the UK about a teenager who committed suicide, apparently under the influence of antisocial media sites' recommendation algorithm.
When they saw she was looking at postings of despair, they directed her to more despair, which became overwhelming.
This suggests another approach which could achieve the goal without threatening people's freedom of speech or people's privacy: namely, to restrict the recommendation algorithms only.
The most basic way is to make a rule that the site must not offer any recommendations, any "promoted" posts, except when the user makes an explicit request — "please show me something you think might interest me". Even if the site's algorithm for deciding what to show you when you request this is unchanged, it will operate less often and show you fewer things.
The next step might be to have a way for users to mark a posting as "not nice". A posting thus marked would still be on line, so you could still see it if you ask for it specifically, but the site would never recommend it automatically to anyone.
We can conceive of many variations of this idea. Surely some variation of them will avoid the real danger without causing real repression.
Analysis of pertinent events showed that US antitrust law was eviscerated 40 years ago by a conspiracy of big US businesses that wanted to buy their competitors.
Other political causes for that change have been ruled out by the data.
The UN Human Rights Council voted to do nothing at all with the Human Rights Commissioner's report on China's oppression in Xinjiang.
In effect, most of the world treats China as too big to criticize, probably due to having been corrupted by China.
The US has done plenty of such corrupting, and plenty of oppressing, but China will do more because it lacks any substantial domestic opposition or criticism.
Nowhere in the world is safe if China continues to extend its power.
New Zealand is considering a carbon tax that would cover farm animals as well as fossil fuels.
I think we need such a tax, or some other strong measures worldwide to press reduction in emissions.
*California, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana and Vermont will hold referendums on abortion next month.*
If you live in one of those states, please vote!
If you live in some other state of the US, please vote!
Starmer is very effectively excluding potential Labour candidates for parliament who would aim to make substantial changes for the better
In effect, this finalizing the conversion of the Labour Party into a right-wing party more "sensible" than the Tories, and nailing the coffin of the Labour Party that inspired my support a few years ago.
If I were in the UK, I would probably vote Green.
Putin has appointed a supreme commander for the war against Ukraine. Perhaps he has come to understand that filling that role himself is resulting in losses.
The new commander is cruel and vicious, and cheerfully kills civilians when he thinks he has an excuse. It is only a matter of time before he commits war crimes. Indeed, he may already have done so, if he gave the order for the volley of missiles recently aimed at Kyiv.
*OPEC's Slap in the Face Shows Biden Critics Were Right About Meeting With Murderous Saudi Prince.*
Some people will respond to a gesture of friendship with cooperation, but a murderous power-hungry despot may interpret it as a sign of that you are weak and desperate.
US citizens: call on the head of the World Bank to resign, since he is a global heating denialist.
* US-style negotiations for reduced sentences in England and Wales raises fears of false confessions and lack of informed consent.*
It ought to raise concern — those are the results in the US.
*US midterms 2022: the key candidates who threaten democracy.*
The violent hatred of India's Hindu-nationalist ruling party (BJP) is spreading into other countries where people of Indian descent live. In England it sparked a riot.
I don't know if it has generated a riot yet in the US, but they are working on building the foundation for one.
Naturally there is a counter-movement among Indian Muslims, but the Hindu nationalist's hostility covers Christians, Buddhists, and other minority religions.
*From barristers to bin collectors, strikers are working to empower us all.*
But it isn't easy — the plutocratists are fighting hard.
CODEPINK activists crashed a meeting of the IMF and World Bank, calling on them to release poor countries from the debt trap that is impossible to escape from.
* Igor Danchenko, who played a vital role in creating the Steele dossier, has been indicted on five counts of lying to the FBI.*
The Steele dossier made accusations about the bullshitter; it seems that some of the accusations may have been fabricated by Danchenko.
An important Iranian politician called for more freedom for Iranians and less imposition of Islamic customs by force.
A study of Putin's official Newspeak.
The real and complex history of Crimea, Ukraine and Russia, since around 1100 years ago, have almost nothing to do with Putin's fantasy justification for conquest.
I've read about parts of this history before, and the article accords with what I read.
* The Federal Reserve’s fight to squash inflation will cause the US economy to start losing tens of thousands of jobs a month beginning early next year, Bank of America Warns.*
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a wealth tax on the ultra-rich.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Army Corps of Engineers to reject the underwater tunnel for the Line 5 oil pipeline.
US citizens: call on NOAA to save the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
US citizens: call on state legislators to reject an Article V constitutional convention.
US citizens: call on Biden to decriminalize marijuana.
US citizens: support the Reproductive Health Care Accessibility Act.
Everyone: call on Ford and GM to stop funding candidates that want to rig elections and ban abortion.
Republicans have been repeating since the 1930s the lies they told to attack the New Deal.
It is true that the corrupter added some new lies to go with the old lies.
*New Report Reveals How 13 US States "Shield the Fortunes of the World's Richest People."* In other words, they are tax havens.
(Satire) *FEMA Requires Flood Victims To Pass Drug Test Before Qualifying For Rescue.*
Without campaign finance reform, rich Republicans will be able to buy themselves almost any office by spending tens of millions of dollars.
* Journalists working for foreign-owned outlets could face jail under Australia's foreign interference laws for exposing defense force war crimes or misuse of surveillance powers, a new paper has warned.*
There is a general pattern in which Australian laws to "protect security" lack safeguards against repression. Consider the Australian equivalent of the Espionage Act, which was used to prosecute whistleblower Witness K, and the law allowing Australia to force anyone to sabotage any computer system (that perse has access to) or be put in prison.
*Climate crisis made [northern hemisphere] summer drought 20 times more likely, scientists find.*
The White House published a draft statement of rules for how AIs treat people. Although these rules are not legally binding, it makes sense to test a set of rules — for a while — before making it binding.
However, from what I can see in this article, these rules are based on the usual wrong assumption: that rules about the use of data about individuals can eliminate the danger posed by of accumulation of that data.
Does it require an AI used to judge people be free software? If not, we know it is too weak.
The dangers of collecting data about you include repression, for instance when China does it, and putting you at a disadvantage, for instance when a John Deere tractor does it.
To make data collection by tractors respect the rights of farmers, it must deliver that data about a given farm only to the farm owner, and if an AI analyzes the data, that should be free software running on the farmer's computer.
A Welsh thug has been convicted of attacking a teenager for making a video of the exterior of a police station. The thug said he had decided to assume arbitrarily that anyone making a video of the police station was a terrorist.
The judge described the victim as a "vulnerable boy". This suggests to me that the judge may believe there are people who are "not vulnerable" and that it would have been acceptable to attack one of them this way. I don't think so.
The climate emergency has already started. We need to push hard to avoid disaster. Most Americans understand this, but rich planet-roasters dominate the media.
OPEC has decided to cut supplies of oil and drive the price back up.
If it were only a matter of prices and the short-term economy, I would recommend that the US ship a lot of oil — that would really screw OPEC. However, the most important issue at stake is global heating and the disaster we must avoid. To do the right thing now means helping people get through this winter, in ways that will reduce the long-term demand for fossil fuels.
Correction about Republican candidate Herschel Walker: the woman whose abortion he paid for in 2009 was not his son's girlfriend, as I wrote. She was, rather, his own girlfriend. It appears I misunderstood some of the text in the previous article.
Paying for her abortion was the right thing for him to do. We should not criticize him for that — not in the slightest. (In a country with a good national medical system, she would not have needed such help, but that's a different issue.)
When Walker has done which does deserve criticism is (1) advocating a ban on abortions in the future, and (2) covering up his history to win support from others who want to ban abortions. In other words, when you criticize a right-wing extremist for hypocrisy, take care to make it clear you are not endorsing the right-wing extremism that the extremist failed to put into practice!
It does children no favor to bring them into a world in which climate crisis is developing into climate disaster — so please help avoid it. Avoiding this will also help stop the process short of total disaster.
After a machine fire in an Amazon warehouse, some workers in the next shift refused to work, perhaps fearing the smoke could damage their respiratory tracts. Amazon "suspended" them.
The FBI has asked US thug departments to submit more detailed crime statistics, but does not require them to offer data at all. Many thug departments did not submit any.
These reports are important, so they should be mandatory.
Someone beat Iranian protester Nika Shahkarami to death, then the state buried her body and ordered her relatives to say she jumped off a building.
Massachusetts citizens: Pledge to vote yes on question 4, to allow non-citizens to get Massachusetts driver's licenses, and then tell others you know.
A law to allow this was passed this year, but this referendum was requested by people who want to reverse that decision.
Proposed new Tory policy would make it nearly impossible to get political asylum in the UK, and violate UN treaties.
An Australian lawyer, Bernard Collaery, calls for reforms in the National Security Information Act which allowed the government to put his client, a whistleblower, and Collaery himself on trial secretly.
The national shame that they revealed was that Australia spied on East Timor's negotiators in order to impose a disadvantageous deal on East Timor about undersea fossil fuel reserves between the two countries.
That deal was eventually replaced with a fairer deal, but both versions of the deal were dangerous for humanity because both permitted the fossil fuels to be extracted and burnt. The only safe thing to do with new fossil fuel reserves is keep them in the ground.
Michigan has used an sneaky and arguably dishonest legal maneuver to drop the criminal charges against state officials accused of poisoning the people of Flint.
Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines is developing a Covid-19 vaccine to distribute in Africa, but has to fear that Moderna, or perhaps Pfizer, will use patents to destroy it.
We should not allow patents on medicines that people's health depends on.
Please reject the perverted concept of "intellectual property", which was [promoted starting as the 1960s] as a campaign to shape public opinion in favor of various kinds of imposed monopolies.
A Philadelphia thug has been convicted for shooting an unarmed, unthreatening motorist dead.
Israel has imprisoned human rights lawyer Salah Hamouri for six months without charges. He is now starting a hunger strike.
Israel's law allows imprisoning a person for life without a conviction or even a stated accusation, based on secret (supposed) evidence. This resembles what South Africa did under its apartheid system (as shown in the film, A World Apart).
*Study links in utero [PFAS] exposure to low sperm count and mobility.*
George Monbiot: *Rightwing thinktanks run this government. But first, they had to capture the BBC.*
Monbiot explains that these "think tanks" are effectively lobbyists that conceal their clients. I suspect they are called "think tanks" because they are the equivalent, in the field of political persuasion, of armored vehicles with treads and cannons.
Liz Truss follows the doctrinaire dooH niboR philosophy introduced by Margaret Thatcher, who promised increased total economic growth in exchange for greater poverty. She delivered the poverty but economic growth went down.
Now Labour needs the courage to reject the bogus assumptions and values underlying that plutocratist plan.
It could get that courage from Corbyn.
Crown Prince Bone Saw is switching to the Putin camp.
It makes some sense, in terms of pure selfishness, that two major oil exporters with no goal other than greed would get together in this way.
* Environmental damage of producing [Bitcoin] averages 35% of its market value over past five years.*
* Vaping is substantially less harmful than smoking, according to a major review of nicotine products, but action is needed to tackle the sharp rise in e-cigarette use among [minors].*
The article says "children" referring to students in "secondary schools", people who are teenagers, not children. I support efforts to discourage them from using nicotine, but calling them "children" is not going to win their cooperation on this or anything else.
*The liberal belief that diversity would have a mellowing or eradicating effect on racism has proven to be a costly fallacy.*
Instead, Tories and other powerful organizations have learned to present their "diversity" as an excuse for policies that contribute to systemic racism, as they actively boost systemic class prejudice.
Is Kwasi Kwarteng "superficially black"? Anyone's skin color is superficial. Rupa Huq's error was in treating that superficial characteristic as determining what a person ought to think and feel. In effect, a form of stereotyping that denies people's diverse forms of lived experience and the values they develop.
I don't think it was necessary to formally punish Huq for expressing that erroneous concept. Surely there was a way to help her clarify it in her mind.
Kwarteng has a duty to have a heart for the poor and those that the powerful mistreat. But the reason is not his skin color. If that were the reason, it would follow that white Tories were excused for lacking one.
The valid reason is that everyone has this duty.
*‘Brexit freedoms bill’ could abolish all pesticide protections, campaigners say.*
The UK National Health Service is paying some staff so badly that some quit to work for more money in pubs and shops. Some call in sick the in days before they get paid, because they can't afford to travel to work. Some have to skip meals at work.
The only thing preventing the NHS from paying staff adequately is the Tory Party.
*House Democratic Leadership Designed Stock Trade Ban to Fail, Negotiators Say.*
*US justice department says [the bullshitter] didn’t turn over all [government] documents — report.*
James K Galbraith: *The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here's how to fix it.*
(satire) *High Schoolers Given Detention For Cutting Class During Active Shooting.*
*As Fed Pushes to "Get Wages Down," Study Shows CEO Pay Has Soared by [a factor of 15] Since 1978.*
The CEO of Shell calls for European countries to tax oil companies and use the money to help the poor.
This is instead of capping the price that individuals pay — because such a cap entails a big subsidy to the oil companies.
The European Commission wants to abolish or get out of the Energy Charter Treaty, a business-supremacy treaty that makes countries pay oil companies "compensation" for laws that cut down oil extraction.
*Hand-washing and mask-wearing: Covid rules we would be wise to keep.*
Likewise higher mandatory standards for indoor ventilation in schools, workplaces, stores and transport.
*Toxic [PFOS] detected in commonly used insecticides in US, study finds.*
Six prominent robot manufacturers committed not to add weapons to "general use" robots.
I think that means they will have a separate product line for militarized robots.
A big explosion on the Kerch bridge (between Russia and Crimea) has made the bridge unusable until major repairs are finished. If Ukrainian forces in Donetsk get within artillery range of the Sea of Azov, they will be able to cut off most supply to most of the territory that Putin has conquered. Putin's attempts to send supplies by ship have resulted in defeat.
Hundreds of thousands protested in the UK against the Tories' piss-on-the-poor economic policies.
The National Archives say that some of the corrupter's high officials are still holding on to government records that they should have handed in to the national archives.
Watch Robert Reich explain how billionaires get their wealth: not creating it, but taking it from the rest of us.
(satire) *Far-Right Republican Wondering What He Has To Do To Get Media To Stop Calling Him "Moderate."*
He should feel much better once he realizes that "moderate", in mainstream US journalism, always means "right wing."
*The US ultra-rich justify their low tax rates with three myths — all of them rubbish.*
Elon Musk proposed to consign 20 million people to Chinese repression for the sake of his profits.
China has gone out of its way to show, in Hong Kong, how little its promises of a "special administrative zone" are worth. Musk evidently hopes people will choose to forget this because they fawn on him so much.
Arguably, Russians fleeing to avoid being conscripted have a valid claim for asylum under international treaties.
That is an interesting argument, but it ought not to be secondary. If a country wants to support Ukraine, it would be utterly foolish not to help Russians avoid fighting for Putin against Ukraine. Isn't this obvious? I can't understand how officials can miss this.
Beware of right-wing domination and indoctrination in US colleges and universities.
* [A UN] Report says policies of high interest rates and austerity risk triggering global recession that will hit developing nations hardest.*
Ralph Nader: * The GOP has blocked pro-family votes and pushed for corporate anti-family policies.*
US Big Oil profits grew by 4 times between 1st quarter and 2nd quarter 2022.
They raised prices because they found they could get away with it.
To cut inflation, we need to tax them a lot more, and distribute the funds to the non-rich.
*Permian Basin [gas pipelines] Leaking 14 Times More Methane Than EPA Estimates: Study.*
Several human beings and one company that tried to acknowledge the apartheid system of Israel's occupation of Palestine have recently been silenced.
On a side issue raised by the article, people have the right to criticize or to defend Israel's occupation practices; UC Berkeley must respect academic and political freedom by allowing people to present either of those sides (and other sides of the issue as well). We must reject all claims that "presenting a certain political stand is harassment because it makes the campus unsafe for group XYZ," because we cannot accept any excuse to abolish political freedom of speech.
*Supreme Court Poised to Shred What's Left of Voting Rights Act, Plaintiffs Warn.*
What can we possibly do to stop this?
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
Complacent Europe is seeing the start of another wave of Covid-19.
The president of Kenya says Africa can get out of the fossil fuel trap, and points to what Kenya has already achieved.
Can African countries help each other get out of fossil fuel? That would enable them to get out of poverty.
UK Green leader: *Energy crisis? It isn’t that we have too little oil and gas. It’s that we have too much.*
A panel of a federal appeals court overturned the DACA policy that protects immigrants who have grown up in the US.
There are two more stages of appeal before a final judgment, but right-wing judges are likely to eliminate it. What is needed is to pass a law explicitly to give then residency, and the opportunity to apply for citizenship. But this will be hard to do, with the Senate split 51-50 and no way to eliminate the filibuster.
*Over 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain linked to [cutting the support for poor people], finds study.*
Now Truss wants to cut even more, which will surely increase the rate of death of poor people.
(satire) *Police Apologize For Tasing Innocent Man They Meant To Shoot.*
The US issues monthly reports on prices, jobs, and wages. But there are no such reports on corporations' profits. We ought to have those reports too.
Ukraine's economic advisor calls for privatization and flexibility of work. (I presume that last would include making it easier to fire employees.) Also, more borrowing.
It may be that Ukraine's system is too inflexible, but any steps in that direction must be taken with great care, because there are plenty of advisors who serve the banks that want to lend you more than you can pay and denominate the loans in a foreign currency. This path has led many countries into a debt trap.
(satire) Things you should never say to your Amazon listening device.
Fetterman rebukes Mehmet Oz for peddling dangerous quackery.
Truss backed down from a planned tax cut for rich people, but many planned give-aways to companies remain in the plan.
Reporting on the battle that expelled the Putin forces from Lyman.
The CIA predicted the Putin forces would rapidly conquer Ukraine. Asked to explain this failure to predict correctly, they say they underestimated the effect of the pervasive corruption in Russia.
The US also suffers from pervasive corruption — less than Russia historically, but Republicans' by-hook-or-by-crook attitude is boosting it. The military-industrial complex is a major center of corruption. I hope Congress thinks about this when funding more F35 airplanes.
On the futile demand for "climate justice".
The supporters of this demand are responding to the level of disaster that we have seen in the past few years — disasters that civilization, countries, and international trade can for the most part survive, albeit with considerable pain. To rebuild after these disasters is well within the capabilities of wealthy countries.
After a disaster of that level, a country can find those responsible and make them compensate those who suffered the most. It would be right to do so.
Global heating disaster is going to be far too bad for compensation. To measure the damages in money would give a meaningless number, far beyond what anyone could pay. The countries that today are wealthy will by that time be struggling to save the lives of most of their own people — and eventually fail to do so. If you had that much money, in Africa, say, you couldn't buy feed the hungry with it, as food will be scarce globally.
Our priority for action, and our main demand, must be to reduce the extent of the coming disaster.
The drought on the Pacific northwest of Canada has dried out some rivers, and killed lots of salmon.
Since the drought is due to global heating, such even worse droughts are to be expected frequently.
*US Covid recovery in "jeopardy" unless poorer countries helped, group [of members of congress] warns.*
*Ukraine won back territory and support, but Russia will test the west’s resolve again.*
The article presents several indications that Putin has no real intention of using nuclear weapons. Let's not be defeated by shadows.
* The RSPB, National Trust, green farmers and anti-frackers all got it in the neck at the Conservative conference.*
Is "growth" a desirable goal? Putting aside the deeper long-term questions about whether further economic growth is sustainable, it is clear that "growth" under plutocratist Tories would go to the wealthy, and would not benefit most Britons. Why should that kind of "growth" be a valid goal for government policies?
Greenpeace activists: *No one voted for Liz Truss's policies. That's why we stormed her conference speech.*
That statement is basically true, but it exaggerates: some small number of Britons did vote for them. Truss is an MP and won that seat in a district election. A minority of the Tory MPs agree with her, and some Britons voted for them. But these voters add up to far too few to win a national election.
*Greenpeace UK analysis has identified at least seven areas across environmental protection, climate action, workers’ rights and tackling inequality where policies either confirmed or being considered by Truss and her ministers are at odds with the 2019 Conservative manifesto.*
High School girls in Iran are now protesting against clothing restrictions.
The Iranian regime is nonplussed by masses of young women, even girls, who are burning their veils in public and chanting "Death to Khamenei."
I speculate that it is a mistake for the US to apply additional sanctions — surely minuscule in their practical effect — since that lends justification to the regimes' claim that the protesters are in cahoots with the US. As far as can see, there is nothing effective that the US can do to help the protesters.
Dissident TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova has fled from house arrest in Russia. She faces possibly 10 years in prison for criticizing Putin on live TV in March.
Much like his some-time American ally, the corrupter, Putin regards any reports that contradict his propaganda "fake news". Putin has made that a crime and prosecutes people for it. The corrupter would do the same, if he could.
US citizens: call on the Dept of Education to defend free speech, due process, and the right to learn without fear of right-wing hate.
US citizens: call on Congress to give the Supreme Court a Code of Ethics.
*EU votes to force all phones to use same charger by 2024.*
This is a victory over callous abuse of power by a nasty corporation which makes for massive waste. However, this is hardly the worst thing that Apple does. Apple won't let the "owner" of an iMonster install free software in it! The EU should very deliberately force Apple to change this practice.
Mexican journalists that investigate corruption have been snooped on with Pegasus spyware after the Mexican government promised to stop doing this.
Big Oil is gouging American customers with a 13% increase in retail prices compared to the last time the crude price was the same as now.
A tax on oil would boost conservation by raising the price in a predictable way. People could plan long-term investments in reducing their greenhouse emissions based on that. But this unpredictable gouging doesn't encourage anything positive.
Candidate Herschel Walker's son publicly called him a lying hypocrite for denying he paid for the son's girlfriend's abortion.
That doesn't surprise me. Right-wing leaders talk about "morality" to stir up hatred that is the fuel for their campaigns, but they often believe that they and their family are exempt from the rules.
A famous Iranian pop musician played a song whose words are the words protesters have posted. The regime arrested him, but the song is heard everywhere.
The article says that copyright threats are being used to try to get the song taken down. The details are not clear in the article, but it seems to involve a false attribution of the song; why that claim is there is not explained.
Technical systems of copyright enforcement are repressive in their own right, and here they are being used to support of more general repression.
Several French cities, including Paris, will refuse to present the video of the world cup of soccer, as a rebuke to Qatar for its abuse of human rights and the environment. In particular, the abusive treatment of the foreign workers who built the facilities for the world cup.
* The White House hunger conference last week was a step in the right direction.*
*Policymakers should be focusing on those causes if they want to solve hunger, said Michael Fakhri, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. Racism, corporate control and poverty contribute heavily to hunger, he said.*
The US military depends on poverty and debt to push young people into joining up. To militarists, the widespread poverty in the US looks like a good thing and reducing it looks like weakening the army.
*The lesson from the first round of Brazil’s election: Bolsonarismo is here to stay.*
Relabeling "white supremacism" as "whiteness", a calculated ambiguity, morphs the opposition to white supremacy — opposition which I support — into a new form of racial hostility which is more or less the reverse of white supremacy.
Instead of "whiteness", let's call it "white inferioricism" for clarity.
I oppose both white supremacism and white inferioricism.
The Paris Metro is replacing paper Metro tickets with a digital payment system.
There are more than sentimental reasons to find this horrible: the digital payment methods track the passenger.
Paying with a mobile phone inevitably identifies the payer. It is not inevitable that travelcards identify the payer — in New York City and Boston, the payment cards can be anonymous. (Be careful, never feed money into the card with anything but cash!) But Paris has set them up so that it is not feasible.
Ohio's abortion ban puts pregnant females in danger when some things go wrong with the pregnancy. The supporters of that ban deal with this by pretending it isn't so.
China is not content with facial recognition; it is pushing to get DNA samples and voice prints of everyone.
In Hong Kong, China is arresting people for having indirect relationships with past protesters. Increased data to identify people will compel people to act like robots.
Meanwhile, San Francisco has invited private owners of surveillance cameras to let the thug department look through them live.
No one should be allowed to set up surveillance cameras that see and show everyone that passes a certain place, with out a specific court order for a limited time and a limited place. Not a thug department, and not a private entity.
Nuclear industry has pushed in many countries for "small, modular" power reactors, but the only projects that were actually completed had giant cost overruns.
And there remains the question of what to do with the long-term radioactive waste.
In May 2021, the National Archives complained that the cheater had taken some documents — including documents from Obama's term — and had to return them.
The article does not say whether the cheater has yet all of those documents.
Australia will bring home some Australian children from prison camps in Syria. Some of their mothers, who fought for PISSI, will also be brought to Australia for trial.
About 5% of people who get infected with Covid-19 have long-term problems with taste and smell. For some, the sense of smell is gone. For others smells get mixed up — the foods you used to like may smell bad.
The railroad between Los Angeles and San Diego runs so close to the ocean that big storms are likely to mess up the tracks and require repairs.
I don't think the approach of repairing the damage each time will be adequate for another few decades. Hadn't they better start planning to move the tracks inland?
Yanis Varoufakis: tax cuts for the rich can't make wealth trickle down to the poor, because those tax cuts don't increase economic growth at all. Rich people and companies given extra wealth don't seek, nowadays, to invest it in increased production. Instead they manipulate markets.
California has passed a law intended to help farm workers unionize.
Timid Labour can't suggest raising taxes on the rich beyond what the Tories have left after almost 10 years in power.
*Eliminating Nuclear Weapons "Is Not Only Possible, It Is Necessary" — UN Chief.*
I agree it is necessary. But is it possible to get the nuclear powers to agree to disarm?
The history of right-wing politics in Italy in the past few decades, and where that is leading now.
I have a general theory that the right-wing has been strengthened in EU countries by the power that the EU's banks have over spending and money. Italy and Greece suffered economic crises after the 2009 recession and the EU blocked them from applying the necessary Keynesian policies. The non-extreme left was stymied and had nothing to offer. Right-wing parties couldn't fix the problem either, but they could propose useless attacks on scapegoats.
General Petraeus suggested how to retaliate for Putin's possible use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, with more or less the approach I suggested. I think his idea does not go quite far enough.
NATO should not limit itself to the rather small Black Sea fleet. It should capture or sink every ship in the Russian navy, explicitly and carefully excluding nuclear missile submarines because we don't want to lead Putin to think that he must use them fast or lose them.
In addition, we should seize as much as possible of Russia's civilian shipping, including their giant fishing ships.
Russia would be unable to prevent this, and the effects would last for many years. Announcing the plan should have a substantial deterrent effect.
A deterrent effect is what we want. Our goal is to deter Putin's use of nuclear weapons, not punish them.
Turkey seized Jamal Khashoggi's phone after he was murdered, for a planned trial of accused murderers. But Turkey made a deal to let Crown Prince Bone Saw, the probable murderer, take charge of the trial. Khashoggi's widow demands that evidence.
Georgia Republicans are trying many different methods of discouraging disadvantaged people from voting. The idea is that eventually these obstacles will impose more trouble and hassle than non-rich people can free up.
*Iranian students defy [suppression forces] as anti-regime protests continue.*
Experts say it will take at least a decade to remove the landmines that the Putin forces have planted in Ukraine.
*Australia announces plan to halt extinction crisis and save 110 species.* Plus other species that share their habitats.
*The Supreme Court Will Decide the Future of Clean Water for Generations. Polluters' legal challenge aims to maximize profits at the expense of the health of communities and our environment.*
Starbucks made concessions to the strikers in the store near Boston University, and they ended the strike.
That was after the Boston thug department threatened to arrest the picketers for trespassing, and the community chased the thugs away.
US citizens: call on Secretaries of State to end voter suppression among college students.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the PRO Act.
Peter Kalmus: *It has been a summer of climate insanity … on average, the coolest summer with the least climate chaos for the rest of your life. That is just the nature of trends.*
*The desperation I feel over this clear failure of world leaders to take the obvious and necessary actions to halt Earth breakdown and potentially save billions of lives led me to engage in civil disobedience earlier this year, an action that resulted in my arrest.*
The rate of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the UK increased by over 1/3 last week. With the hospitals damaged by Tory under-funding, and understaffed, they are already having trouble coping at all.
Planet-roaster politicians in Australia continue to insist that Australia will need coal-powered electricity for decades more, These claims are based on combining falsehoods with exaggerations. This article spells it out.
*Eight Reasons Why There Hasn't Been a Global Climate Revolt Yet.*
* "When the 'all-time low' of uninsured Americans is still 26 MILLION, something needs to change," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal.*
Republican lawsuits on behalf of loan management companies compelled Biden to exclude .77 million Americans from student loan forgiveness.
The US government has put billions of dollars into efforts at carbon capture and storage, and the only result is to provide an imaginary excuse to delay serious efforts to cut down on greenhouse emissions. Now Congress proposes to do more of the same.
"Flaring" of natural gas burns the methane to convert it into CO2. However, the process is not totally effective; the amount of methane that survives to heat the Earth is 5 times what was calculated.
Russia is starting to block Ukrainians from leaving the supposedly annexed parts of Ukraine into Russia, and also from Russia to EU countries.
The right-wing extremists that dominate the Republican Party still intend to ban abortion in the whole US.
The only thing they disagree on is whether to hide it for the meantime.
Richard Boyle, a whistleblower in the Australian Taxation Office, reports that the management had adopted a stance of contempt towards taxpayers who felt suicidal because tax debt collectors had left them with no way out.
I can see that there is something insincere about telling a creditor that your debt makes you suicidal. The temptation to exaggerate is obvious.
However, people in debt have often suffered much worse treatment at the hands of rich businesses and the plutocratic state, and all in all I think we must forgive them for lesser wrongs like this.
Boyle is facing criminal charges and could be sent to prison for years.
(satire) *CNN’s Chief Nihilist Correspondent Gives Perspective On Why None Of This Matters.*
The US military keeps itself in power, and keeps itself fighting wars, by lying about failures and lying to cover up the previous lies.
DeMentis as governor of Florida has systematically obstructed efforts to reduce global heating, or help the poor. Now Florida has been hit by a symptom of global heating.
DeMentis deserves this, but the people of Florida do not.
They say money talks.
The Tories are privatizing Britain's public museums.
*How Amazon, Google, and Facebook Helped Fund the Campaign to Overturn Roe.*
Hurricanes today are no longer natural disasters. These disasters are augmented by human-made global heating, which causes stronger winds, stronger rain for a longer period of time, and bigger storm surges starting from a higher mean sea level.
*Geico workers accuse company of aggressive tactics to deter union push.*
*Why is Labour ignoring its own members on electoral reform?*
I can't prove it, but I suspect that plutocratists are now in control of Labour, and changes outside of a limited range are beyond the range of thinking.
The protests in Iran keep growing, showing enormous resentment against the rigidity of the regime.
George Monbiot: *The prime minister's ideology encourages the extraction of as much income as possible from nature before abandoning it.*
*Those desiring regime change in Russia should be careful what they wish for.*
*Further destruction under Bolsonaro could push vital rainforest past irreversible tipping point.*
To stop the deforestation will not be easy even with Lula's support. The Workers' Party presidents governed for around 13 years, and their laws slowed the rate of deforestation, but never succeeded in stopping it.
Zelenskiy said that Ukraine has applied for membership in NATO.
That threatens to embarrass Ukraine's supporters, since they can't possibly accept. They have good reasons not to get involved in actual fighting with the Putin forces -- to avoid a step down a path that could lead to nuclear war.
It might be useful for NATO to announce that it will treat Ukraine as a NATO member, for the duration of this war, if Putin uses nuclear weapons. That might convince him not to take the risk.
Big hit songs are hit with copyright infringement claims over vague similarities to other songs.
I think this is a sign that the criteria for infringement are too loose. But it is also a consequence of the increased practice of songwriters' or their heirs' selling their whole catalogs to companies. I speculate that they are using AI to search databases of thousands of songs to find opportunities to sue.
Copyright lasts far too long. A 1973 work should not be copyrighted today.
A UN investigative team concluded that Venezuelan government officials are using torture against oppositionists and human rights defenders, sometimes at the direct request of high officials including the president.
The people of Tuvalu hope to develop a virtual replica of their home, to remember it by after it has been inundated permanently.
If we had started seriously fighting global heating 20 years ago, perhaps Tuvalu could have remained habitable. The planet roasters decided to sacrifice it to their profit.
US citizens: call on the Anti-Defamation League to stop defaming Rashida Tlaib, Human Rights Watch, and perhaps also you.
US citizens: call on your members of Congress to keep Manchin's environmental sabotage deal dead.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of the Interior to eliminate sales of fossil fuel leases.
An Australian mining magnate estimates that only 15% (at most) of supposed carbon offsets offered for sale correspond to real avoidance of carbon emissions. He is converting his iron mining business to zero emissions for real, rejecting the use of offsets.
I've been criticizing emissions trading as ineffective, and vulnerable to cheating, since 2007,
India has banned the Popular Front of India, whose stated purpose is to defend the rights of minorities. The government said it is involved in Islamist terrorism. The organization says it isn't.
I know nothing about the facts of the matter, but I am sure that it is unjust for any government to declare arbitrarily that a group is "terrorist." Such condemnation should require a trial.
*Chicago Fourth of July parade shooting survivors sue Smith & Wesson*, alleging that it practiced *illegally targeting ads at young men at risk of committing violence.*
* Hurricane Ian and Hurricane Fiona dumped great amounts of water across larger stretches of land — global heating is to blame.*
Wolves are back on the US list of protected species.
Lanternfish are plentiful, and grow fast. To catch them and use them to feed fish farms is tempting. But they also transport large amounts of carbon to the bottom of the ocean, and it mostly stays there. Catching enough of them to make a difference could speed global heating.
The UK government created low-tax "enterprise zones" with the aim of increasing the jobs available in those places, but this did not achieve very much.
I also wonder to what extent businesses moved jobs there from other places. If you give businesses special benefits to move jobs to X, they tend to take the jobs from Y and Z.
Whatever the specific effect of any special benefits for some businesses, it always contributes to the transfer of wealth to business owners from the rest of society.
* Biden promised to tackle climate crisis but administration’s rhetoric "changed substantially" after the onset of the Ukraine war and it adopted the [fossil fuel] industry's major demands.*
One reason why businesses move jobs to subcontractors is that it helps them get away with treating workers illegally.
This is why I advocate laws to strictly limit the amount of any kind of work that can be done by subcontracting.
The development of genetically engineered trees is likely to lead to replacing forests with plantations. Tree plantations won't support a variety of wildlife like a forest.
We licked the first attempt to pass Manchin's sabotage of environmental permit requirements. But Biden seems determined to pass it.
Shame on you for this, Biden.
Alabama prisoners, condemned to work for a pittance, are going on strike. A strike requires even more courage for prisoners than it does for desperate low-wage employees, because the prisoners may face solitary confinement and other privations.
In the US, "nonprofit" hospital chains cheat poor patients, demanding they pay even when state law says they don't have to, and sending debt collectors after them.
I suspect that mergers and competition for mergers are part of what turns formerly altruistic organizations greedy. Competition with for-profit companies may be part of it true.
I propose that states pass laws to prohibit mergers of organizations that provide medical care, and to prohibit for-profit companies from doing that. They should never have existed; let's get rid of them.
Universities must refuse donations from fossil fuel companies, to avoid being corrupted by them.
US citizens: call on the EPA to ban consumer sale of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides. Use in commercial farms should be banned too.
After Las Vegas corruption reporter Jeff German was murdered, the thugs seized his phone and computers. The Las Vegas Review Journal is suing because this is likely to identify his confidential sources.
The two Nord Stream pipelines, which used to carry methane from Russia to Germany, have been sabotaged — gas now leaks out and bubbles up to the surface of the Baltic Sea.
Putin shut down the pipelines to put economic pressure on Europe. Putin could have resumed the gas supply at any time. But no longer: the sabotage has eliminated the option of resuming delivery. The economic difficulties for Europe continue, but Putin no longer has the power to switch them on and off. Thus, Europe no longer has the option of ending the economic difficulties by caving to Putin.
Some are accusing Putin of causing the sabotage, but I don't see how that would have given him any advantage.
The world's fossil fools plan to build 15000 miles of new oil pipelines.
This at a time when reducing fossil fuel consumption is the only way to reduce global disaster.
Zoom cancelled by fiat a round table discussion that San Francisco State University planned to hold, because it included an actual terrorist who hijacked an airplane in the 1970s.
Zoom claimed that the discussion was illegal. The article explains why that is not so; the protection of freedom of association and freedom of speech under the US Constitution are so broad and firm that "so and so is a terrorist," even if true, cannot justify censoring the meeting.
However, Zoom went beyond citing a putative censorship interpretation of those laws. It asserted that its "terms of service" gave it the power to dictate what topics the university could discuss.
It is intolerable for a company to have veto power over what topics universities can cover in remote discussions. The side issue of how it would use that power, which topics the company wishes to censor, must not distract us from the wrong of putting the company in charge.
Universities should cancel their contracts with Zoom rather than tolerate this censorship.
This is in addition to the injustices that Zoom does to each user: for instance, the requirement to run nonfree software, the requirement to identify oneself (by making an account), and the requirement to agree to an unfair contract.
The Labour Party punished one of its MPs for calling Chancellor Kwarteng, a Tory, "superficially black" — presuming that truly having your skin of a certain color depends on something other than skin color.
Ms Huq's statement was both racist and a distraction from what matters. The problem with Kwarteng is not his skin color. Whether he is "superficially" black or really and truly black, whether he is black at all, are hardly even politically significant.
What's wrong with Kwarteng is that he's really and truly Tory — a plutocratist and a henchman of dooH niboR. He's lower than vermin.
He is trying to impoverish everyone in Britain who's not wealthy or specially fortunate, whatever color per skin is. Why even try to look for a worse thing to say about him than that?
Due to patchy European restrictions on late-term abortions, women need to travel from other EU countries to the Netherlands to get one.
How the local community showed their support to defend a book store and its Drag Story Hour from right-wing bullying.
85% of the human population is being hit by government spending cuts and privatizations that will cause suffering for the poor.
Stiglitz and some associates say, let's tax rich individuals and companies instead.
Famous English castles, beloved of sightseers, are in danger from rising sea levels.
We have increased the level of CO2 in the air to 421 parts per million. In the past, when it was above 400 ppm, Antarctica's marine ice sheets melted; this would have led to a lot of loss of ice from the ice cap, and sea level rise of perhaps tens of meters.
*[DeMentis] privately elevates election deniers while publicly staying mum on 2020.*
*Nearly 80% of Americans Support Legislation to Ban … Stock Trading [by members of Congress].*
*More than 1,700 environmental activists murdered in the past decade.*
*New Report Reveals How 13 US States "Shield the Fortunes of the World's Richest People."*
*Richest 1% Now Owns Over 1/3 of US Wealth.*
More details of the increased concentration of wealth in the US.
The EPA rejected a petition to ban using neonicotinoids to coat seeds.
The pesticide gets into the whole plant, and kills bees.
The French government owns the UK's nuclear power plants, and is considering extending their operation again.
This seems logical if you don't look at the numbers, but Amory Lovins has shown that it is an inefficient, wasteful expense. It would be cheaper to build additional renewable generation to replace the nuclear plants than to keep operating them for much additional time.
The idea that the UK is "behind" on building new nuclear power plants flies in the face of all economics. It makes no sense to do that since building renewable generating capacity is far cheaper, safer and faster.
*CEO Says He's Been "Praying for Inflation" Because It's an Excuse to Jack Up Prices.*
*US courts must stop shielding government surveillance programs from accountability.*
To do this, we must also crack down on all kinds of commercial surveillance. Once the data have been put in a database, the state will surely arrange to access them.
*Italy's Giorgia Meloni is no Mussolini -- but she may be a Trump.*
Cuba has held a referendum on a proposed law -- to legalize same-sex marriage.
The new law was approved, with 2/3 of the votes in favor and 1/3 against. It appears there was actual public disagreement about the law. Allowing democracy in one policy area and tolerating public disagreement is a step forward for Cuba.
Starbucks has agreed to negotiate with all 230 of the US stores that have unionized.
A university student recruiting service has adopted a policy of rejecting oil, gas and mining companies.
*World's central banks financing destruction of the rainforest.*
Palestinian villages such as Masafer Yatta are being slowly strangled by the demolition of all the houses.
*Patagonia's radical business move is great -- but governments, not billionaires, should be saving the planet.*
*We cannot simply stand back and hope that the elite will give away their wealth to tackle the climate emergency.* Most of them won't help voluntarily, so we need laws to compel them.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect Social Security.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
*Britain is crying out for radical solutions, but Labour still thinks it’s in the 1990s.* Warning that if Labour doesn't support what non-wealthy Britons demand, if they have no hope of supporting Corbyn, they will turn to radicals that are authoritarian.
I stand by my cartoon contrasting B'liar's "New Labour" with the Labour government that established the great social democratic policies that lifted most Britons out of poverty after World War II. Just imagine that Tony B'liar is replaced by keir Starmer.
If you won't recognize that "The Tories are lower than vermin," you will never offer anything more than a lesser evil.
A campaign to define "ecocide" as an international crime, comparable to genocide.
I don't think that prosecuting ecocide is a panacea. It is easy to understand intentional deforestation as ecocide. Each piece of the forest is cut down or burnt by certain people.
However, when a lightning-sparked wildfire destroys a forest, it is harder to pin the destruction on anyone. Everyone's CO2 emissions contribute a little to each wildfire.
Nonetheless, prosecuting people like Bolosonaro could help, and they certainly deserve it.
*We watch the protests in Iran and hope, but false optimism may be clouding our eyes.*
Disregard for the goal of reducing the spread of Covid has put millions of elderly Americans in a vice between the need to go out to do things (even seeing doctors) and the danger of being exposed by a risk denier.
Please wear a good mask whenever you are indoors sharing air with other people.
*EPA's Environmental Justice Office 'Won't Make Up for' Manchin Deal, Campaigner Says.*
Women in Dagestan (part of Russia) are holding mass protests against conscription.
(satire) *Struggling U.S. Military Requires Every Soldier To Recruit Additional 300 New Troops.*
A panel of judges rated Starmer's policy speech as more progressive than they expected from him.
Crabs, enjoying the warming ocean around Normandy and Brittany and the delicious mussel farms there, are staying most of the year and devouring the mussels.
Since their numbers are growing, we should encourage people to eat them and keep the numbers stable.
On the campaign to end prison slavery — forcing prisoners to work for private employers for a pittance.
*Hydrogen is unsuitable for home heating, review concludes.*
Hydrogen made from renewable electricity may be useful for decarbonizing transport, but that's a different issue.
The University of Idaho has banned its employees from saying anything about abortion. Even medical personnel. And they are warned not to offer anything under the rubric of contraception.
This requirement, if attributed to a law, seems to be unconstitutional.
*As resistance grows to the fossil fuel regime, laws are springing up everywhere to suppress climate activists.*
The global climate disaster, which I expect will cause gigadeaths, will not be an accident. It will be mass murder, carried out by the power of the planet roasters.
What punishment will they deserve for these murders? What actions would people be justified in using to prevent mass murder?
Italy's new right-wing government is expected to demonize immigrants and queer people. It may also attack the right to an abortion.
Finally, something good from Labour: increasing taxes for the rich, and funding the NHS.
*More than 24,000km of [fossil fuel] pipelines planned around world, showing "an almost deliberate failure to meet climate goals."*
Mexico's president, AMLO, has created a new nationwide police and made it part of the military. That means the military are the thugs.
We don't know yet whether the Jan 6 coup attempt will lead to the overthrow of American democracy. The fanatical party, now committed to contempt for truth, has not given up.
Biden has launched a plan to end hunger in the US, and reduce obesity, with federal help. To pass this plan requires electing more democrats.
Some people are rejecting Spotify for reasons that have to do with their emotional relationship with music.
To use Spotify is inconceivable for me -- its injustices (the same as those of Amazon e-books) overrides all the secondary details.
If you stop using Spotify, please choose alternatives that don't impose those injustices. Check that you don't need to use nonfree software, don't have to identify yourself to listen, and don't have to make an antisocial agreement not to share.
You can access Youtube without running nonfree Javascript code by means of the proxy system, invidio.us.
Edward Snowden speaks about being granted Russian citizenship -- Russia being the only country that will let him stay and not hand him over for prosecution. He wishes that he could safely return to the US and live here.
Snowden did not choose to go to Russia at all. He had a flight connection in Moscow, and was unable to board the second flight because the US had cancelled his passport.
I hope that whatever happens at the end of the war doesn't result in handing over Snowden to the US.
Arguing that, if Putin falls, it would be good for the west to offer his successor a deal that perse could present to the Russian people as a good one.
I am in favor of this, provided the deal doesn't include keeping any of Ukraine.
A whale-detection system will inform ships in a narrow bay in Chile that they should slow down to avoid hitting whales.
I am only guessing, but I tend to think that this will not be sufficient change -- that we need to reduce the overall level of human-generated noise if we want whales to be safe.
Some state laws banning abortions restrict all prescriptions for drugs widely used to treat other medical problems, other than the problem of unwanted pregnancy that is. If these laws covered the whole US, it would interfere with the treatment of millions of patients.
Let us not make the usual mistake of emphasizing the uncontroversial collateral damage over the more controversial intended damage. Those religious fanatics want to force people to have babies!
Institutions have impoverished British society and communication to the point where jumping into a wave of deference to the monarchy is the only outlet for the yearning for a sense of common social feeling and purpose.
The article speaks of "consuming" a "national account of ourselves"
(referring to the British, thus not including me). This is not as
twisted as the idea of "consuming" books or movies,
but I think "absorbing" fits better.
A Russian about to be drafted shot the official that was trying to
draft him.
California now gives all school students gratis breakfast and lunch.
Students, no longer going hungry, are doing better.
It seemed to me that lunch in my schools in New York City was gratis
in the 1960s. I certainly was never asked to pay for lunch. Could it
be that my mother bills paid for my school lunches? It never occurred
to me to wonder about this before, and it is too late to ask her now.
Some churches pressure members to install spyware so the church can
shame them for what they look at on the web.
Westport, Connecticut, has set up a system to help its police department
deescalate confrontations with people who are freaking out. The system
helps them quickly find friends or relatives to calm someone down,
rather than a cop who is a stranger.
British-Ukrainian Aiden Aslin describes the torture and brainwashing
he was subjected to during 5 months as a prisoner of war, before he
was exchanged.
It ranged from solitary confinement to threats to murder him
summarily.
It is interesting that the guards in the supposedly independent
Donetsk People's Republic forced prisoners to sing Russia's national
anthem, not an anthem of their supposed country. They seem not to
take its "independence" more seriously than it warrants.
US citizens: tell Congress and state legislatures that no one
should be jailed or imprisoned for an unintentional voting error.
Iranians are enraged at the state, and keep protesting around the country
despite 35 killings -- mostly protesters, it is clear, but not all.
They are angry about a lot more than the death of Mahsa Amini.
Iranians, led by women, demand changes in laws to respect their
rights.
*California to Ban Sale of Gas Heaters and Furnaces by 2030.*
Setting a sad precedent: a museum has bowed to the pressure of an
indigenous group that demanded the "return" of four artifacts that the
museum legitimately owns.
The group agrees that these artifacts were not stolen; that the
anthropologist who gave them to the museum had acquired them
legitimately. Why should the museum feel an obligation to give in?
What justification can the group present for demanding to get them
back? The article does not present any, it only cites someone who
takes this for granted. The people in that group are not the only
ones concerned here.
In general, should anthropologists obey demands to discard part of
anthropological knowledge? I contend this should require a reason
stronger than, "These artifacts are related to us so only we can have
them."
The Tories are adopting plans for greatly increasing CO2 emissions in
the UK.
(satire) *Putin Stays Up Late Constantly Refreshing Website For
Results From Rigged Elections.*
(satire) *U.N. Mysteriously Disappears After Criticising Russia.*
There is a secret legal dispute about whether the wrecker can use
"executive privilege" to block some of his henchmen from testifying to
a grand jury about what appears to be a conspiracy to overturn part of
the 2020 election.
*To fix its broken welfare system, the U.S. must move away from its
fixation on fraud, exclusions by design, and the stigmatization of
people in poverty.*
Britain is ready to reform its broken electoral system, but the conservative
leaders in control of the Labour Party refuse to advocate that.
Now that California has passed a law to protect fast-food workers pay
and rights, the big fast-food companies want Californians to vote to
restore the power to abuse those workers, in the name of low prices.
DeMentis now claims to have sincerely transported immigrants to
Martha's Vineyard to help them.
One could ask him, "If you really wanted to help them, why did you give
them a false picture of the support they would find there?"
The head of the World Bank really is a global heating denialist, and
it appears he was put in that position by the wrecker precisely to
obstruct climate defense. The world needs to oust him.
The government of California, and local governments, took away black
citizens' land and houses systematically in various parts of the state.
*Corporate greed, not wages, is behind inflation. It's time for price
controls.*
Rigid price controls cause a different kind of market distortion. I
wonder if there is a way to get a similar effect but less rigid. For
instance, what if any increase of X in the price of a product resulted
in an additional tex starting at .9X and decreasing linearly over the
following year down to .1X, then ending after that year. This might
discourage price increases that are not meant to be long-term.
The Crimean Tatars, those that remain in the Crimea, say that Putin is
targeting them for conscription as a method of getting rid of them.
*Autumn has arrived in the UK -- but the season is not [as] it used to be.*
*The US Must Ends Its Complicity in Illicit Financial Flows Out of Africa.*
*UK climate activists held in jail for up to six months before trial.*
If they are convicted, their sentences will probably not be as long as
they were in jail. They are moved frequently from one prison to
another, and their friends can't find them.
I suspect this is an intentional practice of nonjudicial punishment.
The surveillance of employees by US employers is reaching levels
reminiscent of Chinese repression.
We must establish the rule that by default surveillance systems are
forbidden, aside from certain limited exceptions.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates too fast -- not waiting
to see the full effects of previous increases before moving on to another
increase.
This creates a risk of overshoot — of raising interest rates so
much that it is producing a result bigger than the organisation wants.
If you keep increasing a signal again and again, faster than results
can possibly come back to you, you will overcontrol and cause a
crisis.
The governors of the Fed ought to know this, since it is basic
business economics.
*The Guardian view on the Tory trickle up policies: redistributing to
the rich.*
An Australian mobile phone company suffered a data theft which took
personal data about millions of customers. The company had lobbied
against changes to laws about customers' rights over that data.
The harmful consequences of this breach are partly the Australian
government's fault, since it required the company to collect and save
various items of personal data for each customer. The reliable way to
prevent the release of people's personal data is not to possess copies
of it, but Australia did not permit this company to use that method.
Labour proposes to stop giving government contracts to businesses
connected with tax havens.
It would be a change for the better, but only a small one. It would
be simple to require all companies that do business in in Britain to
reveal their real owners, whereas this would only affect those businesses
that get government contracts.
*Giorgia Meloni is a danger to Italy and the rest of Europe.
The Brothers of Italy leader denies she is a fascist but clings to the
Mussolini-era slogan "God, homeland, family."*
*Meloni appears the most dangerous Italian political figure not because
she explicitly evokes fascism or the practices of the black-shirted
squadristi (militia), but because of her ambiguity.*
*Vanuatu makes bold call for global treaty to phase out fossil fuels.*
*Pope calls for courage in halting use of fossil fuels to protect
planet.*
*Attempts by [the wrecker] to delay the criminal investigation into
his unlawful retention of government secrets have been largely thwarted
after the Department of Justice regained access to about 100 documents
with classified markings that the FBI seized from the former US
president's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.*
Big businesses openly and shamelessly hire Congressional staff
to lobby their former coworkers.
They hire former Congressional representatives, too, but they disguise that
behind polite veils.
*80% of US Voters Want Congress to Enact National Paid Family Leave:
Poll.*
Politicians that call themselves "centrists" are opposed to this,
but they are nowhere near the political center of Americans.
*[The Tories] are borrowing big to fund tax cuts for the rich.*
UN investigators have reported evidence of many war crimes committed
by the Putin forces,
as well as a couple of instances of war crimes by Ukrainians.
US citizens: call on ShotSpotter to stop selling surveillance (and
consequent repression).
Republican officials are trying to stop credit card companies from
adopting a new merchant code for gun stores by threatening lawsuits.
I'd be surprised if laws say anything about the question of how
to establish categories of stores for credit cards, so I suspect
this is a way of threatening legal harassment.
The Justice Department succeeded in an appeal and can now examine
the secret government documents that the wrecker took home to determine
whether that was a crime.
1300 Russians have been jailed for protesting against the war.
Some of them were punished by immediate conscription.
Iran has sent thugs to crush protests against imposed religious codes,
killing six protesters.
The injustice of this repression — which Iran has practiced for 30
years — has no effect on my support for resuming the non-nuclear
deal, if any chance of that remains.
*The Tories spent a decade putting fossil fuel profits first [in the
UK]. Now we’re all paying the price.*
Russian men are fleeing Russia to escape being drafted.
EU countries should resume admitting Russian men as visitors.
Why help Putin by forcing them to remain in Russia and be drafted?
Schumer and Manchin's deal to undermine environmental permitting
requirements has been revealed, and it is is broader and deeper than
we knew. It would be a disaster for the environment, including a
massive increase in future fossil fuel extraction.
This deal was a dirty trick by Schumer and Manchin.
It would be much safer to let Republicans shut down the government
than to pass this bill. A shut-down is a short pain in the neck; much
better than a permanent disaster.
Artists have hacked many different airline advertising posters to highlight
the effect of their carbon emissions.
Putin's general mobilization threatens to destabilize the balance
between his military supporters and his formerly-the-KGB supporters.
The cost of cleaning up the UK's nuclear reactors and nuclear waste
is now estimated at UKP 260bn. That would be around 300 billion dollars.
There is no way to avoid these costs, for the reactors that have
already been operated. That suggests to me that it would be worth
billions to cancel the two reactors now being build, even if that
costs billions in indemnities, just to avoid the ever-increasing
cost of cleaning them up after.
France has protected independent book stores with a minimum delivery
fee of 3 euros.
It would be good to do this for all products. Physical stores normally offer
the crucial right to buy anonymously (and this should be required by law).
*Pressure builds for Levi’s to protect factory employees.*
The factories are in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
In Bangladesh, unjust treatment of employees is rife.
I wonder whether the factories in Pakistan still exist;
they may still be flooded.
The practice of having many products delivered is increasing urban
air pollution (as well as use of fuel).
The UK's current prime minister was chosen by the members of the Tory Party.
They include foreigners who don't live in Britain and can't vote in elections.
They also include rich people who secretly buy a share in party decisions.
*The more loudly a politician proclaims [per] patriotism, the more
likely [perse is] to act on behalf of foreign money. Every recent
Conservative prime minister has placed the interests of transnational
capital above the interests of the nation. But, to a greater
extent than any previous leader, Truss’s politics have been shaped by
organisations that call themselves thinktanks, but would be better
described as lobbyists who refuse to reveal who funds them. Now she
has brought them into the heart of government.*
Starbucks plans to replace the current system for Covid sick leave
with a new one, and deny the new system to union workers.
Do you want your coffee to be made by someone who has a transmissible
respiratory illness? Of course not. The law should require paid sick
leave for all employees who, when working, can transmit a disease to
others.
In the mean time, if you do business with Starbucks, tell the managers
of the stores that you disapprove of Starbucks's exclusion of sick pay
for union workers.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the PRESS act, protecting
reporters from searches to find their sources.
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve to issue strong guidelines
to stop greenwashing by Wall Street banks.
US citizens: call on Biden not to allow more offshore oil drilling.
*Deforestation is accelerating in Brazil as Bolsonaro's first term
ends, experts say.*
Forest destroyers are trying to pack in as much destruction as they can
while Bolsonaro before Lula gets a chance to try to stop them.
Some Louisiana Republicans want to imprison females that get abortions.
(satire) *U.S. Landlord General Announces Plans To Fix
Constant Flooding Sometime In Next Few Months.*
The head of the World Bank is a global heating denialist, appointed by
the wrecker.
The wrecker is now the leader of the US Christian fascist movement,
a sworn enemy of the flawed democracy of the United States and all the
incomplete political freedoms the country champions.
The relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh have presented evidence that the shooting
that killed her was difficult to do by accident or by mistake.
They are presenting this to the International Criminal Court.
Venezuela arrested fugitive Leonard Glenn Francis at the request of
the US.
It is interesting to see that the two governments still cooperate to
this extent. It gives me hope that maybe the US can stop treating
Venezuela as a monster.
Cheap add-ons can convert semiautomatic weapons that are lawfully sold
into machine guns.
Why doesn't Starmer, head of the UK Labour Party, criticize all the
disastrous harm Tories have done?
My theory is because that would be too radical -- almost something
Corbyn might say -- and anything that hints at such thinking is now
unwelcome in Labour.
Qatar seems to have suggested to construction companies that they send
most foreign workers home before the soccer world cup tournament.
Many workers are being sent home early, denied expected earnings
and robbed of some wages already earned.
Qatar can't have it both ways. If it did not intend to have many workers
sent home, it should tell the companies to bring those workers back and
make restitution for the costs this imposed. Perhaps at state expense.
The practice of charging money to find someone a job should be
strictly punished with confiscation of all the agent's income,
as well as prison -- whatever it takes to end the practice.
The companies that seek the employees should directly pay the cost
of finding employees.
Ranchers near the Shasta river in California believe that keeping
their ranches and pets going justifies drying up the river and wiping
out the fish.
Ranching near the Shasta river is doomed. There may be occasional
periods in the future with sufficient water, but they will be few and
decreasing.
We cannot allow people to cause extra permanent damage in a futile effort
to keep their doomed businesses going a little while longer. Such
efforts will magnify the harm done by the increasing drought.
It's not particularly those ranchers' fault that sustainable ranching
there has become impossible -- not more than it is our fault. We
(through our governments) should help them by buying them out and converting
that land into parks.
At the same time, we should make it a crime punished by imprisonment
to draw water for ranching in that region. Ranching sustainably there
will not be possible for decades even in an optimistic scenario, and
by that time we will have perfected vat meat and won't need much
ranching.
The US lead industry pooled funds to corrupt city governments and
plumbers' unions so that they would insist on the use of lead pipes.
These rules continued in Chicago through the 1980s.
I would like to know what they did to promote lead paint and lead in
gasoline.
A mother in Arizona was put on a 25-year blacklist which would cost
her her job because she let her child play outside a store for half
an hour with a friend.
She figured that was safer than bringing them
inside the store, where they might catch Covid-19 from customers or
staff. (This was in November 2020.)
Some thoughts on how to progress towards nuclear disarmament.
The recent nonproliferation conference broke down because some
countries put a phrase criticizing of Russia into the draft agreement
which Putin then refused to accept. The criticism was valid, but
there was nothing to gain by raising the topic in that context except
to make the text unacceptable. It appears to me that this was
intended to make the conference fail and blame Russia.
*Global fossil fuel subsidies almost doubled in 2021, analysis finds.*
Everyone: call on the New York Times to correct an article that
called Stacey Abrams' campaign a example of a bad campaign, citing a
source who had in fact called it an example of a good campaign.
US citizens: call on corporations to keep their pledge, and stop donations
to insurrectionist members of Congress.
Everyone: call on General Mills to reduce the plastic in its
packaging.
*New Bill Would Protect Workers Who Walk Off the Job Because of
… Disasters.*
It starts with the right to stop working or flee the workplace for
safety from a disaster, without being fired or punished for doing so.
The bill refers earthquakes and tornadoes as "climate disasters",
which is certainly erroneous for earthquakes and perhaps also for
tornadoes. It is right to include those disasters in legal protection
for workers' safety, but the law should use some other name for them
all, one that isn't flat-out incorrect.
When DeMentis (more precisely, people working for him) lied to
migrants released by US immigration in Texas to convince them to
get on a plane to Martha's Vineyard, they committed a crime under
Texas law.
Those migrants received a brochure that was deceptive, and was given
out in connection with leading migrants to take the flight, but it's
not clear who published it or how it was given to those migrants.
Alas, I don't think the Republican officials of Texas will prosecute
Republicans for crimes committed while mistreating weak and powerless
people in the name of the Republican Party. Mistreating the weak and
powerless is what the Republican Party stands for. Closing the eye to
right-wing hate crimes, even when much worse than these, is standard
practice, hardly even denied.
Is there a Democratic prosecutor in Texas with the jurisdiction and
guts to prosecute this crime?
*Don’t cheer for the Espionage Act being used against Donald Trump. It
will backfire. Wishing to see Trump called to account need not make
us champion a 100-year-old statute used to target whistleblowers.*
More or less all stain-resistant school uniforms in the US contain PFAS.
Putin has declared a partial mobilization, that will probably enable him to
force more Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine. I doubt it will make
a big difference.
In addition he growled and grated his teeth.
Attorney General Letitia James of New York State has sued the
corrupter, his family business, and some of his family for defrauding
banks by misrepresenting the organization's finances.
James stated that New York had presented information to the US government
that could lead to federal criminal charges.
A fracker says that the geology of the UK makes it unsuitable for fracking,
except on a small scale that would hardly be worth the trouble.
That is good news for the UK. Experience in the US shows fracking can
poison aquifers, which is long-term damage that the balance sheets don't count.
Because Truss is an ideological right-winger, I could imagine
her as going all-out to push for fracking, even if it isn't profitable.
*Poverty is a political choice.* In 2021, US government interventions
to help poor Americans reduced the number in poverty by 45 million,
even as millions lost their jobs.
*Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide, and they have the nerve to
claim that this is a compromise.*
It may indeed be a compromise between what they really want, and what
Americans want. But if that is so, what does it imply? It implies
that what they really want is an absolute ban that would kill pregnant
females who have medical problems.
*Russian nuclear sabre-rattling is designed to create fear in the west.*
The draft is provoking opposition and protest against the war.
Relatives of Shireen Abu Akleh have filed a complaint with the
International Criminal Court about her killing (apparently
intentional) by an Israeli soldier.
Spain has designated a lagoon called the Mar Menor as a "person".
It is right to protect the lagoon and its wildlife, but that does not
require proclaiming absurdities like this. Designating a lagoon or a
river as a "person" is as absurd as designating a corporation as a
"person".
*Drought [caused by global heating] threatens UK government’s mass
forestry scheme.* The scheme is intended to reduce global heating.
This is an example of an unexpected positive feedback in global
heating.
The special master, specifically proposed by the bullshitter,
is not proving subservient.
*How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight back.*
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and
normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
Plastic manufacturers seek to exempt incinerators from environmental laws
by relabeling them as "advanced recycling".
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the National Environmental
Policy Act.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to support the Protecting America's
Wilderness and Public Lands Act.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to use US diplomatic power to stop Israeli
demolitions of Palestinian homes, farms, clinics, schools and businesses
on the West Bank.
Truss's plans for policy changes amount to an across-the-board attack
on the non-rich, the dreams of an antisocialist ideologue.
I fear that they will include business-supremacy treaties
that would be difficult for the next government to fix or escape from.
Meanwhile, I suspect that Starmer, who is rather right-wing himself,
like a US plutocratist Democrat, won't seek to fix more than a
fraction of them.
Protests in many parts of Iran continue, triggered by the death of
Mahsa Amini, who seems to have been beaten by religious thugs on
account of her clothing.
The thugs and the state take the usual authoritarian "We never do
anything wrong, shame on you" stance, that we have seen in many
countries before, including the US.
Israel is about to extract natural gas from an undersea deposit
claimed also by Lebanon.
As with all international disputes about which country has the right
to extract certain deposits of fossil fuel, the only acceptable answer
is, "Leave it in the Earth!"
Burning all the currently known fossil fuel reserves would exceed the
carbon budget by 7 times.
In the absence of some massively deployed future CO2 extraction system,
that would bring certain disaster.
On a secondary issue, the fossil fuel industry claims falsely to
employ 11 million Americans. In fact, jobs numbered roughly 700,000
in 2019, and only 500,000 today.
Obviously, destroying civilization and the ecosphere in a few decades
is too high a price to pay to keep a few million people employed for a
decade or two — even if it would really achieve that. There are lots
of other ways for the state to support workers.
Biden pandered to Americans' desire to forget the danger of Covid-19,
by saying that "the pandemic is over." For proof, he cited that
Americans have stopped taking sensible precautions.
*"What's ending here," tweeted University of Washington medical
anthropologist Nora Kenworthy, "is political commitment and funding,
not cases or deaths."* Or, let's not forget, instances of permanent
organ damage, short of deaths.
Republicans called for keeping college expensive to pressure poor
Americans to join the military.
Representative Bowers, a Republican and currently speaker of the
Arizona state house of representatives, denounced the trumpery of most
Republican candidates there as "fascism".
More Perfect Union accuses Florida Republicans, starting from Governor
Dementis, of handing control of the state's electric utility into the
hands of cronies who allow it to keep raising prices. That was in
exchange for the company's secretly funding sound-alike candidates,
whose names would confuse voters so as to defeat some Democratic
legislators.
I don't know whether any of this is illegal, but it clearly shows
Dementis's real contempt towards the residents of Florida, and his
country.
Republican-controlled states refuse to test sewage sludge for PFAs before
spreading it on farmland.
A British-Pakistani novelist talks about corruption of democracy, in
Pakistan and in Britain.
Boys and men today face a difficult situation — the flip side of the
difficult situation that girls and women face.
Men can no longer win respect by being the "bread winner" for a wife,
not only because that role is no longer respected, but because most
jobs don't pay enough to enable a worker to support anyone else.
It is hard for me to empathize with people who want to be the "bread
winner", since I was repelled by that idea of the male role ever since
I learned about it. I yearned for a relationship of love, not for one
of being valued only for bringing in money.
But this problem is real enough for those in it, and the US right wing has
taken advantage of this to recruit fanatics.
Prominent lawyers rip the "special master" decision to shreds
and explain its partisan contempt for established law.
US citizens: Oppose new offshore drilling.
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to recuse himself from
he case about the "independent state legislature theory."
Here's more info about that theory and why it would enable Republicans to
steal the 2024 presidential election.
US citizens: call on Biden, Congress and the EPA to protect Americans
from environmental carcinogens.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
The reappearance of polio in the US shows that vaccine refusal
endangers everyone.
Republican senator Ron Johnson uses China as a target for posturing,
but he has not hesitated to make millions from a company that works
closely with China.
Where Republicans are concerned, we must deactivate our usual practice
of supposing that a person at least to some extent means what person says.
*Meet the Members of Congress Who Traded Defense Stocks While Making
National Security Policy.*
Refuting plutocratist bullshit arguments against cancelling student debt.
("DeSantis" is is not a plural, and neither is "DeMentis", so the "s"
after the apostrophe should not be elided.)
Migrants shipped to Martha's Vineyard and Washington DC from Texas
state that they were induced to accept by promises of assistance,
which the people who shipped them did not provide.
If people in the US want to travel, and you wish to give them a ride,
you should be allowed to do so. (Ironically, Republicans are trying
to prohibit that.)
However, luring people to travel with false promises is fraud.
The Cult of Positive thinking teaches Americans whose lives are
difficult that faith in success is all they need for reaching
success. No need to condemn your employer for firing you and hundreds
of others.
ShotSpotter analyzes microphone data using proprietary algorithms, and
claims to report when and where shots occurred. Those reports can't
be trusted because courts cannot verify the validity of those
algorithms.
In addition, thugs have the opportunity to falsify the reports later
so as to inculpate the chosen suspect.
Congress published a report showing how the main US fossil fuel
companies have been talking up their "investments" in renewable electricity
while acting to perpetuate fossil fuels. They refused to attend the
hearing afterwards.
Ukraine asks the UN to rule that governments can seize Russian
overseas assets to use as reparations for Ukraine.
*Russian pop star Alla Pugacheva speaks out [patriotically] against
war in Ukraine.*
The Tories plan to adopt another excuse to tax business less: to declare
some low-tax "investment zones" and encourage businesses to move operations
there from the rest of the UK.
Mahsa Amini's funeral became an opportunity for the public to show
anger at the religious "morality" thugs that killed her. A movement
to condemn their brutal repression is growing.
The supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, seems to be ill, and he might
need to be replaced soon. That could be a turning point for Iran.
Research comparing various US universities shows a correlation between
when Facebook started operating in each and when there was an increase
in depression.
A new Texas law forbids web sites from deleting user-contributed hatred.
If this prevents Facebook from operating there, the Republicans of Texas
will, for once, have actually helped the well-being of most people in Texas.
Tying the ecological crisis (including global heating disaster) to Capitalism.
Communism is not the solution — it is based on repression, which we
have seen in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. (We have seen it in
Ukraine too; Russia is not communist now, but Putin got his start in
the secret police of a communist state.)
The solution needs to include Socialism, but a state which is pure
Socialism will push everything into a uniform mold in the name of
efficiency and security. The things that everyone depends on should
be handled in a socialist way, including public transit, public
schools, medical care, electricity, water, and some aspect of food
production (but not small farms). However, other areas of life that
should be decentralized so that they are not regimented or uniform.
Would a fully socialist country permit us to make or have computers that
let us reject nonfree software? I think it is more likely it would
legislate a requirement for a back door.
The corrupter publicly endorsed QAnonsense.
Well, why wouldn't he? He has already promoted insurrection in various ways.
John Deere puts locked-down nonfree software in its farm machines,
arousing the right-to-repair movement among farmers.
Nowadays it seems to be producing more de-tractors than tractors.
US citizens: call on your state legislators to adopt ranked-choice voting.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on MGM to cancel its TV program "Ring Nation", which
would glorify and promote Amazon's surveillance device.
*Australia must set higher climate ambitions "to avert impending
disaster," Pacific island leaders say.*
I agree completely, but it's even more important to say this to China.
China's emissions dwarf Australia's. These Pacific island leaders
now have influence there; I hope they use it.
The same is true of the United States, and we Americans have to keep
badgering the government about this.
*Hungary is no longer a full democracy, says European parliament.*
The structure of the EU gives it no way to take action against Poland
and Hungary, because each one protects the other.
DeMentis lied to 50 migrants to convince them to board planes to
Martha's Vineyard.
Long Covid has especially struck cooks, teachers and medical workers,
as their work made them particularly exposed. Now that echoes in the
shortage of American workers for those jobs.
Long Covid could be responsible for up to one-third of the US labor
shortage.
(satire) *Black Homeowner Receives Higher Appraisal
After Displaying Pictures Of Klan Members.*
The Putin forces systematically took away Ukrainian military veterans
that they found in Izium, especially veterans of previous fighting
between Ukraine and Putin's Donbas proxies, No one in Izium knows
what happened to them.
The Putin forces tortured some civilians, and some of those killed
themselves afterward.
There is a political battle in Detroit over whether to spend federal
relief funds on a ShotSpotter microphone system, which purports to
detect gunshots reliably but is less reliable than advertised.
The article explains that opponents warn that each false alarm will
draw a team of thugs expecting more shots into an area filled with
poor people, many of whom are black. That could be fatal for the
latter. They also say that helping poor people deal with the great
difficulty of getting through life under neoliberalism will reduce
crime.
In addition, ShotSpotter microphones listen to the conversation of
people talking on the street. That is tyranny, and ought to be
forbidden.
We must not judge a system mainly by what it is nominally intended
to do; we must judge it by all the things it actually does. If a
system were only capable of detecting gunshots, it might be a good
thing (supposing it worked reliably), but it might still be less
desirable than other ways of spending the money.
*US court revokes permits for plastics plant in Louisiana's "Cancer
Alley."*
With new technology, the harmful emissions of chemical processing can
be greatly reduced. We should replace all the existing chemical plants
that emit pollution.
*Fossil Fuel Industry Seeks to Expand Free Speech for Corporations and
Limit It for Citizens.* (These are two separate, parallel efforts.)
Here's more information about the latter: laws to stifle protests.
The Tories plan across-the-board deregulation, aiming to let
businesses in Britain have their will. Mere human beings will be
powerless to stop them.
One example is fracking.
Is the Labour Party doing anything to stop this? It could warn that
it will restore the eliminated rights when it takes power in two years,
and require all businesses that tried to take advantage to apply for
re-approval. That might discourage businesses from trying to take advantage
of the gap. It's worth a try, but will it try?
Mississippi Republicans have seen the chance to ruin Jackson's water system
forever — by privatizing it — and they won't let go.
Schumer will not allow a Senate vote on antimonopoly bills before the
election. Progressives accuse him of doing this in exchange for their
funds.
Conjecture: Dementis is using migrants as pawns to trigger outrage
from Democrats. That builds him up in the eyes of Republicans.
This suggests we should downplay the importance of his stunts.
I think that Martha's Vinyard's response will be helpful.
Republican officials tricked migrants into accepting flights to
Martha's Vineyard via false promises. The migrants' lawyers are suing
and calling for prosecution.
That's more significant than mere helpless outrage.
When it comes to meeting people's basic needs, the US is not number 1.
It is now ranked number 41, ranking between Cuba and Bulgaria.
Those two are "developing countries", but the US is an "undeveloping
country."
I suppose the reasons for specific faults are complex,
but it is clear that plutocracy is the fundamental reason the US
does so badly with so much money.
The bullshitter appointed a special investigator in 2020 to investigate
alleged crimes committed by Hillary Clinton with Russia. The investigation is winding down and appears to have found little or nothing against her.
The bullshitter may choose not to notice the facts and continue repeating
his accusations.
What will NATO do if Putin uses nuclear, biological or chemical weapons?
As long as Putin does not use weapons of mass destruction, even
"tactical" ones, the reasoning remains valid that we should not have
NATO troops fight in the war, so as to avoid direct fighting between
NATO and Putin, since that fighting could turn nuclear.
However, that reason will lose its validity if Putin does use them.
To deter him from using them, we should make it clear that his use of
weapons of mass destruction could trigger NATO's use of conventional
weapons against the Putin forces and Russia's military power, at least
for a while.
After a week or two of that fighting, it would make sense to give him
a chance to deescalate — offering to pull the NATO troops out of the
fighting if Putin commits to ceasing use of weapons of mass
destruction.
The Putin forces are using many levels of pressure to force children
in occupied Ukraine to study a brainwashing curriculum, and force teachers
to teach it.
When people don't want the pain of resisting oppression, they tend to
justify collaborating with it by claiming that by participating they
can soften the oppression. In principle, that can be true. In
practice, it is usually self-delusion. You can pretend you are
resisting in a subtle way, while actually doing exactly what the
oppressor wants.
Collaboration plus dragging your feet may seem like an opportunity to
be neutral, but the occupying forces don't stand for neutrality: they
demand that everyone give complete support and participate in the
repression.
Thus, the teachers who agreed to collaborate were compelled to do more
than just teach the Putin curriculum. They also had to join in
measures to attack and punish teachers who did not join in. The price
of collaborating under these circumstances is to become totally
corrupt and totally evil. Then how can you live with yourself?
Has Putin ever organized such complete dishonesty before? I have to
wonder if he is getting advice on brainwashing from his Chinese
allies.
The US is in a position to join the treaty to ban cluster bombs,
and it ought to do so.
Internal documents subpoenaed by congressional investigation show that
what companies publish to imply they are trying to curb global heating is
pure bullshit.
What employees say to each other goes directly against it.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, "defeated" in Belarus's last election when
Lukashenko stole it, says that additional
western sanctions on Belarus
can drive him out.
Morale is why Ukraine has a
good chance of winning the war.
California's new "privacy" and "transparency" bills, supposedly meant
to "protect children", are likely to subject everyone to surveillance
and mysterious
moderation/censorship policies.
The US Army sets a standard of excellence in winning battles, and its contrast
shows the incompetence of the Russian Army. However, the US as a country
shows similar incompetence ast the level of winning wars; it can
get stuck
in a losing war for years.
The US is to quick to assume that starting a war is a good idea.
Prime Minister Truss is a market ideologue, a deadly menace
like
Thatcher and Reagan.
*This doctrine insists that politics submits to "the market", which
means, when translated, that democracy must submit to the power of
money. Any impediment to the accumulation of wealth — such as public
ownership, tax, regulation, trade unions and political protest — should
be torn down, either quickly and noisily or slowly and stealthily."
Ukraine has found 440 graves in Izium made during the Putinite
occupation. Those buried included civilians and soldiers. Some of
each were
murdered with their hands tied.
Republicans thought with glee that they could lie to penniless
refugees and dump them on wealthy Liberals in Martha's Vineyard.
Instead, the people of Martha's Vineyard organized to help the migrants,
showing the
contrast between good will and Republican hatred.
Why do poor people suffer more from heat and pollution? It's not only
that rich people compete for more comfortable neighborhoods. It's
also that they use their influence to direct municipal investment,
making parks, beaches and trees on the sidewalls,
to the areas where
they live.
And direct highway construction and chemical plants into the places where poor people live.
(satire) *Apple Announces New iPhones Will No Longer Be
Compatible
With Human Hand.*
They have always been incompatible with natural human society.
*Louisiana woman carrying [totally unviable] skull-less fetus forced
to travel to
New York for an abortion.*
Bird flu has spread to additional bird species, so it has become
endemic
all year in parts of Europe.
It has evolved to infect some mammals too, which means infecting
humans may not be far away.
*Health groups call for global fossil
fuel non-proliferation treaty.*
Unusual heavy rains, and deadly floods,
have now struck Italy.
The Sizewell B nuclear power plant, that the UK is paying exorbitantly
to construct by the seaside, could be dangerous in the
future as
sea-level rise brings the sea up to it.
It is a terrible waste of money that ought to be spent on efficient
decarbonization — with renewable energy.
US citizens: call on Congress to extend the
Radiation Exposure and
Compensation Act for another 30 years.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to reject
Manchin's fossil fuel
deregulation bill.
*New UN Report Shows Fossil Fuel Addiction Is a "Recipe for
Permanent
Climate Chaos."*
US citizens: call on Oklahoma district attorneys not to prosecute
females for using
marijuana while pregnant.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the
Roadless Area Conservation Act.
To sign without
running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site,
use the
Salsalabs workaround.
The UK media project an image of rapt devotion towards the monarchy,
but this is false. Even people who conversed outside Buckingham
Palace
presented various attitudes and opinions.
US freight railroads were facing a strike because workers demanded
more control over when they would work. At the last minute, the
railroads offered them more control, and this may have avoided the
strike. President Biden's pressure helped make the railroads give in.
In the US, a wave of unionization is being met with a wave of illegal
retaliation.
Ask your Democratic candidates for Congress whether they intend to
make the NLRB more powerful, so employers will fear to violate
workers' rights.
An analysis indicates that long Covid has taken at least half a
million
people out of the US labor force.
This is in addition to 250,000 working people that Covid-19 removed from
the labor force via death.
Senator Graham has proposed a federal law to
ban abortions after 15 weeks.
The law promotes several noteworthy confusions, such as calling that
"late term" when the arbitrary stopping point is
less than half the
usual gestation period.
He surely knows that it will not pass, so I wonder what political motive
leads him to propose something that most Americans disagree with.
US inflation is going down; the Federal Reserve should understand the danger
of applying a harmful remedy to correct a
problem that is correcting itself.
Pieper Lewis killed a man that she accused of raping her. She has been
sentenced to 5 years' probation, with the requirement to
pay $150k to
the man's family.
She can't possibly make that much money, because nearly good jobs are
off limits to people with criminal convictions. So this would be an
impossible demand, and that cannot be just. By luck, she raised
the money by asking for donations, but that doesn't excuse an impossible
demand in a sentence.
In California, Jay Jordan has won a campaign to change that policy
of
excluding convicts from good jobs.
Biden has acknowledged the right-wing threat to US democracy, but he has
not dared to
call for solutions that would change it.
California will stop high school classes from starting at the insane hour
of 7am.
They will instead start at the painfully early hour of 8:30am.
Some large private equity funds are still investing billions in into
increasing the use of fossil fuels.
* When overpaid corporate boneheads … substitute slogans and
computer metrics for real solutions, they're admitting that they
are the problem; they simply don't know how to motivate and manage
a creative workforce.
They should resign in shame.*
They have the power, so they won't resign. We should demand laws
to prohibit measuring workers moment by moment.
*EU proposes $140 billion windfall
tax on energy companies.*
*More than half of Republican Senate nominees have rejected, cast
doubt upon or
tried to overturn the 2020 election results.*
Republicans are working very hard to take workers off the voter lists.
Here are
some of the excuses they employ.
You can check your voter registration to make sure it has not been
cancelled. However, the article doesn't say how to tell whether they
are purging you by caging, or how to prevent that.
*Why did the Queen’s death receive saturation media coverage while the future
of the
Earth goes largely ignored?*
I conjecture that it's because global heating implies a responsibility
to try to stop it, whereas the death of the Queen does not imply any
responsibility for most people.
*Ukraine mass grave with 440 bodies
discovered in recaptured Izium.*
Several recent Supreme Court decisions will kill Americans at random.
This reality is not quite analogous to the mythical "death panels"
that were not in Obama's medical insurance scheme, neither as
proposed nor as adopted. Those were supposedly going to decide
whether individual persons were worthy of medical treatment. The
Supreme Court decisions will lead indirectly to the death of victims
selected by circumstances at random.
The US adopted the child poverty tax credit as a response to Covid-19.
It lifted millions of children out of poverty.
Now Republicans (with Manchin's help) have brought it to an end.
I guess they figure that sloppy-thinking voters will blame Biden for
the change, because it will happen while he is president.
*Nearly 100 Members of Congress Reported Stock Trades That Overlap With
Committee Work.*
A protest camp for resistance against the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline
has won a protective order against harassment by local thugs.
The pipeline opponents are protecting more than their local water
supply (though that is a valid reason to oppose a pipeline). They are
fighting one of the local battles to curb global heating and prevent
the early death of billions of people.
The local thugs are on the side of money. Probably because the local
politicians are, too.
(satire) *Disney Wins Emmy For Best Profits.*
A Disney executive probably would deprecate all movies by calling them
"content".
The Putinite occupiers arrived in Izium believing Putin's lie that
they were liberating the people from "Nazis". Civilians set them
straight.
It appears that thugs in San Francisco take DNA samples they get from
people reporting rape and compare them with a large database of DNA
from crime scenes, looking for a match.
I doubt that San Francisco is the only place that does this.
The Department of Justice has sent subpoenas to many officials and associates
of the wrecker, seeking communications that might be about plotting.
The US military is finishing up the first step of renaming bases, ships and
other things whose names honor the Confederacy. This step is to recommend
what to rename.
It is arguable that Matthew Fontaine Maury's contributions to
oceanography and navigation were more significant than anything he did
for the Confederacy. I hope that people will not seek to deny him of
civilian recognition for the former.
(satire) *New California Water Restrictions Limit Shower Sex To Once
Per Week.*
Republican election saboteurs are overloading election officials with
requests for many kinds of records about the 2020 election.
In the areas of Australia that global heating has made flood-prone,
residents are systematically learning to use sandbags to protect their
houses, stockpile food and potable water, and clear road blockages.
Can they put their houses up on stilts? That would protect more than sandbags
could possibly do. Especially if a house needs rebuilding, they should
not make it as vulnerable as the old one.
Indiana and West Virginia have banned abortion.
*Children whose [fathers] breathed cigarette smoke more likely to get
asthma — study finds.*
The Putin forces fired missiles at a dam protecting the city of Kryvyi
Rih, causing a river to rise 8 feet and flood part of the city.
The owner of Patagonia company has donated the whole company to a foundation that will use the income for curbing global heating.
California has sued Amazon for anticompetitive practices.
When the Putin forces captured Izium, they had a list of people to arrest
and disappear.
LED bulbs for night illumination give out more blue light. This increases
interference with sleep for humans and other animals.
The European Parliament voted in a vague way to reduce the felling of
trees to make "renewable" fuel.
Making hydrogen by electrolysis using renewable electricity should
now be cheaper than natural gas, at least in Britain.
Starmer says people have a right to protest at the ceremonies of the
monarchy provided they do it in a way that will hardly attract any
attention.
The UK's two main parties are now the extreme wild right-wing (Tory)
and the tepid right-wing (Labour).
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and ask for funding for
Covid-19 treatment and vaccination, and likewise for Monkeypox, in the
annual spending authorization.
Also insist on keeping Manchin's sabotage of environmental impact
regulations for oil pipelines out of this bill.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
People in Balakliia said that the Putin forces committed some war crimes,
but not massively as in places near Kyiv.
They also say that a fair number in Balakliia collaborated with the
occupation, and most of those have gone to Russia. The supporters of
Putin, all across Ukraine, have been fleeing to Russia, shaken by the
Putin forces' sudden collapse.
I am sure many collaborated with the occupation to a limited extent
because they were terrified of refusing, and expected the occupation
to be permanent. Except for those who informed on others or did
considerably more than the minimum, it would be wrong to punish them.
The military-industrial complex has captured the US Congress, which
hardly even tries to resist funding waste and fraud by weapons
companies.
I am all in favor of spending government funds to make jobs in the US,
but which jobs should they be? Any job will support a worker, if its
wages are decent. So let's choose the jobs that also produce
things that the US needs or that Americans can use.
Congress resists spending money on cancel all student debts,
but it has poured the same amount of money into the failing F-35
without hesitating.
Why the difference? One can guess that Congress values the
military-industrial complex more than mere people.
Australia sees a battle of wits between humans and sulphur-crested cockatoos.
Humans currently seem to be winning.
Must the two species be adversaries? Why not cooperate?
What people dislike about the cockatoos seems to be that they screech.
Could some hacker design a device that offers a button for cockatoos
to open the bin door so they can eat, but closes the door slowly if it
hears a nearby screech? After closing, it could keep the door closed
for 30 seconds, responding to the button during that time with "No,
no, no." They might learn to stop screeching in order to get at the
food.
When the 30-second closure period ends, the device could speak,
"Hello, Cockie!"
Another question is, what is a good way to minimize the scattering of
waste outside the bin while they pick through the bins? Perhaps just
leaving a foot of empty space at the top of the bin would do the job.
*The two main parties may not support striking workers, but the [UK]
Green party does.*
The US is now being hit by the patents that endanger Covid-19 vaccines
and other mRNA vaccines.
(satire) *Delta Lifts Pandemic-Era Restrictions On
Abusing Flight Crew.*
Planet roasters in the US have launched 150 campaigns of legal
harassment against climate-defense activists.
The biggest culprits were Chevron and Exxon.
Starbucks is offering some new benefits to workers who don't join the
union.
They can't be very large benefits, because the company expects to increase
profits by fighting unionization.
An interview with Symon Hill, who was arrested for briefly heckling at
a kingship ceremony in England.
The bullshitter's claims of "executive privilege" over government
documents that he wrongfully took home start from something that the
Supreme Court said in a case against Nixon's claims, but distort and
exaggerate it.
The court only avoided insisting that a former president could not
possibly have executive privilege in some situation regarding some
documents.
The bullshitter has exaggerated this vague hypothetical possibility in
several dimensions at once.
Sanders rebuked the medical industry for spending billions to prevent
the US from moving to universal medical care.
*Russia has spent $300m since 2014 to influence foreign officials, US
says.*
Australia has weakened the influence of planet roasters in its Climate
Change Authority.
Next it should change the name to Climate Defense Authority.
Defending the Earth's climate from human attack is its mission.
To remove a lot of CO2 from the air, we need to preserve the large,
mature trees that continue to do so.
Rebuking Palestinian leaders for focusing on armed war against Israel, and
using their arms to just so they can say they are fighting.
Palestinians in the West Bank have made considerable use of nonviolent
resistance, but they don't have nonviolence discipline. There tends to be a
crowd of stone-throwing youths alongside protests; Israel cites them
as an excuse for its repressive treatment of protesters.
That excuse is not truly valid, but Israel makes it seem valid.
*The UK needs better insulated homes to free us from Putin and the
fossil fuel giants.*
US citizens: call on Congress not to give any handouts to the
cryptocurrency industry. Let regulators do their jobs and protect
consumers now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: urge the DOT to finalize a strong rule requiring
states to reduce transportation emissions.
Some local officials in Russia have called for impeachment of Putin,
and have been charged with a crime for that.
It's one small addition to his long list of crimes against Russia.
China has sentenced some Hong Kongers to 19 months in prison for
publishing a book. The book can be interpreted as suggesting
criticisms of Chinese rule in Hong Kong.
A new merchant code for credit card charges will eventually make it easier
to see who is purchasing a lot of arms or ammunition from firearms stores with a credit card.
It seems that a substantial fraction of people who commit a massacre
spend a substantial sum to buy weapons for it, and a credit card is
the only way they can pay.
Some Africans blame Queen Elizabeth II for the evils of the British Empire.
Since the British monarchs did not make policy decisions in the 20th
century, I don't see that they were to blame for injustices that the
British Empire committed then. It's the elected officials that we
must blame.
In the US, UK, Mexico and China, non-rich people who have been shafted and
cannot possibly afford the payments they are compelled to make are starting
payment strikes.
I am puzzled by the concept of "energy bills" used in articles about
the UK. What is an "energy bill"? I have never received one. I get
bills for gas and bills for electricity. Some people use fuel oil and
get an oil bill. Is the term "energy bill" an oversimplified way of
generalizing about various kinds of bills? Does the system in the UK
send people just one bill for all kinds of energy?
The US "Business Roundtable" represents businesses that claimed to promote
decarbonization, but secretly lobbied against measures that would achieve it.
Shortages and crises trigger food price increases, then banks and
giant food companies take advantage to push the price up.
*Coalition Tells FTC to Curb Amazon 'Surveillance Empire' by Blocking Purchase
of iRobot.*
It is a good reason to do so, but Amazon is simply too big and should
not be allowed to buy any other companies.
The latest Apple spy-watch uses sensors to monitor when you ovulate;
it doesn't need to ask you. And it will give that data to various
companies and governments.
With that data, governments can tell that you probably had a
miscarriage or an abortion. That will provides grounds to subpoena
more data so as to decide whether to prosecute you.
The device may offer you the choice to disable the feature, but since
the software is non-free,
which implies it is controlled by Apple rather than by the
users, it could be drawing those conclusions and showing them to
companies and governments, while pretending that it does not.
Brittany Martin was sentenced to four years in prison for talking back
brashly to some South Carolina thugs while she was in a Black Lives
Matter protest.
In November 2020, the bully insisted to his aides that he had won the
election and would refuse to leave the White House.
Britons who call for elimination of the monarchy, even just by holding
signs, are being arrested.
The Tories officially eliminated many human rights this year. This
could be the way Britons learn what has been taken from them.
I don't care much whether the UK is a monarchy or a republic
provided it is democratic and respects human rights. But that's
precisely what Tories are destroying.
*A federal judge blocked an Arizona law that restricts video recording
of police.*
That was obviously what ought to happen. But we must worry whether the
Supreme Court will allow it to stand.
*A low-carbon chemical industry "could create 29m jobs and double turnover."*
The Ukrainian operators of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant have shut
down the last operating reactor there, as a safety measure.
Is this actually an improvement in safety? I have doubts.
While one reactor was operating, the plant had three options for
obtaining the electricity needed to prevent meltdowns in the shut-down
reactors: electricity generated by the one operating reactor,
electricity obtained by cable from a distance, and the diesel backup
generators.
With all reactors shut down, the first option is gone, and the other
two are no more reliable than before.
The number of people living in slavery today is estimated at 50 million,
including 10 million who have been forced into slavery (including
involuntary marriage) in the past five years.
*Why is Liz Truss sacking top civil servants? Because she wants to suppress
dissent.*
*Alabama is jailing pregnant marijuana users to "protect" fetuses.*
This also has the effect of preventing them from getting an abortion,
which they ought to do if pregnant and using marijuana.
What about pregnant tobacco users? Pregnant alcohol users?
The same logic applies to them, but tobacco and alcohol are not illegal,
so the state has no basis to arrest them. If the US government legalizes
marijuana, it might protect the victim of this law.
The London thug department has a new commissioner whose job is to
teach the thugs to be police officers: not to be cruel or racist
towards the public, and to stop protecting elected officials who break
laws.
Some Republican candidates are running on the platform of "I won't
try to restrict abortion in this state."
But it's not enough to stop the advance of the anti-abortion
movement — we must liberate the states they have taken.
The Republican Party, overall, is the party of lies and cheating,
and most Republican politicians support stealing the next election.
*Princeton University is now [gratis] for families making under $100,000.*
The article said "free", but I've decided to use that word only
in regard to freedom, not in regard to price.
*To Win in November, Democrats Must Listen to Citizen Groups.*
US citizens: call for strengthening the protection of North Atlantic
right whales.
An inexpensive new malaria vaccine is reportedly 80% effective in preventing
malaria.
Although it is comparatively inexpensive, 200 million doses will still
cost 2 billion dollars to make and administer in Africa.
Malaria can't continue to exist in a mosquito for longer than a
mosquito's short life span. If we can prevent it in humans, we can
get rid of it entirely — if we can overcome vaccine denialism.
There is a lot of vagueness in "80% protective," so I don't know whether
this vaccine could eventually eradicate malaria over time. Perhaps in
combination with modern genetic engineering that can greatly reduce the
mosquito population in an area.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, has rejected an attempt
to privatize the sewer system.
Private ownership of water and sewer systems should be illegal.
No matter how much money the city or county gets for selling one,
it will always lose in the long term.
San Francisco has adopted a policy of not enforcing drug laws against psychedelic drugs made from "plants",
which appears to include drugs made from fungi even though fungi are
not plants. (The higher fungi are more closely related to animals.)
Many US thug departments systematically purchase access to the Fog
Reveal "service" which provides access to an enormous data base of
people's movements.
*Tell Congress to Stop Big Oil. Tax Windfall Profits Now.*
Biden has proposed firmer policies for making the results of
federally-funded research, and the experimental data, available to the
public(PDF).
This is a good step in the right direction, but we also need to do
something about the harm done by trade secrecy for science and
engineering that isn't federally funded. This harms medicine and
denies users' right to repair hardware and program free software to
run it.
The proposal has one small problem that is potentially disastrous: the
new systems of publication don't have to take effect until 2025. If a
right-wing government is elected in 2024, it could cancel them before
they even take effect. Yes, that election would cause bigger
disasters — but why enable it to cause another one?
A mother writes about swapping household roles with her three children
for five days, seriously, and how her children became more mature and
responsible and developed better relationships with her and each
other.
Environmentalists are suing the US Forest Service for approving a new
railroad through a protected "roadless area", for the sake of opening
up a new oil field.
The Forest Service paid no attention to the danger
of exacerbating global heating disaster.
Amory Lovins argues that most existing nuclear power plants are so
expensive to operate that we would be better off in just a few years
by shutting them down and investing the savings in constructing
renewable electric generation.
When British people mourn the queen, they may be mourning the safety
of their lives, as they watch Tories destroy the social welfare state
that their lives depend on.
Vague state laws prohibiting abortion, under criteria that are not
entirely clear, can kill patients who need medical care that may be
prohibited, because doctors are afraid to do it.
*Two [of the wrecker's] officials subpoenaed for fundraising to
undermine elections.*
Ukraine launched an attack to the east near Kharkiv and has captured
the strategic rail junction of Kupiansk, which the Putin forces have
been using to send supplies to a substantial part of the front.
The Putin forces soldiers who are cut off may have to surrender.
That would be a very good thing — more victory with less bloodshed.
Reportedly Ukraine's army advanced 30 miles along a narrow route.
That exposes them to the danger of counterattack from the flank, but
perhaps the Putin forces are not capable of doing such a thing.
Jackson, Mississippi, now has running water, but making it safe to drink
will take lots of money, spent on decades of work.
Some employers monitor workers minute by minute. Some won't pay for
work that wasn't recorded by the monitoring software.
To prevent competitive advantage (or the belief that there is
competitive advantage) from stampeding all businesses into intrusive
monitoring of workers as if they were machines, we should legislate
rules that limit monitoring. When a business argues that "We will be
at a disadvantage if we don't do this to our workers, we will have two
responses: (1) your competitors can't do this either, and (2) respect
for human beings is more important than how much profit you make".
Shelling at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant has destroyed part of the
fossil-fuel power plant which provided power to keep the nuclear plant
cool if it were to shut down.
This is a step closer to a nuclear disaster that would affect the
whole region.
I have seen no conclusive evidence that proves which side is doing the
shelling, but Ukraine has nothing to gain from it, whereas Putin has
made a strategy of outrageous threats. It is plausible that he would
say, "I'll poison this land if I can't have it. And some of my own
land at the same time."
Bluffing is also part of his strategy. That he would say that does not
imply he would actually do it.
Greenpeace dropped boulders into a "protected" area of the sea to
physically protect it from bottom trawling. The UK government
responded with unusual vigor to block plans to drop additional
boulders.
Most "protected" maritime areas in UK waters are not protected from
much. But at least they are now protected from slowly falling boulders.
Debunking Manchin's bogus reasons to build the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
*One in 10 US households struggles to afford enough food, study finds.*
Activists are pressuring big western banks to stop supporting Russian
oil companies.
After several failures, one 14th Amendment case has succeeded in knocking
a participant in the Jan 6 insurrection off a ballot.
See how US representatives and senators voted on bills(PDF) to defend and assure
voting rights.
Republican poll worker training in Michigan urged trainees to break rules
and hide it.
A judge overturned the rule that employer-funded medical insurance
must cover medicine to control HIV.
Requiring employers to pay for employees' medical care gets the job
done, but has bad side effects. For instance, it gives employers an
incentive to replace workers with robots. And people who don't have
an employer to fill this role get left out.
Instead, the state ought to pay directly for medical care, and raise
income by taxing the rich. That would avoid all these problems,
including the issue of whether the employer's religion should govern
the employee's medical care.
However, there is no chance of passing the laws to do this unless we
elect many more progressives to Congress, and in the mean time, this
decision will be a setback for preventing further cases of HIV in the US.
*Oil and gas firms’ green investments fail to match promise of adverts.*
Legal experts rebuke the "special master" decision.
It has never made sense to me that an ex-official could claim
"executive privilege" over the use of public documents to investigate
per for possible prosecution. Surely the current officials are the
ones who decide whether privilege applies.
However, I've seen claims, from people it seemed ought to know, that
it is accepted that ex-presidents have a certain amount of executive
privilege over the documents from their activities.
I wish I understood how to reconcile this disagreement.
*The Democrats are gaining because Americans want jobs, not Capitol mobs.*
*US farmers face plague of pests as global heating raises soil temperatures.*
The Oath Keepers' leaked lists of members include over 80 public
officials and candidates, 370 thugs, and 100 soldiers.
Not everyone in the lists is or was a real member.
Michigan will vote on an initiative to legalize abortion.
Activists have looked through federal laws and found many executive powers
that can be used to move the US away from fossil fuels.
In the UK, motorists that want to park are in many places forced to
choose between one kind of oppression and another.
In some places, they are required to pay through a snoop-phone.
That is unjust because it identifies them, and makes them run nonfree software.
In others, they are charged for parking by a system that recognizes
car license plates. That spares them the nonfree software, but it is
unjust because it identifies them,
There should be a law requiring all charged parking spaces to allow cash
payment and not record who parked there.
Everyone: call on CEOs of GM and Ford: stop funding candidates
that promote voter suppression.
US citizens: call on your senators to pass the Pregnant Workers
Fairness Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
The wrecker's effort to make Georgia officials arbitrarily replace
Georgia's electors could put him in prison. It seems that prosecutors
are working to assemble a solid case.
California plans to subsidize some women from anti-abortion states to
travel to California to get an abortion.
Prime Minister Truss has appointed the head of a lobbying company as
her chief of staff, and he now has her office entirely trussed up.
As minister, she gave farmers permission to dump large amounts of agricultural waste, polluting the rivers.
Rules and inspections serve a crucial purpose, and deregulation can
cause disasters, sometimes permanent ones.
She plans to push ahead with fracking in the UK.
She also plans to rescue fossil fuel companies
and cut taxes for the wealthy, while probably making working people
bear the burden.
Perhaps not by coincidence, she got a lot of campaign funds from
planet roasters.
The wrecker's dream wall on the border with Mexico is the perfect
symbol of the spirit of trumpery: claiming to protect working-class
whites against notional threats, while actually screwing and cheating
them (and the other working-class Americans too).
Ginni Thomas has close relationships with various anti-abortion
organizations that called on the Supreme Court to reverse Roe v Wade.
Tajikistan has forcibly deported hundreds of the Afghan refugees that
came there a year ago after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.
It seems to be trying to deport many more.
Many will find life difficult as they have none of the identity papers
that people there are now required to have.
After the superflood in Pakistan, famine will follow.
As continued global heating smashes into the increasing human
population, disasters get ever larger. Eventually the world's
capacity to help stricken regions will prove insufficient. Maybe that
is happening now — several drought-caused famines are happening in
Africa, and they are getting insufficient aid.
Even if we do our best to decarbonize, global heating will continue
for many years. We need to limit the human population or it will be
limited by disasters that kill millions.
*Big oil companies are spending millions to appear 'green'. Their
investments tell a different story, report shows.*
Sea-level rise will destroy 100,000 buildings in the US by 2050,
and perhaps a million by 2100.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to ban use of sewage
sludge, contaminated with PFAS, as fertilizer.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Everyone: call on TV networks to show the final January 6
committee hearings in prime time.
California has passed a law empowering the state to set minimum pay
rates and working conditions for fast food workers.
Iran has found a new repressive use for facial recognition: punishing women
who violate imposed religious dress codes.
Stalkers are using AirTags to track people. Apple will warn you if someone is tracking you with an AirTag, but only if you allow Apple to
track you — all the time, for certain.
(Tracker Detect surely works by telling Apple where you are — and
what more data does it send?)
That does not fix the problem, it just replaces one tracking system
with another.
Making the AirTag give a sound is a step towards a real fix, but it
should also give off radio waves that allow you to find it using a
portable radio receiver nearby to get a fix on it.
A real solution would be to require AirTag-like products to emit
radio waves that one could detect with some non-computerized receiver.
Putin is formally eliminating the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta,
which in practice has already been forced to shut down by jailing its
reporters.
Israel admits that a soldier "probably" shot Shireen Abu Aqleh, but claims
it was a mistake.
I don't consider "mistake" an acceptable excuse for shooting an
unarmed person at a substantial distance away when no fighting is
going on. That is not a natural mistake, it is one you'd have
to go out of your way for — meaning, not really a mistake.
So why did it happen? Israel does not try to explain.
A Chilean thug shot Fabiola Campillai in the face with a tear gas
cannister, and the resulting injuries caused brain damage: she can no
longer see, taste or smell. He has been convicted for this attack and
is now awaiting sentence.
Such attacks are not unusual in Chile (nor indeed in many other
places). Chilean thugs blinded 400 people during the 2019 wave of
protests. Thugs anywhere tend to have right-wing views, and may hate
leftist protesters to the point of killing or framing them. This thug
shot someone who was not even protesting.
Sra. Campillai did not let these injuries crush her. She ran for the
Chilean Senate, and I've been informed that she won.
*Russian journalist facing 24-year jail term for treason refuses to
sign "confession."*
Psychotherapy must consider the external situation that makes
people depressed or anxious.
Can some sort of change in your mind help you cope with the external
situation? I think it can, because different people respond
differently to the same external situation. Some can face up to the
bad situation and try to help deal with it, while as others succumb to
counterproductive rage, despair, or jealousy.
(satire) *Shocking Video Captures Calm Police Officers Handling
Situation Nonviolently.*
After seeing the basic plan for Australia's proposed "indigenous voice
to Parliament", I think it is ok.
The reticence about stating any specifics made me wonder what it was
they did not want to talk about. I was concerned, specifically, that
the plan might incorporate racial distinctions into Australians'
political rights. Australia did just that for most of the 20th
century, to the detriment of the indigenous people, but two such
wrongs would not make a right.
I'm relieved that there is none of that in the proposal. So I'm in
favor of it. Indigenous Australians suffer from racism and its
effects, and this may help them encourage measures to improve the
situation.
Rich countries (and rich businesses) are responsible for most of the
greenhouse emissions that have destroyed nearly all of the food
growing in Pakistan, as well as a large fraction of its housing. They
ought to be held liable.
However, as experience with Covid-19 vaccines shows, rich businesses
don't hesitate to drive people to death for their profit, and rich
country governments mostly serve those rich businesses. Even when it
comes to saving the lives of their own future citizens from the
consequences of global heating, those governments are paralyzed.
Biden has started using the US Petroleum Reserve to stabilize oil
prices, which ideally ought to regulate the rate of oil drilling and
maintain a strong incentive to conserve.
This plan will do some good, but I think it will not, by itself, bring
about fast enough decarbonization. And it certainly won't prevent
busting the carbon budget. We need to accompany it with a carbon tax
that will increase yearly on a predefined schedule. However, the
Republicans plus Sinema and Manchin block that, for now.
If the public has an incentive to conserve fossil fuels, that doesn't
make it practical for people to do so. That requires investment,
and most Americans have no money to invest, in this or in anything.
We need governments, at whatever level, to make this investment.
School closures, and "remote learning", did considerable harm to the education
of a generation of American children.
They were necessary, but they lasted longer in the US than in other
wealthy countries. That was partly because US plutocratists had
eliminated the incomplete social safety net that had existed in the
1970s ("Why waste our money on those poor people?"), and partly
because of politicized sabotage of other methods of reducing disease
transmission, and only school shutdowns were available to compensate.
The damage it did was more than most people recognize — it pushed most people
into use of unjust software
such as Zoom.
A positive feedback in the climate system: hot weather encourages
right-wing hatred, and right-wing politics supports more global
heating.
*Body of British aid worker captured by Russian proxies shows "signs
of torture".*
Michigan's ban on abortions has been overturned based on the state
constitution.
The wrecker brought documents to Mar-a-Lago that discuss US spies in
foreign countries.
There was little security there against foreign spies
who might have sought to identify them.
Earth is approaching five major climate tipping points.
Research identified 11 more major climate tipping points that
are further in the future. If we don't get our act in gear,
we will fall over them too.
A number of right-wing Russian bloggers lambaste the Putin forces as a
failure.
Why, I wonder, does Putin let them continue to say these things? He
has to have a reason. I speculate that it is because they are
building support for Putin to declare war and start forcing lots of
Russians into fighting it.
The US Army discovered one of the many rabid right-wing fanatics in its ranks
in the process of investigating him for another reason.
*Serbia and Kosovo reach free movement agreement.*
This is a first step in reducing the hostility between those two countries,
The mainstream media, in covering Biden's speech about the Republican attack on
America's system of government, treated truth and lies as equivalent.
*Trader Joe's broke labor laws in effort to stop stores unionizing,
workers say.*
The UK as "regulatory state": government no longer believes it can, or
should, actually do anything, but only regulate the procedures used by
businesses that actually do things. And it does not try to ensure
that jobs are done right, or that they are done at all.
Once the state is seen not to be doing enough in some area, it rations
out whatever capacity happens to exist.
Bernie Sanders calls on working class Americans
to stand up to dooH niboR.
The wrecker's motive for taking home secret documents may have been to
threaten the government
so it would not prosecute him for other, bigger crimes,
such as trying to falsify the election's results.
If the US charges him with the crime of taking those records home and
leaving them in an insecure place, that will appear to be a political
act. If it does not, that too will appear to be a political act.
Faced with the choice, it should take the bold choice.
As we have seen, the Espionage Act needs to be amended to allow
a public interest defense so heroes such as Chelsea Manning and Julian
Assange will not be convicted. That would have no effect on the
wrecker's trial; he cannot point to any public interest purpose for
taking those secret documents home.
Los Angeles is in a heat wave worse than that of a few weeks ago.
This is causing acute danger, especially to homeless people, but also
to firefighters and people who work in food trucks.
A museum is going to "repatriate" many artifacts (and some remains)
excavated in archaeological digs. A campaign has convinced the museum's
administration that rationally exploring humanity's past is "theft".
One advisor is quoted as citing supernatural beliefs as the basis for
that claim, asserting that "ancestors" have a "home" and can "return"
to it. A living person can cherish a home, or miss a cherished former
home, but a former person (former because deceased) is no longer
capable of either one. And only a living person can go somewhere.
Remains can only be put here or there.
Were those long-dead people anyone's ancestors? Presumably, some had
descendants and some did not, but the person cited calls them all
"ancestors." We are not dealing with rational belief here. Can
anyone relate some of those deceased in a concrete way to anyone
living? The article does not say so, and I think it would have said
so, if that were so.
Living people have the right to believe what they wish, and it's kind
to cater to anyone's belief when that doesn't sacrifice anything
important. However, their belief, no matter how much certainty they
feel, is not a compelling reason for society to adopt policies that
interfere with science.
In 2020 I signed a form to donate my body to medical research and/or
teaching after I die. The office that handles these donations was
closed in 2020, but I recently determined that it was open again, and
mailed the form. I suppose my organs will be too old to be worth
transplanting, but I've kept that option open too. This way, my dead
body will be able to do some good for humanity. Too bad about those
that won't.
The Minnesota Nurses Association will go on strike against private
hospitals in the state.
(satire) *Mississippi Governor Sends Emergency Workers To Contain
Jackson Flood To Black Areas.*
Elections in Texas and Kentucky are at risk as many election officials
quit in response to threats of violence.
An out-and-out planet roaster is now the minister in charge of the UK's
decarbonization.
Chileans wanted to replace Pinochet's constitution, but rejected the new
one that was drafted. What next?
Kiribati's government has "suspended" all the judges of its appeals court, causing a constitutional crisis.
On a hunch, I pose the question of whether that government is
negotiating with China.
Some states have amended their constitutions to grant people the right
to a "healthful" or clean environment. Some now require regulators
to apply much stricter standards for potentially polluting activities.
Making an extrovert
Q: How can you make your child grow up to be an extrovert?
A: Feed per lots of extroversion olive oil.
Calling on the Democratic Party to ban the use of
SuperPAC funds in
its primary elections.
* There is a fatal disconnect between a political system that promises
democratic equality and freedom while carrying out socioeconomic
injustices that result in grotesque
income inequality and political
stagnation.*
As long as rich people can effectively manipulate elections, we
effectively have plutocracy rather than democracy. That's why I have
called so many times for Americans to
recognize plutocracy as the enemy
and fight to restore democracy.
*Facebook Accused of
Fueling Bolsonaro's Coup-Mongering.*
Having reduced Jackson's water supply to a
fragile state by
under funding it,
right-wing politicians in Mississippi now want to
use that as an
excuse to privatize the system.
This is the same thing that the Tories are doing to the British
National Health System.
There are of course differences in detail; it is possible to
privatize the NHS a little at a time by encouraging first the wealthy,
then the not quite so wealthy, and eventually anyone not abjectly
poor, to move one by one to private medicine, but it is not so easy to
do that with the municipal water supply. But I don't think they are
greatly important.
Basically, this is a standard right-wing plan of operation
to achieve their goal of reducing most people to poverty so that
the rich (who fund the right-wing campaigns) will get richer.
*The [wrecker's] officials who took children from
their parents should be prosecuted.*
That includes the wrecker himself, as the one who planned those
actions.
An idea for how the government should help the poor pay for fuel and
electricity: pay for all of it up to a certain necessary level, then
tax
purchases beyond that much.
Legislators have proposed a bill to add a defense for
whistleblowers
to the Espionage Act.
This could save Julian Assange, and other heroes in the future.
The IAEA inspectors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant report
that the damage from shelling of the plant did not create a danger of
nuclear disaster, but this was due to luck. They called for
establishing a "nuclear safety and security protection zone,"
which
would demilitarize the plant.
*195 Election Deniers [supporters of the bullshitter's Big Lie] Are on
the Ballot in November — And Many Are Expected to Win.*
195 Election Deniers Are on the Ballot in November—And Many Are Expected to Win
(satire) *U.S. Escalates Campaign Against Spotted Lanternflies
By
Arming Praying Mantises.*
Queensland, a state in Australia, states that it has "returned" several
national
parks to indigenous "traditional owners".
What does it mean, practically speaking, for these parks to be returned to
an owner other than Australia?
Does this mean they aren't national parks any more?
Will people from other groups face interference in visiting these parks?
Labour will almost certainly win the next UK election; Prime Minister Truss
has
little that can inspire voters.
The doubt is whether the Labour Party, as it is now, will go beyond
just taking the harshest edge off Tory policies.
Facebook engineers testifying to Congress said that nobody is capable
of saying where
Facebook stores its useds' data.
*Sudan accused of trying to ‘bury the truth’
with mass graves for
protesters.*
In Hong Kong, metaphors that could mean criticism of China
now lead
to conviction in court.
US citizens: call on your state representative to help end the
construction of new natural gas infrastructure.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve to protect our economy and
communities from Wall Street funded climate chaos.
EU citizens: call on your MEPs to vote to stop classifying "forest
biomass" as a "renewable energy source".
Burning wood on a small scale is renewable, but it tends to get out of
hand and result in destruction of forests. Lots of small-scale users
in Haiti eliminated most of the forests in that country. Nowadays,
the EU policy encourages industrial-scale burning of wood, and the
deforestation at industrial scale.
There isn't time, before the disaster we need to try to avoid, for new
trees to grow. We must stop the cutting and burning of the existing
trees.
*South African court bans offshore oil and gas exploration by Shell.*
This has a good chance of keeping some fossil fuels unextracted,
which is what we need to do world-wide to avoid global heating disaster,
given the fact that we have used up the carbon budget.
New York State has passed new gun control rules to replace those
that the Supreme Court ruled against.
Pressure from China — threats of noncooperation — delayed the UN report
on repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang for a whole year.
Bad as racism, plutocracy and media bias are in the US, we must not
forget that things can get far, far worse — and China shows what that
is like.
The US bullies some Muslims to act as spies on their friends. China
bullies all Chinese to act as spies and agents of pressure, and
bullies international institutions to serve its will.
Putin has recently reshaped Russia into a sort of quasi-China. He
engages in cruelty massively, but in a more emotional fashion than
China's machine-like callousness; meanwhile, his grip on Russians is
still not as tight as Chairman Xi's. There is a chance to defeat Putin
before he can reach that point.
A Tory minister has surprisingly acknowledged that a good family
is any group of people that make children feel loved and supported.
I did not have a good family — after age 8 or so, I did not feel that
either parent's house was my home. The next time that I felt I had a
home was when I lived in Currier House at Harvard. After I was
expelled for passing too many classes (I was too grief-stricken to
attend the graduation ceremony), I felt that the MIT AI lab was my
home, for a few years. Perhaps the support I felt there is what
enabled me to develop the strength to begin, in the late 70s, to stand
up against wrongs I saw around me.
Tory strangulation of the National Health Service has left 10% of
staff positions unfilled.
Patients who have money are turning to private doctors.
When they have all given up on the NHS, plutocratist politicians will dare to
render the NHS totally ineffective; non-rich Britons will get little
medical care, and some will die, and Tories will be satisfied.
A government ready to spend more money on making life easier for
the non-rich would find it easy to fix this problem. Perhaps that
would call for taxing the rich, instead of "trickle down" economics.
Russia's fossil fuel industry has been hit by a series of mysterious
deaths in the past few months.
I don't have proof that any of them was murdered, but it is
implausible that they were not. I am sure Russian repression agents,
as well as gangsters, remember the Defenestration of Prague, iteration
2, in which Soviet agents murdered Czech foreign minister Jan Masaryk.
Amazon and Starbucks are refusing to negotiate with newly unionized
employees.
At the Starbucks at 874 Comm Ave in Boston, the company put in a new
manager who cut the hours of many of the staff so that they could no
longer make a living. Rather than give up, they went on strike.
The store has been entirely closed for many weeks.
*Ginni Thomas lobbied Wisconsin lawmakers to overturn 2020 election.*
*[The corrupter] says he plans to pardon US Capitol attack
participants if elected.*
Finally, one case in which he actually demonstrates loyalty to someone
who is not rich.
*Top [Guatemalan] corruption prosecutor held in jail as Guatemalan
elite bids to purge foes.*
Carbon capture and storage can't be a path to ending fossil fuel
emissions if the CO2 that it captures is pumped into oil fields to
squeeze out more oil.
It becomes just another way to extract more oil.
*Burning native forest wood waste for electricity shouldn’t be classed as
renewable energy, [Australia] report suggests.*
Planet roasters search constantly for excuses to bend the definition
of "renewable energy."
The likelihood of Bolsonaro's defeat in the next election has inspired a rush
to cut down the Amazon forest as fast as possible.
Several major economies are planning to impose a limit on the price
paid to Russia for oil, starting in December.
The price limit could apply to imports by other countries when the
shipping involves EU countries in some way.
Russia says it will refuse to sell at that low price, and that will
continue the contest of economic muscle. So far, Putin has come out
ahead in this contest. The question will be whether other customers
will buy all the oil Putin needs to sell.
Ukrainian prosecutors have charged a specific Russian soldier with
joining in the murder of two civilians.
The soldiers talked with the civilians, then shot them in the back
as the latter were walking away.
Biden proposes to spend 13 billion dollars to hire 100,000 more cops,
supposedly to reduce the danger of violent crime. But it might not
achieve anything on that dimension, and it would
ramp up repression in
the form of arrests for drug possession.
It would be more effective to put that money into social programs and
low-rent housing.
FEMA's director acknowledges that FEMA's maps of flood danger need to
be updated to
reflect changes due to global heating.
Chileans rejected the draft constitution written by the
constitutional
convention.
Pinochet's constitution was designed for repression; it needs to be
replaced. But with what? I suggest asking the public to vote on
several questions about which of the major changes they like or
dislike. Those answers might help in writing a constitution that
a substantial majority of the public will support.
New and old unusual ways to raise funds for critical infrastructure
to help farms and
people cope with drought.
South Africa has banned seismic blasting in the ocean off the
Wild
Coast area.
Shell was going to do the blasting to search for
fossil fuels that
humanity cannot afford to extract anyway.
The blasting itself would
have
harmed whales and other wildlife.
I celebrate the outcome of this case, but I think that the views of
people living near the proposed area of exploitation are a weak foundation
for something as important as limiting fossil fuel extraction. The dangers
of the extraction are global, and the ban should be global too.
Fiji's government has bounced from coup to coup, and the current prime
minister rules in an
authoritarian and vengeful way.
Meanwhile, competition with China for influence blocks Australia
from using its influence to promote human rights in the Pacific.
Governments would respond to that by jumping to China's side; China
does not seek to promote democracy.
Gentrification is driven by powerful business forces, often supported
by the state. If you oppose the change, focus on those forces,
not on
the visible symptoms.
Some people are prepared to pay thousands of dollars for "just the
right" puppy, without ever actually seeing it. Sometimes they pay
the thousands and
never even get the puppy — it is a scam.
Nothing can excuse swindling, but the victims would never have fallen
prey to this scan if they had not started with a foolish approach. An
adult ought to know better than to believe that one specific puppy,
that perse has never met, is the one and only right one.
There is a certain tendency for people to believe that spending a lot
of money on something unusual and different in your life will make it
better. But it doesn't usually have that effect.
The Credible Messenger Mentoring Movement helps teenagers from
disprivileged groups avoid the temptation of gangs and drugs by
offering them mentors: adults
who grew up in the same community and
succeeded in meeting that challenge.
The mentors are credible in that they personally experienced the situation
that they guide the teenagers in coping with.
Artist Ken Lum made two sculptures, a bison and a fur trader (perhaps
also a bison hunter), to display in the city of Edmonton so as to
provoke thought about the extermination of the bison. The city
cancelled their display in the name of
hyper concern for some people's hypersensitivity.
Hunters did not kill 100.000000 percent of the bison — the species still
survives in some protected places.
Starbucks carefully cultivates a let's-be-kind-to-each-other image
while treating employees like dirt and punishing
them illegally for
organizing.
I too stopped by the strike site at 874 Comm Ave, Boston, and I found out
how the workers have been able to keep the picket going 24/7 for months:
it's not just the workers! Volunteers from the community help out.
I wish I could post a link to more information, but that site won't
show anything unless the visitor runs nonfree JavaScript code, and I
will not direct people to such a site. Is there a web developer who
would be interested in setting up a freedom-respecting site to show
the same information? The strikers might be happy to adopt that site
if some developers set it up.
Recommending that the abortion rights movement take inspiration from
the 80s/90s organization Act Up, which campaigned for
AIDS patients'
rights and medical care.
Scientists conclude that parts of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and
Bolivia have already reached a tipping point, and
will not regrow as
forest if left alone.
We can't be sure just how big a disaster this will be, but it will be
big.
*Doomscrolling linked to poor physical and
mental health, study finds.*
The Tory Party has selected a plutocratist
extremist as the new prime
minister.
The nation mostly opposes her already. As most Britons are forced
into poverty, her program is to cut taxes (a benefit for the wealthier
Britons) and
cut spending (more Tory cruelty).
Perhaps recognizing her unpopularity, she intends to delay elections
as late as possible. Two years in power will allow her and the Tories
to do no end of harm.
Identitarians may rejoice that, for the first time, none of the four
principal ministers in the cabinet will be a white man. Perhaps being
forced into poverty, and allowing the government to get away with
mistreating people illegally, will hurt less this way than if white
men had done it.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the No Tax Breaks for
Union Busting Act.
This would eliminate the tax deduction for the money that companies
spend on union-busting. I think this won't be enough to eliminate
union-busting, but I think it will convince some companies to do less
of that.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Department of Education to take legal action
against Florida's law that tries to censor discussion of uncomfortable
topics in school.
US citizens: call on Congress and the White House to make
Afghanistan's fund reserves available to the Afghan people.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call for stopping Florida law that is designed to
intimidate and censor university professors and students.
US citizens: call on the Federal Reserve not to raise interest rates on working people. Government must fight corporate greed instead.
Raising a child through high school now costs $310,000 in the US.
That is for a middle-income married couple's second child.
(The first would presumably cost more.)
This doesn't count the breakup of the relationship, which is a
frequent result of having a child.
One Republican senate candidate used to claim on his web site
that the Democrats stole the 2020 election — for the Republican
primary. Now that he has won that, he has deleted the claim.
For Republicans, deceit is habitual.
Some thug departments in the UK require each thug to list any
reporters perse knows.
US court cases are considering whether litigation insurance policies
for oil companies include lawsuits for damaging the climate.
*Greece to launch parliamentary inquiry into spy scandal*
about government spying on political leaders.
*Sudan journalists defy military rule by forming first union in 30 years.*
The head of World Vision International (a charity)'s work in Gaza,
Mohammad el Halabi, has been convicted by Israel of supposedly
routing aid funds to Hamas, but the trial appears to have been bogus.
Human Rights Watch, the government of Australia, and others have concluded
that the conviction is not based on evidence.
* Once-in-a-decade plans to protect the natural world and halt its
destruction will be decided in Canada in December.*
Salafi Arabia has sentenced Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani to 45 years
in prison for some unstated acts of dissent.
Americans are catching on to the threat that right-wing extremists pose
with their persistent dishonesty and violence.
Advocating attacks on our system of government, or on Americans who
disagree with them, is far beyond merely holding views about policies
— even major policies — that we disagree with. Those are citizens,
whose freedom we must respect even as we try to convince them.
The attackers hate our freedoms, and have declared their intention to
use dishonest and/or violent means to eliminate them. We must prepare
to fight them, and we can't be nice about it.
Breathing nitrous oxide too much and too often can cause grave nerve
injuries, if you don't protect yourself with supplements of vitamin B12.
This is a job for … public health education!
In some cities in France, people now need to put a sticker on the
mailbox if they wish to permit delivery of junk mail.
This is intended to reduce waste of resources and waste to be disposed of.
*Polling shows that US voters favor climate bills — yet assume fellow
Americans don’t.*
I suspect that the propaganda term "centrist" is part of the cause of
this. Plutocratist Democratic politicians discourage firm climate
defense action to serve the plutocrats who fund them, and the
mainstream media refer to them as "centrist." This is designed to,
and often does, convince most Americans that those plutocratists
represent the political "center" — but
the real political center is well to the left of there.
Many folders intended for secret files were found empty
in the
corrupter's possession.
I wonder whether the government knows what documents were in those
folders. The article does not clearly say.
*Arkansas [thugs] suspended after bystander films
savage street
beating of shoe less man.*
I would like to suggest suspending them by the neck, but not seriously
— I oppose the death penalty, without exception. What those thugs
deserve is a long prison sentence — longer because they betrayed the
duties of their job as police officers.
*GOP operative wants LGBTQ community put in "isolation
camps for their own
protection".*
A right-wing manipulation group, the Tea Party Patriots, undertook to
sabotage the US efforts to resist Covid-19.
It may have been
substantially effective.
I do not believe anyone is entitled to the "freedom" to go unmasked
indoors, risking spreading Covid-19, from mere preference.
500 deaths per day adds up to around 180,000 per year. That is around
a 4% increment in the death rate.
The number of people developing long Covid per day is likely to be in
the thousands, and the number of people unable to work is estimated as
on the order of
2.5% of the entire working population.
When Dubya released some British prisoners from Guantánamo, his
officials asked the UK government to jail them arbitrarily or through
unjust trials.
The UK government refused to do this.
New York City is suing Starbucks for firing a union organizer.
Rather than using federal labor law, which generally prohibits this too,
it is using a
New York City law that is stronger.
*Columbus [thug] shot Donovan Lewis within a second of opening the door
to his room, and then, while he was dying,
told him to 'stop
resisting.'"*
I have a hunch that thug said "stop resisting" to a man who was not resisting
as a way of pretending that he was resisting — to create a fake excuse
to use later.
*There can be no middle ground in the fight between
democracy and
authoritarian fascism.*
Right-wing extremists make threats of domestic terrorism in the hope of
intimidating the defenders of democracy. We must not be intimidated
out of defending it.
Ralph Nader invites people to help form an organization to defend the right
(and the option) of
using cash to pay.
Proposing a progressive price system for electricity and fossil fuels,
as a way of helping the poor without
subsidizing fossil fuel for the rich.
That would be much better than giving rich people the same subsidy as
the poor, but I've already explained that a subsidy for energy is a
terrible mistake.
(satire) *Hawaiian Travel Ad Boasts Sandy White Tourists
As Far As The
Eye Can See.*
Don't worry about the resources — tourists pay high prices for those.
*Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies
Nearly Doubled in 2021.*
Protests are planned against the US banks and insurance
companies that make
fossil fuel expansion possible.
Here is the full list of events,
viewable without Javascript.
I am very glad that the campaign has made the info available in this way. It means I can promot the campaign without promoting nonfree software
*The 'Green Revolution' Has Failed in Africa and
It's Time for a New
Direction.*
I have no special knowledge about on this field — this seems plausible,
but I can't be sure whether it is true.
*Schools must teach the history of strategic non-violent campaigns
that
won civil rights and women's rights.*
US citizens: call on Congress to keep censorship of abortion advice illegal.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
*Chipotle Workers in Michigan Vote to Form Fastfood Chain's First
Union.*
Officially forming a union is just the first step. A bigger hurdle follows:
getting the company to negotiate with the union in good faith.
*Irish farmers say they will be forced to cull cows to meet climate targets.*
Most of us will have to make sacrifices in the effort to avoid total
disaster. Would those farmers prefer collapse of civilization?
Let's just make sure that the billionaires don't dump their share of
the sacrifices onto the rest of us.
*The Violence at the Heart of [Republican extremism].*
A feminist recognizes that having women elected to office is not going
to help women's rights, if the women who are elected are right-wing.
*Invasions and illegal exploitation of indigenous lands in Brazil tripled
under Bolsonaro, says advocacy group.*
Darya Dugina, who was killed by a car bomb recently, was reportedly
an important figure in Russian disinformation campaigns.
Perhaps the car bomb attack was aimed at her rather than her father,
but I think it would have been an unreliable plan. I don't think
Ukraine would have burned such a capability on a propoagandist or
a philosopher.
A US judge ruled that the US government cannot seize the funds of the
Afghan central bank, and that they belong to the Afghan people, but
not (if I understand correctly) to the Taliban.
The arguments cited are legal arguments, not moral ones. Nonetheless,
I'm happy with the outcome — I hope it will not be reversed.
Greenland's ice will melt enough to raise sea level about one foot.
It is too late to prevent this, but we may be able to prevent further
melting in Greenland.
Ice is melting elsewhere too, so the actual rise that is now inevitable
will be more than one foot.
Bogus Johnson is trying to arrange a comeback, aided by the fact that
the two contenders from which Tory Party members will soon choose a
new prime minister are inclined to make poor people suffer, and likely
to lead to a big Tory defeat in the next election.
Ukraine has built wooden imitations of US HIMARS missile launchers,
to use as decoys. The Putin forces fire expensive missiles at them.
It was a good hack, but I'm afraid that whoever revealed it has ruined
it. What a pity.
*California approves landmark bill to give fast-food workers more
power.*
Restaurant owners argued that improving low-paid workers' pay and
treatment would increase the prices of restaurant food. I am sure
that will happen, to some extent, but we restaurant customers can live
with that. I also expect that the restaurant owners are exaggerating.
The water supply of Jackson, Mississippi, has broken down and is out
of service. The immediate cause was flooding that affected the water
purification plant.
Mississippi is a Republican-controlled state, and many of the
residents of Jackson are black. I suspect that the state has underfunded
all civic systems in Jackson for a long time, and that this is the
underlying reason for the failure.
An excavation in Norwich, England, found the bodies of 17 Jews
murdered in a pogrom in 1190.
Antisemitism in medieval Europe often led to murder.
* The European Union's power sector is a good example of what market
fundamentalism has done to electricity networks the world over.*
The teachers of Columbus, Ohio, went on strike and gained important
victories.
The Federal Trade Commission is suing a data broker for selling
location data and including data about visits to "sensitive"
locations. This shows how fundamentally weak the US approach
to privacy is.
Any location data record can be sensitive for some people. The way to
truly protect people's privacy is to ensure that people's locations
are not tracked.
*Prevent tree extinctions or face global ecological catastrophe,
scientists warn.* Over 1/4 of tree species are endangered.
US citizens: call on Congress to block any new fossil fuel handouts,
including the Manchin deal.
Bernie Sanders: *The US has a ruling class -- and Americans must stand
up to it.*
California's worst heatwave yet is making firemen collapse, even as it
sparks wildfires.
*"They are human beings": Chicago mayor welcomes migrants bussed by Texas.*
What a delightful way to highlight Republicans' inhumanity and cruel spirit.
A Canadian spy inside PISSI helped Shamima Begum and two other British
girls get to Syria to join PISSI.
The British government reportedly decided to cover this up as a favor
to Canada.
The fact that the girls received assistance from a surprising source
does not reduce the gravity of the crime they had already gone to great
lengths to commit. However, aiding volunteers for PISSI rather than
stopping them made the British and Canadian governments partially responsible
for their arrival in Syria and participation in PISSI.
To punish Shamima Begum for that crime may well be justified,
but exiling a citizen is not a legitimate punishment even as a sentence.
To do it as an administrative decision is punishment without trial,
and that is never acceptable.
Statistics on long Covid in the UK. 400,000 people still have it two years
after their acute infection.
I wonder how many people in the UK had been infected, by that point in time.
*Hawaii to close its only coal power plant in a step toward renewable
energy.*
*Democrat Mary Peltola wins Alaska special election over Sarah Palin.*
Peltola will be a representative until the end of this year, and will
have to run for reelection in November along with everyone else in the
House of Representatives.
A US diplomat says that Libyans have mostly given up hope that the two
factions that rule parts of Libya can ever make peace and unite the
country.
Michigan has a body, with two Democrats and two Republicans, whose approval
is needed for ballot initiatives. The two Republicans voted against
the abortion rights initiative and the voting rights initiative, causing a tie
which blocked both initiatives.
An official UN report describes China's torture and brainwashing of
Uyghurs.
Watering flowers while black can get you arrested in Alabama.
Jackson's water supply has been slowly failing for years because of a lack of
funds to maintain it.
This was decided by the state's Republican government.
The Republican Party has been going all out to help its [richest] backers
avoid paying taxes..*
Recent observations of Greenland's melting ice show that climate models
have underestimated the rate of sea-level rise.
I've been predicting for years that models underestimate the effects
of future global heating. They forecast disaster, but the real
disaster will be worse.
(satire) *More MLB Teams Trying To Attract Younger
Audience With Free Prostate Exam Day.*
(satire) *Casting Director Can Tell That Child Actor Doesn't Have The
Abusive Parents It Takes To Make It In Entertainment.*
(satire) *Solar Power Investment Skyrockets Upon Discovery Of Massive
Underground Deposit Of Sunlight.*
How activists in Los Angeles blocked a program to build a lot more jails,
and instead won programs to help people avoid committing crimes and stay
out of jail.
Bernie Sanders comments on today's alignment of unions with
progressives, and other political issues.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter and senators to pass the
bills to establish Medicare for All.
To sign without running
nonfree JavaScript code
from the web site, use the
Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act
which will treat Afghan refugees better.
US citizens: call on Congress to overhaul the US credit reporting system.
Google canceled a man's account on seeing he sent a doctor photos of
his baby son' injured genitals.
Despite the publicity, Google has not reinstated his account.
This highlights well-known dangers of automated detection of
possible child sexual abuse images. Beyond that, it also shows that
having humans involved in making the decision is not guaranteed to
correct an erroneous automated detection.
Furthermore, it shows the danger of having various different digital
services provided by a single company, or by companies that have agreed
to work together to kick "offenders" off the services of all of them.
Child sexual abuse is a real problem, but people accused of doing that
are entitled to have a trial before they are punished. We cannot
allow online disservices to implement unofficial punishment without trial.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare a climate emergency.
(satire) *[The bullshitter] Claims Seized Classified Documents Had
Been In His Family For Generations.*
1/3 of Pakistan could be flooded by later this year.
If India were governed by statesmen, they would offer aid to rebuild
Pakistan. That could end the long hostility between the two countries.
Alas, instead of statesmen it has the BJP.
Over 40,000 prisoners in the US are held in long-term solitary
confinement.
That is a form of brainwashing.
Putin plans to disconnect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant from
Ukraine's power grid. This would create the risk of reactor meltdowns
if anything goes wrong with local electric generation, because keeping
the reactor cores cool requires electricity.
One can see, from this, that the existence of a nuclear reactor
creates a risk whenever anything else goes wrong. Earthquete?
Tsunami? Air attack?
This is one of the reasons why building more nuclear power plants
is foolish. The other reason is that for the same amount of money
you could build far more generating capacity using renewable generation,
and power storage too.
Britons might appreciate Corbyn's policies more now than they did in 2019,
now that those opposed to them have discredited themselves at every level.
The challenge is to overcome the power of Starmer, who has made it his goal
to marginalize Corbyn's supporters within the Labour Party.
If they are ever the majority, the party will ignore them.
Would-be vaccine monopolists Moderna and Pfizer are fighting over
vaccine patents.
Meanwhile, they are both using trade secrets to keep most of humanity
unvaccinated. Shame on both of them! And shame on the World Trade
Organization, that has made most of the world surrender to this deadly
regime.
*Corporate PACs Have Lavished $22 Million on 'Big Lie' Republicans
Since Jan. 6.*
In poor countries, many practical obstacles impede vaccination and
treatment of Covid-19.
Six of these obstacles are not a matter of "hesitancy". One of the
obstacles is a historical cause of understandable distrust, and thus
hesitancy.
Republican candidates that won Republican primaries by professing
bellicose opposition to abortion are trying to disown those views to
win the final election.
So, did they seriously mean the positions they took before the primaries?
Or do they seriously mean the positions they take now?
Or neither one?
The Federal Reserve plans to keep increasing interest rates until inflation goes down.
Low interest rates are not causing today's inflation, so this tactic
is not going to achieve the goal until it creates lots of unemployment.
It strikes me that Powell's real goal may be to undermine the wave
of unionization. His business cronies will surely appreciate that.
Recognition of the apartheid-like nature of Israels occupation of Palestine
is spreading around the world, among human rights organizations, world leaders,
and even some former Israeli officials.
New sensors are being developed to determine a person's emotional state
from per skin.
Based on recent fashion, I forecast that the sensor will connect to a
snoop-phone, and the data will all be sent to some cloudy company
from which many companies and governments will get it.
Virtual reality, backed by high computational power, makes possible
subtle forms of manipulation that influences people but that they
won't notice.
For instance, a political speech can be altered slightly for each
person watching, making the speaker's face subtly resemble the
viewer's face. This has been proven to make viewers, on the average,
have a more favorable attitude toward the speaker.
The author proposes developing systems for detecting the use of this
technique and other manipulation techniques.
I fear that nonfree software, combined with remote attestation,
will be used to make it impossible to run the software to do this.
It will be "unauthorized."
*France to blame for refugees risking Channel crossings, say NGOs.*
*Bernie Sanders rebukes GOP for backing corporate tax breaks but not student
debt relief.*
*Britons need to be "less squeamish" about drinking water [extracted]
from sewage [and purified], says agency head.*
Imagine you're on space station Earth — of course, sewage is recycled.
The International Space Station recycles urine for drinking water.
An uncontacted indigenous tribe in the Brazilian Amazon has been
murdered one by one. None remain alive.
The massacre may have started when murderous colonizers got the tribe
used to eating gifts of sugar, then gave them poison (mixed with
sugar?).
The last survivor refused all contact. We do not know the tribe's
language, or even its name.
*Invasions and illegal exploitation of indigenous lands in Brazil tripled
under Bolsonaro, says advocacy group.*
*Turkish pop star Gülsen arrested over religious schools joke.*
The joke clearly suggested religious schools have undesired effects
on some students, but is not a direct accusation of wrong, Nonetheless,
she has been denied bail.
Do female politicians have a right to go to a small party with friends
and dance?
"Some critics of Marin have said a leader who is drinking would be
unable to take important decisions for their country," Never mind
that Marin denies being drunk. More important is that they never
seemed to apply that rule to male politicians. Those could get as
drunk as a lord, in a party or a club, without criticism like this.
Flooding disaster hits Pakistan: 700,000 homes severely damaged or
destroyed, 33 million people gravely affected.
Pay attention! Floods like this are coming to a place near you,
if you don't campaign to decarbonize.
*Low Covid [vaccination] rates in poorer countries falsely blamed on
"vaccine hesitancy."*
Under funding of the National Labor Relations Board is interfering with
its ability to deal with the increased union-busting that accompanies the
increased efforts for unionization.
*Louisiana[n] denied abortion despite fetus’s fatal abnormality [will]
travel to
North Carolina.*
The affidavit released by the FBI shows why some of the bullshitter's
supposed excuses are irrelevant,
It also shows the broadness of the Espionage Act, and why it threatens
whistleblowers and the public's right to know.
*Six of 43 missing Mexican students were
kept alive in warehouse for days.*
Then executed by the army.
*Balls, gowns, marriage pressures.
Jane Austen was basically Pakistani.*
This article helped me to truly feel the oppressiveness of woman's
social role in Britain in the 1800s, and in Pakistan today.
*How migrant workers get trapped in
debt to recruiters.*
A federal court has defended the right to hand out information about
jury nullification: the possibility for a jury to find a defendant
not guilty because they disapprove of the
law that was used to charge
the defendant.
As I understand it, the reason for the right to be tried by a "jury of
your peers" is so that they can protect you from prosecution under an
oppressive law.
Republican anti-abortion laws threaten to criminalize press coverage
of abortion, and nationwide publication of
information about getting
an abortion where that is lawful.
The EU will not ban Russian tourists; rather, it will make getting
tourist
visas more effort for them, as a message.
This seems like good decision. It will avoid the closure that an outright
ban would have caused.
*Desperate times need radical solutions. Even Churchill [a Tory] knew
when it
was time to tax the rich.*
Everyone: call on Costco to move beyond single-use plastic packaging.
US citizens: call on Biden to fire I.R.S. Commissioner Rettig, who was
appointed by the corrupter, and replace him with someone trustworthy.
In the US: support American railroad workers.
Everyone: call on Tyson foods to roll back its price increases.
The Pentagon has published a sensible plan for developing new rules to
prevent military operations from harming civilians.
When the rules are finished, in 2025, they will become part of
"military doctrine", so soldiers will be required to follow them.
A crucial part of the plan is a policy of taking seriously civilians'
reports of casualties, instead of rejecting them bullheadedly.
The plan to connect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to Russia's power grid
is supposedly a backup plan to prevent a meltdown, if connections to Ukraine's
grid are damaged.
Preventing a meltdown is important, But doing so that way would also
enable Putin to steal the generated power. And the danger of a
meltdown exists only because Putin stations troops in the plant.
Putin should demilitarize the plant and let someone
repair the damaged redundant connections to Ukraine's grid.
Starbucks has now fired over 80 workers illegally. In one unionized
store, it sent a new manager to harass workers over little excuses.
The rate of shootings has decreased 4% in the US since last year.
But death threats from Republicans are increasing.
46 countries have eradicated at least one
"neglected tropical disease". Togo has now eradicated four of them.
There is a long way to go, and further progress depends on donations
from rich countries.
Canberra now allows people to get recreational drugs tested to see
what substances they really contain. In addition to discovering
adulterants, they may find there is none of the drug they thought they
had bought.
A quarter of the people who test a sample of drug product decide not to use
the product after all.
Around half of the inhabitants of former Yugoslavia — or perhaps more
— are nostalgic for that no-longer existent country.
I wonder if they will decide to reunite most of that country,
this time as a democratic federation.
China and Europe are suffering from persistent heat and drought,
which are causing many kinds of harm to the economy.
The US drought is approaching that point.
It will be much worse ten years from now. And afterwards it will
be disaster, unless we take big steps to avoid it.
*Northern Australia could have dangerously high heat most days of the year by
2100, study finds.*
*Southern regions of Australia may experience deadly heatwaves annually,*
The UK Green Party calls for nationalizing the largest gas and
electric utilities, and for taxing the rich to pay part of poor
people's bills.
The first step is very good. The second is half good. Taxing the
rich to help the poor is very important, but each poor person should get
the same amount of aid regardless of how much energy perse uses. That way,
poor people who can reduce their energy use will have more money to spend
on other things.
Rwanda does not allow journalists to meet refugees: all communication
with them is forbidden. All inquiries about their conditions are blocked.
That is not only unjust in its own right, it is also a hint that the
refugees have something really bad to criticize.
I've read reports of repressive treatment of dissent in Rwanda
for many years.
*Under global [heating], the frequency and intensity of wildfires is
expected to increase, which would lead to "more stratospheric warming",
said one expert.*
*Nearly 700 Civilians Killed or Wounded by Cluster Munitions So Far in
Ukraine War.*
There is a treaty that prohibits use of cluster bombs, but since
Russia has not signed it, I think that is not very persuasive as a
reason to condemn the Putin forces for using them.
The cogent reason to condemn the use of them what the article tells us
about their effects: they mainly hurt civilians. Using them is one
indication that hurting Ukrainian civilians is something Putin wants.
All countries should sign the treaty to prohibit them;
that includes the US.
Dangerous heat waves could be three times as frequent by the end of
this century.
This will have enormous impacts on farming in tropical regions,
as it is not safe to do strenuous work in such heat.
A school in Nebraska abruptly eliminated its 54-year-old student
newspaper based on objections to what the paper published about the
rights of queer people.
Publishing a newspaper no longer requires the expensive and
specialized equipment that it needed 54 years ago. The students can,
and surely will, move it to the internet. I hope they will make sure
people can read the newspaper without running any nonfree software, by
not sending Javascript code to run in visitors' browsers.
Biden illustrates the default approach of "centrist" Democrats:
when trying to help the poor in some way, take a small step so as
not to be called "extreme".
A new study estimates that 2 to 4 million Americans are being kept
out of work by long Covid.
That has a substantial economic effect, though it's not responsible
for this year's inflation. Wage increases this year are not big
enough to be the cause.
*Energy Giants Spending Millions to Block [Maine's] Effort to Create
Consumer-Owned Utility.*
Big US banks are investing 23 billion in Russian development of carbon bombs.
The history of political corruption in the US. Around 1900 it had
reached a level of blatant excess that spurred progressive politicians
to enact strong campaign finance limits.
Since 1980, plutocratist politicians have swept them away, absurdly claiming
that giving money to politicians' campaigns doesn't buy them. Americans
need to eliminate plutocracy in order to bring back democracy.
California is considering a plan to revamp math education, whose first
draft aimed to reduce the advanced courses available now (only in some
schools) for students who were good at math. The idea was to
prioritize equality of outcomes over helping each student to go as far
as possible.
If the goal is to help nonwhite students on the average to do better
in math, how about making sure calculus courses are taught in all high
schools? The lack of these is one factor in holding them back, and it
has an obvious remedy in the school system. Meanwhile, the article
suggests that San Francisco has a way of encourage more diversity of
students to advance to calculus without holding anyone back.
Another aspect of racism that contributes to the problem is that
people in disprivileged groups are more likely to be poor. The math
curriculum can't fix that, but the government can reduce poverty. We
did it before; it isn't hard to do, if the government spends the
requisite sum. If we defeat the plutocrats, we can do it again.
Here are the details of what Biden announced about partial student
loan forgiveness.
Some aspects will have to wait for lawsuits to conclude, but in the mean time
nobody will have to make payments.
This describes some other incrementally helpful provisions.
A formerly private 2019 legal memo from the Department of Justice used
questionable arguments to protect the corrupter from charges of
obstructing justice.
A House investigation found that the wrecker's officials harmed the US
response to Covid-19 in 2020 through pressure on the FDA.
Egypt excluded "undesirable" Egyptian civil society groups from the
coming Cairo climate conference by not informing them about how to
apply.
(satire) *Big Ben Undergoes Routine Cleaning To Remove
Hapless Tourists Dangling From Minute Hand.*
Japan plans a return to nuclear power.
Restarting idle nuclear power plants might be reasonable, if they can
take adequate precautions against future tsunamis and earthquakes.
Building new nuclear plants is absurd even if they are safe, because
they cost too much and take too long.
They are a bad strategy for decarbonization.
Arizona Republicans have passed a law to impede making video
recordings of thugs in action, creating an imaginary presumption that
this somehow impedes them in acting lawfully. Various defenders of
freedom of the press are suing.
The Twitter whistleblower says that Chinese, Russian and Indian
government agents are getting special surveillance cooperation from
Twitter.
The article talks in a vague sense about "intellectual property rights"
that Twitter would need license for in order to train AI systems on
various databases. Because that term is a misguided over generalization,
the statement gives us no clue about which law it is actually talking about.
None of the various laws that are foolishly lumped together under that
term would be relevant to this. Maybe the statement is garbled, or has
been confused by the use of the misleading generalization.
Right-wing politicians and organizations rebuke Biden's partial
loan-forgiveness, saying that it would encourage "irresponsible
behavior". It turns out that many of them recently benefited from
forgiveness of much larger loans, or other sorts of business bailouts.
Right-wingers believe it is wrong for the government to help the poor,
because they assume that the poor are poor because they are bad people
and therefore deserve to be poor.
One of Reagan's advisors warned him in 1970 that if college were
gratis, it threatened to produce an "educated proletariat" which would
endanger the power of the rich.
So Reagan set about making college more expensive.
Everyone: call on Facebook to encrypt all messages end-to-end.
Normally my approach to bad things done by Facebook when it uses
people is to urge people to refuse to be used by Facebook at all.
To campaign to change one of the many ways it mistreats people is a distraction.
However, this particular mistreatment is so dangerous that I
make an exception for it.
US citizens: call on Congress to limit the President's ability to
launch nuclear weapons.
US citizens: call on Congress to end disenfranchisement of people
convicted of felonies.
I am not sure that the federal government has the power under the
constitution to do this; but if it can do this, I support it.
US citizens: call on Biden to insist to Israel: human rights advocacy
is not terrorism.
Georgia governor Kemp has arranged to remove local election officials
who he thinks would resist pressure to alter election results.
The article starts with a theory of why he is trying so hard to avoid
testifying to a grand jury.
The use of drones, controlled from far away, means that US presidents
can fight small wars that the public is hardly aware of. So they no
longer need to convince the public to support any given war.
A herbal "medicine" seems to have killed Lori McClintock, wife of
a member of Congress.
The "Enough is Enough" movement, of and for poor people, demands that
the UK government do the opposite of what Tories want: help the
non-rich.
Predictions about the next 6 months of war in Ukraine.
I think Ukraine can win, with enough western arms. And we had better
provide them, or Putin will emerge triumphant and set on preparing
another war.
An infographic to explain what the increased IRS funding will be used for,
and that non-rich Americans will not have an increased chance
of being audited.
Those selling "ghost gun" kits in the US will now have to put serial
numbers on certain parts, and carry out background checks.
Abortion rights and democracy are winning elections for Democrats.
*Idaho librarian resigns over "atmosphere of extremism" and "intimidation
tactics"* of the right-wing Christians.
At this state of the fight, resigning in protest can be a powerful
gesture. However, as time goes on, it will be necessary for
librarians to find ways to fight that don't involve taking themselves
out of the battle.
*Identitarianism is Incompatible with Humanism.* The Council for
Secular Humanism declares
opposition
to the campaign to judge and treat individuals and their ideas
based on the group identities each is assigned to.
On the importance of remembering slavery and commemorating its history.
The article is about slavery and Britain, but even though the history in the US
is different in detail, the point is basically the same.
*Real Estate CEO: Recession Could Be "Good" If "Unemployment … Puts Employers Back in the Driver Seat."*
In a purely journalistic site, "Executive will not regret suffering
for the masses if it increases rich people's power" might not count as
news. It is too much like, "Dog wants to bite man." But I'm
publishing political notes, not news.
A Tory activist is on the BBC board and decides what counts as
"impartial" in the news.
Australia has prepared a plan to save the swift parrot from extinction,
but it was designed not to protect against the biggest threat,
which is logging.
New Zealand calls on the world's nuclear powers to get serious about
nuclear disarmament.
It is a valid argument that, if countries have nuclear weapons, sooner
or later some country is likely to use them. By the same argument, if
it is possible to build nuclear weapons, sooner or later some country
will build some.
Thus, abolishing nuclear weapons globally will take us one step
further away from a nuclear war, but not in an irrevocable way. We
will be in a less acute variant of the same dilemma we are in now.
So I think global nuclear disarmament calls for a strategic plan: if
after global nuclear disarmament one country builds nuclear weapons
again, how should the rest of the world respond?
Along what lines should the world respond?
I pose these questions but I do not have answers for them.
US citizens: call on Biden to agree to the non-nuclear deal with
Iran.
More information about the situation.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Democrats to combat the lies Republicans tell about increased IRS funding.
The CIA couldn't find any connection between the Palestinian human
rights groups and terrorism,
but Biden refuses to criticize Israel for forcibly shutting them down.
Three Arkansas thugs are being investigated after a video showed them holding
a man down and punching him.
I welcome public denunciation of non-fatal instances of violence by
uniformed thugs. If that becomes widespread, it could potentially end
official tolerance for violent thugs.
They accuse the victim of having started the fight. One can hardly
believe thugs as witnesses for such a thing, as they are accustomed to
testilying, but it might be true. But that question doesn't change anything
significant. To teach everyone not to engage in violence is too much
to hope for, but we must teach that to official thugs.
*Herewith the 6 rules for getting a second (or third or fourth) chance
to sell a giant con.*
Some Michigan Republicans, including officials, got their hand on some voting
machines in Michigan and did various "tests" on them.
I can't be sure what those machines actually do. It turns out that
the term "tabulator" is used for all sorts of machines that generate
total vote counts. It is possible that voters vote directly on those
machines, and the machines output only totals. Using that kind of
machine with a computer in it makes the voting system vulnerable.
If so, the state should eliminate their use.
However, those vulnerabilities don't spontaneously exploit themselves.
They can be exploited by people. The people most likely to rig an
election through voting machines, are those who are (1) their
manufacturers (because they have opportunity), (2) given to wild
conspiracy ideation such as QAnonsense, or (3) willing to break any
law for their cause. Each of those three groups is mainly Republican.
I would not put it past those conspirators to have inserted a back
door into the machines they got control over. But it could also be
the common Republican play, Blow Smoke Then Cry 'Fire'.
Making things even more shocking and dangerous, one of the
conspirators is now running for Attorney General of Michigan, endorsed
by the corrupter. I'd expect him to quash the investigation if he is
elected.
If you find any reliable information on what part of the election
these machines actually do, I would appreciate it if you send it to me
with its URL.
*It’s high time the free world realised that it is not fighting a mad
dictator but an autonomous and self-regenerating aggressive power
system.*
Dementis is trying to remove the elected Tampa prosecutor from office,
but he couldn't directly do this. He had to ask the state senate to
support it. However, the prosecutor is challenging the move in federal
court. For the moment, he remains in office.
*[Ukraine] says Russia has transferred more than 1,000 children
from Mariupol for illegal adoptions in Siberia.*
Studying Big Oil projections for future use of fossil fuels finds
that they expect/plan not to achieve the (weak) Paris agreement targets.
*Imagine a repeat of Jan 6th [the coup] — but with tanks, soldiers, and guns.*
I would suggest federalizing states' national guards, perhaps one
state at a time, and giving direct orders that will provoke coup
supporters to quit.
Why forgiving student loans should not be limited to people
with under a certain limit:
*[It] isn't that people with high incomes will be denied student debt
relief; it's that people eligible and desperate for relief will get
lost in the bureaucratic maze that income-based restrictions
inevitably create.*
The four big global grain companies are using the global food shortage
to gouge. This calls for a windfall profits tax.
Instead of doing this one industry at a time, how about applying it to
all businesses that are making big profits — counting bonuses and
stock buybacks and part of those profits?
This article asserts that Dugin, the apparent target of the car bomb
that instead killed his daughter, is a fierce right-wing critic of
Putin and has demanded a much harsher war against Ukraine.
I can't have full confidence in what CNN reports about this, any more
than I can have full confidence in the rest of the mainstream media.
But I don't think Russian government agents would assassinate someone
for being more Putinite than Putin himself. It does not sound like he
is Putin's enemy.
Amazon warehouse workers have walked out of the job, saying that the wages are too low to live on, and that management is demanding that they work
ever harder and faster, discarding safety precautions.
For more reasons to refuse to buy from Amazon, see amazon.html.
The corrupter's White House officials tried to "bully" the FDA to
authorize hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid-19, counter
to the evidence.
The Solomon Islands is moving step by step towards autocracy. Now it
has announced it will ban foreign journalists based on what they
write.
"Racial profiling" means applying laws to people in a prejudiced way
based on their race. A central part of that unjust practice is that
the person acting has real, direct power over others. To apply the
term to journalists' writing, even racist writing, is twisting its
meaning.
Racial profiling can't be seen directly in one instance; it takes a
set of instances to see such a pattern, and then it's a judgment call.
To use this as a criterion to admit or exclude a journalist makes no
sense — unless it's simply an excuse for arbitrary censorship.
The movement towards autocracy began when the government made
a "security" deal with China. I suspect that is no coincidence.
Argentines are protesting, demanding the government help them obtain
food.
As it generally does, the International Monetary Fund is "helping"
Argentina pay its debts by limiting government spending to help people
in difficulty. In effect, the IMF converts supposedly sovereign
countries into colonies of the foreign banks, with their governments
focused on extracting money for them.
This is disappointing, since the deal with the IMF was supposedly
a new form, designed to avoid this result.
Oil-prospecting companies plan seismic testing in wide areas of ocean
near Australia's coasts.
Surely there is no room in the carbon budget to actually extract oil
from any new oil fields they might discover. So it makes no sense to
let them search.
A former thug pled guilty of falsifying the search warrant that led to
the shooting of Breonna Taylor by thugs.
*Anti-Union Companies are Anti-Worker and Anti-American.*
Examples described include Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft.
As well as Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe's, Target and Walmart.
And Costco and Trader Joe's. Also Chipotle, Starbucks, and McDonalds.
And don't forget Tesla.
The assassin that attacked Salman Rushdie was influenced by bizarre
interpretation of Islam. Well-educated Muslims condemn such acts.
This article explains why.
I think what we can learn from this is that fanatical leaders can
distort any religion into a murderous cult.
Compare, for instance, with the Christian fanatics that murder
abortion doctors, and the Christian fanatics that want to imprison
women for abortions. It would be wrong to conclude that Christianity
advocates killing doctors or imprisoning women. What we should
conclude is that Christianity has the potential to be a basis for
fanaticism.
So does Islam, and so do various other religions.
The US faces a shortage of teachers, partly caused by demonization of
teachers and government policies blaming them for bad outcomes.
Together with low pay.
China is suffering from wildfires, like many other countries, and they
are sending smoke into the megacity of Chongqing.
*50+ Israeli Organizations Blast 'Baseless' Attacks on Palestinian
[human rights organizations].*
Continuing to wreck the climate as we do it now could wipe out 90% of species
that live in the seas.
Biden plans to cancel just a part of Americans' student loans — not enough
to rescue them from debt trap.
I think the income test is ok. People who make over $125k a year are
not trapped by their student loans. But Biden ought to rescue
the people who are trapped.
Mick Lynch, head of a rail workers' union in the UK, has galvanized
politics with his activist stance. "You don't think strikes are the
answer? What is?"
US citizens: call on the FTC to investigate the Amazon-One Medical merger.
US citizens: tell Congress, "AIPAC doesn't speak for me."
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Martha Wright Act, to
reduce the price of calls with family for prisoners.
Starbucks workers have been on strike since June at a store in Boston.
Bernie Sanders visited Boston to show support for them.
The UK's former spy inside al-Qa'ida accuses a British school of
treating his daughter with hostility because other students' parents
vague-mindedly associated him with danger.
Dean supported al-Qa'ida for local war, but when it turned to
terrorism, he condemned that based on Islam.
Ilhan Omar calls on Democrats to *Give Working Folks a Reason to Turn Out to Vote for Us.*
Democrats in Congress are starting to consider legislating workers'
rights for domestic workers, following the lead of various states and cities.
Syrian refugees in Turkey fear that Erdoğan will hand them over to Assad.
And Rojava fears Erdoan will attack.
Italy's right-wing party that is likely to win the next election
is sabotaging abortion
access in the region where it has control.
Global heating disaster has struck China, drying up the Yangtze River
much as droughts elsewhere
are drying up the Rhine and the Colorado.
Can this convince the Chinese governments of the need to stop building
more
coal-fired generators?
CNN appears to have decided to triangulate between Republican
insurrectionists and Democratic plutocratists, and fired a long-time
show host, Brian Stelter, who made a
practice of denouncing right-wing
falsehoods.
Robert Reich
explains the reason behind this
By the way, what the first article says about
Toobin is a misrepresentation
of the actual events.
A New York City prison thug shot and killed a young man who was
engaging in a
watergun fight with a clearly identifiable watergun.
A foreign oil company is suing Peru to block the creation of an
indigenous people's reservation.
That would convert the reservation into a carbon bomb.
I wonder whether the lawsuit is based on a business-supremacy treaty.
Who set the car bomb in
Alexander Dugin's car?
Ukraine's "false flag" accusation seems implausible to me. A Russian
false flag operation would not target Putin's friend, or the friend's
daughter.
Russia's claims about a Ukrainian underground bomber seems implausible
to me, for the reasons stated in the article. They make more sense as
disinformation.
That Ukraine did it in some other way is less implausible, but Ukraine
generally targets things that support Putin's war effort, and for good
reason. Why risk inspiring disapproval by attacking a civilian?
The underground anti-Putin group possibility seems more plausible than
those.
*Duo found guilty over plot to kidnap
Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.*
They did this because the wrecker had encouraged it.
* [US] state department says it does not want to close off pathways
for Russian dissidents and victims of human rights
abuses to get visas to go to the US.*
I agree with this decision, but I can't tell from the article where
the US will draw the line in giving visas to Russians. Do you have to be
an active dissident or demonstrably persecuted, or is it enough to have
no special connection with the government?
*Lula vows to protect Amazon [forest] if returned to
power in Brazil elections.*
A court ruled that the Ben & Jerry's founders can't legally make Unilever
stop selling ice cream under that name in
Israel's colonies in Palestine.
Everyone: call on CVS to publicly and permanently stop blocking
Medicare for All.
Everyone: call on airlines to invest in people, not Wall Street.
US citizens: call on Democratic leadership in Congress to stop
overdraft profiteering by Wall Street banks.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz
testify about blatant union-busting.
A court ordered Starbucks to rehire seven employees that it fired,
apparently as punishment for union organizing.
Some Britons are moving back to cash payments to help themselves avoid
unnecessary spending.
This side benefit of using cash is well-established.
But even if you don't need to economize, paying cash is a step
against mass surveillance. This very recent trend back to cash goes
against a long-term trend of surrender to surveillance.
Please join the resistance! While others reject surveillance
technology for the sake of valuable short-term benefits, you can
reject it for the sake of freedom, whether you need those side
benefits or not.
The first step is to make sure, when you leave the house, that you
have enough cash for what you might want to buy that day, plus some
extra.
If you don't have enough, don't identify yourself to a merchant!
Get cash from an ATM, then come back to the merchant and pay cash.
Giving a little data to your bank is not as bad as giving more
data to a store as well as your bank.
(satire) *Texas Schools Require Clear Bags To Prevent
Students From Bringing In Books.*
Pavel Filatyev, Russian paratrooper, has published a forbidden
memoir about his experiences in the Putin forces.
His unit was sent to help capture Kherson. He saw how badly the army
treated the troops. (Paratroops are generally thought of as elite
units, which normally would get the best equipment.)
Then he figured out he had been forced into a war of conquest —
recall that Putin lied to Russia about that — and was in the Putin
forces. After being wounded and sent home, he published his memoir.
After hiding for a couple of weeks in Russia wondering when he'd be
arrested, he decided to flee the country
I disagree with him on one point. If he had escaped the front, and
surrendered, that would have been a step toward ending Putin's
invasion. He could have continued by writing the memoir, and it
would have done the same good, while being less dangerous.
But I don't mean that as criticism of him. Filatyev did a heroic
deed, and it may help end Putin's invasion. Bravo, Filatyev!
*Eliminating invasive species on islands has high success rate and big
benefits [for protecting native wildlife].*
*The Climate Movement's Fight to Undo the Worst Provisions in the IRA
Begins.*
Louisiana is punishing the city of New Orleans for refusing to cooperate
with the state's ban on abortions by cutting off bonds for improving
the city's flood defenses.
A flood in New Orleans could kill hundreds of human beings, even
thousands. Anti-abortion fanatics don't particularly care about them
because they are post-birth. However, some fraction would be
pregnant, and many of those would have brought those pregnancies to
term if they had survived. Do the fanatics care about the survival of
those fetuses?
*Over 70 Economists Call for Biden Administration to Return
Afghanistan's Central Bank Reserves.*
Robert Reich: *America used to regulate business. Now government
subsidizes it.*
This is one aspect of plutocracy. Our political system gives business
unjust power over the government, and it has used that power to reorient
the government to solve all problems by giving more to business.
I've criticized a related aspect of plutocracy by calling for
punishing companies that act in harmful ways, rather than rewarding
companies that don't.
*Stop telling gen Z to relax — we have to fix the mess left by your
generation.*
Arguing that we should not allow a desire for revenge to play any part in
how we treat criminals.
Lawrence Freedman: "[Putin's] war against Ukraine has been hampered by
failings experienced by autocratic states during conflict* due to *the
inability of those at the top to take responsibility for mistakes."
But, he adds, "It's not that democracies always make better decisions."
The US is still bombing Somalia, after starting in 2011.
US citizens: call for repeal of Florida's law to monitor the political
views of every student and every professor.
Biden got the court's approval to end the persecutor's
"Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers coming from Mexico.
The "power of stories" may be inadequate to deal with problems or
injustices of global scale, such as a pandemic, or the coming global
heating disaster.
*… some of the most urgent and lethal challenges our
society is facing are too giant and unwieldy to fit into the little
patterns our human minds are used to making. Our present pandemic
response policies suggest some people don't get to be "heroes" on a
"journey", and many traditional western storytelling conventions aren't
up to the task of understanding a climate emergency that defies any
sort of conflict-resolution arc.*
Texas has passed a law requiring every public school to display a
poster with religious statement of belief in a god that intervenes in
human life.
This ought to be unconstitutional.
Perhaps the state hopes to take advantage of a previous loophole
by not spending public money on the posters. A proper understanding
of the prohibition of "establishment of religion" would consider
that question irrelevant.
A black family was denied a loan because of an apparently racist low
appraisal of their home. They showed the home to another company,
covering up indications that the inhabitants were black, and got an
appraisal of almost three times as much.
A leaked video shows Russian military vehicles inside of a turbine building
at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Hackers have figured out how a farmer can take control of the
computers in many John Deere tractors.
It is true that "malicious actors" could also use these jailbreaks to
take control of the tractor. But don't exaggerate the significance of
that danger! These tractors have been under the control of a malicious
actor (named John Deere) ever since they left the factory.
Farmers, like motorists and other computer users, are entitled
to full control over their computers.
John Deere has done various secondary bad things that add to the basic
wrong. This includes bad development practices and GPL violations.
In addition, its security against unknown third parties is
ineffective.
Danger: *Election deniers have claimed nearly two-thirds of GOP nominations for
positions with authority over elections.*
CVS is trying to increase its power over US medical care by expanding
into many other business aspects of medicine. Now it plans to buy
some medical treatment company.
I don't think we should tolerate the size of CVS. We should make it split up
so that there are additional competing pharmacy companies.
Amazon shouldn't be allowed to acquire any other company.
The US government wants to make Americans pay individually for
Covid-19 vaccines and drugs.
That will make poor people much more likely to die of Covid-19, like
2020 again.
(satire) *[Right-wing Americans] Explain Why They Do Not Trust The FBI.*
It is customary to describe right-wing Americans as "conservative,"
and there was some truth in that back when progressives/liberals had
powerful campaigns for changes. Today's followers of the corrupter
are in no way "conservative."
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts in the page, then right-click and select item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Liz Cheney's strong resistance to the wrecker crowns a long career
of supporting lies and injustice.
P&O Ferries will not be prosecuted for abruptly firing 800 union workers
so it could replace them with unskilled offshore workers.
The owners are quite happy with the outcome.
President Ortega of Nicaragua has crushed all political dissent, so now he
has attacked the Catholic Church by arresting a bishop and other clerics.
There are no specific charges, but it may have to do with giving
sanctuary in he past to protesters that Ortega's men were attacking.
A Greek intelligence agency used spyware on the phone of an opposition
party leader, and is under pressure to resign.
Greece should have laws and mechanisms to stop this sort of thing.
So should the US, whose laws and mechanisms seem to have been
effectively negated.
The government of Gujarat released 11 prisoners convicted of raping a
Muslim woman and murdering her relatives.
Gujarat is a center of powerful hatred against Muslims. In 2002,
Hindi extremists with support from the Gujarat government carried out
major pogrom against Muslims there,
with support from Modi himself.
These rapes and murders were part of that pogrom. One must suspect
that the release of these prisoners represents the Hindu extremists'
endorsement of support for pogroms against Muslims.
The ripper made a habit of tearing up memos he didn't like,
disregarding the Presidential Records Act for the whole of his term as
president.
Minutes show that the Federal Reserve will keep on raising
interest rates, preferring poverty to inflation.
Progressives warned Biden that reappointing the wrecker's chairman of
the Federal Reserve could lead to things like this.
The search of Mar-a-Lago will not directly interfere with the
corrupter's plans to run again for president. It could lead
to a criminal conviction, if it finds evidence to convict him.
That could — let's hope — make it harder for him to cheat his
way to victory again the way he did in 2016.
On the other hand, it won't protect us from Governor Dementis.
*Mexico's ex-attorney general arrested over disappearance of 43
students in 2014.*
Warrants have been issued to arrest 83 others, including soldiers, thugs,
and local officials, as well as gang members,
I am curious about the evidence which led to these conclusions about
the case.
*Tigray: almost one in three children under five malnourished, UN says.*
How President Petro's coalition seeks a lasting civil peace in Colombia.
Bogus Johnson invented a "jobs" program designed to pressure unemployed people
to apply for jobs outside their careers. Low-paid jobs, that would be.
The change led to a decrease in Britons' finding work.
The UN is considering regulations to prevent small plastic pellets
("nurdles") from getting into the ocean.
Nancy Davis of Louisiana is pregnant, but the fetus has a fatal
defect. Nonetheless, Louisiana will not allow her to abort it.
US citizens: call on Congress and President Biden to stop DeJoy from
slashing USPS jobs.
US citizens: call on Congress and the President to support a Green
New Deal now.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site, use the Salsalabs workaround.
Walden Bello, socialist candidate in the Philippines, has been charged
with libel and arrested, for criticizing President Marcos and running
mate Duterte.
This is a sign that they are going to be as evil as people have feared.
Google workers are calling on Google to stop donating to antiabortion
politicians.
The US just gave Intel a pile of money, supposedly so it could manufacture
more chips in the US. Instead it has announced a plan to reduce
investments and pay big dividends.
Intel is famous for making processors with malicious hardware, the
Management Engine back door, that users cannot turn off.
*Watchdog: Secret Service Didn't Notify Capitol Police of Threat to
Pelosi Until After Jan. 6 Attack.*
It seems natural that it should have passed along the warning.
Whether this was just a screw-up, or criminally suspect, depends on
background information I don't know.
*Allen Weisselberg, longtime Trump Organization loyalist, pleads
guilty to tax fraud.*
He will testify about the company, but not about the corrupter
personally other than that.
EU countries support the work of some of the Palestinian organizations
that Israel has declared "terrorist". They reject the accusation.
*Police call for Bolsonaro to be charged for spreading Covid
misinformation.*
Chemical pollution is wiping out the animals in England's rivers, by
killing small animals that the larger ones eat.
Most of this pollution is from pesticides used in farms.
29 Hong Kong democracy defenders have plead guilty to political charges
after a year in jail.
The west needs to mine lots more rare earth metals, to end China's
domination of that market; but if it isn't careful, the mining process
will cause disastrous toxic pollution, as it did in China.
The dispute about which country gets gas from the Timor Sea
is heating up again. Australia, or East Timor?
There is only one acceptable decision: nobody.
There is no room in the carbon budget for that gas.
It must stay under the sea.
Other countries should support East Timor so that this
step, necessary for civilization's survival, does not cause
a bigger disaster to East Timor than is going to hit world wide.
A Mexican government commission concluded that the disappearance of 43
Mexican students in 2014 was state-sponsored.
A new app for reporting dissidents has magnified the threat from Crown
Prince Bone Saw to anyone who criticizes the government.
This article doesn't mention the most grave statement that Salma
al-Shehab made while at school in the UK: she stated support for the
women's rights activist, Loujain al-Hathlou, who has been punished for that.
To imprison someone for so little shows repression carried to an almost
Chinese extreme.
A large study of medical records shows that, for people over 65 years
old, Covid-19 leads to an increase of almost 5% in the probability of
having brain fog or dementia in the next two years.
That is a big risk, worth considerable effort to avoid.
The previous mayor of London — Bogus Johnson himself — gave thugs
access to license plate camera images for the inner parts of London.
The current mayor wants to extend this to a much broader area.
The injustice of this is the same regardless of how big an area it
covers. Indeed, tracking cars through their license plates is wrong
in itself. Surveillance of everyone is the soil for repression to grow.
The International Criminal Court is operating, but handicapped because
the world's main powers have not signed the treaty for it. That includes the US.
Big Pharma's condemnation of the bill that allows Medicare to
negotiate bulk drug prices with pharma companies (for some drugs only)
shows the central bogus assumption: whatever increases those
companies' profit is automatically best for patients.
This is the faith of the cult of the Invisible Hand: "the market knows
best," no obey it sheepishly, no matter how much big businesses use
their clout to arrange for bad results.
Israel arbitrarily labeled six Palestinian civil society groups as
"terrorist," without a trial, by passing a law saying, "They are
terrorists."
Then state agents raided the offices of those organizations.
Ask yourself, if Israel stops Palestinians from organized peaceful
defense of their human rights, what alternative they would naturally
turn to.
I greatly miss Uri Avnery, who would have explained the links between
the events, and the newsletter The Other Israel, which would have
given more information.
The story of a 30-year-old man who returned to his old high school,
pretending to be a teenager, and graduated a second time.
I wonder what grounds the medical school cited for expelling him after
that. His giving a false name and age may have been irregular, but
they did not harm anyone, including the medical school. If he was
doing well enough in his studies there, why not regularize his status
instead?
*[London thugs] stop and search powers to target protesters, suggests data.*
A Texas thug threw Christopher Shaw down on the concrete in jail,
and this paralyzed him below the chest. Permanently, it seems.
It is absurd to claim that having an abortion requires more "maturity"
than having a baby, but that's what a judge in Florida ruled.
That teenager needs to get herself to a state which will let her
have an abortion. I hope her guardian will help.
*Hundreds of Google workers demand abortion care protections.*
Hundreds of Google workers called on Google to fund abortions
for contract and part-time workers. Also to stop collecting
data that would expose people to abortion repression.
They also called on Google to stop all lobbying activities.
I think it would be good to stop all businesses from lobbying.
Scientists set out to develop a way to use a computer to follow
references from printed books. But instead of doing this the natural
and general way, they want a way that will only work on books that
are printed in a special, extra expensive way.
The probable Republican candidate for attorney general of Michigan is
suspected of stealing vote tabulator machines, a felony which carries
a 5-year prison sentence.
That probable Republican candidate is a supporter of the wrecker,
and his lies that the 2020 election was stolen.
*Biden can still stop Trump, and Trumpism — if he can find a bold plan and moral vision.*
The law to subsidize semiconductor manufacturers in the US is an unjust
transfer from working people to rich companies and their owners.
It's an example of the bad trend in the Democratic Party
that Reich writes about further on.
An empirical study found children were much more likely to develop
the most common kind of lymphoblastic leukemia if they had been near
a frackwell during gestation.
Black residents of Lexington, Mississippi, are suing the city and its thugs
for persistent racist harassment that goes as far as repeated false arrests.
The former thug chief was fired for boasting about killing blacks,
killings done by predilection and preference, not necessity or
justification.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by
capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry,
capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and
normally I will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
Textile company Saint-Gobain published data about its use of PFAs, but
hid them in plain sight in a stack of 90,000 documents.
US Republicans support Orbán's racist nationalism.
*Putin is banking on a failure of political will in the west before Russia
runs out of firepower.*
The Putin forces' casualty rate is so high that I think Ukraine will
be able to push them out of Ukraine next summer, We must keep supporting
Ukraine that long.
The UK plans to use a snoop-watch to track the movements of some
convicted criminals, The system includes facial recognition to verify
that the intended person is carrying the snoop-watch.
Since this system tracks and recognizes only a specific person, and is
imposed on that person as part of punishment after conviction for a
crime, it is one of the exceptional legitimate uses of facial
recognition and location tracking.
This example also highlights, by the contrast it makes, the injustice
of imposing facial recognition or location tracking on anyone other
than a convict. They are typically imposed combinations of businesses
that are so powerful that they can shape our society. They receive
help from various laws designed to give those companies power.
Carrying a snoop-watch is easier than wearing an ankle-chain,
and is much less painful than being in jail.
The Solomon Islands government is showing various signs of tyranny.
The latest one is direct censorship of the country's public TV/radio
station.
Its secret "security" deal with China is another.
Some countries plan to attack the Inflation Reduction Act's EV credit
with the help of the WTO.
The World Trade Organization is a business-supremacy treaty;
it prioritizes catering to business over all other goals.
The city of Manteca, California, has cancelled a statement it made in
support of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh,
which is a foreign auxiliary
to the RSS in India.
* The biggest fallacy in the online privacy [issue] is that there is a
[real] difference between "state surveillance" and
"commercial surveillance."*
In fact, government surveillance operates through commercial
surveillance. Both wholesale (surveillance of the whole net) and
retail (think of Amazon Ring cameras).
We need to restrict the deployment of massive surveillance systems
regardless of who operates them.
The Tories will cut anything to reduce government spending that
doesn't go to businesses. They have cut 1/5 of the firefighters in
the UK since they took power in 2010.
Finland may stop issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens, to punish
them for Putin's war.
I think it is misguided to punish Russian tourists for Putin's war.
It's not their fault, and excluding them is counterproductive.
Putin maintains an information blockade; any Russians who visit
Finland will come in contact with non-Putinized news.
It also gives Russians an opportunity to leave Russia and not return.
The FBI invited Aswad Khan, a Pakistani who was visiting the US after
attending a university there, to become an informant and go to mosques
to spy on people. Aswad, who was not particularly religious and was
more interested in getting a well-paid job, said no. After that, the
FBI harassed his friends until they cut off all ties with him.
FBI whistleblower Terry Albury says that the FBI regularly does this.
Many American men are getting vasectomies before the Supreme Court
gets a chance to interfere.
Puerto Rico is suffering from widespread official corruption.
Mayors and governors have been charged with crimes.
The article doesn't mention the crushing debts, but I believe they are
the root cause. The US Congress has given Puerto Rico no debt relief,
so it is forced to squeeze the people (even poor people) to pay the loans.
The result is that most everyone who can leave does leave.
I suppose the creditors hope eventually to take control of the
island's land and turn it into tourist resorts and corporate-owned
plantations.
They won't stop with Puerto Rico — they will move on to other parts
of the US.
CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling's thoughts about the prosecution of
Julian Assange. He endorses Rashida Tlaib's proposal to amend the Espionage Act
with a public interest defense.
*One-third of the food we eat is at risk because the climate crisis is
endangering butterflies and bees.*
Before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the Taliban were offering to
make a deal with the US which involved chasing out al-Qa'ida. If Dubya
had accepted the deal, we would never have invaded Afghanistan.
Now US newsmedia — even NPR — are covering up this history.
Why didn't the US accept the deal? I don't know, but whatever the
reason was, it is likely to be the same reason that motivated the US
to reject the Taliban's surrender offer, later in 2001.
Meanwhile, al-Qa'ida is still not very effective in Afghanistan.
I gather that the Taliban consider al-Qa'ida as a troublesome and
unfriendly rival. Next time the US identifies a leader of al-Qa'ida
in Afghanistan, it might be wise to try helping the Taliban deal with
him, rather than attacking him directly.
Poor people in Britain whose pets die feel incomprehensibly attached
to spending money they don't have, for funerals for those pets.
Overattachment to pets, and pets' corpses, leads to a perverse sense
of values. If you are rich and you feel like burying or cremating a
pet, it's harmless. But we must not stand for the idea that people
have an obligation to spend so much on pets that they ruin themselves.
That way of thinking leads to enormities such as abandoning refugees
in Kabul to evacuate a planeload of dogs.
I would feel sorry for Freya when her dog died, but I would not cater
to her mishigas.
The broken aspects of US society are damaging the physical and mental
health of young Americans to the point that military recruiters can't
find enough soldiers.
It may also be the realization that a lot of the fighting the US does
is not justified or not necessary.
Assange's lawyers have sued the CIA for violating their
attorney-client privilege — by spying on their discussions.
The former Australian prime minister, Morrison, bizarrely appointed
himself minister of health, minister of finance, minister of industry,
ministry of science, minister of energy, minister of home affairs
(policing), and minister of the treasury — without informing the
public, or even the officially appointed ministers of those issues.
Apparently this meant that the officially appointed ministers remained
ministers, but Morrison could override them at will. When he actually
did so, did the officially appointed ministers find out what he had done?
Or was that concealed from them somehow?
I wonder if Morrison was inspired by the wrecker's practice of
dismissing the heads of agencies and departments and leaving those to
be run by acting heads. This might have had an equivalent effect.
In Australia, the governor general (representative of the British
crown) is responsible for swearing in ministers. He quietly
participated in this abuse of the Australian governmental system.
There is a movement in Australia to cut its tie with Great Britain and
become a republic. I have a feeling supporters will point to this as
a reason to remove the British crown from the process.
Morrison, who apparently couldn't keep track of all the things he was
personally the minister of, said there was "no sense of bad faith in
it." That may be true — he may be so inured to practicing bad faith
that he has no conscious awareness of it.
*Britain has been avoiding its biggest problems for decades. Now we’re
paying the price.*
It has been avoiding these problems because correcting them required
rich people's money, and those rich people refused to participate
in saving the country.
Psychotherapists and other practitioners of mental health
are on strike against Kaiser Permanente.
This seems to be a consequence of the increasing frequency of psychological
problems in the US.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and a defeated Republican congressional candidate
advocated voter fraud at a rally.
This makes a bizarre contrast with her attacks on supposed Democratic
voter fraud, whose existence can't be found anyway. Does she believe
fraud is wrong only for Democrats?
60% of Americans that rent housing are worried about whether they can
pay the rent in the coming year.
The governor of Mississippi (a Republican, or course) cancelled the
state's federally-funded rent assistance program. He said, though in
different words, that helping poor people pay rent made their lives
too easy.
Drought in the US west will require big cuts in water use for Arizona,
California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.
For now, they must reduce usage 15%, but the drought may get worse and they
may have to cut more.
The drought will surely get worse if we don't curb global heating.
Bolsonaro is trying to use the Evangelical Taliban to attack democracy
in Brazil. Lula has responded by saying that Bolsonaro is possessed
by the devil.
That would be entirely plausible, if there were a real devil that
could really possess people.
(satire) *City's Primary Investment In Community Comes Through Police
Department's Wrongful Death Settlements.*
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An empirical test found that Facebook systematically accepted election
disinformation ads for Brazil's upcoming election.
(satire) *New Texas Law Requires Gun Buyers To Show Proof Of Mental
Illness.*
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Republican state officials are going to extreme lengths to punish
businesses that recognize the danger of global heating.
Ricardo dos Santos, a black man, was stopped in a car by British thugs
for the third time in two years, for no obvious reason.
He alleges racial profiling and threatens to sue.
US citizens: call on your senators to prioritize judicial nominations
when they return from recess.
Peru is recruiting fire prevention brigades to supervise farmers' fires
and make sure they do not get out of control.
code.org's new high school course in programming involves stricter-than-ever
monitoring of teachers.
The motive for this is another bad practice: running the students' and
teachers' programs on servers, rather than on local computers.
Since 1980, Americans have tended overall to die younger than people
in other developed countries; since then, the problem has grown.
In 2019, 2/3 of a million more Americans died than would have died
if the US had been like those other countries.
Part of the problem is that the US lacks the national universal
medical system that other developed countries have. Another part is
that the US lacks the welfare system that other developed countries
have. Also contributing is the plutocratist politics of the US,
which impoverish an increasing fraction of Americans. Other social
problems in the US contribute too.
*A universal healthcare system utilizing a single-payer model in the
state will save California families and businesses over $100 billion
per year.*
That is in addition to thousands of lives, of people who under the
current system go untreated.
When cars record locations, the data is available to advertisers,
insurance companies, and uniformed thugs. Cars must offer a dashboard
switch to stop them from determining their locations.
Cars must also offer a dashboard switch to stop the car from sending
out signals by which other systems could track them.
Toll payment systems must offer an anonymous method so that they don't
track you either.
In Britain it is not unusual for people present at a murder to be
convicted of murder on the basis of a weak association with the
murderer.
Some US states do this too.
America does not owe Manchin anything, and especially not cooperation
with his plan to undermine environmental protection. He has broken deals
with Biden.
In addition to maintaining environmental regulations, we should reject
the idea that gutting them would be "reform".
*"Dictatorship Never Again": Massive Pro-Democracy Protests Sweep Brazil.*
This after a million Brazilians signed a petition against the return to
dictatorship which Bolsonaro threatens.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the Pentagon's unmonitored
proxy wars.
Here's a description of unmonitored proxy wars. The US has built up a
world-wide secret program of training military proxy forces in many
countries. The US sends them on missions to fight anyone that the US
considers enemies.
Europe's wildfires have burned 2500 square miles so far this year,
breaking the record.
*Weeks of heat above 100F will be the norm in much of US by 2053,
study [predicts].*
Putin is using westerners in the Ukrainian army as hostages,
employing his sock puppet regime, the "Donetsk People's Republic",
to threaten to kill them.
If it goes ahead with this, those responsible, from Putin on down,
should face charges of murder. In the mean time, it would be
appropriate to send commando teams to seize officials involved in this
hostage plot, so as to offer to trade them for the hostages.
US citizens: call on Congress to make Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz
testify about blatant union-busting.
Congress has failed to extend the increase the child tax credit, which is about to expire. Millions of Americans whose income is insufficient will suffer terribly from this.
Republican followers of the wrecker are making lots of threats against
the FBI and other federal agencies. And against individual agents.
I think they are nerving each other for another violent fascist
uprising, with the wrecker leading them on again.
Actions that Biden could take to reduce the enormous salaries that
corporate CEOs often get nowadays.
Here are technical details.
Kaspersky discovered this example by chance, but is unable to
check in general for the presence of such rootkits in computers.
Nonfree software does not make your computer secure — it does the
opposite: it prevents you from trying to secure it. Sadly, computers
today are typically sold with nonfree UEFI software,
required for booting, which is impossible to replace: in
effect, a low-level rootkit. All the things that Intel has done to
make its power over you secure against you also protect UEFI-level
rootkits against you.
Instead of allowing Intel, AMD, Apple and perhaps ARM to impose
security through tyranny, we should legislate to require them to allow
users to install their choice of startup software, and make available
the information needed to develop such. Think of this as
right-to-repair at the initialization stage.
PFAs have spread through the world to the point that they are present
in rainwater everywhere. There is nowhere on Earth that rainwater
meets the new EPA standard for acceptable levels.
An assassin attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife as the latter was
about to give a talk.
Rushdie is seriously injured, and may lose an eye. But he can still
think, and still speak.
Senator Warren has launched a Senate investigation of the danger that
Republican abortion persecution poses to pregnant Americans, including those that do want to have a baby, and those that don't.
*Even low levels of air pollution can damage health
, study finds.*
Don't panic, though — a tiny concentration of air pollution will
normally do a tiny amount of harm, which is hard to measure without a
sample of millions.
In the absence of any standard of perfection (keep air pollution under
level L and it will do exactly zero damage), how should we decide how
much to work to reduce air pollution? It's a matter of how the danger
from air pollution stacks up against all the other dangers we face.
Suppose we decide to spend a billion dollars on public health, which
allocation of funds would we rationally expect to make the biggest
improvement? Part of that plan could be spending to reduce air
pollution.
*The Democrats' climate bill is a historic victory. But we can't stop
here.*
The bullshitter's supposed defenses for taking the secret government
documents home are bullshit.
That does not imply he will be prosecuted. The government may be
satisfied with having recovered the documents. But it is important
for him to be prosecuted.
Three members of Congress propose to block using the Espionage Act
against journalists.
However, their bill would not offer a public-interest defense to protect
whistleblowers.
(satire) *[Thugs] Claim Unarmed Black Man They
Shot Was Attacking Them With Psychic Hallucinations.*
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The attack on Salman Rushdie demonstrates the need to fight censorship
from any and all directions.
See my article about Hrant Dink, who was ready to fight censorship
from all directions.
A senior Hungarian judge condemns the government's interference with
courts.
Some Taliban officials sneakily send their daughters outside of
Afghanistan to get an education.
Thugs at an Arizona school, which they had "locked down", attacked
parents who were trying to get their children.
The UK used torture and murder systematically in the 1950s to fight
the Mau Mau movement in Kenya. Then it blocked and suppressed an
investigation into this.
*"You often hear people say in Britain that it was acceptable by the
standards of the time. And I think documents like this really
illustrate that, no, people at the time knew this was wrong as well."*
(satire) *FBI Sent Itemized Bill For 12-Hour Stay At Mar-A-Lago.*
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Delta Airlines fired Leondra Taylor for posting a cartoon showing the
corrupter with a Ku Klux Klan hood. The company called this cartoon
"disrespectful, hateful or discriminatory", which is quite a distortion.
Taylor is suing.
In the 20th century, many US amusement parks practiced excluded
blacks, in some cases violently. This was not only in the south; it
occurred even in New York City.
Nowadays, black customers face hostility from staff at some amusement
parks, as at Sesame Place. With so many racists in the US, that is
going to happen randomly. But is it more than that? It could be that
that particular park has a habit of bigotry among its staff.
A report examines the specific way Cheniere Energy's greenwashing
bends the facts about the methane it trades in.
The anti-anti-racist Republican governor of Oklahoma is harassing the
Tulsa city school department. One thing she did was label it as
"deficient" for allegedly showing a video that shamed white students
for being white, which is prohibited now.
The school department replied that the video (1) didn't try to shame
anyone alive today and (2) was shown before that law was adopted
anyway.
Republicans have made it standard practice to stretch laws and twist
facts. With a little private pressure and harassment on the side,
they can hope to win a victory for injustice.
Women protested again in Kabul, chanting "bread, work and freedom."
Taliban thugs hit them with rifle butts.
As we remember the death threat Ayatollah Khomeini made against Salman
Rushdie, we should also show our disapproval to those who call for
retreating in the face of bullies that try to ban books.
Nowadays, Muslim extremists are not the only group that tries to bully
people into banning books. For the sake of freedom of thought, we
need to resist all such campaigns.
Here is the inaugural address of Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia.
The new 1% tax on stock buybacks will make those corporations pay
a little more tax.
That is a step forward.
It also sets a precedent: if we can tax them 1% today, we can tax them
25% next year. If we keep raising that, eventually the percentage
will get big enough to discourage buybacks.
*Four Key Climate Questions About the Inflation Reduction Act.*
One of the wrecker's Jan 6 coup mob attacked an FBI office with guns,
and was eventually shot dead.
I expect the wrecker and his followers to praise the gunman.
A team of scientists concludes that Sars-Cov-2 almost certainly entered
humans in the wild animal market in Wuhan.
I think the question of how the virus started infecting humans is
interesting, but not morally important. Its importance is only to
affect precisely what we might learn about how to prevent future
epidemics.
It could be that we already know the crucial lessons for preventing
pandemics from starting from wild animals, and for preventing
pandemics from starting from lab leaks, and all we need not is to put
them into practice. Regardless of which path this virus followed, we
know both dangers exist.
The Mediterranean Sea ecosystems are threatened by marine heat waves.
An activist campaigning against voter fraud in Wisconsin ordered mail-in
ballots for other people, found it was easy to do, then went public.
It would be wrong to file charges against the activist. He did not
try to vote using those ballots. But what should the state do instead?
In effect, he tried to demonstrate that the state doesn't have much
security against this sort of fraud. Apparently that is true. Is
that a real problem?
If people actually use this "security hole" for fraud, I think it is a
real problem and the state should fix it.
On the other hand, if nobody really does this, maybe the system is not
really broken and there is no need to fix it.
Australia holds hundreds of people in prison without a conviction for
any crime, and has no statistics about why, or how many.
*The strategy that worked in Kansas [for defending abortion rights]
— countering misinformation, building a broad coalition —
offers lessons for [other states].*
Republicans defeated the bill to limit the price of insulin.
California's approach, manufacturing insulin to compete with the giants,
may work better. Forcing the established companies to tolerate more
competitors could work too.
My proposed giant-splitting and competition-boosting tax scheme
could do it also.
*An Accused War Criminal Trained Florida [Thugs] in "New Concepts of Shooting."*
EU countries are helping France fight large wildfires.
Of course, they ought to help each other. But that won't be
enough in 20 years when they all face large wildfires at once.
The interaction between waves and shore is a complex system; a sea
wall can prevent erosion at one point while exacerbating it elsewhere
in the region. Scientists are developing permeable obstacles that
slow down the ocean waves, to protect shore and land from erosion.
These measures can be effective against erosion, but not against
inundation. Therefore, they are temporary expedients, presuming that
we curb global heating and prevent the coming inundation.
Inland wetlands can buffer against floods and drought (and therefore
also against fire).
I am skeptical of the "biodiversity net gain" requirement.
Constructing a new wetland is surely not as simple as it sounds, so it
is likely that businesses will often follow the rules but produce no
real new wetland. If a development has destroyed an old wetland and
failed to create a new one, what does the government do?
The FBI raid on the corrupter's home was looking for secret documents
that nobody was allowed to take home, and it found quite a few.
California could experience a series of atmospheric rivers that would
add up to an enormous flood, that could flood millions of people's
homes.
As global heating continues, the likelihood of such a flood will increase.
The Markup investigated 80,000 popular web sites and reports on
how much they snoop on users. Almost 70,000 had third-party trackers.
5,000 fingerprinted the browser to identify users. 12,000 recorded
the user's mouse clicks and movements.
A natural gas company urged Australia to forget its climate defense target
so that the company can drill.
A journalist describes how she learned to break away from right-wing
Christianity, and how she copes with the resulting breach with her
family.
Massachusetts residents: call on Governor Baker to sign the abortion
access bill.
Nixon talked with the South Vietnamese generals in 1968, urging them
to obstruct President Johnson's peace negotiations. Both parties
expected progress towards peace would help the prospects of Nixon's
Democratic opponent.
Nixon even discussed this with the bankers that backed him.
Nixon's actions may have been a violation of the Logan Act, so having
the FBI investigate was proper. Even supposing they were not illegal,
they were treacherous in spirit.
Ultimately, Johnson decided to keep the secret reports that proved
Nixon's treachery, so as to avoid stimulating distrust of the US
government when Nixon was at its head. That was well meant, though we
would today consider it naive and foolish.
Johnson also had one of his officials take those secret documents away
rather than leaving them in the White House. The article says nothing
about the motivation for this, but perhaps it was to make sure that
Nixon's treachery would be revealed some day — decades in the future.
He may have been afraid Nixon would destroy them.
Some Louisiana Christians hate same-sex couples, but interestingly
many other do not.
I think it is unfortunate when children are taught a religion. but
I still appreciate the good news that some Christian schools reject
the usual Christian hatreds.
*Koch Network Uses National Philanthropic Trust to Conceal Transactions.*
Coercive control (among individuals) is based on threats to cause pain. Often these involve physical violence, but it takes different
forms from violence in other contexts.
*Election lies [and therefore the Republican Party that encourages
those lies] pose physical threat to US poll workers, House report
warns.*
* Officials at the DHS’s office of inspector general said their attempts
to inform Congress [about deleted text messages] in April were thwarted
[by its leaders].*
* [The author has] documented 61 cases from the years 2000 to 2020 in
which people have been criminally investigated or arrested for
self-managing their own abortion or helping someone else do so; the
majority of these cases exclusively involved abortion medication.*
Despite the climate bill (which was passed), Biden must still declare
a climate emergency and stop approving fossil fuel projects.
(satire) *China Threatens To Retaliate For Pelosi's Taiwan Trip By
Letting Her Return Safely.*
Shell is using every spare pound for stock buy-backs. Investing in
renewables, it is not interested in.
Stock buy-backs used to be illegal in the US. There is no reason to
permit them now. But we should not depend on fossil fuel companies to
invest in renewable energy. We should charge them a lot of tax, and
have the government fund investment in renewable energy.
To actually do that depends on electing more progressive legislators;
talking about this is the way we get there.
The House passed the climate/tax/drug price bill, so it will soon be
law.
If Democrats increase their lead in the Senate, maybe they can get rid
of the bad parts next year.
On the obstacles to having a serious political discussion about future human
population.
Just as discussion of reducing the human population is insufficient
without discussing reducing per-capita consumption, so discussion of
reducing per-capita consumption is insufficient without discussing
reducing the human population.
Climate disaster will eventually reduce the human population with
millions of deaths, but if we want to do it by reducing births
instead, we need to plan it.
*On Their 57th Anniversary, Medicare and Medicaid Remain Under Threat.*
*Since 2021, Big Oil Has Spent Over $200 Million to Sabotage Climate
Action: Analysis.*
*Facebook and Anti-Abortion Clinics Are Collecting Highly Sensitive Info on
Would-Be Patients.*
The "Inflation Reduction Act" is a good start at climate defense, but
only a little in other areas.
More on what it does to do Medicare.
Academic luminaries praise the new Chilean constitution.
*Yellen directs IRS not to use new funding to increase chances of audits of
Americans making less than $400,000.*
There are limits on the amount of fossil fuel energy that we can effectively
extract and usefully combust.
If we decarbonize rapidly, those limits may not matter.
Otherwise, we may actually hit peak oil.
About 5% of the people who catch Covid-19 have problems with taste and
smell for at least 6 months afterwards — bad enough to make life horrible.
Waiting 6 months for my enjoyment of food to recover, I could live
with. Waiting years would be a fate worse than death. I wonder what
fraction suffer loss of taste and smell for years?
Australia's new government has undermined its climate defense plans by
encouraging new natural gas extraction projects and describing natural
gas as an "ally" of decarbonization.
A precipitous gas shortage and price spike would cause a crisis; that
is not desirable. What Australia needs (like the rest of the world)
is a planned, steady and predictable rise in the price of gas.
That's easy to do with a tax, scheduling tax increases annually
until decades from now.
*[Australian] Greens urge Labor to reject international carbon offsets
as "accounting tricks."*
Sometimes they are accounting tricks; sometimes they are outright
fraud. Sometimes they are mere gambling. We can't predict global
heating well enough to know which "carbon offsets" will really deliver
emissions reductions in future.
UPS drivers face intolerable working conditions, including 14-hour shifts
working in heat that endangers their health.
European countries have given the US and Iran a "take-it-or-leave-it"
final text for the
non-nuclear deal.
Let's hope they take it, because that will be a victory over nuclear
proliferation. And a step towards reducing hostilities between the US
and Iran.
*Koch-Controlled Organizations Spent More Than $1.1
Billion During the 2020
Election Cycle.*
Ukraine has fought the Putin forces to a standstill. Some American
progressives want to stop the fighting before
Ukraine can retake any of
the conquered provinces.
That would pull Ukraine's defeat from the jaws of victory.
The article speaks of using diplomacy to make Putin return captured
territory, but it would never work. Putin is doing very well at
standing up to western diplomatic pressure and sanctions.
Chronicling the corrupter's campaign to reduce US military leaders to
give their loyalty to him personally,
rather than to the United States.
When the corrupter demanded a military parade in Washington DC,
General Selva (who grew up in Portugal under the rule of a dictator)
told him, "That's what dictators do." Alas, I doubt that convinced
the would-be autocrat the parade was a bad idea.
After this, various officials worked hard repeatedly to block the wrecker
from launching a coup, a war, or bloody repression in the streets.
Guber is still running at a loss,
even after raising its prices.
Guber is unjust to workers because it pay them peanuts. It is unjust
to customers because it
Please join in wiping out Uber!
More information about the FBI raid that
seized government records from
the corrupter's home.
In Australia, powerful senators are demanding that the government
erase the
housing aid debts of states.
"private equity" parasites gave Senator Sinema $500 million in campaign
funds this year,
to pay her to protect their low income tax rate.
Even worse than their low tax rate is the way these so-called
"investors" destroy companies. Years after the demise of Pay less Shoe
Source, which I used to be a customer of, I have found no physical
stores that sell the things I used to buy there. That is just one
example of many.
The two Tory contenders to replace Bogus Johnson stand for
neoliberal-ism. Their ideology says that the government should do
nothing to correct Britain's devastating problems,
because interfering with
the market is a sin.
Laissez faire, laissez mourir.
In practice, that means they do nothing to stop businesses from
squeezing money out of the non-rich. The billionaires that fund the
Tory party must find that convenient.
Google said it would "delete" location data that show visits to
"sensitive" locations, which include
abortion clinics and some other
places.
In regard to location data, it is a good first step, but limited. It
is limited because
Most crucially, it doesn't include the places where you might someday
arrange to meet a
reporter to disclose a crime committed by the state.
I am not sure what it means to say they "delete" this data rather than
not storing it. Is it just another way of saying the same thing?
If it really means something tangible, it seems like a risky mistake.
US citizens: support striking workers at Maximus, who demand
more toilet breaks and sick leave.
US citizens: call on the eight Democratic holdouts on minimum wage to
raise wages for working Americans now.
US citizens: call on the SEC
regulate corporations to impede greenwashing.
The new, effective treatment for Hepatitis C is so expensive that 2/3 of
the Americans who catch it don't get treated.
This failure of the medical system used to happen only in poor countries,
but now even the US is becoming a poor country (for most of its inhabitants).
Tennessee has made it a crime to camp on the street in a tent.
Is it permissible to camp without a tent and get wet and sick?
(satire) *SNAP Recipients Now Required To Prove Need [i.e., hunger] By
Eating All Their Groceries On Spot.*
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(satire) *Prison Charges Inmate $1 Per Minute For Time With Photo Of Family.*
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*Global heating has caused ‘shocking’ changes in forests
across the Americas,
studies find.*
Trees are advancing to the north, and dying or burning in the south.
*Melting of the world's biggest ice sheet [the East Antarctic] would cause catastrophic sea level rise, but
can be avoided with fast climate action.*
*Inside Somalia’s vicious cycle of
deforestation for charcoal.*
Reportedly, al-Shabaab is trying to prohibit cutting trees with leaves,
and having some success enforcing the prohibition by burning trucks
caught carrying such wood. A democratic government might be able to
enforce the rule with less brutality, but this may be better than
nothing in the long term.
In a world of growing scarcity, the long-term non-brutal solution is
(1) decarbonization and (2) much fewer births.
ISTR that Haiti has suffered for decades from a similar problem;
nearly all the forests have been cut down.
Colombia's new president Gustavo Petro declared that
fighting the war on drugs
has failed.
but he means, fighting that war on Colombia's territory has failed. He's
right about that. But he seems not to realize that fighting that war
on US territory is equally a failure. "Strong measures that prevent
consumption in developed societies" is not a solution to the problems
caused by use of addictive drugs.
We should put that war into a treatment program to get it off drugs.
The corrupter said, "Only guilty people and mobsters plead the Fifth."
This week, he did just that,
while being questioned for a lawsuit.
It's tempting to say, "He's guilty, or he's a mobster — he said so himself!"
But it's wrong to say that, because the "rule" he cited was bullshit all along.
To treat it as valid is to undermine the Fifth Amendment itself, and we
must not do that.
We have plenty of other reasons to believe that the corrupter is guilty
of trying to overthrow the US government and seize power, as well as swindling
in his fund-raising.
Not yet proof that can put him away, though.
To whip inflation in the US, we need to stop big businesses from
raising prices from greed.
The way I prefer is to break up the many large companies that have too
big a share of whatever market. Rather than launch a lawsuit against
each excessively large company,
I recommend a tax system that raises the
tax rate sharply as a company gets bigger, or as it gets a bigger share
of each market.
Death Valley suffered flooding from unusual heavy rainfall.
At least no homes were flooded, since nobody lives there.
A right-wing t-shirt company, which supports the corrupter, has been
fined for fraudulently labeling its shirts "Made in the USA".
In fact, they were made in China.
What else would you expect from people that support someone who boasts
of lying.
Privatized water companies in Britain are profiteering while draining
their customers. That's what privatizing a government service tends to do, and the Tories
that did it probably were aiming for that result.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to vote for the
"Inflation reduction bill" (which includes climate defense, a little
more tax on the rich, and reducing some medicine prices), which the
Senate already passed.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Amazon wants to purchase One Medical, a medical treatment company
which holds lots of patients' medical records. And if it can
purchase iRobot, which makes robot vacuum cleaners, it can collect
data about the lives of the people who use them.
The corrupter could be put in prison for years for taking
secret documents home, or for destroying them.
I don't understand why Risen proposes to involving the Espionage Act
in this. That would be very dangerous, because it could legitimize
the misuse of that law to prosecute whistleblowers.
Until the day we change that law to protect whistleblowers, whose
"crime" is to tell the people about the state's actions, we must not
lump them together with people like the corrupter who take secret
documents in order to deny the state access to them and block it from
functioning.
Phoenix, Arizona, is so hot that people doing nothing more than walk around
are collapsing and need urgent rescue.
The abortion charges against Celeste Burgess and Jessica Burgess are
based on a subpoena for their Facebook messages.
The only communication systems you can safely use to discuss abortion
plans in the US now are those which do not save any record — either
in a central server or in your own device.
China's communications about Taiwan are monomaniacal intimidation pretending
to be friendship.
It's similar to coercive control, but on an international scale.
(satire) *Relieved [corrupter] Thought Mar-A-Lago Raid Was About All
The Bodies.
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
* Pentagon contractors operating in Afghanistan over the past two
decades raked in nearly $108 billion—funds that "were distributed
and spent with a significant lack of transparency," according to a
report published Tuesday.*
*AIPAC's New Political Strategy: Spend Millions on Elections Without
Mentioning Israel.*
*With Antitrust Bills Stalled, Watchdogs Demand Schumer Disclose Big Tech
Donations.* They suspect him of being paid to block those bills from getting a vote.
(satire) Reminding would-be mass shooters that it has become old hat,
and people would hardly even remember their names.
If an Onion page appears blank, try disabling JavaScript entirely or
telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Proposing credit card companies warn when someone orders large
supplies of guns and ammunition.
I think this is a good idea. The interference with privacy would be
very narrow, and little by comparison with the things we are fighting
against.
*Biden Administration Plans for Legal Psychedelic Therapies Within Two
Years.*
We must expect Republicans to demonize this with lies and
exaggerations.
FBI agents searched the corrupter's home at Mar-a-Lago, looking for
secret government papers he was not allowed to remove from the files.
Naturally they had to look inside his safe, but if "breaking in"
implies damaging the safe, that was gratuitous. Thugs often cause
gratuitous damage to people when they search. and many of those people
aren't rich like the corrupter and can't shrug off the cost of those
damages
They should have given him — and anyone whose premises they search
— the chance to open things for them and avoid damage.
However, there is no reason to suppose he was honest about this.
(He's not usually honest.) Maybe the safe was opened without damaging
it.
*Emmett Till: woman whose accusation led to [his] lynching will not be
charged.*
I think this verdict was inevitable. If her story is true, it implies
she is not responsible for the murder of Emmet Till. If she is lying,
she might be co-responsible in some way, but there is no evidence about
what it may have been, let alone any proof.
The people who really should have been convicted of murder were the
people who killed him. They were acquitted by a racist jury.
If that were to happen today, the murderers would face federal civil
rights charges, as well as state charges. The conviction of Ahmaud
Arbery's killers suggests that the US has learned to be less racist in
its justice than it was in 1955. Maybe some day it will learn to be
even less racist.
*Brazilians fear return to dictatorship as
"deranged" Bolsonaro trails in
polls.*
Like the wrecker in the US, Bolsonaro has talked about refusing to
hand
over power peacefully.
People fear he will try to organize mobs on Brazil's
independence day to overthrow democracy, perhaps arranging a false flag
attack on them as an excuse.
As Greenland's ice melts and exposes some areas of land, people
are
prospecting for rare metals.
There are no established ecosystems on those areas, but mining can
spread pollution in many ways. It could pollute the land so that
plants can't grow there; it can pollute the nearby seas.
Investigation finds probable racism in how British thugs applied the rules
for
fines for violating Covid rules.
They were supposed to apply their discretion to make fines a last resort;
now ever, they were much quicker to fine black.
The article linked to just 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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
Worshipers of the Invisible Hand have seriously proposed that people
should become corporations and sell shares in
themselves to raise
funds to invest in their education.
That's effectively a way of selling a fraction of yourself into
slavery. A few may become successful, while many become controlled by
their shareholders. The rich who own the shares will dominate the
decisions about the laws to regulate this system.
The book, The Unincorporated Man by Kollin and Kollin, describes a
future world in which this has happened. The people in that world are
used to the system and defend it, but at the end we see that forces
everyone to be partly owned by whoever buys stock in them.
Please do not get it from
Amazon!
The US military uses a highly polluting method (burn pits) to dispose
of most kinds of
inconvenient waste in deployment bases.
It causes avoidable injury to US solders, and also to the local
civilians. But it's cheap for the Pentagon, supposing it doesn't bear
the cost of treating those injuries. Now it will have to pay to treat
the US veterans, but not the local civilians.
Don't forget about the diseases caused to both US soldiers and local civilians
by
Depleted Uranium.
*Nebraska teen and her mother charged for
aborting and burying fetus.*
Some of the charges are about doing things with a "dead body". It is
absurd to consider a fetus a dead body, but antiabortionists push for
anything that classifies a fetus as a human being for any specific
purpose in any specific circumstance, regarding that as a step closer
to classifying abortion as murder.
Roe v Wade did not legalize abortion after 6 months except with
certain specific grounds. I wonder if any of those grounds applied
here — and also why she did not have an abortion earlier.
China is going all out to intimidate US support for Taiwan, even "breaking off" discussions on curbing
global heating.
Not that China was cooperating very much anyway: it continues to build new coal-fired generating plants, and its target for (the weak goal of) "net zero"
is 2060.
China has recently experienced disastrous floods and faces the danger of fatal weather in the
North China Plain.
China's rulers are arrogant but not crazy. The only thing that can convince them to try hard to decarbonize is awareness of what will happen if they don't.
The US is also doing far too little to decarbonize, though the
just-passed climate, welfare and tax law is a step forward.
Texas governor Abbott is having state officials force border-crossers
onto buses to New York City,
even though they wanted to go elsewhere.
It would be a kindness to offer them rides to New York City, if they
had the choice to decline the offer without being punished.
Misrepresenting this mistreatment as such a kindness is a big lie,
a typical Republican act.
China's missile interdiction of seas near Taiwan was such a large exercise
that it was
probably planned for months.
Pelosi's visit was a convenient excuse, an opportunity to put the blame
on her.
The great danger is that it shows that China can cut off Taiwan's
maritime trade just by firing missiles. To prevent that requires some
way of making it cost China more than it costs Taiwan.
A Republican candidate for attorney general of Michigan is accused of
plotting to
tamper with voting machines after the 2020 election.
The coach of a college football team has been forced to resign after
he started reading aloud the text on a distracted student's iBad, and
in the
process recited some taboo word.
The word is so taboo that CNN dares not say what it was — and indeed,
it hardly matters which taboo word it was. I presume it was a slur of
some sort.
The ethical issue here is whether to treat such slurs as insults,
wrong to use as insults because that unjustifiably nasty, or treat
them as taboos. Do people deserve punishment for inadvertently
breaching taboos?
The coach believes that even though the words he spoke were not his
words, his violation of the taboo was such a grave sin that he
deserves to be shunned and lose his job for quoting them carelessly.
By doing that, he lets down other future people condemned for
violating taboos. If he had to resign, he should have done so
without admitting guilt.
If you step on a flagstone that has a taboo word inscribed on it,
should you be shunned? How about if you are photographed near a sign
(in a non-English-speaking country perhaps) which has a taboo word on
it? Should you be fired for that? Is "what people might think" more
important than what really happened?
Using slurs to insult someone is nasty and wrong. But we ought to
know better than to punish people for violating taboos. To do so
indicates a lack of moral reflection.
61 Oklahoma legislators called on the state to re-investigate whether
Richard Glossip is really guilty. They believe there is no evidence
that he committed the murder he is scheduled to be executed for.
Some people can forgive great wrongs; others simply can't. It's not a matter of choice.
This suggests to me that society's treatment of criminals should not
be based on whether their specific victims can forgive the crimes.
Society needs to pardon the criminals eventually, if that helps make
society whole, even if the victims can't.
*Climate research finds modeling used [by central banks] cannot
predict localized extreme weather, leading to poor estimations of
risk.*
US citizens: The climate, tax and welfare bill passed the Senate, but
hasn't passed the House of Representatives. Big Pharma is lobbying to
kill the part that will reduce drug prices. Please phone your
representative to support it.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Military challenges Ukraine faces in recapturing Kherson.
I believe it is possible. The Putin forces soldiers have no reason to
fight to the death, if Ukraine shows they will be safe if they
surrender.
*Photos suggest Trump blocked toilets with ripped-up White House documents.*
Destroying those documents may have been illegal.
The Putin forces are using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as
a shield for their artillery, firing cannons from near the plant's facilities.
Meanwhile, they are interfering with proper maintenance of the plant.
The dental part of the UK's National Health Service has collapsed;
many Britons can't find a dentist to treat them.
*Climate impacts have worsened vast range of human diseases.*
They include Zika, malaria, dengue, chikungunya and even Covid-19.
*Democrats lose effort to cap insulin at $35 for most Americans before passage
of Senate reconciliation bill.*
*The Danger of Empathy.*
*Amazon [(the company)'s] carbon emissions up 40% but somehow still on
track for "net zero" by 2040.*
The right-wing government of the UK does exactly as Adam Smith warned:
it crushes the non-rich and panders to the rich.
It goes as far as murder.
As Aneurin Bevan said, the Tories are lower than vermin.
Texas threatens to prosecute any Texas organization that funds travel
out of Texas for an abortion, and to sue any individual who provides
such funds.
This is terrorism. Fanatical right-with Christian Taliban terrorism.
Activists in 13 countries that propose to negotiate a new
business-supremacy treaty warn that it may become another iteration of
the Trance Pacific Partnership,
also known as the Pacific Partnership Trance.
The new treaty has a name, IPEF, and a likely bad result
because of which countries are involved.
Poor children wore body cameras in New Zealand to contribute to a picture
of what life in poverty is like.
A study like this can have good results, but we need to take steps
to prevent poor people from being lured, tricked or forced to contribute
to massive surveillance.
*Assange family barred from taking book about WikiLeaks founder into
Australia's parliament.*
*It's time to ban private jets — or at least tax them to the ground.*
I favor taxing them heavily, because sufficient tax should make them
insignificant as a contribution to global heating, and we can use the
money. Prohibiting private jets as tax deductions would also help greatly.
*Massive Quantities of PFAS Waste Go Unreported to EPA.*
A bubble barrier is removing most of the plastic particles from the
Oud Rijn river, with a modicum of energy and little human labor.
Republicans have been increasing income taxes and cutting support for
working people for 40 years, but they are not satisfied, so they are
proposing extreme ideas for how to do even worse. Ron Johnson
proposes to make Social Security and Medicare payments a year-by-year
decision.
People like Ron Johnson and Rick Scott deserve to be sentenced to live
on $100 a week, and forbidden to receive gifts except through begging
from strangers.
Governor Dementis advocates a long list of right oppressive right-wing
policies. One that is subtle and long term is the distortion of
civics education in favor of government promotion (effectively,
establishment) of religion.
The campaign to limit use of facial recognition has stalled, and some
regulations are being reversed, or expiring.
What makes facial recognition so dangerous is its capacity to track
everyone's movements. The only legitimate cases for using it are
in systems that cannot be used to track everyone's movements.
To use it for "lead generation" is exactly the danger.
*Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that
wise?*
It was a very risky bet. For such a bet to be wise, you need to be
very sure of the dynamics of the situation. I don't think any
political group can validly be that confident.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the DISCLOSE Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the assault weapons ban.
People have criticized this proposed law for drawing the line in not
exactly the right place. Perhaps that is true — but it is a step in
the right direction, even if it doesn't end up in exactly the right
place. It includes a ban on selling large magazines, and that will
generally reduce the number killed in mass shootings.
Although most people killed by guns are killed by handguns,
that doesn't make this measure ineffective — only less than perfect.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness
Act.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to reject new oil/gas leases.
US citizens: call on the Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act.
US citizens: call on Biden and Blinken to prevent home demolitions in
Masafer Yatta, Palestine.
US citizens: call on NOAA to designate the underwater Hudson Canyon
as a national marine sanctuary.
US citizens: call on the Department of Justice to prosecute the wrecker
for his conspiracy to steal the election.
US citizens: call on Congress and Biden to make the federal minimum
wage $15.
*Trump's worst toadies hold degrees from Harvard and Yale. Did they
learn anything [there]?*
*By taunting the US ‘paper tiger’, China risks provoking a backlash over Taiwan.*
Neither the US nor China is engaging in uncalculated emotional
reaction. Both countries are pursuing their conflicting goals,
driven by the strategic logic.
China's rulers' goal is to conquer Taiwan; this is not speculation, it
is what they say. As long as that does not change, the idea of
"stabilizing" this confrontation for the long term is self-delusion
because China won't accept that as an outcome.
China's "reactions" to whatever happens are not spontaneous emotion.
They are planned actions by officials, aiming at the goal of
conquering Taiwan. Sometimes they go softer, sometimes harder, but
either way it is tactics.
One of China's tactics — China uses it because it is effective — is
to twist the US up in the contradiction between its "one China" policy
and treating Taiwan as independent. In the long run, that
contradiction will be debilitating; so if the US is to protect
Taiwan's independence, it must move away from the "one China" policy.
China will threaten to break off relations, etc.; the US must respond,
"We can't prevent you from doing that, but you'll hurt yourself more
than you hurt us." Then it must stand firm until China comes to face
facts.
Smoke from wildfires harms people even thousands of miles away. A
small concentration harms a smaller number of people but isn't
harmless.
Since even wealthy people don't know how to protect themselves, we
should have programs that aim at protecting everyone. Or perhaps
everyone with asthma, if only people with asthma are particularly in
danger.
In the long run, we can expect wealthy people to pay for this
protection themselves, once we make sure they know what is needed.
Opposing the merger of Amazon and Roomba, on grounds of competition and
privacy.
With proper privacy laws, no privacy issue would arise from this merger.
A product such as the Roomba would not be allowed to send any data
to anyone about the owner or the use of the product.
Billionaire Polluters have spent a million dollars to influence the
British public against a windfall profits tax.
Texas and the federal government are headed for a fight where federal
guidelines call for an abortion as part of proper medical care for a
pregnant female with certain kinds of dangerous medical conditions,
but Texas says it is a crime.
Pearson plans to allow students to "resell" digital textbooks, but not
freely: they will have to pay Pearson for the privilege, and let
Pearson track them.
Pearson uses the term "NFT" to describe these plans, but that's a red
herring, as the article explains — a marketing buzzword that has been
stretched to fit.
There is no sign that these ebooks will avoid any of the injustices of
existing digital textbooks: DRM, surveillance,
and "jerkmaking" contracts where you commit to be a jerk by refusing
to share copies with others.
It is unethical to agree to such a contract; however, carrying it out
(supposing you have agreed to it) is even more unethical. The less
bad option, if you have agreed to such a thing, is to disregard it.
Veterans for Peace protested the US military's failure to reduce its greenhouse
gas emissions.
A judge ruled that refusing to give Andrea Anderson emergency contraception
wasn't discrimination based on sex.
That conclusion makes sense to me: it didn't fall under the heading of
"discrimination" because there is no reason to believe the pharmacist
would have treated a male patient differently. In my view, it was an
injustice for the pharmacist to refuse to fill her prescription, but
it was a different kind of injustice.
There is something in the article I don't clearly understand. Did the
jury award Anderson $25k in damages (under some other rubric), or not?
If it did, that could be a very good outcome: perhaps sufficient to
convince those pharmacies not to let this happen again. But if so,
I'd like to understand the reasons for it.
* Special [UK Foreign Office] unit spread fake news about leftist
[Kenyan] politician, Oginga Odinga, seen as threat to British
interests in 1960s.*
Anna Vorosheva was a prisoner in Putin's Olenivka prison, and reports
on the torture done to male prisoners there. As for female prisoners,
they were not tortured but were treated degradingly in many ways.
The article excuses the Putin forces of setting off an explosion a
week ago, inside the prison, which killed around 50 prisoners.
If Putin keeps refusing investigators access, it will be his word
against the satellite photos; but refusing access is a reason to
disbelieve his word.
San Bernardino thugs got out of an unmarked car, and after a few seconds
started shooting at Robert Adams who had done nothing but run away.
(satire) *Biden: U.S. Won’t Rest Until Brittney Griner
Returned Home To Serve
Marijuana Possession Sentence.*
The US should legalize marijuana and free everyone that's in prison
for nonviolent crimes relating to marijuana. Then it will speak
with moral authority when it calls on other countries not to punish
Americans for such offenses.
Republicans in some US towns are defunding their public libraries, or
trying to, over
objections to books about queer people.
I write "queer" rather than "LGBTQ" because the former is one syllable
instead of five and covers the same range of variations.
The wrecker's officials approved plans for coal mining which failed to
uphold environmental requirements. Environmentalists sued, and
Biden's officials defended the wrecker's plan.
Fortunately, a court ruled against the plans, but why defend those
plans? Whether or not they were lawful,
they were clearly bad.
*First-of-Its-Kind Greenwashing Lawsuit Targets
Gas Giant for Methane Lies.*
Actually, it wasn't what we normally called a "gas giant" — it was on
the small rocky planet we inhabit.
*Election deniers are one step closer to
taking control of voting in 4
key states.*
China is going all-out to remind us that it is a
military threat to Taiwan.
which reinforces that the US must stand firm with Taiwan.
China's "live fire exercises" close to Taiwan amounted in
effect to a
temporary blockade of Taiwan.
South Dakota has an optional Indian alternative justice system which
aims for
healing rather than punishment.
In the 1970s, US courts and prisons aimed for rehabilitation of
criminals, but that was all discarded in the
1980s under the malign
influence of the "war on drugs".
Portugal requires residents to have a biometric ID card for many
purposes, including medical care, employment and travel. This is an
injustice to everyone that is compelled to have the card; it is also a
practical disaster for the resident foreigners who can't get one.
The government seems to be using those foreigners as hostages to an
international dispute, but we should not let this distract us from
the injustice those cards present to people who DO have them.
*Justice Department employees ask for expanded benefits to protect abortion access,
asking for the administration to expand health care
coverage to include abortion-related benefits like paid leave to travel
out of state and reimbursement for travel expenses.*
Amnesty International criticized Ukraine for stationing military units
and
weapons systems in cities.
It would be absurd to compare this with the pervasive evil of the
Putin forces, and it certainly doesn't excuse them. But this is a
valid point. Ukraine should heed this criticism and change those
practices.
A woman is suing the only pharmacy within 50 miles of her home for
refusing to fill a prescription for contraception
(the morning-after
pill).
Such situations are likely to arise in the depopulated rural parts of
the US, where stores of any kind are few and far between, and
anti-abortion fanatics are numerous.
I am suspicious of any pharmacy business that gives its individual
staff the privilege to veto a prescription. No supermarket would
tolerate a sales clerk who refused to sell certain products — if you
won't do the whole job, you would need to find some other job. I
suspect that the owners or managers of those pharmacies are themselves
anti-abortion fanatics, and that letting staff veto prescriptions is a
intentional deniable way of attacking abortion and birth
contraception while denying their responsibility in the matter.
It's clear that any pharmacy, when open for business, must be legally
required to fill any valid prescription presented by anyone.
The price Biden wants to pay Manchin for approving spending is a
permanent change to environmental
rules for damaging projects.
Sanders lambasted Manchin's
planet-roasting demands,
which were elsewhere described by "Exxon CEO Loves What Manchin Did
for Big Oil in $370 Billion Deal."
The UK will test a system that uses photos of drivers of passing cars
to detect those who are not wearing seat belts, or are
holding phones in
their hands.
Detecting the use of a snoop-phone while driving is a good thing, in
itself, because that practice is dangerous. But I wonder what else
these photos could (and will) be used for. Will the state use them to
identify every driver by facial recognition? And ever passenger, too?
There should be technical safeguards in the
system to ensure it can't
be used for this
Australia's coral is
not out of the woods yet.
Global heating will eventually kill the Great Barrier Reef, and the
acidification caused by too much CO2 in the water will eventually wipe
out most sea animals with shells — including coral.
President Wickremesinghe has sent Sri Lanka's thugs to use cruelty to
crush the
protest movement that drove out President Rajapaksa.
*How the Tory party has systematically run down the NHS.*
It *does not believe in the NHS but dares not say so.*
US citizens: call on Biden to stop the Uinta Basin Railway.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
Everyone: call on Columbia Sportswear to commit to ending use of
PFAs in its products.
*Boston police chasing white suspect wrongly arrested black man, lawsuit says.*
This is an extreme case of thugs' frequent practice of assuming a
black man is guilty of something, simply because he's black. They
knew the suspect was white,
The article linked to just 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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of the exceptions.
*US border patrol accused of taking turbans from Sikh asylum-seekers.*
Thugs are fond of contriving excuses to claim that they are required
to do something that will cause suffering to someone weak.
*Four corporate US landlords deceived and evicted thousands during Covid.*
I contend that we should forbid ownership of buildings containing
housing for rent by corporations. Or else limit how many units, or
how many buildings, any one owner can own.
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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make
exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important.
That article is one of these exceptions.
*Floods, storms and heatwaves are a direct product of the climate crisis — that's a fact, so where is the action?*
The thugs involved in killing Breonna Taylor now face federal charges
of violating her civil rights.
Governor Dementis "suspended" the elected state prosecutor of Tampa,
who said he would refuse to prosecute anyone for abortions, and
put in his place a nonelected prosecutor.
I suppose Dementis has chosen a replacement who will eagerly prosecute
abortions. I wonder when the citizens of Tampa will have another chance
to elect a prosecutor.
Warning, Australia! Warning, Europe! Potential business-supremacy
treaty sighted near both continents!
Promotion of these treaties focuses on increased profits for some
businesses, and those businesses push for treaty approval. What the
mainstream media tend not to mention is that they transfer power from
government (which can be democratic) to businesses (which are by
definition not democratic).
The sex of a baby sea turtle is determined by temperature.
This must have been an effectively random choice in the past,
but now that it is so hot, all the loggerhead sea turtles hatching
in Florida are female.
In a few decades, that will cause extinction of the species — the females
will have no mates.
Extremist Republican senator Johnson wants social security and medicare
to require congressional approval each year.
Most US schools monitor everything students say and do on their
school-supplied laptops, and students are in a substantial danger of
being charged or harassed as a result.
If this massive surveillance continues, parts of the US may jail
students for seeking abortion resources (or birth control, or whatever
the Christian Taliban may prohibit) using those school-supplied
facilities.
A school-supplied laptop that allows connection to anything but the
school's own servers is bait — tempting students to browse the web
under direct monitoring by the school and the local thug department.
Paradoxical as it may seem, perhaps schools should be legally required
to limit these computers strictly to class assignments, so students won't
make the mistake of using them for their other activities.
US citizens: call on your Senators to pass the Saving America's
Pollinators Act.
To sign without running nonfree JavaScript code from the web site,
use the Salsalabs workaround.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Ending Corporate Greed Act (windfall profits tax).
(satire) *Woman [is] At That Age Where All Her Friends Getting
Prosecuted For
Losing Pregnancies.*
I suspect that right-wing white women will get preferential treatment:
they won't get prosecuted for miscarriages.
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The heatwave in Europe is damaging olive oil
production in Spain and Italy.
*Justice department urged to investigate deletion of
January 6 texts
by Pentagon.*
Republicans changed their mind about veterans poisoned by military
incineration of toxic substances, and
passed a bill to help them.
They tried following their philosophy, which is that if you're not
rich you don't deserve help, but the public disgust made them change
their tune.
*UN to investigate prison attack that killed [53]
Ukrainian
prisoners of war.*
The Putin forces claim this was a false flag attack by Ukraine, but
the claim is not plausible. It is absurd to think that Ukraine would
kill Ukrainians just to have an excuse to accuse the Putin forces of
yet another atrocity. Ukraine has hundreds, or is it thousands, of
atrocities to charge them with.
It is the Putin forces that would desire to kill those Ukrainians;
indeed, it had already threatened to execute them.
* For a long time now, the mechanisms of our democratic system of
government meant to ensure accountability have been at the edge of
collapse,
if not obliteration.*
The use of Real Estate Investment Trusts for business property cause
complications for businesses that impede them from providing good
service.
They also increase the power of the financial industry, which
harms society overall.
The 6 uniformed thugs of Kenly, North Carolina, who are white, all
handed in resignations after the
town appointed a black woman as city
manager.
In the absence of any specific facts, I speculate that they were used
to getting away with abusing some citizens, and saw that the new city
manager was not going to permit that.
California has decided to produce insulin and offer it at a
much lower
price to diabetics in the state.
I wonder if California will sell to diabetics in other states, too?
Mark Finchem, who won the Arizona Republican primary for attorney
general, is a Qanonsense believer that advocates the wrecker's
Big Lie
(that the 2020 election was stolen).
*Big oil is wringing humanity dry. We need a
fossil fuel
non-proliferation treaty.*
Rewilding marginal areas in a large farm was a big help to wildlife,
and the increased wildlife increased the
productivity of the rest of
the farm.
A new HIV-prevention drug could wipe out that disease, over time,
except that it is
too expensive for the people that need it.
*Spiraling inflation, crops left in the field and travel chaos: 10
reasons [leaving the EU]
has been disastrous for Britain.*
I dislike the word "Brexit" so I don't use it.
An extremely strange snail species, found only at a few deep-sea
thermal vents in one region, is endangered, and
could be wiped out by
deep-sea mining in that region.
Robert Reich: *Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema act out of ego, not principle.*
In a broad sense, this must be true. But is it "ego" in the ssnse of
simple emotion, or is it "ego" in the sense of future advantage?
Umberto Eco explains why the Italian term "facsism" could generalize
to fit many different repressive tyrannies.
The heat in Europe is reducing the power output of some nuclear power
plants.
They are cooled by water from rivers, and it is too hot to cool them
enough.
Right-wing Democrat Cuellar joined Republicans in proposing a law that
would allow companies to eliminate important workers' rights, by
extending the
piecework sweatshop economy to more kinds of work.
This would also stop states from requiring better wages and
working conditions for existing gig-work companies such as
Uber
and
Lyft.
*Zuckerberg-backed Summit Learning platform suggests schools 'listen' to
parents'
'online conversations'.*
The citizens of Kansas voted to keep abortion rights into the state
constitution,
by a landslide.
*Organizers said treating reproductive rights as a non-partisan issue
was key to success in a
Republican-leaning state.*
The vote was on a right-wing initiative to ban abortion in Kansas, but
initiatives to legalize abortion are also possible, in the states that
allow them.
Yet more gratuitous
cruelty by the US border thugs.
This article mentions a policy of making asylum seekers throw away
all their personal possessions, as well as specific cruelty towards
Sikh men — forcing them to violate religious commandments for no
rational reason.
Religion is not an excuse for someone to violate safety requirements
or mistreat anyone else. But these particular Sikh religious
practices don't hurt or endanger anyone.
When "security forces" display a persistent habit of gratuitous
cruelty, we cannot take their word about what they do. Their
punishment should be a requirement to document how they treat each
asylum seeker.
*AIPAC Defeats Andy Levin,
the Most Progressive Jewish Representative.*
AIPAC is a big danger to the US fight against plutocracy.
Americans who care about injustice to persecuted minorities tend to
be concerned with Israel's occupation policies, so AIPAC essentially
campaigns for disdain towards persecuted minorities.
(satire) *Democrats Worried Biden Will Be
Healthy Enough To Run Again In 2024.*
The military budget passed by the House of Representatives
is a big give-away to the military-industrial complex,
including systems
that are useless.
What should we say about the people who started out supporting the
wrecker when he was a hate-spewing right-wing extremist, and stopped
only when they saw he was an
enemy of our system of government?
I don't think that either the good or the bad erases the other.
I can't deny that Pence is actively campaigning against sedition.
I can't refuse to recognize that he is a religious extremist
that seeks to impose his religious extremism on everyone in the US.
He is a hero and he is atrocious, both at once.
Several new business-supremacy treaties are being negotiated.
In addition to the usual kinds of oppression, these may also restrict
governments' in
blocking massive surveillance by networks of businesses.
A large music festival in Atlanta has been cancelled because Georgia
does not permit
music festivals in parks to exclude guns.
The direct cause of cancellation seems to be that Atlanta refused to
authorized it, but I expect the city invited the festival to change
its rules to permit guns in order to get approval. I expect that the
organizers were wise to stand by their policy.
According to Russian law, it is illegal to jail volunteer soldiers (as
distinct from conscripts) for refusing to fight in Ukraine. However,
Putin is using the puppet governments of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the
Wagner mercenaries, to jail hundreds of refusal soldiers and
pretend
that Russia isn't doing it.
Is it possible to establish in international law that Russia is responsible
for crimes supposedly committed by those puppets?
China responded to Pelosi's visit to Taiwan with the typical bluster
with which it tries to pressure other countries not to support Taiwan,
and the
usual displays of military strength.
These are the way China tries to intimidate and threaten. If we don't
want to let China conquer Taiwan, we must not be influenced by China's
pressure.
China is a real military threat, but that's not due to Pelosi's visit,
and Pelosi could not have made China less of a real threat by staying
away from Taiwan. We cannot defend Taiwan from China's military power
by tiptoeing.
Republicans seek to purge the employees of federal agencies and
replace them with inexperienced
Republicans who will do whatever they
are told.
Due to their lack of experience, they won't respect traditional rules
that were adopted to restrain abuse of power.
In the FBI, the extremist agents will investigate whoever the
president tells them to investigate. In the DoJ, the extremist staff
will prosecute whoever the president tells them to prosecute.
* No single crisis, no matter how existential, will be enough to shut
this [planet roasting] machine down naturally.
We must break it or
it will break us.*
* The fossil fuel industry as a whole is not just another business,
providing a service to meet a demand; it is a predatory drug dealer
that works every day to keep the world addicted to its poisonous
product, knowing full well that it will eventually prove fatal.*
(satire) *15-Year-Old Finds Summer Job As
BetterHelp Therapist.*
Trumppets in Arizona organized a bogus "audit" of the presidential
election in Arizona, evidently aiming to blow smoke so they could
claim there was a fire. They later reported 282 supposed cases of
dead people who had cast votes.
A subsequent investigation by Arizona's attorney general found that
281 of them were in fact alive.
The FBI continues luring vulnerable people (generally Muslims) into
fantasy terrorism schemes and sentencing them to 20 years in prison.
If the FBI goes after right-wing extremists it could start protecting us from
real terrorism.
Australia's inflation is like America's inflation: caused by big businesses
that have the power to impose price increases because they want to.
Looking at some of the ways global heating's effects could possibly cause
extinction of humanity.
I think that result is unlikely. Humans are quite flexible, and have survived
in drastically different situations. So I think various small groups of humans
will remain, without high technology. But I can't claim that extinction
is impossible.
US citizens: call on Congress to act to let the FCC restore the past
network neutrality requirements on ISPs.
As explained before, the Obama-era network neutrality requirements
that the corrupter abolished were weak and inadequate.
Nonetheless, they would do some good.
UN Secretary General Guterres warns that the risk of nuclear war is
slowly increasing. The world's nuclear disarmament efforts are
weakening.
Putin is trying to threaten nuclear war and pretending that he isn't
— much as US Republicans (also known as the Christian Taliban) are
threatening civil war and pretending they aren't.
Shell is using its windfall profits for stock buybacks — not investing them
in renewable electric generation.
US government "security" agencies track people's movements through their
phones, without getting search warrants, by buying location data from
companies that accumulate them.
We must forbid companies from collecting, or accumulating, people's
location data.
*Corporate Media [Fail] to Connect Gas Price Surge and Climate Crisis.*
(satire) *Police Experimenting With Nonlethal Methods To
Give Speeding Ticket.*
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telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
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lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
Sanders: *I say to Senator Toomey, if you don't believe we can afford to take
care of our veterans suffering from toxic burn pit exposure, then you
should not have approved funding to go to war.*
(satire) *New Windex Formula Removes Menacing Apparitions From Mirror.*
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The UAE has convicted democracy campaigner Asim Ghafoor, who is a US
citizen, of money laundering after a suspect trial.
He was arrested in a flight connection in Abu Dhabi. I recommend people
avoid setting foot in Abu Dhabi's airport.
Another bizarre thing in this report is that it the accusation appears
to have come initially from the US; but the US did not arrested him,
instead it let him fly to Abu Dhabi airport and he was arrested there.
I suspect this represents dirty work.
The US has a pattern, since 2001, of persecuting Muslims that raise
money in the US for charity in other countries.
Try as they might,
they get accused of terrorism, or violating financial regulations.
Is that what happened here?
Filipinos, including expats, are buying lots of copies of the book
Marcos Martial Law: Never Again, fearing that the new president, son
of the late dictator Marcos, will suppress the memory of his crimes.
The US has adopted policies that encourage the public to ignore
Covid-19 and abandon the effective, low-tech methods of reducing
transmission. This has allowed transmission to increase enormously,
which puts vulnerable people at great danger. Politicians say,
implicitly, that it doesn't matter if those people die, that they are
not important enough to wear a mask for.
There are two side points in the article that I take issue with.
First, eugenics means an active effort to control who can reproduce.
Letting people get sick and perhaps die is not eugenics. It is wrong,
but it is a different wrong. This is an example of a pattern of
stretching terminology for condemning a wrong that has excited special
ire, to apply it to other things and carry some of that ire to them.
Second, the article describes the US practices as "American
exceptionalism", but I've seen similar practices in several European
countries, and I think most of them have adopted the policy of
"Imagine there's no Covid."
I asked the mayor of Boston to start a PR campaign to convince people
to wear masks in enclosed places. Even if it's not a legal requirement,
there are ways of convincing people to do it — and in this case, it
doesn't require any deception. Obviously, this has not been done.
Rally for Julian Assange on Monday, August 1, from 11 to 12:30, at
Park Street Station on the Boston Common. People will remain near
the Park St station entrance for an hour, then march through the
Common, giving out literature and talking to people on the way.
You can also support the campaign by phone or email.
Human-caused global heating will cause more tornadoes and more
flooding in Kentucky. The governor is horrified seeing this at work, but will he
understand what needs to be done?
The US must put an end to irrigation of lawns in areas where water
is going to be scarce.
88% of Britons who stopped working since 2020 did so because of
long-term illness.
I would expect the same to be true in the US, but does anyone actually know?
Already some places on Earth occasionally experience fatal weather,
for short periods. But we know only theoretically at which point the
combined heat and humidity (measured as the "wet bulb temperature")
will kill a large fraction of humans.
I fear we will get clear empirical evidence about this question in the
next 20 years.
*Yes, Republicans really did try to make abortion punishable by death.*
*‘Soon it will be unrecognisable’: total climate meltdown cannot be stopped,
says expert.*
Hothouse Earth, by Professor Bill McGuire, says we must stop trying to
give people hope by underplaying the extent of the disaster that we have
already made unavoidable.
Are economic sanctions against Russia worth while, if they don't help make
Putin drop the attempt to conquer Ukraine?
I support showing solidarity with Ukraine, but I contend that the best
ways to do that are the ways that re effective help. Giving Ukraine
arms to defeat and repel the Putin forces is effective, while economic
warfare through sanctions seems to be backfiring. Thus, I suggest we
do more of the former and less of the latter.
The US is suing to block the merger of two of the five giant US
publishing companies.
This demonstrates the weakness of our antitrust laws. For two such
large companies to merge should be a crime, so that blocking the
merger requires no lawsuit. We should not have let them get down to
less than 20.
*A group of whistleblowers has provided evidence that the
Environmental Protection Agency has not adequately assessed the
health risks posed by several new chemicals on the grounds that they
are corrosive. Managers in the New Chemicals Division have repeatedly
and incorrectly used the idea that a chemical may cause irritation to
the eyes, skin, and respiratory tract as an excuse to avoid assessing
the risk of other harms it may cause.*
By 2100, Austin, Texas, will be as hot as Dubai is now.
Dubai then will be even hotter.
The heat wave in the UK has ruined the harvest for many kinds of
fruits and vegetables.
This is surely true also in parts of the US, but I don't have an
article to reference.
Moon's "Unification church" has offered electoral support to Japanese and American right-wing politicians, since the 1970s.
Now that some TV weather forecasters are warning people about the
likely significance of heat waves, global heating denialists are now
trying to bully them into shutting up.
A ship carrying Ukrainian grain has left Odessa, bound for Lebanon.
If Putin allows grain shipments to continue, that will be a great help
to many countries where people are suffering from hunger.
I previously suggested the idea that Ukraine could choke off Russia's
oil exports from Novorossiysk. Back then, it would have been
retaliation in kind for what Putin was doing — but maybe he is no
longer doing that.
If Putin henceforth refrains from cutting off Ukraine's exports,
Ukraine should and must refrain from cutting off Russia's exports.
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to pass the "trans bill
of rights" now.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden not to run again in 2024.
Here are reasons.
* "Approving lots of new fossil fuel projects in exchange for some clean
energy funding is completely bonkers and will make the climate crisis
worse."*
All but 6 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against
legalizing abortion of pregnancies caused by rape.
Could it be that big US businesses are jacking up prices to help the
Republican Party win this year's election?
(satire) *Regretful Officer Believes More Could Have Been Done To Kill
Unarmed Black Man.*
*Humanity faces ‘collective suicide’ over climate crisis, warns UN chief.*
*US drafts new speed limits on shipping to help save endangered whales.*
The US government must fund "managed" retreat from housing that is doomed
to be flooded or burnt.
The people who live in those homes can't afford to move or build
elsewhere — the government must help them. But subsidizing
rebuilding in place is an enormously inefficient way to do that.
I disagree with the statement that "managed retreat is not defeat."
Of course it is! Global heating disaster will be one defeat after
another. However, there are different kinds of defeats. When you
can't win the battle, an orderly retreat is much less bad than a
disorderly rout, and that's what will happen if we don't plan this.
Cory Doctorow explains how the rootkit that attacks treacherous
computing is a disaster for "security" in the usual sense.
It means that machines with the WHAT? can now have additional back doors
other than the one that Microsoft designed into Windows.
However, since WHAT is what ensures we can't free our machines from
Microsoft's control, the same vulnerability that this rootkit uses
might give us a way to turn off treacherous computing and/or install
our own free boot software.
The inspector general of the Department of Hostility and Sadism knew for months
that some important Jan 6 messages had been deleted, and did not tell Congress.
The missing (deleted) messages extend beyond the Secret Service;
some involved the highest officials of the DHS.
*Big Pharma Flooding Airwaves With Disinformation to Kill Drug Price Reform.*
(satire) *Toyota Unveils Multifamily Tenement Sedan For People Living
Out Of Their Cars.*
Doctors in US states that have banned abortions are now afraid to treat
miscarriages and nonviable pregnancies, because that overlaps with abortion.
The Indian state of Telengana is pushing for total surveillance.
The excuse is terrorism, but India's repression combined with total
surveillance will do more damage than terrorism that lacks the backing of
the Indian government.
Four myths about inflation (in the US).
Republicans have, for years, pushed to start a constitutional convention
that would rewrite the US Constitution. It turns out that Republicans would
have pre-imposed control of that convention, and could do whatever they wish,
disregarding the public.
*Fears that Egypt may use Cop27 to
whitewash human rights abuses.*
Australia may soon change its constitution to establish something to
be known as "an indigenous voice to parliament",
though no one has
stated clearly what that would concretely mean.
In general, it is wrong to establish rights or privileges for citizens
based on their racial background. Would this "voice" do a thing?
Without a concrete plan, we can't tell.
Prime Minister Albanese has promised to state simply and clearly the
text for the referendum to decide on the plan. Supposing that the
simple and clear text also states concretely what would be done, then
depending on those details, it might perhaps be a good thing.
The indigenous Australians suffered a grave wrong when the British
colonists took their land, and suffer from direct and systemic racism
today. They deserve various sorts of help and compensation — but that
is a different question.
Some former Republicans are campaigning against trump-pets and for
preserving democracy.
The ancient Middle East understood the need to cancel debts
periodically, so that the rich did not
drive the rest into bondage.
Nowadays, by contrast, the creditors rule and government believes it exists
to make sure that debts are not forgiven.
*IVF may be in jeopardy in states where
embryos are granted person hood.*
I think that artificial assistance to getting pregnant is ok in
theory, but terribly self-destructive to a society in our present
situation.
The EPA has an indirect plan to get
coal-fired generators to close.
Accusation: *Boris Johnson is planning to fill the
Lords with his
cronies and legitimize bribery*
A Bank of America executive expressed hope that workers will lose their
power to pressure for raises, and
that unemployment will rise.
*Maritime heatwaves have destroyed up to 90% of coral
populations in parts of the Mediterranean.*
These heat waves are intense — almost 6C hotter than normal.
*Could Long Covid lead to the rise of a
four-day work-week?*
A four-day work week might be a change for the better, but in order
for long Covid to make society adopt that, it would have to wreak such
enormous suffering that a mere change in work schedules could not come
near to compensating. We need to prevent so many people from getting
long Covid.
Brazil has approved a paved highway through Amazonia, which risks encouraging
illegal logging.
This is Bolsonaro at work.
The US achieves foreign policy goals by sending arms or troops. Cuba
achieves foreign policy goals by sending doctors or teachers. Can the
US do with sending more doctors or teachers, and less arms or troops?
Indiana's attorney general is a religious fanatic. He is looking for
any possible excuse to harass Dr Caitlin Bernard, including "complaints"
about her from people who never met her or had anything to do with her.
Sri Lanka's new president, Wickremesinghe, formerly prime minister, is
imposing harsh repression of protests.
I have a suspicion that Wickremesinghe allowed protests to chase out
Rajapaksa, for reasons of his own.
Australia's prime minister is not an extreme planet roaster, but he is
repeating myths used by the coal industry to keep coal cheap.
Only 11 states require sex education classes that are medically
accurate.
Good education for adolescents about sexual relationships is rare.
Good education about how to be confident of delighting your lover is
almost nonexistent in our society, and that absence causes millions of
people years of misery.
Republican performative cruelty includes US workers whose medical insurance
is currently required to cover screening for various dangerous diseases.
The Department of Justice is investigating the phony electors plot.
Sanders warns that Bolsonaro is plotting to overthrow democracy in Brazil,
and called on Biden to help Brazil resist this.
Sad to say, there are reasons to distrust the computerized voting
machines used in Brazil.
Or at least, that was the case 10 years ago.
They are digital and the system does nothing to try to detect systemic
digital fraud. Brazil should replace them with paper ballots.
But there is no reason to think that cheating in Lula's favor is more
likely than cheating in Bolsonaro's favor. Quite the contrary:
Bolsonaro's supporters are more likely to have the business
connections necessary to cheat, more likely to think they need to
cheat, and more likely to be unscrupulous enough to cheat.
*Inflation Is Not an Excuse to Withhold Support for Needed Tax Reforms and
Investments.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to vote to allow the
Equal Rights Amendment to take effect. The Equal Rights Amendment says,
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on elected officials to speed decarbonization and
make the greenhouse gas emitters pay.
*BBC criticised over climate question in Tory leadership debate.*
The sole question about climate disaster supported the fossil fuel
companies' distraction campaign, reducing one's own "carbon footprint",
rather than on the systematic state actions that they seek to prevent.
However, when it comes to reducing your own personal efforts to avoid
global heating disaster, it's clear that the best thing you can do is
avoid having children. Fewer humans in the future means humanity's
collective ecological footprint will be smaller in every dimension.
Reproducing at full speed, and letting the human population be reduced
by famine and war is the other alternative, and it's much worse.
The US assisted in a Nigerian air raid on a displaced persons' camp,
which killed aid workers and civilians; then it secretly investigated
what had happened.
The raid was intended to target terrorists, but something went very
wrong in the planning.
The Democrats' great "deal" with Manchin includes increased drilling
for fossil fuels.
It is one step forward in exchange for Manchin's demanded half a step
back.
The deal also includes some positive changes regarding taxes: a 15%
corporate profits minimum tax, more higher tax on private equity funds,
and funding the IRS to investigate tax cheaters that aren't poor.
Also, it makes an effort to reduce the cost of medicines for people
on Medicare. Sanders called it "better than nothing."
Overall, it is a change for the better, but the additional wells
will pump death for decades.
But we must never talk about this deal without condemning the price
to civilization that Manchin has charged for it.
*Climate targets at risk as countries lag in updating emission goals, say campaigners.*
Christian anticharity is the main opposition to Australia's plan to
eliminate the national law prohibiting assistance for suicide.
The US clinical trial data for some recently approved anti-cancer drugs
is still secret some years later.
The US government should stop negotiating with those exploitative
companies and legislate that the US government can and will publish
those studies as soon as the drug is approved. Or perhaps as soon as
the application for approval is filed.
The biggest companies tend to want to increase their trade secrecy to
gain more advantage over competitors. But what is good for the public
is to give the biggest companies less advantage over competitors.
Therefore, whenever there is a public-interest reason to demand that
companies come clean about their operations, we should make that a
legal requirement.
Trader Joe's workers at one store have voted to unionize.
Noam Chomsky: *Even without fundamental changes in prevailing state
capitalism, the kind of New Deal-style regulation that was dismantled
by the neoliberal assault can be reinstated, and strengthened.*
Republicans made a deal to improve medical care for military veterans
who were poisoned by toxic substances while deployed. Then they demanded
to change the deal, and ultimately killed it.
Military veterans used to be politically untouchable in the US, but in
2016 the wrecker started started showing public contempt for veterans
and their families. Maybe that made them less sacrosanct.
A right-wing party that advocates climate defense will oppose Tories
in the next UK elections.
*What has happened to the Labour party that it can’t stand up for labour?*
The answer is, it has followed the Democratic Party in the US in
becoming "centrist", and forgotten the goal of making working people
better off.
*One in three people killed by US police were fleeing, data reveals.*
It is usually unjustified for thugs to shoot someone who is running away
or even looking away from them.
*Labor announces national security law review after inquiry criticises
secrecy of Witness J case.*
*Humanity can't equivocate any longer. This is a climate emergency.*
The wrecker put Cuba on the US "state sponsors of terrorism" list for
no valid reason — Biden should remove it from that list.
Accusing Senator Schumer of protecting big tech near-monopolies in exchange for campaign funds.
*Climate breakdown made UK heatwave 10 times more likely, study finds.*
The article does not discuss the heatwaves in western Europe and
various parts of the US, but I expect global heating is largely
responsible for them too.
*Self-awareness in short supply as Trump calls for law and order in DC.*
Hackers have developed a way to embed misoprostol in business cards
so that it can be used for abortion straight off the card.
General Milley reports that China's military has become more
aggressive in dealing with US military forces since 5 years ago.
China states repeatedly that it intends to capture Taiwan; we know
from what we saw in Hong Kong that this would mean subjection and
repression.
When China posed no real threat of conquering Taiwan, it was safe to
smile at China's pretensions of doing so, and avoid ostentatious
support for Taiwan. But now that the threat is real, the US needs to
face up to it with a calm, explicit visible commitment to Taiwan's
defense. That means that China can't order the US to limit its ties
with Taiwan.
The present aggressive confrontations are harassment, intended to
pressure Taiwan and the US to step on the path of yielding. That,
above all, they must not do. To argue that "Pelosi should not visit
Taiwan now because China might respond by increasing the harassment"
is the first step of abandoning Taiwan.
However, it would be a mistake to treat these harassments as if they
were real attacks — for instance, to respond aggressively. The only
response to these acts of harassment should be the necessary defensive
precautions in case one turns into a real bombing raid.
*Congressional Staffers Arrested for Climate Sit-In at Schumer's Office.*
One thing we can expect in last stages before total disaster is that people
will desperately pollute and destroy unusual ecosystems, to delay the local
disaster a few more years. Now the DR Congo is about to open up a large
rainforest for oil drilling.
Hulu is censoring Democrat's political ads that talk about abortion
rights and gun control.
Incoming medical students at the University of Michigan walked out on
a ceremony which presented a speaker who claims that fetuses are
people, and rebuked the university for inviting a speaker who advocates
forbidding abortions.
The US Constitution forbids people who have participated in insurrection
against the United States from running for elected office, but judges have
thwarted the attempt to make this apply to Marjorie Taylor Greene.
A study estimates that exposure of today's living Americans to PFAs
could cost 5 to 63 billion dollars in medical costs.
That is assuming that the US continues functioning with a modern
medical system that actually tries to treat most Americans who have
these medical problems.
*The Global Ruling Class Is Frog-Marching Us Towards Extinction.*
*Extreme Heat Could Wipe Out Decades of Gain in Fight Against Child
Malnutrition.*
That's just the beginning. In a couple of decades, malnutrition could affect
most of the human population.
Humans are very adaptable. I expect that small groups of humans will
survive for a long time at low levels of technology — but that will
be little comfort for the rest.
The central principle of the Republican Party is performative cruelty.
Unless you are a millionaire (as well as white and straight), don't suppose
that you are not the target.
The Tyre Extinguishers campaign against gas-guzzling SUVs by deflating
their tires, and leaving leaflets on the cars thus targeted.
Students at the University of Cambridge persuaded the university not
to name a research lab in honor of Billionaire Polluters.
*Adopting a policy to reject "all fossil fuel
industry funding and research partnerships" is what's needed.*
A female couple wants to join with a male couple to have and raise one baby
as four parents.
*[US] Banks' financing of coal, oil, and gas was higher in 2021 than it was
in 2016, the year after the Paris agreement was adopted.*
This activity amounts to mass murder, to accelerate over the next few decades.
*Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and
fight clean energy.*
What they spend it on includes election dirty tricks to defeat legislators
that support bills to decarbonize.
This activity amounts to mass murder, to accelerate over the next few decades.
US citizens: tell Congress that AIPAC doesn’t speak for you.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
Zelensky explains why a temporary cease-fire would help the Putin
forces in the long term.
We must not allow Putin to succeed in capturing and holding Ukrainian
territory, but as long as we prevent that, it makes sense to help him save face.
A militia leader testified in the Jan 6 committee that the wrecker was
preparing for an armed revolt.
The EU is making big cuts in burning natural gas. The immediate
motive is to resist Putin's pressure, but this is a good thing for
more general reasons.
In practice, "Sustainable investment" funds try to avoid investing in
businesses that would lose value from decarbonization — but they
don't invest in accelerating decarbonization. So they are no help
to what we need.
*Biden says Trump "lacked the courage to act" during January 6 attack.*
What a bizarre understatement! The wrecker had already acted, by
preparing and launching the attack on the Capitol,
and he continued to act by keeping it going and protecting it.
What he lacked was not guts, but loyalty to his country.
Doubts over obtaining insurance for the ships puts a cloud on the
supposed deal to export grain from Ukraine through the Black Sea.
Walgreens in Texas refused to prescribe methotrexate for the purpose
of facilitating insertion of an IUD, claiming the pharmacy couldn't
know that it wasn't for an abortion.
Millions of people take methotrexate to treat various medical problems
other than pregnancy, and the Texas law has put them all in danger.
*The Enduring Tyranny of Oil: War, Inflation, Geopolitical Rivalry,
and Soaring World Temperatures.*
Students: *We're planning school strikes across the world to protest
climate inaction.*
This is entirely reasonable, for those who realize that global heating disaster
will not leave them much of a chance to use their studies.
Sad to say, their web site depends so totally on JavaScript code that
it shows no information with JavaScript disabled. It's as much as to
require, arbitrarily, that you can't support your own freedom and
their campaign too. Why create a gratuitous conflict between these
two causes, when fundamentally they are entirely compatible?
If you are in contact with them, please offer to make their site
work at least minimally for users that reject JavaScript code.
If you attend a school where an occupation is planned, I expect you
will be hear about it in other ways, so that you can support it.
Tories plan to require carers who need to stay overnight in a hospital
to take care of a patient to pay to stay.
Little by little they are making the NHS impossible for poor people to use.
Tory policy is, sick poor people should die.
US citizens: call on the Senate to protect same-sex marriage.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare a climate emergency, and use
his emergency powers to decarbonize.
*The World Burns and the Richest Profit. It Doesn't Have to Be This Way.*
Biden's gestures, making nice to Netanyahu and Crown Prince Bone Saw
were ugly but merely symbolic. Sad to say, they symbolize support for
actions that are horrible.
Orbán publicly endorses unabashed racism.
Cellular network operators in Europe are associating each network
access from a snoop-phone with its phone number, so web sites
(advertisers) can track each user.
Thousands of US women are getting themselves sterilized, for fear that
they would no longer have the option of abortion. But it can be difficult
to find a surgeon willing to do the operation.
*Let's Acknowledge Why the Midterms Look So Bleak for Democrats: Joe
Biden.*
I can't say I am entirely sure that this is true. The reason why I am
not sure is because voters' thinking seems to be irrational. Why let
your opinion of Biden affect whether to vote for your local
progressive candidate?
Biden or no Biden, it's clear that the only way to get progressive
laws through Congress is to elect more progressives to Congress. The
2022 elections are an opportunity to do this — so what are we waiting
for?
Since I can't make sense of what those voters are thinking, I can't model
what would influence them. But the article could be right.
(satire) *Snobby Ex-Con Always Mentioning How He Went To Private
Prison.*
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Reality Winner speaks about her duty to inform the public
when the government was lying to the public.
This reinforces the need to change the Espionage Act to include a
public interest defense.
US citizens: call on Merrick Garland to prosecute the wrecker and his
co-conspirators for their coup attempt.
US citizens: call on the U.S. Forest Service to protect the Boundary
Waters.
US citizens: call on Congress to end US military support for Salafi
Arabia's war in Yemen.
200 Starbucks stores in the
US have voted to unionize.
*Biden's Presidency Isn't Sinking Because of the Left — It's
Because of
Right-Wing Democrats.*
* By declaring a public health emergency under the Public Readiness and
Emergency Preparedness Act, the Biden administration could "enable
out-of-state prescribing and dispensing of medications for
abortion for those in states with abortion bans."*
The Burmese military government has executed democracy activists,
accusing them of "terrorism".
Two large chains of Australia stores have ceased using
facial recognition
to identify all customers.
*Tyre dust: the "stealth pollutant" that’s becoming a
huge threat to
ocean life.*
Governments' mission requires compelling tire manufacturers to disclose what
the tires contain. No one is entitled to keep secrets about
chemicals that may be endangering ecosystems. The idea that businesses
should have such powers is sheer plutocracy.
The American Data Privacy and Protection Act takes a step toward
limiting how companies can snoop on computer users. But the bad part
is
that it preempts state laws.
I suspect that the ADPPA is fundamentally based on limiting the use of
data once collected, an approach that it is inadequate, because the
only method that will really work is to
limit the collection of the
data.
If states can't pass laws that go beyond this, all progress will
stop.
So I think this law should not be passed.
A recent decision by the Supreme Court may have
blocked Biden from
cancelling federal student loans.
It is not clear.
A movement for white Christian nationalism is spreading through the US.
It is based on falsifying the history and
founding principles of the US.
Republicans ruling Arkansas and Nebraska, for ideological reasons,
rejected federal rental assistance for poor people in those states.
They prefer to see poor people evicted.
The wrecker is continuing to
try to overthrow the US government.
Israel is using Google's AI services to track Palestinians by facial
recognition and analyze everything they say, write, read or express
with their faces to
generate suspicions about them
Starmer is taking the Labour Party a
step closer to plutocratism.
"Growth" as a political goal tends to be an excuse to reject other
more important goals, such as "tax the rich and help the rest."
*If Biden isn’t willing to really fight the climate crisis,
he shouldn’t run
in 2024.*
I disagree with the article on one subpoint: it is not only the
results that count. When something really important is at stake, we
can forgive you for being defeated, if we see you fought really hard.
But if you fail to do that, you have failed us.
US citizens: support the National Popular Vote Compact.
US citizens: call on investment fund companies to create sustainable
options now. This refers to companies such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and BlackRock.
US citizens: call on the Senate to replace Senator Manchin as Energy
Committee Chairman.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Biden to end the Remain in Mexico policy.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act.
The Department of Hostility and Suffering currently buys lots of surveillance data. This law would prohibit that, but it wouldn't eliminate the resulting
injustice. It is a small step forward, but not a true solution.
Governments could buy other kinds of data which would enable them to
find out what sort of places you have been, and then use parallel
construction to attack you.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
*DRC to auction oil and gas permits in endangered gorilla habitat.*
Global disaster will push many people to the brink, and before
actually dying, they will try desperate schemes to survive.
Many of those schemes will involve destruction. This is a foretaste.
If there had been stronger winds, fire might have engulfed much of London
last week.
*These soaring temperatures have given Britain a taste of the dystopia
to come.* Other parts of the world, too.
The planet-roasters, and the officials they have bought influence with,
are responsible. Let's rub their noses in their mess.
*Barely 12 hours after Moscow signed a deal with Ukraine to allow
monitored grain exports from Ukraine’s southern ports, [Putin]
targeted Ukraine’s main port of [Odessa] — through which grain shipments
would take place — with cruise missile strikes.*
*Airstrikes on ports could derail grain export plan, warns Ukraine.*
I had a feeling that this deal was too good to be true. Cheating is
Putin's way; you can't expect him to keep a deal sincerely.
Putin has been using food effectively as a weapon, and he would hardly
let go of a weapon.
I support Ukraine in this war, but "Odessa" has been the English name
of that city for much more than a century, and I don't see a reason to
change the way we write it in English.
In Shasta county, ideological opponents of masks bullied many county
officials into resigning, and removed some officials from office,
demonstrating how they wish to harass anyone who doesn't bow down to them.
*Dip in UK woodland’s ability to capture CO2 [because] felled trees not
replaced.*
I would guess that other countries have the same problem, if they don't
take care to grow new trees as fast as they cut trees down.
Ralph Nader: * Waging peace and conflict resolution should be the
State Department's main mission.*
Extreme heat in the US is driving many species towards extinction,
including birds, fish and mollusks.
The wrecker made a plan, called "Schedule F", to enable him to
arbitrarily purge the employees in 50,000 federal civil service jobs
and replace them with people personally loyal to him. This could corrupt
the whole federal bureaucracy.
Any Republican elected in 2024 might put this into practice.
Reportedly Republicans in the Senate support that plan, and will block
the efforts to legislate against it.
Why Bannon's defiance of a subpoena to testify in Congress goes hand in hand
with insurrection.
Bannon claimed that the wrecker still has the "executive privilege" to
forbid Bannon from testifying, even though the wrecker no longer holds
an executive office. This could be the basis of an appeal.
It seems pretty obvious to me that ex-officials must not have any
power to block testimony about what they did while in office.
*Do you trust the people in suits downplaying this [climate]
emergency, or the activists lying in roads in an attempt to ward
off catastrophe?*
Unions and the labor movement have great capacity to support democracy
and human rights, and have done so throughout history.
The Jan 6 committee has presented powerful evidence that the wrecker
intentionally built up and directed the attack on the capitol, and
chose intentionally to keep it going until he concluded it had failed.
*How the January 6 panel set the stage for a criminal case against Trump.*
California has passed a law that parodies the Texas law authorizing almost
anyone to sue whoever helps someone get an abortion. California's law
does that same thing to people who do anything with illegal guns.
Is this a good idea?
I think that the "anyone can sue you" approach to enforcing a law is
cruel and repressive, regardless of what actions are being prohibited.
Using this to enforce anti-gun laws is bad for the same reason
that using this to enforce anti-abortion laws is bad.
Kenyan thugs have been convicted of murdering a human rights lawyer
and others.
Although Graham Mansfield was not convicted of murdering his dying
wife, he was convicted of manslaughter. His sentence was suspended so
he probably will not go to prison for this.
I don't know whether he cares about that question. He did not want to
outlive Dyanne, but having survived his suicide attempt, he is stuck
with it. Can he find meaning in life now?
I believe that the right to die should not be limited to people who
are going to die soon anyway. People who are incapacitated, whose
prospect is many years of helpless boredom and futility, should have
the right to help in dying, too, if that's what they want.
Extreme hot weather is causing local damage to roofs, bridges,
railroads, pipes…
In ten years, the heat waves will be hotter, and cause a lot more damage.
Same-sex couples organize to stop right-wing fanatics from ruling same-sex
marriage invalid in the US.
*US Regulators Urged to Block Amazon's "Terrifying" Purchase of [the
medical clinic company] One Medical.*
Large companies like Amazon should not be allowed to acquire any
other companies.
The inspector general is investigating the deletion of possibly
disloyal text messages posted by Secret Service agents.
(satire) *More Young Americans Achieving Homeownership By Changing
Locks On Airbnb.*
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telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
and select the item "Reveal hidden HTML". Or use a browser such as
lynx that doesn't implement JavaScript and CSS.
*Progressive Lawmakers Push Biden to Stop Transferring Military
Weapons to Cops.*
The IMF could provide funds for food for starving countries, if the US
gives the ok.
*Nearly Every House Republican Votes Against Codifying Right to
Contraception.
"If they had the chance they would ban it," said Rep. Ilhan Omar
(D-Minn.).*
(satire) *Local Mom Wants Just One Nice Vacation Photo Where Family
Isn't Running From Gunfire.*
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telling LibreJS to blacklist all scripts on the page, then right-click
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Global heating has made fighting wildfires much harder in the UK.
The government does nothing about this.
Political divisions are appearing among evangelical Christians.
Abortion rights activism pressured Biden to take small steps to defend
access to abortion. If he had been truly eager, he would not have waited
to be pushed.
(satire) *New Ford F-450 Comes With Shotgun In Case Truck Doesn’t Kill
Pedestrian On Impact.*
*The Only Effective Pandemic Response Is a Global One.*
Biden is confronting Iran in a belligerent tone.
The article asks why he does that. I have two ideas: (1) to pressure
Iran to resume the non-nuclear deal, and (2) to such up to Crown
Prince Bone Saw so he will sell more oil. Neither one is a good reason.
The monarch butterfly is now listed as endangered.
Not enough restaurants and cafes allow the public (not limited to
customers) to use their toilets.
The solution is to pass laws which require them to do so.
Racial bias in length of prison sentences is increasing in the US.
A Chicago thug shot a teenager who ran away, as he was putting his hands up
while holding a camera phone. The boy is now paralyzed.
California thugs killed a man who ran away with a phone in his hand.
*House panel says Trump "chose not to act" during attack on US Capitol.*
That is a shocking understatement. The corrupter did much worse than
remain inactive during the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol. He continued
to egg his followers on, as they rioted, for more than an hour.
At this point, I think the crucial question is, is there any law
which criminalizes these actions? There ought to be, but is there any?
The new "interim" president of Sri Lanka, chosen by parliament,
arrested hundreds of encamped protesters shortly before they were
going to leave.
Ukraine wants to put Putin and his high officials on trial for war
crimes.
Threatening to prosecute Putin would be a mistake, if there is any
chance of actually bringing him to justice, because he would continue
the war simply to prevent that, even if he has no chance of actually
winning.
However, if there is no chance of bringing him to justice, the trial
is just a futile display of anger.
The UK spy organization supports the plan to make all UK snoop-phones
check everything people send through them.
They would like this, wouldn't they?
"Gullible cynicism": the practice of bending over backwards to
disbelieve the generally accepted explanation for anything whatsoever,
while eagerly accepting absurdly implausible conspiracy theories
instead.
Gullible cynicism appeared long before there were modern
disinformation campaigns. Nowadays it has spread beyond the US — but
gullible cynicism sure helps disinformation campaigns succeed.
Food banks in the UK don't have enough food for all the hungry people.
*We're living in an age of permanent crisis — let's stop planning for a
"return to normal".*
Governments continue trying to do that.
It is fundamentally harder to plan for a different world 10 years from now,
and a world 20 years from now that would be different again.
*Unless we act soon, this heatwave is just a taste of things to come.*
Complaints from black immigrants in US deportation prison *reveal a
disturbing pattern of physical abuse and ignoring medical needs.*
An indigenous prisoner in Australian jail died of a disease that
proper medical procedures would have identified.
But they don't follow proper medical procedures with indigenous
prisoners.
Ukraine is preparing a counterattack to recapture Kherson.
The climate protesters of Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) glued themselves
to the glass screen of a famous painting, Primavera by Botticelli.
*Ukraine and Russia sign UN-backed deal to restart grain exports.*
There are many ways this plan could fail. Putin could "implement" it
with bad faith, or make new demands. But it could also fail despite
sincere efforts by all parties. I hope it does succeed.
The UN's International Court of Justice will proceed with a
case against the Burmese government for genocide of the Rohingya.
Global heating effects are damaging roses in England.
An activist for the Satanic Temple is demanding the right to make
satanic prayers publicly at football games in Florida.
16 members of Congress were among those arrested for protesting for
abortion rights in the street before the Supreme Court.
Graham Mansfield was tried for murder after killing his wife, Dyanne,
who in great pain from terminal cancer and made him promise to end her
suffering. Then he tried to kill himself, but he couldn't go through with it.
I read that he was acquitted of murder. I hope they do not punish
him. Staying alive without his dearest is a terrible punishment.
The Republican nominee for governor of Maryland is an election liar.
Marylanders must expect him to lie about elections in the future, too,
including the elections he runs in.
Amazon is harassing warehouse employees with pressure not to vote
to unionize.
Workers at a Chipotle outlet filed for union recognition, so the
company shut that branch permanently.
The article sates that since mid-June the branch has been open "only
for staff trainings". I have a hunch that these "trainings" are
actually union-busting harassment meetings. This is a standard tactic
used by many companies to fight union organizing. They order workers
to listen for hours to the propaganda of union-busting consultants,
and perhaps to answer their questions too.
It could be useful training … in how to stand firm against the man.
Do you feel like eating Chipotle's food after reading this?
US cities are raising the priority of efforts to adapt to extreme heat,
since heat we now call "extreme" will become normal
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
Most of China has been hit badly by extreme heat and extreme rain.
Will Americans and Chinese recognize that current policies will make this much worse in a decade or two? Mere adaptation to a danger while we continue to make it a little worse every year is not rational, and in the long term the heat will win the race.
US citizens: call on Biden to continue the policy of refusing to sell offensive weapons to Salafi Arabia.
It is very disappointing that instead of calling on the president to take new actions to end US support for Salafi Arabia's war in Yemen, we have to campaign against increasing that support.
US citizens: call for prosecution of the corrupter's campaign for fraudulent fund-raising.
Biden said he is taking urgent action for climate defense, but he does not seem to be acting with much urgency.
(satire) *Woman Has Friend On Standby To Drive Car Through Bar Window In Case Date Going Badly.*
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*If the Jan 6 hearings end without consequences for Trump, the main takeaway will be: this is how much you can get away with in 2020s America.*
*How US prison work breaks bodies and minds for pennies.*
*Opinion: Stop cheering for a fetus's right to ride in an HOV lane.*
Anything that accepts the claim that a fetus (or even an embryo!) is a human being will spread the damage to our legal system.
Some Senate Republicans have joined in supporting laws to fix many of the vulnerabilities in US democratic procedures that some fanatical Republicans tried or propose to exploit.
A bill to restore the FCC's power to regulate internet connection services would enable it to once again require its weak standard of "network neutrality".
This would be a step forward, but nowhere near far enough to prevent snooping.
The Tories are so determined to be cruel to refugees that they pushed ahead with deportation to Rwanda despite knowing many reasons they should not.
They are also determined to do it before a court rules on whether it is lawful in the first place.
Thus, it's not just some refugees they plan to do wrong to — it's every citizen of the UK.
Indonesian artists intended to condemn Israel's occupation policies, but the work they produced appears very directly antisemitic.
The artists have apologized for that result.
The more figurative and "artistically creative" a work is, while also making a statement about a controversial issue, the it is likely to to have various of possible interpretations, perhaps including a very nasty one.
Was it pure coincidence that two FBI officials that the corrupter fired were both audited by the IRS shortly thereafter?
The IRS said it is "ludicrous" to suspect malice was at work, but given how Nixon did exactly that to the people on his "enemies list", and given how that former president was inclined to crookedness, it would be ludicrous not to suspect him.
* To call this a "culture" war is to understate its true meaning and potential danger. Those of us who still believe in separating church and state, guarding reproductive rights, ensuring racial equality, ending gun violence, and protecting democracy must understand that much of the Republican Party now stands for the exact opposite of these values.*
Russia is using its puppet regimes in Luhansk and Donetsk to force Ukrainians into the Putin forces, while denying that it is responsible.
Offshore fish farms could increase the total amount of fish farming — and also the volume of wastes that pollute the ocean.
Documents prove that the wrecker and his officials intentionally set out to distort census data for partisan purposes, and intentionally hid that.
The plan to add a question about citizenship was blocked, but the wrecker's officials took other steps to intimidate non-citizens so as to skew the census.
The project to build a giant telescope with a 30-meter mirror on Mauna Kea is advancing but has been delayed for a new environmental impact study.
Indigenous Hawai'ians demand that we stop the project, but they cite only their emotions as reasons why, with no rational basis. They demand we obey their feelings, but there is no reason we should.
People who appreciate science look forward to advancing our knowledge of the history of the universe. The desire to understand the world is also emotional, but there is a clear and rational aspect to it as well.
I hope to live long enough to appreciate some of the discoveries that this telescope will give us.
Egypt still repressively prohibits street photography, even by tourists.
*The ferocious heatwave that is gripping much of the US south and west has highlighted an uncomfortable, ominous trend — people are continuing to flock to the cities that risk becoming unlivable due to the climate crisis.*
Kicking Manchin out of the Democratic Party would show the public the truth: that Republicans (including Manchin) really control the Senate, and Americans had better vote to replace them.
Bernie Sanders is trying to reduce the 250-billion giveaway to chip companies.
US citizens: phone your senators at 855-740-2519 and say you are disappointed with the Senate for not passing a law to boost clean energy, reduce medical costs, and raise taxes for the rich and businesses.
A US appeals court agreed that Monsanto and other companies are responsible for the damage done when dicamba, a herbicide, drifted onto an orchard from nearby farms.
Dicamba is used on genetically modified soybeans and cotton.
*Weapons Industry's $10 Million Investment in [something equivalent to bribing] Congress Could Yield 450,000% Return.*
It is misleading to represent large ratios (bigger than 2) using percentages. The clear way is with a ratio. Their return is 4500 times the amount they "invest" in congresscritters.
Biden may approve a new oil railroad, which would lock in increased greenhouse gas emissions in the US.
Biden should either cancel this, or approve it only after the passage of a bill that would reduce emissions much more.
A billion personal data records from Chinese national thugs were taken by crackers and sold.
Forget about "data protection"! Our safety depends on prohibiting the systems that collect data.
The high heat in London has caused many fires to break out inside the metropolitan area.
The OLIGARCH act would establish a graduated tax on wealth.
I think it is a good idea, except for its use of median household wealth as a measuring unit. What if further impoverishment reduces the median household wealth in the US to a negative number?
*"The climate crisis will continue to escalate and get worse as long as we stick our heads in the sand and prioritize profit and greed over people and planet," said … Greta Thunberg.*
(satire) *EPA Closes Down After Running Out Of Salvageable Environment To Protect.*
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*How [government PR about] "living with Covid" is helping keep England's infections stubbornly high.*
This applies more or less to the US as well.
An investigation showed that Corbyn's opponents ("new Labour" plutocratists) fought bitterly against his supporters.
The Tories arranged a business-supremacy treaty with the previous (planet-roaster) Australian government, and now want to ratify it without debate. Climate defenders are suing under another treaty to demand debate and examination of this agreement.
Why doesn't the new Australian government insist on renegotiation?
We must expect by default that any business-supremacy treaty is bad, but here's more about what's bad in this one.
A UK union representing gig workers calls for a one-day boycott of Uber.
If only Uber's injustice against workers concerns you, that is a natural response. But if Uber's injustice against customers concerns you too, I suggest going on a permanent boycott, as I have.
*The terrifying truth: Britain’s a hothouse, but one day 40C will seem cool.* The article explains the practical consequences that will certainly bring.
The article says "equitable", but the intended meaning belongs to the word "equable." What a big difference!
Please do not have children! Each additional birth will cause more than one additional death later this century. How much more than one, I am unable to estimate.
Republicans are lying about and threatening the Indiana doctor who carried out an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim, who was compelled to go Indiana because Ohio's right-wing law did not allow her to get an abortion there.
Many Republicans now actively defend forcing people who have been raped to have babies. It is consistent with their religious beliefs, and it shows how cruel and arbitrary those beliefs are.
A New Zealand company sued a US web service demanding it identify the people who posted harsh reviews of the company as an employer. The US court decided the case based on New Zealand's laws, which don't protect free speech as the US does.
The weakness of protection of freedom of speech outside the US is one of the main reasons I have been reluctant to live outside the US. The other countries are not getting better, not at all, but the Christian Taliban threaten to make the US far, far worse.
The Tories plan to promote more flying in the UK, presuming that future technology will eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions of all those flights.
Betting on future technology to reduce the greenhouse emissions of common activities is utterly foolish. Lobbyists always present such a bet as a sure thing, or close enough one can treat it as a sure thing. They are surely exaggerating, and we must not trust them.
* In the near future, cars will not only collect information about their driver and passengers, but the vehicles, pedestrians, and city around them.* Unless we stop them!
The reliable way to prevent this is to make it illegal for cars to save, or transmit, anything that they see in images from the car's cameras, anything that their microphones hear, and anything else that their sensors collect.
This will demonstrate to the public that they don't need to fear the presence of today's cars on our streets.
*California will start making its own insulin to combat high [insulin] prices, governor says.*
The EU is considering the question of what activities to permit AIs to be used for.
Using AI to control people's fate creates two kinds of dangers: those that result when it doesn't do a job reliably but people assume it does, and those that result when it does do a job reliably.
The head of the Australian Medical Association calls for mask mandates to slow the spread of Covid-19.
*[The issue of alleged] Antisemitism was used as "factional weapon" in Labour party,* by both Corbyn's supporters and his enemies.
*Ukrainian boy held hostage by Russia tells of cleaning up torture rooms.*
*Russian gas shutoff would send some EU countries into recession, IMF warns.
As LA thugs repress homeless people, they end up in the Mojave desert with no running water.
A proposal to punish elected officials for lying or misleading the public.
Biden could put Manchin in his place by blocking the Mountain Valley Pipeline. More importantly, it would show his commitment to limiting greenhouse gases.
I wonder whether his various decisions in favor of some large fossil fuel investments (which would increase fossil fuel consumption for decades) might be an attempt to buy acquiescence of some fossil fuel interests. If so, it did not work. It may have struck then as weakness, leading them to demand more.
The only acceptable way to make a deal with planet roasters is to insist that nothing in the deal is final until the closing. Never let them get anything "on credit", because they will cheat.
Right-wing extremists in Japan are scapegoating Korean-Japanese who have been subject to bigotry for many decades.
Friends have told me that parents of ethnic Japanese refuse to let their children marry people of Korean descent. They investigate potential spouses' families to check this.
The latest heat wave has brought unusual forest fires to countries on or near the Mediterranean. This is just a taste.
(satire) *Aides Concerned Low Poll Numbers Could Drive Biden To Do Something Drastically Popular.*
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*Children in England in deep poverty "stealing food from schools."*
I expect Tories will propose to put the children (or their parents) in prison for this.
The Christian Taliban are a big threat to the United States.
They recruit the support of other movements by appealing to their shared hatred for the state. They recruit support from white nationalist pagans, despite their religious disagreement.
They recruit support from antisocialists (the article uses their misleading propaganda term for themselves, "libertarian") even though those antisocialists would hate the theocratic state. For them, "a utopian past is one in which 13-year-old boys work in coal mines and their adolescent sisters toil 12 hours a day in cotton mills."
The Muslim Taliban of Afghanistan did not hide their aim to impose Islamist repression on their country. The Christian Taliban of the US lie about their goals.
*Not One Single Republican Votes for Probe of Neo-Nazis in US Military and Police.*
Almost 50 counties have relaxed abortion laws due to feminist campaigns.
*When a Country That's Orchestrated Many Coups Has One of Its Own.*
This article does not mention the US-organized coups in Guatemala (successful), Cuba (failed) and Iran (successful), nor the recent coups in Honduras (successful), Bolivia (successful for a year) and Venezuela (failed).
Researchers have estimated the economic damage caused to the world by the greenhouse gas emissions of the five main emitting countries: United States, China, Russia, India, and Brazil: a total of 6 trillion dollars.
With this, the rest of the world can sue these countries for damages.
Women who wish they had not had children tell their stories.
*Texas Official Admits Beloved Black Principal Was Fired for Being Against Racism.* The Republicans confusedly equated trying to discourage racism with teaching "critical race theory".
Albuquerque SWAT thugs started a fire with a flashbang grenade, and it may have killed a child who was a bystander. Local TV news told the story, obfuscating it so heavily that readers can hardly see those facts in the the story.
The establishment view of what is needed to "fix" Sri Lanka. Its idea of what "fixing" means does not include enabling the country to save the non-rich.
The IMF does not "bail out" countries to save them. Rather, it gives them a chance to sell themselves into slavery. For instance, it has a long history of imposing "structural adjustments" that reduce the incomes of the non-rich, require payment for public education, and destroy public health programs.
I think Sri Lanka's only chance is to make the west and China compete to offer a deal that doesn't enslave the country.
More generally, we need world systems that stop politicians from stealing a country's income, sending it overseas, and leaving the country and its non-rich crushed by debt.
*Trio of dissidents [in exile] in US condemn president's trip to [Salafi Arabia] and accuse him of "normalizing" murderous regime.*
Legal abortion has always been safer than giving birth.
*House Dems Call for Suspension of Aid if Brazilian Military Attempts Election Coup.*
I predict that Republicans will oppose it, because they regard Bolsonaro as one of them.
The detailed progressive program for federal protection of abortion rights.
It may not be easy to codify various individual rights in federal law in a way that the radical Supreme Court can't attack.
Many blind internauts say that nonfree website enhancers make web sites harder to use, not easier.
If you judge by convenience alone, you might think it is unfortunate that these proprietary website enhancers don't work well. But what if they did? Freedom-disrespecting web sites would benefit from them, while web sites in the Free World would be obliged to reject them.
In addition, I suspect these enhancers trample the visitors' freedom by sending nonfree JavaScript code that users are compelled to run. If so, then were they fixed to work well, they would give visitors convenience in exchange for their freedom.
Calls to move the Cop27 climate conference out of Egypt, because Egypt is planning to keep activists away from the government representatives and because queer people attending face the threat of arrest and torture.
It should have been obvious in advance that Egypt was a bad place to hold an international conference, so why was the plan made to hold it there? Perhaps because it is a bad place. Many conferences have been sited in countries that will prevent protesters from showing up.
The Suicide Six ski lodge is changing it's name because people criticized use of the word "suicide" as insensitive.
I firmly oppose the campaign to make such words unacceptable to use. It was already going too far to demand everyone avoid any word that someone might take offense at. But this pressure demands even more. It demands we tiptoe through life, always timid because of possible sensitivity.
I can imagine the same critics demanding that the Grateful Dead change it's name — or else, that radio stations boycott it's music.
China has arrested four Hong Kongers, former democracy activists, for trying to escape.
Island nations in the Pacific Ocean are trying to unite to fight their common enemy: global heating.
A large carbon capture and storage project in Australia fell very short of its target — perhaps just half what it was supposed to capture.
This came with a penalty — Chevron had to buy and use up carbon offsets to make up for the difference. As we know, many of these offsets are bogus.
I say the idea of carbon offsets should be replaced with carbon emission taxes.
Chevron is, of course, culpable for persecuting Steven Donziger for representing the Ecuadorians whose land was polluted by its oil extraction there.
George Monbiot: *This heatwave has eviscerated the idea that small changes can tackle extreme weather.*
(satire) *Deckhand Scolded For Throwing Trash On Floor Of Ship When Great Pacific Garbage Patch Right There.*
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Artificial imitation grass is bad for the environment and for wildlife, requires time-consuming maintenance, and gets much hotter than real grass. And it has to be watered (washed).
*Monopolists control nearly every part of the food production process.* And they are driving up food prices.
When the government regulators permitted these mergers, they were abandoning their mission. This was obvious, but democracy in the US had been undermined to the point where we could not get anyone to stop it.
*Democrats are facing asymmetrical warfare. It's time to wake up and fight back.*
The European Union is proposing a system of massive surveillance of all internet communication, in the name of "protecting children".
The two standard excuses for proposing repressive measures are "protecting children" and "stopping terrorism". These goals, while valid, are perfect for making citizens panic and rush to support the measures despite their danger.
MEP Patrick Breyer, who opposes the scheme, has prepared a web site that explains a lot more.
Biden threatened to attack Iran to prevent its developing nuclear weapons.
As the article says, "It makes absolutely zero sense that he won't delist the IRGC [revolutionary guards] to prevent an Iranian nuke but would launch a war to prevent an Iranian nuke." In addition, such an attack is much harder than it sounds. The crucial facilities are underground and Iran has years of experience resisting Israel's attacks.
Threatening Iran is also likely to drive it into a closer alliance with Putin. How foolish.
US citizens: call on the Senate to lower prescription drug prices now.
Biden dropped the plan to nominate an anti-abortion Republican as federal judge. He cited opposition by Republican Senator Paul, and did not give credit to the campaign for this.
If Republicans take the House of Representatives, they will conduct investigations of their enemies and attack the usual scapegoats.
Formerly unusual heat is harming agriculture across the US.
I think we must expect food shortage to become normal.
Does drought include West Virginia? If so, it might be used to pressure Manchin.
*Leak reveals corporate donors at anti-abortion GOP event: Tik Tok, Comcast, 3M, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Anheuser-Busch, Juul, Koch Industries, Lowe's and Walmart.*
Some Republicans have used misleading fund-raising emails, and now Republicans are pressuring businesses to exempt their fund-raising emails from laws against spam. They also want to pass a law that their emails cannot be treated as spam.
With Rubio's plan for parental leave loans against Social Security, *"when mom or dad tragically dies a few years after having their third kid, the surviving spouse will have to send a big fat check to the SSA,"* until it is all paid back.
Senator Manchin killed any possible climate defense bill, after spending a year negotiating details of it.
This strikes me as negotiating in bad faith.
The town of Lytton, in British Columbia, was destroyed by a fire. Some residents have rebuilt their homes, and now they have been told to evacuate because another fire threatens the town.
*How Sri Lankan protesters unseated their president.*
Kicking out the Rajapaksas was necessary, but not sufficient. I fear that the only help that the US and other western powers offer will involve selling the country into something like slavery.
Ukraine is failing to arrange places to stay, and essential support, for people who flee from homes near the front.
I've been wondering why so many people remain in Ukrainian towns where they could be killed or maimed by shelling, and where they may be captured by the Putin forces and tortured, executed, or kidnapped and taken to Russia. Perhaps it is because they have no place to flee to and survive.
Putin is targeting Ukrainian civilians with long-range missiles.
Ralph Nader: corporations control almost everything in the US universities of today, including the basic assumptions that courses take for granted and inculcate.
This also includes the software courses use, which gives corporations power over every student.
(satire) *China Worried U.S. Outpacing [It] On Poorly Functioning Low-Speed Trains.*
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US job growth is slowing down, and so is the increase in wages. It would be foolish to raise interest rates.
Jim Hightower: *The GOP as a whole has mutated from a conservative party with some extremist factions to effectively proclaiming itself the Party of Extremism.*
Potential 2024 candidates are competing to be the most extreme fanatic.
*The Uber files: firm knew it launched illegally in Australia, then leaned on governments to change the law.*
Bernie Sanders: *Let's rebuild the US microchip industry — not give it a $50bn-plus check.*
*… in order to make more profits, these companies took government money and used it to ship good-paying jobs abroad. Now, as a reward for that bad behavior, these same companies are in line to receive a giant taxpayer handout to undo the damage that they did.*
If the US government does give these companies a subsidy, it should attach conditions — let us turn off the DRM, the management engine, and so on.
*Economists Warn More Fed Rate Hikes Would "Push Millions Out of Work."*
Accusing the US Supreme Court of deliberately attacking the basis of representative democracy, and fabricating far-fetched pretexts to do so.
(satire) *Increasingly Unhinged Eric Garcetti Covers Own Body With Metal Spikes To Prevent Homeless People From Sleeping On Him.*
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US citizens: call on Congress to tax billionaires' wealth.
On Jan 6, when Pence was at the Capitol, Secret Service agents tried to put him into a limo and take him to a "secure location". That would have achieved the wrecker's goal of sabotaging the formal election count.
Pence refused to enter the limo, and made it clear it was so he could continue with an honest count.
*More than 200 congressional staffers have urged the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to finalize a reconciliation package that includes robust measures to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency before the August recess.*
Meanwhile, a plutocratist Democrat in the House is trying to eliminate the tax increase for the rich.
*Sanders Warns Congress Is Working 'Behind Closed Doors' on $50 Billion in Corporate Welfare.*
Including 10 billion for Bezos.
*We're talking about giving $50 billion in corporate welfare with no strings attached — a blank check — to the highly profitable microchip industry.*
It makes sense to encourage companies to manufacture chips in the US, but not with a subsidy. We must stop "rewarding" companies for not doing some harmful practice. Instead we must punish the ones that do it.
The traditional way to do this is with a tariff. The World Trade Organization restricts that — its purpose, from the start, was to reduce the power that states have over businesses and give the businesses power over states, and it succeeded. That's why I call it a business-supremacy treaty. But there are ways to impose a tariff.
The problem is that when a country applies a tariff to a product that it does not produce, it only discourages use of the product. What we need is a tariff that applies to any given model of imported chips once some factory in the US produces comparable chips.
*Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe documents the discovery of torture chambers … in Bucha.*
The report also asserts that the Putin forces used Ukrainian civilians as human shields.
Bolsonaro has been encouraging violence against his opponents and threatening rebellion if he loses the election. Now one of his supporters has assassinated the treasurer of the Workers Party, which Lula leads.
The Putin forces seem to be burying the dead civilians of Mariupol in mass graves, without identifying them (which would be a challenge). Estimates of the number of dead range form 22,000 to 90,000, and perhaps vary even further.
DiEM25 reports that Greece is accused of throwing migrants into the Aegean sea, handcuffed.
NHS doctors will strike, using cuts in their pay (after inflation) to illustrate how the NHS is underfunded in every way.
A video shows Bannon stating, before the 2020 election, that the bullshitter was going to claim to have won, at a time when he had a temporary lead in the unfinished count.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect warehouse workers.
US citizens: call on Biden to open abortion clinics on federal land.
US citizens: call on Congress to expel the members who tried to overturn the 2020 election.
US citizens: call on Congress to end fossil fuel subsidies.
*Trouble for [the wrecker] as committee makes case Capitol attack was premeditated.*
This makes criminal prosecution easier, if officials have the guts to try.
Australia's Labor Party plans new fossil fuel projects. The Green Party is standing firm against them.
The current causes of high inflation are shortages and gouging — not wage increases.
Here's the pertinent data.
Australia and New Zealand are supporting a company that wants to mine the sea floor for valuable metals.
In principle, this is a very good thing to do, provided it is done in a way that avoids destroying sea-bottom life, which tends to be slow to reproduce.
They are working on developing robotic picking, to avoid the horribly destructive method of bottom trawling. However, environmentalists are worried that the machine's noises could destroy undersea ecosystems. Many undersea animals are sensitive to noises — the noise from ships is interfering with whales' hearing.
An investigation found that Queensland thugs sometimes arbitrarily disbelieve accusations of domestic violence, or refuse to take action.
The Biden administration told US pharmacies that refusing to fill a prescription because the patient is pregnant violates federal anti discrimination law.
This rule interpretation can protect their access to medicine for treating various diseases including lupus, as well as protecting access to some methods of abortion.
I expect that the fanatical justices will look for an way to overturn it.
Meanwhile, in Texas, doctors already hesitate just as Izabela Sajbor's doctors in Poland hesitated, with fatal results in her case.
*More than 200 congressional staffers urge Pelosi and Schumer to act on climate or risk dooming younger generations.*
Future technology may enable us to burn non-fossil gases, such as green hydrogen and methane from bio-wastes. But we can't use them in quantity in this decade, and probably not in the next.
*Turkey announces deal with Ukraine, Russia and UN aimed at resuming grain exports.*
*You have to wonder: if [the corrupter] did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, would all those prosecutors still be struggling with the question of whether they could or should indict him?*
I see the sense in thinking five times before turning a question of politics into a matter of criminal justice. That can undermine the political system. Sad to say the Republicans have already gone much farther than this, and the line these prosecutors are trying to hold has already fallen. Now the question is whether to fight back or let them win.
Uber's tactics: "break it till you make it".
Drought is emptying Lake Powell and Lake Meade, which feed two giant hydroelectric dams. In a year or two, they may cease to generate power.
George Monbiot calls attention to Bookchin's political philosophy.
*Let's Be Clear: The Battle Before Us Is Democracy vs. Autocracy.*
An analysis shows that NATO is quite capable of defending itself from any Russian conventional attack. Bombardment of cities with missiles is the one real threat that Russia has, and stopping the bombardment might require a counterinvasion — but Russia's trying this while fighting in Ukraine would be suicidal.
I have doubts about whether the various NATO countries could coordinate well, but their strength may be enough that they could win anyway.
I think of this as giving the NATO countries space to relax somewhat. They need to remain strong, but while they do, they are not in great danger.
US citizens: call on Biden to declare that the attack on abortion rights is a public health emergency.
US citizens: call on Senator Schumer to schedule a vote to let the Equal Rights Amendment take effect.
US citizens: call on Biden not to put bureaucratic barriers on canceling student loan debt
US citizens: call on the Republican National Committee to denounce campaign ads promoting extreme violence.
US citizens: call on Biden not to allow offshore fossil fuel drilling.
Climate insanity: Biden still wants to approve oil drilling in northern Alaska.
(satire) *Amazon Supervisor Delivers Rousing Speech To Employees About Honorably Laying Down Lives For Prime Day.*
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(satire) *Elon Musk Tries to Back Out of Twitter Deal by Deleting App from Phone.*
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*A New York Starbucks abruptly closed — was it retaliation for its union drive?*
Right-wingers call for redesigning schools as fortresses with no windows, but there is no reason to believe this will reduce the number of shootings in schools.
It will certainly do nothing to reduce the number of shootings elsewhere.
Meanwhile, stationing thugs in schools puts the students in danger of imprisonment.
Amazon regularly gives Ring door camera videos to the government without getting permission from the camera's nominal owner.
This is a secondary wrong which makes those cameras a little more unjust. But they would be plenty unjust without this. When millions of people make videos of everyone that walks past their door, and hand the recordings over to a particular company to store, that's asking for abuse of the recordings. That kind of system should be prohibited.
Basically, you should be required to set up the camera so that it only sees people when they approach your door, not when they pass by on the sidewalk.
The president of Sri Lanka did not resign when he promised he would. Instead he got an air force plane to take him to Singapore.
No doubt he has access there to secret funds, which the people say come from corruption. I doubt that Sri Lanka can convince Singapore to send him or his money back to Sri Lanka. It will be a great shame if he lives for the rest of his life in wealth while leaving his country in poverty.
Biden's Secretary of Veterans Affairs wants to close facilities and outsource services.
Outsourcing means the workers are paid less and the work has no accountability to the public.
*Groups Demand Egypt Uphold Right to Protest at Global Climate Summit.*
The corrupter tried to threaten witnesses who were going to testify for the Jan 6 attack investigation.
A rough estimate suggests that around 100,000 Americans develop long Covid disabilities each day.
Almost all of them decided to dispense with precautions, such as masks, because "nobody else does that any more, so they must be unnecessary."
*US, African Scientists to Collaborate on mRNA Vaccine Development.*
The US bends over backwards to aid Salafi Arabia's intervention in Yemen while falsely denying what it does.
Suggested work-arounds for various destructive acts by the Supreme Court. Some of them are substantial work.
Iran has jailed three film-makers, two of whom have won international awards, for protesting.
Secretary Becerra says that federal law overrides state abortion bans when an abortion is needed for a medical emergency.
This will remove the most dangerous aspect of those bans — if the fanatics on the Supreme Court do not invent an excuse to strike it down. It is hard to be confident that there is a limit they respect.
Almost 2/3 of Democrats don't want Biden to run again in 2024.
*Nearly $2tn of damage inflicted on other countries by [past] US [greenhouse gas] emissions.*
I think that how we cut down emissions is more important than who emitted how much already. The bad guys are those who fight against rapid cutting.
Amazon warehouse workers have a new slogan: "Don't quit, organize!"
*West must force private lenders to ease Africa's crippling debt, say campaigners.*
If they don't dare to overcome the investors in vaccine companies to free up making of vaccines, I see little hope they will do this.
Drivers for Uber make less than minimum wage — in London, at least — but there is no competition for drivers to switch to.
*Elon Musk wants everyone to have big families like him — but who's going to pay for them?*
It is rational to choose not to have children because raising them is so expensive. But if that is the main thing that convinces people to avoid having children, then survival of civilization will depend on making the children of poor people grow up in poverty.
We need people to be even more rational, and choose not to have children because the world can't support them. Plus, it's dangerous and painful, etc.
US citizens: call on Congress to: protect Birth Control from the supreme Court — pass a law protecting the right to use birth control.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Judicial Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act, which will enact ethical standards for the Supreme Court.
Germany will reactivate old, closed coal power plants to cope with the lack of Russian natural gas.
Since gas causes as much global heating as coal does, this substitution may not do any net harm. But what will happen to the gas that Russia is not selling to Germany?
Will Russia leave some in the ground? (I've read it is not feasible to entirely shut off extracting gas.) Will Russia sell it elsewhere? Will Russia burn it at the well-head, for the lack of any place to put it?
Driverless taxis operated by Cruise are not autonomous — they work on remote control. If they lose communication with the base, they stop.
I wouldn't trust any driverless taxi if it communicates with any server whatsoever — or if I can't use it anonymously.
The latest Jan 6 hearing showed evidence that the wrecker strove persistently to steal the 2020 election, first by lies and lawfare, then by planned provocation of violence at the Capitol.
Neelie Kroes, formerly head EU official in charge of internet policy, is accused of lobbying for Uber shortly after leaving that job.
Several UK ministers met secretly with Uber lobbyists.
Having those meetings may not violate any specific rules, but morally speaking it suggests they are working for the wrong side.
*Rashida Tlaib Is Trying to Fix the Espionage Act, but Whistleblowers Are Probably Out of Luck.*
Australia's privacy regulator will investigate two store chains for using facial recognition on customers in general.
Uber paid academic economists as much as $100,000 to publish research that would present the company as beneficial for society.
The article explains facts that these economists disregarded. However, just as crucial was to choose economists whose general assumptions predisposed them to evaluate based on parameters where Uber would excel, and ignore consequences that we might consider bad, such as wages that you can't live on.
*Tax cut pledges by Tory leadership hopefuls "risk stoking inflation and inequality."*
You can generally expect Tories to address any problem by cutting taxes for the wealthy. It's their hammer.
The UK's strict lock downs may have harmed the psychological development of children and teenagers.
The Spix's macaw has been reestablished in the wild after a massive, careful program of breeding the ones living in captivity.
The movie Rio may have helped inspire the effort.
Some black men run away from traffic stops because they are terrified that thugs will kill them.
Rationally, the chance that any given black man will be killed in any given traffic stop is minuscule. But I can't blame them for feeling terrified, given the thugs' patterns of bias and harassment. There is no reliable way for a black driver to get through a traffic stop safely — you can get shot for obeying the thugs' orders.
A regional drought in northern Italy has left the Po river nearly empty.
Agriculture has been devastated, and cities have water restrictions. I expect large wildfires to follow.
Iran is providing armed drones to Putin.
This support is comparable to (though much smaller in scale than) NATO's support for Ukraine. It is clear, and very regrettable, that the US blew its opportunity to reduce hostilities with Iran.
I think the US's motive was to appease long-time allies such as Salafi Arabia. This entails sucking up to Crown Prince Bone Saw — someone as murderous as the rulers of Iran, and even more oppressive to women and dissidents. And he doesn't even give the US strategic support when it asks.
Uber's highest executives approved of using this "greyball" deception feature to thwart government investigations of allegations that Uber was violating regulations.
If that wasn't illegal, the laws are too weak.
Sri Lanka's president tried to flee to Dubai on a commercial flight, before he ceases to be president, but airport staff stopped him.
Reversing Roe v Wade was nothing at all like the historic Brown v Board of Education decision that ruled out "separate but equal" education.
Modelling suggests that a middle-size nuclear war (India and Pakistan, perhaps) would cause a global ice age that would last centuries.
Most life in the ocean would starve, and so would humans.
Mines in the Black Sea are endangering all the countries with shorelines there. It will take years to remove them all.
In April, China froze the bank accounts of thousands of people because the bank was in danger of bankruptcy. Those people have effectively lost their money, and may be broke, so they protested in the street, and thugs came and beat them up.
*The UK’s unwritten constitution is put to the test by Johnson’s unprincipled acts.*
The Australian government must act to increase use of anti-Covid masks.
*Calls for inquiry into [French president] Macron's links to Uber lobbying.*
The European Commission is Uber-corruptible, and it's not only Uber that has corrupted it.
US citizens: call on the Senate not to recess while judicial vacancies remain.
Guber implemented a command (the "kill switch") to shut off access to its data base from headquarters computers, so that government investigators couldn't determine whether the company was breaking taxi regulations. The company used it in France, the Netherlands, India and Hungary, as well as Canada and Hong Kong. The highest executives explicitly gave the command for this. Even though they are no longer working for Guber, they should be prosecuted and punished for this crime.
As for Uber, let's punish it for all its wrongs by not giving it our money.
Illegal gold miners in Venezuela are shooting the indigenous leaders that are trying to keep their land free from gold mining and the poisonous mercury it releases.
*Restoring US abortion access won't be easy — but we need leaders who will try.*
US citizens: phone your senators and urge them to preserve the millionaire's surcharge (passed by the house) in the tax and investment package.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121. If you call, please spread the word!
*Plant-based meat by far the best climate investment, report finds.*
British construction companies and their suppliers knew that they were building firetraps, and went ahead uncaring. Will Tory ministers trouble to make them stop?
*Are You Ready to Be Surveilled Like a Sex Worker?*
FOSTA/SESTA's censorship provides a model for how to quash discussion of abortions.
*Our "Normal" Climate Is Dead — Now We Live in an Emergency.*
Teachers and nurses in the UK are beyond ready to strike. Many are more than ready to quit.
Diptheria bacteria are now spreading in Australia due to anti-vax superstition.
*Biden's executive order on abortion is better than nothing. But not much better.*
After public criticism, a national store chain in Australia agreed to stop using facial recognition on customers.
Sad that the organization that criticized this undermined itself by suggesting that maybe this tracking would not be so bad if the company had better informed customers about it.
If the customers were well informed about the practice, the company could argue that they had implicitly consented to being tracked. That means nothing — it is no excuse for establishing universal tracking! Even explicit consent from millions of people would be no excuse. Systematic tracking of people is the soil in which repression grows, and that is an injustice to everyone.
Deep-sea mining is noisy, and the noise can travel for hundreds of miles in water. It can interfere with marine animals' reproduction or safety, and thus disrupt ecosystems.
American women have already been prosecuted for taking abortion drugs.
Turkey arrested a Russian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian grain, but now it has released the ship, for unstated reasons.
Scientists call for banning the use of nitrites in curing bacon. Other chemicals do the job equally well and are safer.
Journalist Maria Ressa has been convicted of libel (which is a crime in the Philippines), and could be sentenced to years in prison.
As for freedom of the press, it has already been sentenced to death in the Philippines.
Putin's henchmen have sentenced a municipal official to 7 years in prison for criticizing the invasion of Ukraine.
I wonder precisely what "information" they claim is "false"?
*Ukraine forces finally seeing impact of western [long-range artillery], says Zelenskiy.*
The right-wing scheme to allow state legislatures to disregard state constitutions for federal elections completely contradicts the ideas of "federalism" which the right-wing politicians claim to base their thinking on.
It seems that UK thugs protect other thugs from accusations of domestic violence by intimidating the accusers.
*School Surveillance Will Never Protect Kids From Shootings.*
Prominent Ukrainian medic Yulia Paievska was captured by the Putin forces in March, because they recognized her as somewhat famous. Then they tortured her persistently, constantly demanding she admit to some Nazi connections.
Why don't the Putin forces grab some Republicans from the US instead? Those may be glad to admit they are Nazis.
The last journalists reporting from Mariupol were told, "Get out — if they capture you, they will torture you to say that your reporting was fake."
Offering too much to other countries to free US citizens would put more US citizens in danger.
In my view, a patriotic citizen (of any country) does not ask its government to procure per release from a foreign prison through concessions that could affect the well-being or interests of the country. I am surprised by the expectation that the head of state personally involve perself in such negotiations.
Biden's officials have refused to decriminalize marijuana despite pressure from some senators.
Cory Doctorow: The Swerve.
With climate disaster approaching, making dangerous efforts to stop the disaster is now less dangerous than not making them.
Bogus Johnson said he will step down as prime minister when the Tory party decides who to appoint in his place. That will take time.
Florida adopted a new civics curriculum; now it is training teachers to teach it. The training pushes distorted history and establishment of Christianity.
*Indian government censors tweets critical of Indian [government's] internet censorship.*
The tweets in question were made by Freedom House, which evaluates countries on their respect for freedom.
Global heating may be slowing the reaction that removes methane from the atmosphere, even as it increases some production of methane.
If that's true, we may be doomed.
A politician who openly defies norms of honesty and gets away with that permanently erodes those norms. Especially when he gets away with it because his party chooses to sacrifice the norms to keep him in office. His eventual defeat does not restore the lost practices of honesty, nor the lost trust that depended on those practices.
This, for example, the persistent and unlimited falsification of the wrecker taught most Republicans to support lies when they lead to victory.
US citizens: call on Transportation Secretary Buttigieg to protect passengers and crack down on airline malpractice.
It's much less painful to find, in advance, that no space is available for your trip, than to get a ticket but learn, at the airport, that you can't actually travel. Fining airlines for the latter will teach airlines not to schedule more flights than they can actually operate.
US citizens: call on Congress to reform the Supreme Court.
I intentionally signed this petition as well as the more specific petition to expand the court, because other forms of reform would also do the job.
US citizens: call on Biden not to nominate antiabortion crusader Chad Meredith for a federal judgeship.
The Democrats should deny Republican senators veto power over judges from their own states, just as Republican senators did before. To insist on fighting according to rules that your enemy blatantly ignores is to be a chump.
Unilever treated the moral objections of the human Ben and Jerry to selling "Ben and Jerry's" ice cream in Israel's colonies in Palestinian territory as an inconvenience and found a simple fix: selling the business, in Israel (including its colonies), to another company.
Ben and Jerry are suing Unilever to stop this.
I agree with them in supporting Israel but not its occupation of Palestine.
It is not unusual for supporters of Israel's occupation policy to accuse "antisemitism" when anyone criticizes that policy. This was used to return the UK Labour Party to plutocratist control by kicking out Corbyn and his supporters,
and AIPAC, the pro-Israel-occupation lobbying group, is now funding the campaigns of insurrectionist US politicians.
Australia has dropped the prosecution of Bernard Collaery, who was accused of helping to reveal that Australia had bugged the Timorese negotiating team. Australia was negotiating at the time the division of oil rights between East Timor and Australia.
However, prosecution of other whistleblowers that revealed Australian government wrongdoing continues. This threatens human rights and democracy.
The European Parliament approved a plan to direct some of the funds meant for decarbonization into natural gas development instead.
Counting the inevitable methane leaks, natural gas is as bad as coal.
The same plan allows for spending on nuclear power plants, too. While they do not emit greenhouse gas, they create the danger of nuclear accidents. Because of their great expense, this is a terribly inefficient way to decarbonize.
The Federal government habitually helps state governments get personal data from databases, and from people's computers. If it doesn't take action to avoid this, it will help states find abortion patients or abortion providers.
*Don't waste all your anger on Boris Johnson — save some for his enablers.*
Covering fields of crops with plastic sheets increased local temperatures by around 0.7°C and humidity by nearly 25%.
The large-scale use of this practice changes the region's weather.
Oxfam: *A broken food system is perpetuating hunger.*
We must not overlook the role of population growth in the malfunctioning of the system of supporting humans. Growing enough food and distributing it to those who need it, while protecting wildlife, will be much easier for a smaller population.
George Monbiot: *It's democracy v plutocracy — this is the endgame for our planet.*
*It's as if, when ministers go to bed, they ask themselves, "What have I done to make the UK a worse place today?"*
The mayor of Uvalde accused the upper management of the Texas Department of Public Safety of organizing to cover up the cause of the incompetent reaction of the "security" forces.
European countries are considering a continent-wide high speed rail network.
This is a very good thing to do; but to get the full benefit of it, we must campaign against demanding ID from each passenger. Several countries, including Spain and Italy, imposed that requirement as a measure for tracking Covid-19 cases — but now that there are so many cases, no country in Europe is really trying to find them all. That means this anti-freedom policy is no longer justified.
*[Senate Republicans] Colluding With Autocratic Orbán Government to Tank Global Tax Deal.*
*Are Democrats Really Clueless About Impending Election Doom?*
This criticism applies to the plutocratist Democrats, but we should not hold it against the progressive Democrats.
The possibility of resuming Obama's non-nuclear deal with Iran is fast ebbing away.
The blame for this falls on the wrecker, who cancelled the deal for his own personal ambition (the main reason for everything political he does).
Secondarily, it seems to fall on the Iranian hard-liners, for preferring to make Iran a nuclear power, and on Biden, who gave insufficient priority to avoiding that.
Given the repeated acts of terror (war against civilians) carried out by the Putin forces, we must treat Russia as a terrorist state.
I don't think that this offers a magic way to alter the direction of the war. I don't think that the countries which now do business with Russia will pay attention.
Shell companies systematically evade sanctions to buy phosphates in Syria and sell them in Europe.
Pakistan's suppression forces regularly kill or disappear people of the Baloch minority. They mete out cruelty to peaceful protesters.
There has long been a separatist movement among the Balochi, but extrajudicial killing and kidnapping are not a legitimate response.
US citizens: call on Marsh insurance not to insure the East African Crude Oil Pipeline.
US citizens: call on Congress to demand accountability from executive agencies for supporting war crimes in Yemen.
US citizens: call on Congress to legislate to protect same-sex marriage.
Hong Kong artists published graphic novels about wolves and sheep, that could be taken as metaphorically depicting Chinese and Hong Kongers. The wolves are now prosecuting them.
Maya Forstater, who was dismissed from work for maintaining that gender identities are meaningless and all that matters is a person's biological sex, has won a discrimination lawsuit.
I disagree with those views, but I defend her right to state views that disagree with mine.
*A toxic combination of climate emergency, conflict and Covid is pushing some of the poorest countries into an acute hunger crisis.*
*In pretending that Covid is over, the UK government is playing a dangerous game.*
This applies also to the US, and at least most countries in Europe.
A group of human rights lawyers accuse Turkey of complicity in PISSI's massacre of Yazidis, and blame Syria and Iraq for failing to prevent the massacre.
They certainly did fail, but I wonder if they could in practice have done any better than they actually did.
After one too many blatant lies, two Tory ministers resigned rather than continue serving alongside Bogus Johnson.
Subsequently, other ministers joined them. The rest continue supporting Bogus, lacking even that minimum level of integrity. But the ones that resigned just now sat still for lie after lie.
Senator Manchin is blocking medicare expansion while the poor people in his state are suffering without it.
Republicans are recruiting poll workers who are trying to falsify the last election. They are unfit for the responsibility of a poll workers — to protect the integrity of the next election — since they show their goal is the exact opposite.
Can they be prosecuted for conspiracy to steal the election?
An interview with the author of the book, Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy.
The interview starts by reminding Americans of the achievements of the New Deal did for the non-rich, then how President Carter and subsequent Democrats helped Republicans undo it. The last topic is how to save democracy by fighting for something similar to the New Deal.
(satire) *CEOs Explain How They Will Protect Abortion Rights [for their workers].*
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Many of the refugees that the UK plans to send to Rwanda are victims of trafficking.
The fact that one particular refugee is a woman should make no difference whatsoever to per human rights, but being a victim of trafficking (a form of enslavement) does make a difference. Victims of trafficking must be protected so that they don't fear to report the crimes that were committed against them.
The general attitude of the current UK government is towards law is, "Laws are weapons to hit you with — not tools for defending your rights." The plan to disempower the European Court of Human Rights demonstrates this.
A preliminary report finds that catching Covid-19 twice (easy to do, with the BA.5 variant) more than doubles the subsequent danger, compared with catching it only once.
The study measured how many people died, were hospitalized, or developed various long-term medical problems in the subsequent six months.
Each reinfection adds to the total risk, and the amount it adds increases too.
Perhaps this means we need the new vaccines developed for Omicron. Or perhaps we need a different one for BA.5. Meanwhile, making a practice of wearing a mask when you are indoors with other people, except for your few closest friends, is something you can do now to protect yourself and others.
Thousands protested in England against the high cost of living, which many people with low incomes cannot afford. Sad to say, they misidentified the problem as "high fuel prices", which means that their public message is a demand to make fossil fuel cheap. That way lies death!
Anyway, it's not only fossil fuel that low-income Britons can't afford. Inflation affects more or less everything. The right solution, to give them enough extra income that they can afford their living expenses, will address all of that.
Naturally, the Tories aim to repress any protest that people will notice. They recently passed new laws to do this. I wonder how many of these protesters supported the Tories for that, while Tory repression was aimed at environmentalists.
(satire) *Conservatives Explain Why They Oppose Abortions.*
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Global heating means, literally, hell on Earth.
US citizens: Call for Democrats to consider these several ways of restoring abortion rights.
Covid in New Zealand is increasing rapidly, as people can get reinfected just a few months after having it. Doctors call for masks, self-isolation, and other measures to slow the spread of the disease.
Thugs perceive black teenagers, and even children, as more adult than whites of the same age — and treat them as culpable.
*Dangerous strain of salmonella becoming more common in UK meat.*
*Potentially deadly [drug-resistant bacteria] found in British supermarket pork.*
Even worse, it was found in pork raised under a system that limits the antibiotics they are given.
*Turkey seizes Russian ship carrying … Ukrainian grain.*
Russia announced that the grain is Ukrainian, so now it must suffer the penalty.
Toronto homeless shelters require security guards to remove facial hair so that N95 masks will fit them well, and effectively prevent transmission of Covid-19. This rule is to protect health and safety during Covid waves.
Some guards, who are Sikhs, believe that this rule is unfair to them because complying with it would go against their religion. They contend that the state has no right to enforce rules on them that conflict with their religious observance.
Such a demand must be refused. No one is entitled to set aside a requirement to protect other people's health in order to practice a ritual. In the end, if you won't do the job as it needs to be done, you must leave.
In general, we should let people practice their religions when it doesn't cause a significant problem. For instance, if someone wants to wear a long bathing suit while swimming, there is no reason to forbid that.
It is also good to look for compromises, including with the Sikh guards. For instance, a small beard, like the one I wear now, can fit under an N95 mask. (I cut it to fit underneath.) Such beards should be permitted. Whether that is acceptable to a Sikh, I don't know, but if it is, they should be allowed to wear their masks over these beards.
It is reasonable to insist that an employer offer a worker some other job, when a new rule excludes per from per current job. But people with a religion should not thereby acquire more human rights than Atheists have.
*It's time for Democrats to fear their own voters.*
Xiao Jianhua, a Canadian billionaire (formerly Chinese) who was kidnapped from Hong Kong by Chinese suppression agents in 2017, is now getting a Chinese-style secret trial.
The series of kidnappings of Hong Kong businessmen terrified the citizens; for Xi, they demonstrated that the other powers would not take strong measures to protect freedom in Hong Kong.
Humans must prepare to be ready to care about the rights and needs of sentient AIs, so that we can respect their rights if and when we meet them.
Thugs in Akron shot and killed a black man who was running away from them.
He may have been a criminal — he had left a loaded gun behind in the car, and was reportedly wearing a ski mask (in June!). But he was not threatening anyone when they killed him. Perhaps he deserved to be tried and convicted — we don't know — but there were no grounds for killing him.
The article linked to just 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 will not link to articles that promote it. But I make exceptions for some articles that I consider particularly important. That article is one of the exceptions.
Is there a need to give each person an official sex (or an official gender)? Maybe not.
It may be desirable to distinguish officially between being someone's biological mother and being per biological father.
*More than 180 British Council contractors left trapped in Afghanistan have been given immediate permission by the UK government to apply online to come to Britain, but no hint of how to get out of the country safely.*
It appears that UK bureaucrats followed their standard practice, with all would-be immigrants, of looking for excuses to refuse to let them in. It must have become a habit for them.
*Spain and Portugal suffering driest climate for 1,200 years, research shows.* Scientists now know what causes this; it is directly connected with global heating. As this gets worse, it will be a disaster for olive and grape production.
The UK plans to try again to send refugees to Rwanda, and do so before the start of a planned court hearing about whether it is lawful to do this.
That would go beyond disregarding asylum seekers' human rights: it would show contempt for the idea that they (or any people) have rights.
*Brazil sees record Amazon deforestation in first half of 2022.*
US citizens: call on Clarence Thomas to resign.
US residents (citizens or not): call on Dollar General to end low pay and unsafe working conditions.
*Boiling Like Frogs in a Pot, Will Democratic Leaders Ever Jump Out?*
I like what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez posted, but it may have a correctable problem. It appears that "codifying Roe" may be difficult or impossible to do in a way that the Supreme Court extremists can't wreck; but expanding the court to restore Roe can work, if we don't wait too long.
A "global energy price cap" could cut Putin's fossil fuel income. This article explains how it would function, by conditions on insurance for oil tankers.
For this to function, it needs various countries stand firm behind it, and others go along with it.
I wonder if China might defeat it by offering insurance without insisting on the price limit.
*"Morally Bankrupt" G7 Slammed for "Caving" to Fossil Fuel Lobby on Climate.*
*Oxfam Condemns G7 for Leaving "Millions to Starve" as Global Hunger Surges.*
Poland's abortion restrictions killed Izabela Sajbor. Her doctors knew she needed an abortion to survive, but they had to wait until the fetal heartbeat ceased; by then, it was too late.
Pszczyna is around 1-2 hours' drive from the border with the Czech Republic. I wonder if it was possible to save her, while she was in labor but not dying, by putting her in a car and taking her to a Czech hospital. Doctors surely would have said it was too risky for her to travel, and I suppose it was; but I think they were not reckoning with the risk for her of staying put.
*Evidence contradicts [Putinite] claims about Kremenchuk mall attack.*
I've seen report of a rumor that these missiles are inaccurate, so maybe the missile was fired at the repair factory and hit the mall by mistake, If that is true, it means another Putinite claim (that it was accurate) is false. And it is a war crime to bombard civilian areas with inaccurate weapons.
*Growing Food for Fuel Is Starving People.*
*[Biofuels], used on a large scale, … are no more sustainable than whale oil.*
Having enough additional food production to feed 2 billion people does not mean we should be content to see 2 billion more people! We can't afford that either way.
Part of that increment production could enable us to give every living person enough food. Part of it we could discontinue, preserving wild lands or rewilding some.
Stuart, a food delivery subcontracting company which handles delivery for Just Eat in the UK, uses a driver-guidance map system which occasionally sends drivers to the wrong place or via impossible routes. As a result, they fail to complete the job on time, and Stuart fires them.
If violations of workers' rights were punished vigorously, companies would not dare treat their workers like this.
Governor Newsom of California is running ads in Florida condemning Governor Desantis for attacking freedom there.
Murderous drug mafias have led the Netherlands to launch a sort of war on drug mafias.
I would guess that most of the drugs smuggled through the Netherlands is headed for other countries in Europe, and only a small fraction is for Dutch users. If there were a lawful way to buy cocaine for personal use, it might pull the rug out from under the mafias.
A subtle but general question in copyright law is the basis of a lawsuit: to what extent can a work of fiction embody the conclusions of historical research about specific people in its plot without counting as "plagiarism".
Viewing copyright as a system for encouraging authorship, the answer is clear: this should be permitted, because prohibiting it does not serve that goal and instead obstructs it. A fictional work is not a substitute for a historical work — they do not compete.
However, if you use the propaganda term "property" to conceptualize copyright, it will bias you in the wrong direction. You might unconsciously start from the assumption that authors (in practice, more often the publishing companies that published their work) are entitled to maximum power regardless of what effects that has.
This is one of the reasons to reject and shun the term "intellectual property." The other reason is that it's an over generalization about several disparate and unrelated laws. If you assume they are similar, you are likely to misunderstand each of them.
The habitual use of "smart" phones seems to be weakening people's memory, and is perhaps responsible for visible changes in brain development.
What should we do about that?
Like a true surrender-monkey, the author says it is unthinkable to do away with them. The article suggests that taking one-minute breaks would make the problem less. Well, one can hope.
I'm glad to say that I have ever had a "smart" phone. I know others who reject this; you can, too!
I go further than that, personally. All portable phones track your movements and can be modified remotely to listen to all the conversations around you, all the time — so I refuse to carry any kind of snoop-phone.
Texas "educators", fearing the law restricting schools from teaching about racism, proposed to rename slavery as "involuntary relocation".
That reminds me of "detained". and "rendition" two other terms designed to hide the reality of what they refer to.
If properly taught, comparing voluntary immigration with the transport of slaves could teach students a lot about what slavery was. But teaching that properly would be illegal in Texas — so they must have been planning to downplay the truth.
Historically, slavery in British colonies was achieved by forced transportation of Africans. But that was not true everywhere else. Slavery in Spanish colonies started with the indigenous people Spain had conquered. It did not involve transporting them, since they were worked as slaves in the land where they lived. That didn't make it less horrible.
Millennia earlier, the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt also occurred in the place where they already lived.
Politicians are finding excuses to increase use of natural gas. They cite various bogus excuses, but all this can really do is accelerate global heating.
Depending on your employer to pay for your trip to get an abortion puts you in a very vulnerable position.
In any case, I expect that only a tiny percentage of US workers work in jobs that are covered by such commitments. (Can anyone find out what percentage?) It's a nice gesture but it isn't a solution.
New South Wales directs thugs to persistently harass some teenagers (and their relatives) as part of a scheme to stop them from repeating delinquency.
US citizens: phone your senators (each one) and call on them to explicitly enact the authority for the EPA to regulate total emissions of any greenhouse gas.
The Capitol Switchboard number is +1-202-224-3121.
If you call, please spread the word!
Massachusetts residents: call on your state legislators to enact limits on state use of facial recognition.
Here's the text I gave as my personal message.
Please vote to enact the recommendations of the Special Commission on Facial Recognition Technology. Those recommended rules will limit the use of facial recognition by and for state government agencies so that it does not become oppressive — presuming that the rules apply to all jurisdictions that are part of the state. (I can't see an explicit statement about that.)
However, this will certainly not be enough to protect us from the repressive potential of facial recognition. Private companies can also use facial recognition in ways that repress people. Imagine that Amazon Ring joins forces with Clearview AI: it could track almost everyone almost everywhere. It could report every person from Texas that visits an abortion clinic in Massachusetts, for possible prosecution in Texas. There are many other unjust possibilities. Other methods of tracking, for instance through cellular phones, can have the same effects.
To prevent tracking technology from threatening many human rights, we need to legislate that it not be used in Massachusetts.
Thus, I urge you to follow the adoption of the commission's recommendations about governmental use of facial recognition with strict limits on private use of tracking technology.
New York thugs violently arrested a beloved saxophone player, injuring him and damaging his instrument, for playing without authorization in the subway.
Apparently Night-Mayor Adams has taken the bogus "broken windows" theory one step further. Breaking windows is undisputedly wrong, though not a heinous crime. Playing music in the subway is merely against a regulation.
The first lesson is, never vote for an ex-cop for mayor.
The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA can regulate CO2 emissions only in limited, local ways, not aiming for major reductions in total planet-roasting emissions.
That means it can't do the one task most important for civilization's survival.
*Biden Urged to Take Emergency Action After "Disastrous" Climate Ruling by Supreme Court*.
What he has been doing recently is the opposite: unleashing a big increase in US oil extraction, which will take effect several years from now.
*Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling plan.*
It would be better for gasoline prices to increase in a slow, steady, predictable fashion, with gas tax increases scheduled in advance. But they must increase!
Now legislators are calling for expanding the Supreme Court to undo its climate attack, in addition to abortion rights and voting rights.
*In Blow to Voting Rights, [the Supreme Court] Saves Louisiana's Racially Rigged Electoral Map.*
*Arizona, the most "pro-life" state in America, "one of the worst states in the union" for child health.*
This is no surprise — the people who oppose abortion tend to reject the idea of systematically helping post born fetuses.
Senator Ron Johnson privately admitted participating in the fake electors scheme.
*California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plastic.*
Queensland, Australia, will ban some kinds of single-use plastics.
Helium is scarce and it is needed for some important uses. We should not permit it to be used for inflating balloons!
Ecuador has reached a harmful deal to end indigenous protests: cutting the fossil fuel price.
This eases the immediate suffering of the poor, at the cost of making future suffering worse for them and everyone else.
The right way to help poor people cope with various kinds of high prices is to give them extra money which is independent of the amount of fossil fuel they use.
The deal also includes stricter geographic limits on search for and exploiting fossil fuel. That part is good.
*Mark Meadows's associate threatened [Cassidy Hutchinson] before her testimony.*
Senate Democrats are likely to fail to fill all the vacancies in federal courts by the end of this year. If they lose control of the senate, those vacancies will go unfilled until 2024 and might be filled by Republicans instead.
Why do they not eliminate the rule that allows individual senators to block these appointments? The Republicans did. Could it be that Manchin or Sinema is sabotaging this?
ATMs and vending machines in Russia run nonfree software — the machines' owners cannot fix them.
We might argue that it is ok for banks and companies in Russia to be attacked in this way, as punishment for Putin's invasion of Ukraine; but I expect the same attack vector exists in most or all other countries too.
Construction of the planned Sizewell C nuclear power plant would quite likely destroy an adjoining wildlife reserve.
That is in addition to wasting billions of pounds on inefficient decarbonization, rather than spending it on much cheaper solar or wind power together with temporary battery storage.
Federal funds will be available for projects to undo the damage done to poor or black urban neighborhoods in the 1960s by building highways through them.
India has banned a long list of single-use plastic products.
Global heating is wreaking ecological havoc on US national parks.
In some places, all the old trees are dying of various climate-related causes.
Let's get rid of the right-wing myth that abortions lead to psychological problems. They don't.
On the other hand, having a baby does sometimes cause them. (And non-mental medical problems, too.) Being compelled to have a baby you can't afford to take care of is even worse.
About the decades-long plutocratist campaign that led to last week's sabotage of the EPA's authority to defend human civilization from global heating disaster.
Google will delete location history data showing a visit to an abortion clinic and certain other sensitive places.
That would protect people from repression using certain data bases, but plenty of other companies collect location data in various ways, including mobile phone networks.
(satire) *Elmo Receives Vasectomy In PSA On Preventing Unwanted Pregnancies.*
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*Expanding US LNG Exports Would Be Planetary Disaster.*
Mississippi Republicans are determined to force rape victims to give birth.
Republicans are avidly trying to legislate repression against people who visit another state to get an abortion. If Republicans can't actually prosecute them, they will try to organize people to sue them into bankruptcy.
Criminalizing abortions converts the thug department into your enemy, even if you're not female.
Washington's governor Inslee has ordered the state thug department not to cooperate with requests from other states for information about who got an abortion in Washington.
*Beware: The Supreme Court Is Laying Groundwork to Pre-Rig the 2024 Election.*
If it rules that state legislatures have total arbitrary control over how to choose a state's electors, Republican states will use that to disregard the actual votes and make the Republican presidential candidate the winner.
Three of the fanatical in-justices have already said they are in favor of this.
We need to prepare to stop them, recognizing that we can't count on principles of jurisprudence to deter them.
Several Republican extremist politicians and candidates have posted messages hinting at violence against Democrats, or against non-extremist Republicans, and the trend is that the hints get more obvious.
The human immune system doesn't do a good job against Omicron, and even less against the newer BA.4 and BA.5 variants. People catch it over and over — and each time, long Covid may develop afterward.
The existing vaccines, developed against the original virus, reduce the rate of hospitalization and death, but don't prevent people from getting sick again and again.
What should we say about the Russian drug charges against Brittney Griner?
First of all, the "war on drugs" is an injustice. Nobody should be punished for possessing marijuana or its derivatives. On that basic level, the conclusion is clear: she ought to be freed,
There are many countries that do, or might, put someone in prison for years for carrying hashish oil. The UAE has an extreme practice of doing this, which is why I urge people not to transit through Dubai airport. The US remains allied with Dubai despite this and other nasty practices.
Indeed, the US might itself imprison Americans for doing exactly what she did. Marijuana products remain prohibited by the federal government and many states.
I won't argue that this makes it legitimate for Russia to imprison Griner for carrying hashish oil. It is wrong for any country to do that. A's injustice towards people P, Q and R does not justify B's injustice towards people X, Y and Z. However, it's a mistake to treat this as worse when Putin does it than when anyone else does it.
Is Putin using her as a hostage? Perhaps he is — he does that sort of thing. But it isn't very useful to harp on that. The more the US demands he release her, the more valuable she becomes as a hostage.
I suggest that Americans focus on demanding full legalization of marijuana in the US, a goal which is attainable. Then it would have more moral stature to call on other countries to release prisoners of war in the war on drugs.
US citizens: call on the Senate to suspend the filibuster and protect abortion rights.
At the same time, the Senate should legislate the right to use birth control and the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, since those are the next targets of the Court of Chaos.
How to do this so that the same court can't invalidate it may be a tricky problem. It may require expanding the court to cancel the religious extremists.
Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Tony Ornato told her the wrecker tried to grab control of his limousine, when Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol where his followers were attacking. However, a Secret Service agent says that the wrecker did not actually do that.
This is no reason to doubt Hutchinson's testimony. She did not claim to have seen those events herself — she was reporting what someone else told her. If he changes his story now, that could mean he regrets having had loose lips.
However, I am sure that the the wrecking crew will try to twist this so that it appears to shed discredit on everything she testified to.
If the wrecker did to try to grab the wheel, I cannot blame him for that. If my driver flat-out insisted in taking me where I did not want to go, I would consider it kidnapping and I would think about how to escape from the car. To grab the steering wheel might be ineffective, or dangerous, but it would not be wrong under those circumstances. This, in itself, would not matter for his guilt or innocence.
What does matter is that he wanted to go to the Capitol and egg on his followers in attacking it. That was inculpating, even if he asked for it in perfectly civil terms.
*Australia's bush fire season has grown by almost a month in 40 years, study finds.*
We have a big increase in wildfires, and the times of year that they happen, in the US, Canada, Spain, and Siberia
Turkey demands that Sweden extradite "terrorist supporters" including those of the PKK, or it will block Sweden's accession to NATO at some later point.
Sweden recently "designated" the PKK as a "terrorist organization" without a trial. That's always an injustice, and this illustrates it. That wrong is practiced by many countries including the US. countries including the US.
It would be an additional wrong to do this and then suddenly start to extradite people who had previously been accepted as refugees. Sweden must at least give those people time to leave.
Has Sweden has also "designated" Rojava, the state of the Syrian Kurds, as "a terrorist organization"? I would think so. I fear that Turkey demands extradition of people for working with and supporting Rojava and its army, which is a noble cause, and I fear that Sweden will eventually do that.
Charges were dropped against the Michigan officials involved in poisoning the water in Flint.
For information about the poisoning and its causes, see these notes.
The charges were dropped because of a fundamental irregularity in procedure. I wonder if the charges can be refiled in the proper way.
Planet roasters continue making totally unreal claims about energy costs to try to sidetrack renewable generation and promote nuclear power.
New York State is drawing up a new gun permit law, to replace the one that the Supreme Court overturned.
*Google Maps or a random game on your phone could just as easily be weaponized against someone as a menstrual tracking app.*
To keep people safe, we must reject the practice of designing programs to send data anywhere off your machine, except on your explicit request.
*Greek [thugs] coerce asylum seekers into pushing [actually, rowing] fellow migrants back to Turkey.* And the thugs beat those up before before having them pushed back.
The refugees are told they will be charged as smugglers if they refuse to help row the others back.
The political situation in Colombia, and President Petro's prospects for changing it.
Subcontracted non-medical workers in British hospitals are now striking.
Subcontracting has been one aspect of the general Tory pressure on the NHS.
The EU is considering a sweeping requirement for all commercial services for users to communicate or post anything to scan all communications.
The stated purpose is to detect child sexual abuse, but since this is a tool for Chinese-style repression, it hardly matters what purpose is stated.
If Congress legislates to legalize abortion, it will not be straightforward to stop the fanatical Justices from finding an excuse to overturn that law.
According to the writer, the Court of Chaos has already abolished most of the possible bases for Congress to establish any sort of right. It is now easier to prohibit something nationwide than to make it lawful nationwide.
Here's a plan that would do the job — because it includes expanding the Supreme Court. That would make possible reversing the damage, not just the immediate decision overturning Roe v Wade, but the deeper levels too.
A defendant has appealed a conviction because it was based on ordering Google to reveal which people had done a particular kind of search.
Fanatical Christian officials could do this to find women who might have got abortions.
(satire) *Supreme Court Casually Mentions Nation Now Divided Into Six Provinces Ruled By Conservative Justices.*
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New Zealand has designated the Proud Boys as a terrorist group.
It seems to fit that description, but these decisions should be made by a trial, not arbitrarily.
The Labour Party seems to be rejecting candidates for Parliament that it considers leftist.
Now that Labour fails to oppose plutocracy hard, striking workers provide Britain's opposition.
The anti-abortion crusade's next goal is to impose a ban on abortion on all Americans. Many of them are willing to do this by hook or by crook.
The Putin forces are threatening teachers in occupied Ukraine with firing, eviction, and possible imprisonment or violence unless they agree to teach Putin's censored curriculum. If they do agree, they may be punished by Ukraine in the future.
I agree that Ukraine should not punish civilians who collaborated under duress. But I wonder if there is any way for teachers (and others unwillingly under Putin's rule) to get out.
Certainly, Ukraine should try harder to make sure all teachers to leave areas that may soon fall to the Putin forces.
Human Rights Watch: *Palestinian Authority routinely tortures [prisoners].*
*NHS privatization drive linked to rise in avoidable deaths, study suggests.*
This is what we would suspect, but it will be harder for politicians to continue the privatization once this is more than just a suspicion.
The Republican party is supported by a coalition of single-issue voters for various issues, but it works for the plutocrats, and uses cruelty to make its supporters stop thinking.
Rebecca Solnit: *A planet in peril and so many Big Brothers: George Orwell would have been shocked.*
I hope some one can inform Solnit that some of us do not "opt in" to this surveillance and manipulation.
George Monbiot: rich countries should forgive poor countries' unpayable debt, so those can spend money on conservation and education rather than debt service.
Perhaps this should be conditional the beneficiary countries' cutting down the extraction of fossil fuels.
*Spread of "free-range" farming may raise risk of animal-borne pandemics.*
Democratic PACs are running ads to help extremist Republicans win primaries, in the hope that they will be easy to defeat in the general election.
Aside from the fact that this is like betting double-or-nothing, which is risky, it's also insincere.
Musk said he plans to fire many salaried Tesla workers and hire more hourly workers. In other words, he wants a more precarious work force.
He also seems to plan to hire other salaried workers later this year to replace those he is firing now. You'd think he could afford to keep those workers on for the few months in between. Or is this really a fire-and-rehire scheme to knock wages down? Musk has a pattern of covering up nasty actions with distraction publicity.
*Does Justice Clarence Thomas want to overturn a landmark freedom of the press ruling?*
The plutocrats that Republicans (and many Democrats) work for would sue newspapers over and over until they crack.
Australia is making a serious decarbonization plan for electricity.
I don't think it aims to do enough before 2030, though. Also, there are other sectors that need to be decarbonized.
*An [Imaginary] Anonymous Note to Liberals From a Right-Wing Supreme Court Justice.*
*War on drugs prolonged Colombia’s decades-long civil war, landmark report finds.*
The leftist guerrilla movements started fighting against the inequality of Colombia, but over the decades turned to drugs for financing and got sucked into that.
A summary of key points in Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony.
*"Hutchinson's testimony of the deeply detailed plans of January 6 and the inaction of those in the White House in response to the violence show just how close we came to a coup."*
In Poland, as in the US, right-wing Christians attacked abortion rights by taking over the country's supreme court.
Australia's new government has recognized that its carbon offset scheme is bogus.
That is true elsewhere, too. I hope other governments will recognize it.
The EU countries agreed on a law to stop sale of new fossil-fuel cars by 2035.
Avoiding global climate disaster requires much more than this, but at least it's a step forward. Other major economies (such as the US) have not done even this much.
US citizens: call on these companies to stop funding attacks on abortion rights: Amazon, Google, AT&T, Citi, Coca-Cola, CVS, Walmart, Verizon,
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